It got immediately odder. Just across the bridge, we arrived at the space that Arlington Cemetery would occupy on our side of the portal, all rolling green lawn and white headstones. In Hell, it was a vast desert piled with bones. Bones of people, bones of animals, whales, even a couple of dinosaur skeletons. Arranged in scattered groups and clusters, the boneyard stretched into the distance, shimmering with enough heat to create little dust devils around the piles. We stared for a moment, me trying to fathom how many actual bodies it would take to fill that much space when Nika took a sharp breath.
“We need to turn south and go,” she said.
“What is it Nika?” Lydia asked.
“Some of those little dust cyclones have eyes. We should leave,” she said, turning left and moving out at a brisk pace.
I looked at the nearest dust devil and discovered she was right. Two red eyes stared at me from the center of the little storm. Several other mini-tornados came out of the forest of white bone, clustering around the first one. That didn’t seem so good.
“Company behind,” Arkady announced in a deep, yet quiet, tone. Demon forms were just visible at the beginning of the bridge behind us. We all picked up speed without comment.
A glance back showed more dust devils and more figures crowding the bridge. We started to jog, the river of lava on our left side, the Hell’s version of Arlington on our right. Ahead, we could just make out a massive structure of black stone.
“They’re grouping up and following,” Arkady announced. I didn’t know if he meant the dust devils or the bridge demons so I glanced back. It was both. Awesome.
“What’s going on?” I wondered aloud.
“When you pulled out the Sword it… sang. So did Tanya. I think others must have heard it as well,” Lydia said, shifting the Saiga shotgun on its strap to keep it from smacking her in the face.
“Heaven’s Swords are not welcome in Hell sorta thing?” Stacia asked, jogging effortlessly. My stomach growled.
“Yeah, maybe a beacon of sorts,” Lydia answered.
Three demons popped up on the road directly in front of us. Awasos batted one so hard, it arced out into the lava river and burned up on splashdown. The other dodged Nika’s spear thrust and promptly impaled itself on Tanya’s sword. She too flicked the body to the river where it sat on the surface, blackened, then flared up into flames. I picked the third off with an explosively formed quarter.
“Incoming to the right,” Stacia announced, pointing.
A cluster of dust devils was spinning our way, still in the bone piles. One veered off course and slammed into a massive pile of bone so hard, the whole thing shifted slightly. Then it shifted again, rustled, and stood up. It was some prehistoric version of a rhino or something. Massive four-legged structure, huge horn, all skeleton. Two lava-red eyes burned bright in its skull. Great, so the mini-tornados could drive skeletons.
Another pile of bone shook itself free of the sand and padded out onto the road behind us, this one with the massive curved teeth of a saber-toothed tiger. We moved from a jog to a flat-out run without anyone saying a word. The rhino and the saber-toothed were now giving chase, moving slowly at first but picking up speed with each step. Behind them, a giant two-legged bird skeleton with an axe-like beak pulled itself together and took its first tentative steps.
Ahead, the massive structure grew even larger, the black stone becoming a wall that reached high to the sky, five stories at least. At first I thought it was solid, but as we got closer, I could make out holes, like little caves, rising in rows across its face, and there was a huge gap in the wall like the entrance to a… maze.
The bridge demons were running behind us, a growing mass of monsters that kept adding individuals—a swelling mob of Hell’s rioters.
“We need to get to the courtyard in the middle of that thing as quick as possible,” I said as we rapidly approached what could only be an entrance.
“Then we cheat,” Tanya said, pulling out slightly ahead just as we entered the maze. She ran to the black stone wall and then up it, dodging a red pincer claw that shot out of a cave opening. Jabbing back with her sword without pausing, she kept climbing, arriving on top in just seconds.
“Come on up. I can see the courtyard from here,” she yelled. Her message was timely as the way ahead of us was suddenly blocked by four massive demons and a horde of smaller ones.
“Arkady take ‘Sos; Stacia, you’re with me,” I said. Awasos changed to wolf form and Arkady scooped him up like a giant furry puppy, turning and following Nika and Lydia up the wall. Stacia jumped on my back, wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms under mine. A roar from ahead of us was all the incentive I needed to forget about the warm form draped on mine and run up the wall, Clinging and Releasing with every step.
A clawed hand darted at us from the third cave up. Grim grabbed it and yanked, throwing the humanoid-shaped monster into the faces of the big demons below us. It was immediately torn apart, but one less demon wasn’t going to make a difference in the horde that was converging on our position.
We got to the top and Stacia slid off my back, the others already spreading out on the massive flat space. Tanya was ahead, having already begun scouting the proper path to the center of the maze.
I looked over the edge. Demons were swarming and some were starting to climb the walls of the maze.
“Come on; we’ve got to go,” Stacia said, waving me forward. I glanced back at the demons even as I started to follow. Then I looked at the solid basalt at my feet.
Demons, at least some of the ones here in Hell in their own forms, hadn’t been all that vulnerable to my aura. But stone was stone. Basalt was basalt, whether here or on earth.
I formed an aura blade, an extended mono-edge, and pushed it out further than normal, then pushed it again. Sliding it from the edge of the stone near my feet, I cut back toward the middle of the wall we were on before turning the blade to run parallel with the wall, cutting right down the middle, but at an angle.
Up ahead, the others had reached a ninety-degree turn in the wall. It went from travelling toward the center to travelling to the west. Tanya had determined we needed to jump across the gap to the other side and keep on our mostly southern path to the courtyard in the center.
I arrived as the others were all jumping the forty-foot gap, my invisible blade ripping free from the stone as we reached the turn.
“What the Here are you doing?” Lydia asked.
I put my left foot on the outer edge of the wall and pushed down. A twenty-foot triangular section of the top of the wall that was ten feet wide slid down the sharply angled cut I had made, gathering speed as the multi-ton mass slipped on the almost-glasslike cut the mono blade had made. It disappeared silently off the top, leaving only half the original width we had just walked on, falling into the abyss of demons. Screams, roars, and squishing sounds floated up around the rumble and bang of tons of falling stone.
“Oh. Nice,” Lydia said with a nod, then turned and jumped the forty feet. I followed, glancing below as I sailed over, noting that despite my little gift of stone, there were still hundreds of demons swarming below and starting to climb up.
My black-haired vampire noted my landing, as I was the last of our group to cross, and then took off across the next gap, continuing her straight line to the center of the maze. We all started to follow, my wolf-bear just behind her. A demon popped over the top and I kicked it so hard in the chest that I left a bootprint as it fell out and down. My stomach rumbled and hunger pushed into my thoughts. I pushed it away and followed the group. More jumps, more landings, more demons reaching the top where we were. Most were behind us, having to waste time climbing before they could try and follow us across the top of the maze.
I played tail-end Charlie, using combined energy and aura to knock down the leading demons in the swarm that was beginning to form up top. Our route was the fastest possible way, and the few demons ahead that managed to get in my vampire’s way were killed or knocked out of her path with extreme prejudice. Each side of the massive pentagon was almost a thousand feet long, but from the outside edge to the courtyard was probably less than three hundred. We covered it quickly, jumping forty-foot gaps and running over those portions that headed in toward the middle.
The courtyard came into view and then, after a final jump, we were there, standing atop the last wall with our destination below. The problem was that the blonde mindreader vamp had been entirely correct—this was the next most likely place for the next gate—and the several hundred assembled demons below seemed to know it. We looked down; they looked up. Hunger made me dizzy and I wobbled a bit.
“What do we do?” the smallest vampire asked.
They turned to me. I shrugged, my thoughts focused on the idea of food and eating.
My vampire looked at me closely. “Chris, I know you’re very hungry, but we have to get through that small army and then somehow open a gate, probably in the center of the pentagram they’ve marked in the middle.”
I looked where she pointed. A blood-red, five-pointed star was drawn in the exact center. The demons were all waiting around it. Or they had been. Now they were watching us.
“Christian, if we can get through that, we can get home and get food,” she said, ignoring the sharp look she got from the blonde wolf girl and the littlest vampire.
“Okay,” I said, voice deeper than normal. Then I reached and pulled the Sword, finding it the first time. It shone bright, but not as bright as my first ever view of it, when the blonde angel had showed me how to find it.
I held it up for the demons to see. They didn’t seem to like it. Tough. I jumped off the edge—time to show it to them up close and very personal.
Chapter 32
The ground and the demons rushed up to greet me, or maybe I rushed down. Hard to tell. So damned hungry. The Sword sang; the demons roared, screamed, and screeched. I started to cut.
The rest was blurry… indistinct. Chopping, cutting, spinning, stabbing, ducking, dodging, striking, slicing. Black blood flew, red flesh split. Behind me, I sensed my others—mine. They followed and fought hard, too. There were so many that there was plenty for them although I kept the most for me. It was glorious, but blurry. The demon in front of me fell to the ground. I fell to my knees. There were no more behind him, just a red shape on the ground. But more were coming; I could hear them in the maze or on it. I could feel them in my blood. My others finished the few demons left to them. They crowded around me. I stood, or tried. It was harder than swinging the Sword.
“Chris, can you open the gate?” my black-haired, blue-eyed one asked.
I looked at the Sword in my hand, then looked at the five-sided center of the shape on the ground. Stumbling forward, I fumbled the sword around, holding it point down. My arm raised it over my head and I stabbed toward the center of the center. My feet tripped. Falling forward, the Sword slipping from my hand. Another hand, slim and white, caught the Sword. That was good. The Sword hummed, happy with that hand. Blue eyes looked at me with a question face. “Sing,” I said and pointed. “Sing and stab,” said I, holding myself up on one arm.
She nodded and sang to the Sword. It liked it, brightening till I could hardly look at it, and singing back to her. So bright, all of us had to look away. Bright enough to stop the new arrivals at the entrances to the battle space.
She flipped it point down like I had, still singing the Sword’s song, and drove it point first into the red ground in the middle of the shape in the middle of the star in the middle of the battle space.
The ground opened and we fell through.
First down, then suddenly up. I landed in a jumble on a cold tile floor. The Sword was bright in her hand when she landed behind me. The others landed around the room, some on the floor, my white-furred werewolf on the counter and the little one on a stool. I smelled food, just behind a glass and metal door. Then I saw it. Bread and meat and cheese and green leafy stuff and red tomato. I ripped it free from its package and stuffed it in my mouth. Another caught my eye, smelling of chicken and mayonnaise. I ate it too and grabbed another. A bear snout pushed past me, trying for my sandwich. Not so fast. I growled, it growled back. I held it away and pushed another sandwich into the furry, toothy mouth. It retreated to chew.
“Chris, how do we close this?” my vampire asked. I gulped down the third sandwich as I turned to her. She pointed at a big hole in the tile floor, illuminated by the super bright Sword. It was much brighter here, even without her singing. I started toward her, veered right to plunder a huge glass jar of giant chocolate chip cookies, finally taking the Sword from her hand. It brightened a bit at my touch and I paused in my cookie chewing to study it. Now a full four feet long, it looked different than when Barbiel had first taught me to find it. Instead of a sturdy and plain, if painfully bright, broadsword, it now looked like a very large Japanese katana. In Hell, it had looked like a Roman gladius. Maybe Tanya’s touch had influenced its form; she did like katanas.
Shrugging and chewing, I followed my instincts, walking around the black portal on the floor, dragging the tip of the Sword just on the circle’s very edge. The shining blade left a glowing line in its wake, one that brightened when I finished my walk. The spot where I had connected the beginning with the end glowed brightest, so I shoveled the final cookie into my mouth and grabbed it with my now-free left hand. It came away from the floor like a glowing strand of rope and the tiles underneath it were solid and normal, not black and all doorway to Hell-like.