The Book of Doom (22 page)

He remembered.

He remembered Heaven and Hell and everything else in between.

He remembered Angelo.

And he remembered leaving him down there, all alone with the demons and the monsters and who knew what else? He had told him he’d go back. He had promised.

He poured the eyes back in the bag, put the bag back in the backpack, pulled the backpack over his shoulders.

He’s not my friend, he’s my colleague
.

Yeah, right. Who was he trying to kid?

Zac rummaged in his wastepaper bin and pulled out two small torn pieces of card. Then, with a final look around the room, he left, pulling the door firmly closed behind him.

AC HURRIED DOWN
the stairs, along the hallway, where the goldfish was still splashing furiously in its bowl, and into the kitchen once more. His grandfather was mopping up the spilled coffee and looked up as Zac entered.

“Listen, Granddad, I have to go away again.”

Phillip stopped mopping. He leaned on the handle and gave his grandson a withering look. “Again? I thought you said you hadn’t been anywhere?”

“I know that’s what I said,” Zac admitted. “But I... forgot that I had.”

The old man thought about this, then nodded. “Happens to the best of us,” he said. “Will you be long?”

Zac nodded, and as he did he felt tears pricking the back of his eyes.

Phillip straightened up. “But... you’re coming back.”

It took all Zac’s strength to shake his head.

“Oh,” said his granddad. He rested the mop handle against the table. “What, never?”

“I... I don’t know. I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance I won’t be.”

Phillip nodded, as if not entirely surprised. “It’s something to do with this Angelo,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

Zac nodded again. He knew if he spoke now his voice would betray him and tears would surely follow.

“You’re going to help him,” Phillip said. “Aren’t you?”

“I’m the only one who can,” said Zac croakily.

Phillip reached over and rested a hand on his grandson’s shoulder. “You know, Zac, wherever they are, your parents would be very proud,” he said. He smiled away tears of his own. “But not as proud as I am.”

Zac put his arms round the old man and buried his face against his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t be leaving you.”

Phillip stepped back. “We all have to do what we have to do, Zac,” he said, smiling again for his grandson’s sake. “I’ll be just fine. Right now Angelo needs you more. He’s scared, Zac. He’s so very, very scared.”

Zac looked into his granddad’s eyes. “How do you know?”

Phillip frowned. “I... I don’t know. I hear him sometimes. Crying out. So very afraid. Help him, Zac. You have to help him.”

“I’m going to. I will.”

“But... but he seems so far away. How will you get to him?”

Zac’s jaw clenched. “That bit I’ve got covered. I just have to make a couple of stops before I go.”

Zac sat on a wall, his feet dangling over the edge. He tried not to think of his granddad. If he thought of his granddad there was a chance he’d turn back, and how could he turn back knowing everything he knew? How could he live with himself if he did?

The backpack was heavier now. He could feel it pulling him, holding him back. It had been a struggle to fit everything inside, and even more difficult getting the zip closed afterwards. But the man from the toyshop had been very helpful, and between them they’d got the job done.

The people in the church hadn’t been quite so eager to assist. They’d been annoyed. Furious, even. But then religious people seemed to get furious at most things he did, and he’d long since decided not to care.

It was windy up there on the wall. He’d expected that. It was often windy up on the rooftops. The higher you went, the less cover there was from other buildings, and so the more the wind blew. Right now the wind was blowing very hard indeed.

He wished he could just jump. It would be easy if he could just jump. But he knew he never could. His instinct for survival would never allow him. That was why he’d had to make other arrangements.

“Hey, kid,” said a voice behind him.
Right on time
.

Zac swung himself back up on to the roof and saw his reflection in the Monk’s mirrored sunglasses. “You came.”

“You called. I gotta be honest, kid, I’ve offed a lot of folks in my time. Not one of them ever phoned me up afterwards. That really takes the cake.”

The Monk reached into his robe. A moment later, the gun came out. “You sure you wanna do this? You know what you’re giving up, right?”

Zac clipped the straps of the backpack together across his chest. “I have to,” he said. “I can’t leave him alone down there. And he’d do it for me. He’s... he’s a good kid.”

The Monk nodded. “That he is. Better than you an’ me, anyhow.”

“Better than you and me,” agreed Zac. He straightened his back and held his head high. “Do it.”

The Monk raised the pistol. “You got balls, kid, I’ll give you that.” He hesitated, his finger on the trigger. “Might not be any use to you, but you ever meet Gabriel again, you ask him about the Right of Enosh.”

“The Right of Enosh?”

“The Right of Enosh,” confirmed the Monk, and then his finger tightened and the pistol roared.

The force of the shot sent Zac staggering backwards over the roof edge. Clutching his bleeding stomach, he tried to scream. There was a faintly jarring
bump
as his body hit the concrete. His physical form stayed behind as a messy splat on the ground, but the rest of him just carried on falling.

The grey mists of the Nether Lands smothered him for a few seconds, then cleared to reveal a dark and barren landscape, spread out like a blanket at the world’s gloomiest picnic. From way up high he was able to pick out some detail of the land below him. There was the River Styx. There was the waterfall. And there, way off in the distance was Hades and the flickering lights of Eyedol.

Zac fell. Down towards the sludgy water. Down towards the blood-stained welcome sign. Down towards Hell itself.

He fell.

He smiled.

And he kept on falling.

E LANDED ON
his feet and the ground rippled around him.

He had passed through the roof like a ghost and come to a stop in a cave-like room with lava flowing through gaps in the rocky floor. The wailing and the sobbing of the damned bounced like squash balls off the walls around him.

The worst of the wailing, though, seemed to be piped in through hidden speakers. There were only thirty or forty people in the room itself, and most of those were standing in small groups looking worried. Only two or three people were actually weeping, but the sound effects suggested thousands more of them were hiding round the corner.

There was demonic laughter too, and the crackling of deadly flames. Small log fires burned here and there around the cave, but the roar of the inferno was also coming from the speakers.

There was only one actual demon in the room, as far as Zac could tell. He wore gold hot pants and roller skates, and was bare from the waist up. The demon looked up from a clipboard and a flicker of recognition crossed his face. “Oi,” he said. “I know you. You’re the one what shot me.”

The demon trundled awkwardly over on his skates. “Thought you were the big man, waving that gun about,” he spat. “Thought you were the big
I am
. Not so tough now, are you? Not so tough n—”

Zac formed his left hand into the shape of a spearhead and jabbed it upward into the soft area just above the demon’s right armpit.

“Ooyah,” hissed the creature, and then half his face went slack, and half his body went limp, and all of him slumped to the ground in a whimpering heap.

Zac stepped over him and raced towards a door set into one of the rocky walls. He’d barely got his fingers on the handle when someone called out to him.

“Um... excuse me?”

He turned to find a middle-aged woman waving to him from one of the worried little groups. “We were just wondering... what should we do?” she asked. “It’s just that we’re all quite new to this and...” She ran out of steam then, and someone from another group took over.

“Should we just hang about here or what?” asked a man just a few years older than Zac. “Only no one’s really told us anything since I arrived and, well, between you and me, I’m getting a bit sick of it.”

There was murmured agreement from the rest of the damned. Zac sighed. He didn’t have time for this.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, are any of you murderers or anything?”

A few questioning glances were exchanged. Then, at the back of the room, a solitary man in a long dirty raincoat raised a hand.

“Right, well, you stay here, then,” Zac told him. The man tutted quietly, but sat down on a rock and did his best to make himself comfortable. “The rest of you do what you like,” Zac shrugged. “Try to get out if you want. If you can make it upriver there’s a nightclub. I’d imagine it’s more fun than here. Tell the owner Zac sent you.” He moved to open the door. “Oh, and tell him I said sorry about his boat.”

The door led out into the reception area, where the secretary was sitting at her desk, knitting furiously and gazing down at a double-page spread in
Your Hellhound
. She looked up as Zac entered and the clicking of her needles stopped.

“All right?” he said. He set the backpack down on the floor, unzipped it and began rummaging inside.

“Um...” said the demon. “Um...”

“Sorry about earlier,” he told her. “You know, shooting you in the face and stuff?”

“Um...”

“We were trying to be stealthy, that’s why I did it.” He took out a couple of small plastic guns and stuck them in his waistband, then he removed a much larger gun from the bag and set it on the floor. Next he removed the little sack of Argus eyes and put them in his pocket.

Finally, he took out the bomb. It was a simple thing. He’d bought it from Geneva Jones on his way to the toyshop. She’d agreed to give him a discount to make up for selling him out to the Monk. It was all just business in the end.

The bomb itself was relatively harmless. Relatively harmless compared to other bombs, at least. It contained only a very small amount of explosive. Four two-litre bottles of water were attached to it, making the whole thing awkwardly heavy. Zac slung the strap of the large gun over his shoulder, leaving his hands free to carry the bomb.

“But I’m not trying to be stealthy any more,” he said, kicking the now empty backpack into the corner of the room. “You’ve got an alarm system in here.”

The demon nodded. “Um...”

“You’d probably better press it.”

The demon nodded again. Her finger slowly went to a button beneath her desk. Zac kicked open the door just as the alarm bells began to ring.

All round the first circle, doors began to open, and the alarm was briefly drowned out by the screams and howls of the damned. A green and purple demon with ape-like arms was unlucky enough to step out from the closest door.

“What’s all the racket?” he demanded, before the tip of Zac’s shoe came up sharply between his legs. The demon clutched his groin and dropped to his knees, then he toppled sideways, groaning, on to the floor.

More demons poured from more doors up ahead. Others still emerged from the rooms behind him. Zac looked down at the floors below and saw that they too, were brimming with monsters, all gesturing angrily in his direction.

With a flick of a switch, Zac primed the bomb and a three-second countdown began. He tossed the thing out over the frosted-glass barrier and into the big space in the centre of the rings. The bomb flipped twice, then began to fall.

It had barely travelled three or four metres downwards when the explosive charge detonated. The bottles ruptured, spraying a rain of holy water in all directions. Those demons unlucky enough to be hit by the spray began to scream as their hides sizzled and blistered.

“Wow,” said Zac. “So that’s what it does to them.”

The din of the demons’ screams echoed round the corridors of Hell. The spray had only hit a small percentage of them, but their thrashing and howling and begging for help had quickly plunged the whole place into chaos.

The demon he’d kicked was still lying on the ground, holding his crotch and trying not to vomit on the carpet. He gave a high-pitched whimper when Zac hauled him to his feet.

“The tenth circle. Can you take me there?”

The demon shook his head. Zac took one of the smaller water pistols from his waistband and jammed it in the demon’s mouth. “Holy water,” he explained. He cocked his head and listened to the screaming from the lower floors. “But then you probably guessed that. I’m going to ask you again. The tenth circle. Can you take me there?”

The demon shook his head again. Zac squeezed the trigger, just enough for a single drop of water to dribble into the monster’s mouth. The demon’s eyes went wide as his tongue began to sizzle and burn.

“Tenth circle,” Zac urged. “Yes or no?”

“’Es!” the demon squeaked. “’Es!”

Zac glanced around the corridor. Those demons who hadn’t been hit by the spray were shoving past the others, making their way around to him. They’d be on him at any moment.

“Then do it,” he growled. “
Now!
”

There was a
blip
and Zac found himself standing in the room he’d been in earlier. There were the chains that had bound him and Angelo. There was the reclining chair. But it looked like a tornado had ripped through the place.

The chair was in pieces. The light that had been mounted above it lay smashed and broken on the floor. A gaping hole had been torn through one wall. From beyond it, Zac could hear shouts of anger and yelps of panic, and the roars of something monstrous.

The captive demon watched him, his eyes bulging, the gun still wedged in his mouth. Zac carefully removed the pistol. “Sorry about that,” he said, then he drove a left hook across the demon’s cheek, knocking him out cold. “And that.”

He looked over to the hole in the wall. “Right, then,” he announced to no one in particular. “I’m guessing this way.”

Just as he reached the gap, something large and scaly came hurtling backwards through it. With a cry of pain, Haures smashed through a stainless-steel worktop and thudded hard against the wall. Black blood oozed from the duke’s nose and mouth. He coughed violently, mumbled, “That’s more like it,” then slid sideways on to the floor.

Zac cautiously poked his head round the edge of the hole and peered into a room larger than the one he was in. It was filled with what was probably until very recently state-of-the-art medical equipment, but which was now little more than scrap metal bent into a variety of interesting shapes.

A large metal box, which may once have been a prison cell, stood in the centre of the room. One of its walls had been torn away, the others were scorched and black with soot. Sparks rained down from a broken electric light that hung from the high ceiling. The other lights flickered, more off than on.

Three of the demons in surgical masks chittered excitedly as they launched themselves into the shadows beneath the broken light. A bellow of rage rocked the room and two of the demons were hurled from the darkness at terrifying speed. Their spindly bodies went
krik
as they broke against the wall.

Zac looked on as the third little demon came darting out of the gloom, its eyes wide open with terror. It made it four steps before a hand reached out of the dark and swatted it to the floor. The demon screamed as the hand dragged it back into the shadows, and then the screams became muffled before abruptly coming to a stop.

Silence followed, broken only by a burp from the darkness.

Zac stepped through the hole in the wall. “Hey, Angelo,” he said, doing what he could to control the shake in his voice. “Hoped I’d find you here.”

Breath hissed in the shadows. A growl rumbled at the back of a throat.

“I came back. You know, to rescue you. Like I said. Because, well, I was thinking and—”

A jet of flame crackled towards him, forcing Zac to throw himself sideways. He rolled expertly and took cover behind the buckled remains of a metal wall. The flame had come from high up, somewhere near the domed ceiling itself. Zac raised his eyes. The ceiling was ten metres high, maybe more. Higher than Angelo’s demon form had been. Much, much higher.

There was a clatter from the hole in the wall and Haures came staggering through. The Duke of Hell glowered gleefully up into the darkness and extended his arms out wide.

“Come, my boy,” he cried. “Come to Uncle Haures!”

Zac kept out of sight. He ducked down low and watched as the shadows parted revealing the Angelo-demon in all his true horror.

“Oh, come on,” Zac muttered as the monstrous shape stepped into view. “You have
got
to be kidding me.”