The devil dances, p.21
The Devil Dances, page 21
part #2 of Nick Englebrecht Series
“Don’t make me laugh,” I hissed. I swiped my hand out and ripped his cross away. There was only the vague sensation of burning in my hand. As I had suspected, Abraham’s faith in God was wavering, running out. Probably, it had been running out for a long time now. That’s why he had turned to the Craft, the angels, and the Old Ones for assistance. It was still there, his faith, but it was weak. The vampire movies are right about that, by the way. It’s not the symbol, but the faith behind it. Abraham wasn’t putting much stock behind it anymore.
I squeezed the cross in my hand and then dropped the mangled bit of burned wood to the ground at his feet. It had left something like a small cigarette burn in the palm of my hand. “You have about as much faith in God as I do, little man.”
Abraham gave me an enraged look. “You won’t win! The Devil never wins! God will save us!”
“God doesn’t care about you anymore!” I growled and all his men cowered in the dirt. Even Vivian cowered with them, and that hurt a hundred times more than seeing these pathetic ragmen trembling in their superstitious fear. It doesn’t take a lot to beat the Devil. Faith in God—or, barring that, just faith in yourself—is usually enough. But these men had none of that.
“Vivian.”
She raised her head, but she didn’t look directly at me.
“Vivian, come here.”
She stood up slowly, shaking and hovering undecidedly, like she’d rather be with the men who had been holding her prisoner than with me.
“Come on, babe. Trust me.”
She looked up then. I smiled at her, but she shook her head. “Nick… you’re scaring the hell out of me.”
I offered her my hand. “Do you really think I would ever hurt you?”
She looked doubtful but finally took my hand. I pulled her away from the men and against the shelter of my body. I found it was a little difficult to do with all the armor and stuff between us, but I managed. I put my lips very close to her ear and said, “I told you. We’re going to get that house on the edge of town. We’re going to get almost-married. No matter what I am, what I become, I would never hurt you, Vivian. You know that. I love you, babe.”
She laid her head against my chest and I wrapped my free arm around her waist.
Suddenly, Abraham stepped forward again. He still looked frightened half to death to be facing the devil, but something else simmered in his eyes. Malice. Wisdom. “I know the law. Ha-Satan can only claim souls. He cannot make them!” He raised his pitchfork in a menacing way, almost driving the metal tines into my face. “You cannot hurt us!”
“You know what, Abraham? You’re right. I can’t actually hurt you. But I can stall for time.”
He looked confused. “I don’t understand.”
“That Ophanim of yours walks pretty damned slow,” I told him. “Let’s see which of you is without sin.” I closed my wings around Vivian and shifted to one side.
That left the one remaining Ophanim, just stepping out of the woods, in full view of the men gathered at the edge of the grove. I kept my wings securely locked in place, protecting Vivian from the sight of the angel and its many eyes, but I, myself, watched the carnage unfold.
Abraham looked the angel in its many eyes. I saw his face go slack with disbelief. Then his entire body trembled as if he were suffering a massive seizure. He dropped the pitchfork to the ground. The calcification started at his feet and rushed up his body in a wave, turning the man in his brushed, black suit and hat into a marbled-grey statue of a man, wide-eyed and hunched over just a bit, the posture he would wear for all eternity, his body, soul, and conscious mind locked together forever in a stone prison. The statue would last a few thousand years, I wagered, but eventually the elements would wear it down to dust, and that dust would eventually mingle with the bedrock of the earth and fossilize. Some of that fossilized dust might eventually even find its way across continents, into space, other planets, other universes, but still Abraham would be trapped in it, fully aware and unable to die.
The angel turned its vapid, thousand-eyed gaze on one of Abraham’s staunchest followers, and he, too, seized up, his fingers grasping the useless cross in his fingers, mouth open in a soundless O of a scream. A third man turned to run, like the others who were beginning to run away, but made the mistake of looking back over his shoulder at his leader. He froze up in mid-step and in his half-turned posture.
By then, I’d felt that the angel had done its work. I opened my wings, lifted my bident, and drove it into the frail body of the angel, just between its shoulder blades, amidst its many, blinking eyes—eyes in blue and green and brown, eyes of all kinds, some even like animals. I ran it through without mercy or hesitation. Abraham was right. I may not have had dominion to kill human beings, but angels? Angels were on the top of my to-do list, all right. Its holy, blue blood showered the earth in a hot, burning spray and the thing lunged forward with a mournful wail, the tips of its eye-covered wings closing around it as it shuddered and crumpled to the ground, itself seizing up into a winged statue of a crouching, weeping angel.
With a grunt of effort, I pulled the bident from it, and it began to crumble into dust.
“It’s okay now,” I told Vivian, still clutching me, her face hidden against my chest. “You can look.”
She turned and beheld the medusa garden of stone men. Her eyes were big and crazed with fear. “Oh, Christ, what did you do, Nick?”
I grinned over what I had wrought. It felt so damned good to take revenge on these men, to even the score between us. More than good. It felt right. “I told you long ago I would protect you. I’ll never let anyone ever hurt you again, Vivian…”
She covered her mouth like she was going to be sick and took a step back from me.
“Vivian…” I began.
But she shook her head. “Don’t…”
I was about to ask her what was wrong when I saw a glimmer out of the corner of my eye and a portal opened, some swirling darklight that didn’t belong to this world. As I watched, one huge, hoofed foot broke through the darkness and clunked down to the ground, then the rest of Cernunnos’ hulking form stepped back into this world.
I edged away from the portal, dragging Vivian away with me. I was confused. Abraham—the beast’s tether to this world—was gone. Cernunnos should not have been able to pass through.
He turned his hideous, bull-like head and surveyed the damage I had wreaked on his master and his followers. He snorted steam through his nostrils, then swung his fugly face around to me as his eyes narrowed to mean little slits of red light. “Lord Lucifer… what have you done?”
I realized my mistake, then. I hadn’t killed Abraham. In fact, nothing ever could. Abraham would live forever. That meant Cernunnos’ anchor to this world was assured. Nothing would ever banish him again.
Well, shit.
he sky darkened, and the morning went to midnight in seconds. Lightning-like veins of burning crimson cracked across the leaden black sky. The wind picked up, swirling debris around us. Cernunnos advanced a step toward me and I lowered the Morning Star until the wickedly jagged prongs were level with his chest—the one weapon I knew he feared. It had put him away once; it could do so again, and we both knew that.
Cernunnos stopped and glared at me. I experienced a burning mixture of fear, excitement, and uncertainty, and I wondered if my grandfather, the first Lucifer, had felt this same way as he took on the legions of other-gods for his Lord’s sake. He had led the army that put God on the Throne. In a way, the Lucifers were really a line of God-makers.
Cernunnos laughed as if sensing my doubts, but I noticed he didn’t advance another step. “I don’t fear you, Lucifer. You have no power to harm me. You are no god.”
“Maybe not,” I answered, “but I know this pig-sticker sure can fuck up your day.”
Behind him, through the portal he had opened, I could see a shifting, almost sentient darkness laced with spikes of light and color. Some of the patterns of light sported colors that just didn’t exist on Planet Earth, and many almost seemed to take on faces—distorted faces full of multiple eyes and gaping, toothy mouths, none of them friendly. I heard low moans and high, almost catlike squeals of rabid laughter pealing forth from that darkness. It sounded like a legion of angry, hungry gods. No, I corrected myself, a pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who had once ruled the Earth and who wanted to rule it once more.
A part of me—a big part, I admit—wondered just where Cernunnos went to when he wasn’t in this world. Some plane of existence beyond space or time? That question was quickly answered when I spotted something slithering out of the portal and across the ground. It was oily black and snakelike, and only when it coiled over, looking for some form of purchase, did I recognized it as tentacle-like and lined with human eyes that seemed to laugh at me. More of the tentacle-things slid out of the long oval portal, grasping along the sides and top, hissing like snakes as they explored the limits of what they could do to escape their unearthly prison.
“What are those?” I said, looking at them.
Cernunnos smiled that lascivious smile full of malice and secrets. “My brothers… my people. The future lords of Planet Earth. When I am God, they will be my foot soldiers, my knights, my counts and barons and dukes. I have promised them escort to Earth.”
The tentacles exploring the ground wriggled closer to the toes of my boots, leaving in their wake an oily slime, and I took a wary step back. I saw Vivian shirk as well at my side.
“You mean… other Old Ones?”
Cernunnos snorted with satisfaction. “Do you fear them, Lucifer? You who rule over the dark and the damned? Do you fear a few old gods?” His smiled grew into a hungry grin full of jagged yellow teeth. He laughed. “An army of old gods?”
I remembered my own words to the Swartzcopf: when you open one door, it opens the door to other things. I really wish I hadn’t been right. Dear Christ, I thought, even as the sky darkened further and the wind picked up, the howling, moaning gales blowing my long blond hair all over my face and knocking me back a few steps. Forks of crimson lightning split the sky, and a growl of thunder sounded not far off.
He was going to let them out. He was going to let them all out…
“Nick…” Vivian warned, glancing around at the suddenly thrashing treetops.
“Stay there. Don’t go near that portal, Viv.” I didn’t wait for Cernunnos to get any closer. I didn’t wait for anything else to come through that split in time and space. I transferred the bident to my left hand, underhand-style, and hurled it at him like an Olympic decathlon star throwing a javelin. The bident was perfectly weighted and found its mark in the beast’s lower belly like a heat-seeking missile.
Cernunnos threw back his antlered head and roared into the storm, rumbling the ground under my feet and charging the air around us with his pain, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought I’d actually hurt him, but he knocked the bident away fairly easily. He glared at me with insult, his little yellow eyes flashing with power and maniacal rage. “You throw toys at me?”
He lunged, his huge hands grappling my robes and lifting me effortlessly off my feet. My huge, black wings beat around him, adding to the nearly hurricane-strength wings blasting around the two of us, bending trees nearly flat, blowing down fences and ripping off roof tiles by the bucket loads, but he shook his head, about as bothered by them as an elephant is bothered by fleas. I thought, for sure, that he would pummel me into the ground, but he suddenly stiffened up and his fingers released their hold on me so I could drop down to my feet in front of him.
Vivian had the Morning Star, and she was driving it into his side. She was bent almost double with the work, her shoulder muscles bunching and flexing, her teeth gritted, her long red hair swirling over her face. “Fucking loser, go back where you belong!” she screamed as she drove the tines of the bident even deeper into the god’s flesh so he screamed in raw agony. His clawed hands went to grab at it, but when he gasped the shining gold, vibrating metal, they started to burn and he jerked them away.
Morgana was right, I realized. The bident really did hurt him. The blood of God was eating a giant black hole through Cernunnos’ flesh; I could see a spiral of black gangrene burning around the entry of the tines. I raced to Vivian’s side and grabbed the long staff just behind where her hands were gripping it. She looked at me with burning black, hate-filled eyes, and I nodded. I knew how much this meant to her, how much being victimized enraged her.
“Push!” I cried over the storm, and together we started pushing, trying to force Cernunnos back toward the portal.
Cernunnos’ roars turned to screams and he lurched back a step. I considered it a modest victory.
“Come on, babe, show me what you’ve got!”
Again, we pushed. Again, he stumbled back a step, not far, but one step back was better than one forward, I reasoned.
Cernunnos snorted, “Do you really think you and your bitch of a sister can harm me?” One long arm lashed out, just barely missing the top of Vivian’s head. “Do you think two little Lucifers can so easily defeat a god?”
“Yes!” I screamed. Vivian turned to look at me, the obvious question in her eyes, but I added, “He lies. He’ll say anything to keep us from sending him back to the void. Push!”
Again, we pushed as one. Again Cernunnos lurched back, this time closer to the shining black tentacles that were groping blindly along the ground, looking for some kind of handhold. They gave me an idea and I said to Vivian, “Use your power! Set the fucker on fire!”
Above us, the storm intensified, the wind raking debris against our faces, blowing grit in our eyes. It made the gravel under our feet skitter dangerously.
She nodded, lowered her head, and put everything she had into the next push. Cernunnos only lurched back an inch or so, but the bident suddenly grew much hotter in my hands. Cernunnos roared and tossed his giant, antlered head from side to side, the debris from the air catching in his giant rack. We hadn’t gotten him all the way to the portal, but that no longer mattered.
We’d pushed him to within reaching distance of the tentacles, and as they started curling around his ankles, Cernunnos snorted and stomped, trying to free himself. “I lead you!” he screeched at them. “I will lead you to a glorious victory! I will make princes of you all!”
“He’ll enslave you,” I yelled over the storm. “Do you really think the Horned God will share his victory with you? The god of greed and earthly pleasures? Do you really believe he’ll give you a place at his side?”
The Old Ones were losing faith in him fast. The tentacles were climbing higher up his legs.
“Push, Vivian!”
We gave it one last try. Cernunnos lurched backward, and with the tentacles gripping his legs, his rack threw him off balance. He started falling backward into the void.
A big part of me thought, Well, this is it. We’ve finally won. But as the monstrous creature toppled back, I realized that Vivian was far too close and Cernunnos’ desperation far too great. His hand flailed out and he snagged a handful of Vivian’s viciously whipping hair. As the tentacles yanked him back through the portal, Vivian lost her grip on the bident, slid backward on her ass on the ground, and started going, head-first and screaming, with Cernunnos into the void.
I lunged at her and managed to snag her wrist, but her momentum was so great, my boots slid in the loose gravel. With nothing to grab to sustain us, I unfurled my wings, all eight of them, and the darkness around us immediately lit up like noontime, so bright in was painful to look upon, even for me. The creatures in the void, dark, hungry, hideously deformed and inhuman, began to burn and scream. My wings caught the storm’s updraft and dragged me up so that for one moment I hung suspended like a human kite as I attempted to pull Vivian back from the edge.
“Nick… oh, God!” she screamed, her voice echoing hoarsely as her head was bent viciously back into the portal. “Don’t let me go!”
I ground my teeth and pulled with both hands. Vivian lurched toward me, but some of the glistening black tentacles had slithered up and over her body. One slid up the side of her face and across her mouth like a gag and she mewled piteously as it left a slick brown trail of mucus in its wake. I sank my fingernails deep into her wrist. I hung on for dear life, the witches’ marks on both our wrists burning viciously.
Vivian belonged to me. She was my soul to keep. “I’m not letting you go…” I grunted through my grinding teeth and yanked. I expected her hand to be ripped right out of my hold, but I think the marks had welded us together in some preternatural way, grounded us in a way that could not be undone.
Cernunnos gave one last hearty yank of her hair. Vivian screamed around her gag and her eyes went saucer-wide. Her neck cracked alarmingly as the crown of her head broke through the watery surface of the portal, but then a strong gust of wind caught my wings and yanked us both back, my heels sliding in the gravel. She slid free at last, and I spied Cernunnos’ clawed hand still nested in her long, blood-red curls. The bastard just wouldn’t let go! It was like he knew he was doomed, and he was determined to take Vivian with him one way or another.
I pulled even harder in this cosmic tug-of-war and Vivian screamed as some of her hair was yanked out. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Don’t… let… me… go!” she moaned through her grimace of pain.
“I won’t, Vivian,” I told her. And then with no alternative left to me: “You’re his daughter! Use your power!”
I felt our marks spark, burning like red-hot brands on both our wrists. Vivian let out a howl and I saw her beautiful red hair catch fire—not fire as in burn, but as if the very strands themselves were living, writhing flames. Her head suddenly bore the halo of a crackling inferno. The tentacles crawling all over her face shrank away and the thing in the void that it belonged to screamed with the mewling voice of an angry, thwarted baby.
