Hellfighters by Alexander Gordon Smith
“Because he told us,” she replied. “He said that we had only one more battle to fight. One last defense, and his war would be done. He just needed us to keep you away—just for a while, just so they could finish. And they have. The Engines are united.”
No demons pushing themselves through the walls, no ocean of blood and fire churning down the street. If Mammon had succeeded in uniting the Engines then why hadn’t he opened the gates?
“Nothing’s different,” Marlow said. His fingers were cramping where he was holding the girl and he relaxed them. He still felt her shrug.
“It takes time,” she said. “It does not happen instantly.”
“Screw her,” said Pan, turning and stomping down the steps. “We don’t need her to find the Engine. It will pull us right to it.” She disappeared around the corner of the spiral staircase, her shadow following her. “You want her, she’s your problem.”
Taupe followed her, then Truck, muttering something about how much he hated stairs.
“Bring her,” said Herc. “Better we keep an eye on her. You pull that vanishing act again, kid, and you’re toast. Got it?”
The girl nodded, the fight beaten right out of her. She sniffed, knuckling her eyes. She was looking younger by the second. Herc turned and followed the others and Marlow stood, holding out his hand to the girl. She took it, letting him pull her to her feet. She dusted herself down, hauling in a long, broken breath.
“I’m Marlow,” he said.
She studied him for a moment with dark eyes.
“Claire,” she said.
“Well, Claire,” said Marlow as he started to walk, keeping hold of a fistful of her jacket. “I have to say, you’re not the kind of soldier I was expecting to fight for Mammon.”
“You are not who I expected either,” she said.
They made their way down the stairs, just enough light ahead to see by and a wave of impenetrable darkness on their heels. Marlow kept glancing back into it, expecting to see a razor-toothed jaw open up there, or Mammon’s face pushing through, eyes blazing. He shuddered, upped his pace, almost slipping on the wet stone.
“So, what made you fight for him?” he asked, just to stave off the suffocating silence. “Mammon isn’t exactly nice. And what are you? Fourteen?”
“Nearly,” she said. “In like a year and a half.”
“You’re twelve?” he said.
“Oh, and you are much older, yes?”
“Fifteen,” he muttered. “Loads older.”
Claire said something in French but he didn’t exactly need a translation to know she was making fun of him. She sniffed again, shivering. The stairs kept going, spiraling endlessly. Marlow’s internal organs were fighting a no-holds-barred cage match, his whole body ringing with the force of the Engine. Engines.
“How did you even end up here?” he asked, doing his best to ignore the sensation.
“I was, um, how do you say, without a home. I live on street. Me and friends, the ones…” She swallowed hard. “I do not think they survived.”
“Sorry,” said Marlow.
“I do not know them long. I ran away, bad father. Somebody came to see us, just the day before today. A girl.”
“Red hair? Face like a smacked ass?”
“A smacked what?” she said, frowning at him. He waved it away and she nodded. “Red hair, yes. She told us that if we helped her for one day then she would get us off the street, that she would make us rich. She did not say what it was she needed us for. She did not say there would be…”
She choked on her words, brushing away tears.
“But you saw the Engine, right?” Marlow went on, almost slipping again. How deep did these stairs go? He glanced up, seeing a weird star-shaped mark on the ceiling. Why did it look familiar?
“Oui,” Claire said, nodding. “It is horrible. It is the work of the devil, non? Mammon threw us into the black water, we could not refuse him. And there was something in there, something impossible.”
Marlow knew, he’d seen it, too. An entity of darkness, as big as a mountain, watching him with insect eyes.
This is what you desire? it had asked. The memory made his head ache and he felt something creep its way down from his nose—blood. He smudged it away, focusing on the stairs, on their endless downward passage, on another black mark on the ceiling. He frowned, looking back, nothing but darkness. Reaching out, he pulled one of the skulls from the wall. It came loose with a pop, two of its teeth scattering. He laid it on the step beside him and carried on, ignoring Claire’s questioning look.
“Then what?” Marlow asked her.
“He said we could have anything we wished for, but that we needed to wish for something that would make us strong, make us powerful. Something we could fight with. I did not believe him, but when I was there I panicked. I just wanted to escape. So I wished to be not seen, to be, uh, what is your word?”
“Invisible,” he said.
“That is the same as we say. To be invisible. I thought that if this was true, and not some nightmare, then I could sneak away. But he could still see me. He sees everything. He took us up to the surface and told us that we needed to fight. If we survive, he said, then we will have anything we wanted.”
“How many of you?” Marlow asked.
“I do not know,” she said. “There were seven of my friends, but there were others there, too, many others.”
Too many for Mammon to ever be able to cancel their contracts, Marlow thought. There just wouldn’t be time. He’d set them up to die—worse than that, he’d set them up so their contracts would expire, so that they would be dragged into hell.
But what else had he expected from Mammon?
“Listen, I need to know if you saw my friend. The guys down there, was one of them called Charlie?”
“Charlie?” she said, pronouncing it Sharrrlie. “I do not think so.”
“My age,” he said, pressing. “Dark hair, brown eyes. Short. American.”
Claire stopped walking. Her eyes had grown twice as big, so huge they looked like they might just roll out. The horror on her face was contagious, filling Marlow’s heart.
“What?” he asked.
“The boy you describe, he was there.”
Thank God, Marlow thought, saying, “Alive?”
“I do not know,” she said, shaking her head. “He was…”
“Was what?” Marlow said. She pushed past him.
“I cannot talk about it,” she said. “I cannot.”
“Hey,” he called after her. “Claire, he’s my friend, I need to know.”
“Watch your feet,” said Herc beneath them, and Marlow turned the corner and almost stepped on a skull that lay there. He put a hand to the wall, to the space he’d ripped it from. Then he looked up, knowing what he’d see there.
A burn mark, star shaped, where Pan had fired a bolt of lightning into the ceiling.
“Hey, guys,” he yelled. “Hold up, something’s wrong.”
He heard grumbling beneath them, then Herc’s face appeared, the beam of the flashlight like an explosion in Marlow’s retinas—so bright he could see the veins there.
“What?” he said.
“We’re going around in circles,” he said.
“Duh,” came Pan’s voice from below. “It’s a spiral staircase.”
“No, I mean we’ve been walking on the same bit of stair for a while now”—he struggled to find the words—“like, something weird is going on.”
Pan appeared next to Herc. She shrugged impatiently and Marlow pointed to the skull.
“I just pulled that out of the wall, and that mark, you made that, Pan.”
Pan shook her head, turning and walking off. Marlow heard her footsteps thud downward, fade, then start again from overhead. And suddenly Pan was there, above him.
“Oh,” she said.
“Temporal loop,” said Herc, putting a hand to the bone-covered wall. “Try going up again.”
Pan spun around and jogged up
And there was Truck again, his bulk just about blocking the path.
Marlow swore, pulling another bone from the wall, and another. There was nothing beneath them but solid stone.
“Hey, calm down,” said Herc. “Just let me think.”
“What the hell is going on?” Marlow said, ripping a skull away. It hit the ground and chattered down the steps, gaining momentum, appearing above them as it bounced to a halt.
“It’s part of the Engine’s defenses,” Herc said. “This must be the outer boundary, the thing that keeps the Engine hidden. Hey, kid, you know anything about this?”
Claire shook her head. She had shrunk back against the wall, draped in shadow. Even though she wasn’t invisible she was pretty hard to see.
“We came this way,” she said. “But this … this thing was not here.”
Marlow had cleared a patch of wall now and he pushed at the stone beneath. It felt solid, and cold. How deep were they? Maybe a hundred meters by now. The earth was a solid mass on every side, above and below. He could almost hear the vast weight of it groaning, pushing down on them. He snatched in a breath, no air down here, and the panic was an acetylene torch held against his eyes.
“How do we get out?” he said, turning to Claire.
“I do not know,” she said, shrinking away from whatever was in his expression. “I do not know.”
He reached for the girl but she backed away, sprawling on the step.
“How do we get out?” he roared, and this time he lashed out, his fist striking the wall, splinters of bone detonating. He punched it again, the stone cracking. Dust rained down from the ceiling like a handful of soil on a coffin. He punched again and this time the stones moved, crumbling outward. The fourth attack left a hole in the wall, darkness pouring through from the other side. The entire stairwell trembled, the pressure changing so fast that Marlow’s ears ached.
Time, snapping back.
“Marlow one, wall zero,” said Truck, stepping up beside him and planting a calming hand on his shoulder. “Feeling better?”
The dark wasn’t the only thing entering the stairwell. There was a breeze, too, cold and stale but still beautiful. Marlow inhaled until he thought his lungs would burst, the monster inside him shrinking away. Herc stepped up and stuck his head through the hole Marlow had made.
“Can’t see a damn thing,” he muttered. He opened his backpack and rummaged around inside, pulling out a flare. Striking it on the wall, he lobbed it out. “Ground, not too far below. Can’t make out much else. You know what’s down there, kid?”
Claire didn’t need to answer. It was pretty clear what was down there. Marlow’s flesh crawled with it, like a churning foam of spiders had ridden in on that wave of darkness, crawling on his skin, chittering their way into his nose, his ears, his eyes. He scratched, groaning, his head suddenly full of whispers and screams. He dug a finger into his ear to find an impossible itch, would have happily stuck a knitting needle in there and pushed it into the flesh of his brain.
No, she didn’t need to answer, but she did anyway.
“Hell,” she said, her voice almost drowned out by the madness that roiled inside Marlow’s skull. “Hell is down there.”
THE LIMINAL
Pan clung to the edge of the hole, the world around her burning brimstone bright from the flare. She knew she had to drop, but her fingers weren’t going to obey her. They knew the truth.
If she let go now, then she was going to fall right into hell.
“Hey, Pan,” yelled Truck from fifteen feet or so below her. “Stop hanging around, we’ve got to go.”
He laughed at his own joke.
“Hold on,” punned Marlow. “Give her a chance.”
“You guys insane? Kidding around in this place?” growled Herc. “Besides, you all know she doesn’t like heights. It’s one of her hang-ups.” He snorted, trying to cover it with a cough.
She had no idea why they were making jokes. They had breached the outer wall of the Engine. They were about to throw themselves into a battle against one of the most powerful entities on the planet. What was funny about that?
And yet the sound of their muffled giggles was contagious. The Engine wasn’t the only thing with defenses, she understood. People had them, too. Laughter was powerful. It was pretty much the most human thing you could do. Even now, with chips of broken bone and stone digging into her palms, her stomach threatening to cramp, and that godawful endless idiot chatter of the Engine in her head, she couldn’t help but smile.
It gave her strength and she let go, her stomach lurching into her throat. She managed a scream, the drop higher than she’d expected, so high she thought she might have fallen right through the floor, falling right into—
She landed lightly, a pair of strong arms grabbing her from behind and reducing the shock. She leaned into them, happy to be held and not wanting to be let go. When she turned to thank Taupe, though, she saw Marlow instead. She scowled at him, pulling loose.
“Sorry,” he said, backing away like a beaten dog.
They were standing in a cavern. She had no idea how big it was because it was drenched in darkness—darkness so heavy, so deep, that it felt like a physical thing. It seemed to press down on her, to put a cold hand over her mouth. To one side was the wall they had just passed through. Every inch of it was covered in bones, the floor, too. Herc’s flare sputtered, spitting out an infernal red light.
“Now—”
She stopped, feeling something wriggling inside her throat. She hawked it up, spat, seeing the glistening body of a fat, squirming maggot slip between the bones on the floor. Her stomach tightened, her body trying to turn itself inside out.
“Now what?” she managed, smearing her hand over her trembling lips.
“We did not see this place,” said the girl. Her voice, with its annoying accent, seemed like it came from a million miles away, as if they had dropped to the bottom of the ocean. “We passed through a … a church, then a tunnel, then entered the stairs. This is new.”
“The Liminal,” said Herc. “The space between. The Engine is surrounded by it, it’s what keeps it out of reality, keeps it hidden.”
“The space you pass through when you go through the Red Door?” Marlow asked, his voice as muted as everyone else’s. “No wonder I feel like my guts have been trampled by an elephant.”
He wasn’t wrong. Pan flexed her jaw, something buzzing inside the skin of her cheek, and she imagined a clutch of flies had just hatched there. It was unbearable, and the only thing that stopped her firing a crossbow bolt into her own head was the fear that she might be stuck down here, trapped in the Liminal for an eternity.
The thought of that was somehow even worse than the thought of being taken by the demons.
Herc’s flashlight wobbled and he gave it a slap, shining the beam into the heart of the darkness. It reached maybe fifteen feet then stopped dead, too afraid to reveal what lay there.
“How far away is it?” Truck asked.
“The Engine?” Herc shrugged. “No idea. Time and space, they’re different here. One way to find out, though.”
He set off, bones crunching beneath his boots. Pan adjusted her crossbow and set off after him. She was exhausted, everything drained. She wasn’t sure she could even conjure up enough for a burst of charge. Something popped beneath her and she looked down to see a skull. That used to be somebody’s face, she thought as she pulled her foot free, shaking the dust away. A sudden, alien scream loosed itself inside her
In front, Marlow doubled over, groaning. She grabbed his arm, as much to keep herself standing as him. They stumbled on together, Herc’s flashlight a boat of light in the river of darkness. Behind them, the flare sputtered out. There was no way back.
Not that there ever had been. You didn’t start a mission like this expecting to retreat.
“What is that?” said Taupe up ahead. Pan could hear the fear in his voice. When she reached him she saw that he was looking down at the ground and something was moving there.
One of the bones.
It was vibrating, softly. Barely noticeable, other than the buzzing noise it was making. It stopped, then started again, reminding Pan of a bluebottle trying to fly with torn wings.
“I really don’t like this,” said Truck.
“Come on,” said Herc, hoisting up the duffel bag. “We got to keep moving.”
They had only made it another few feet, though, before something else clattered over the ground. It was another bone, a small one that might once have been somebody’s finger. It was jittering like there was an earthquake, bouncing a couple of inches then lying still.
“I really, really don’t like this,” said Truck. He stamped down on it, grinding it to powder.
A voice, up ahead. Somewhere distant. It sounded like a man crying out in pain. Pan’s skin crawled so badly she thought it was trying to slither right off her.
“Someone’s there,” she said, pulling the crossbow from her back. It was loaded with a bolt, one that had been carved from the fabric of the Engine itself. The metal was old, etched with runes. And it was powerful, especially against the undead. Fire one of these into a demon and it would be like it had swallowed a grenade.
Then why did she feel so exposed, and so helpless?
Another faint cry, more bones scuffing across the ground as though they had minds of their own. Pan squinted into the darkness, no sign of anything.
“Stay sharp,” said Herc. “Anything is possible in here.”