Hellfighters Read online

  “Herc!” she cried, and he was barely out the door before she thumped into him, hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. She held him like he was a life raft and she was about to tumble over a waterfall. She sobbed into his shirt, breathing in the smoky, Old Spice smell of him. And she felt the hitch of his chest as he cried, too, his face pressing into the top of her head, his tears falling into her hair. Time had broken again. She just held him, and for those seconds—those infinite, endless seconds—everything was okay.

  It was a lifetime later that Herc coughed, easing her away. She peeled herself from him, everything trembling. She’d left a wet patch on his shirt but at least the sobs had stopped.

  “Hey,” he said, smudging away his own tears. His eyes were red-rimmed, like he hadn’t slept since this all began. He scanned the courtyard and nodded to Truck, then to Marlow. She saw the moment his face fell, almost sliding right off the bone.

  “Night on lookout?” he asked, and when Pan shook her head he choked on another sob, turning away for a moment to study the church wall. When he looked back there was an anger that Pan had never seen before. “Those assholes,” he muttered. “But you, you’re fine?”

  “Oh sure, Herc,” she said. “Never been better.”

  “Glad to see your sarcasm bone wasn’t broken,” Herc said. “Truck?”

  “Circle canceled my contract,” he said, staring at his hands like they’d betrayed him. “But I’m still breathing.”

  “What about you, Marlow?” Herc said, and the look he threw across the courtyard wasn’t exactly friendly. Marlow must have seen it, because he stared at the ground, tracing patterns in the dirt with his sneaker.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “I didn’t know Charlie was going to do that.”

  Herc opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. He chewed something over then said, “It doesn’t matter now. It’s happened. Important thing is you’re here.” He glanced at the gates, then up into the empty sky. “Come on, we’re too exposed out here.”

  Pan nodded, turning away from the church.

  “This way,” Herc said from behind her, gesturing into that block of darkness. Pan shook her head. Her tears had washed away some of the Red Door’s taint but it was back now and stronger than ever, her head packed tight with whispers and moans that couldn’t come from anything human. Herc ushered her forward. “It’s safe,” he said. “They won’t find us here.”

  “Herc, a fly just crawled out of my eye,” she said. “A freaking fly. Out of my eye. There’s no way I’m going through that door.”

  Herc sighed.

  “I know,” he said. “It sucks. But I promise you, you’re going to want to see what’s in there. Who is in there.”

  “Who is in there?” Pan asked. Herc looked up at the sky again, searching for something.

  “I can’t say, not out here.” He offered her his hand. “But come on, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

  WHAT’S NEW?

  Herc went first, stepping into the ruined church. He didn’t quite vanish, not the way people did when they went through the Red Door. This close, she could still see the outline of his broad shoulders against the darkness, as slow and black as pitch. She reached tentatively after him, seeing the shadows creep up her fingers, the sensation like reaching into a freezer. When she pulled her hand out again tendrils of darkness stuck to it, dissipating like smoke.

  “Anytime you’re ready, Pan,” said Truck. “I gotta take a dump in the next ten seconds or I’m gonna pop.”

  “Nice,” she said, still not moving.

  “Who do you think’s in there?” said Marlow. “You think it’s a trap? You sure that was Herc?”

  “Yeah, it was him,” she said, and she had no doubt. Every iota of him was just the way she remembered it. It was him, Herman Cole, in the flesh. Her hair was still damp from his tears.

  The thought gave her courage and she pushed her hand back into that cold, silent darkness. Then she walked into the door. There was an instant where her body felt as if it were quietly being pulled apart—like the gossamer-thin bonds between each cell were expanding. Then, just as quick, the sensation was gone.

  “Not so bad, right?” asked Herc. He stood in front of her, and behind him was the mangled body of the church. Honey-colored light dripped in from the ceiling, pooling on a tiled floor that was thick with rubble and rot. The pews were in disarray, scattered like bones. The windows were boarded tight, the altar stripped bare of everything but an overturned table. There was a wooden cross on the wall but all that remained of the figure it had once held was a puddle of bronze on the floor, like it had melted.

  “Better than walking through the Red Door,” she said, shuddering at the memory. She’d walked into this church a hundred times or more, but she’d never seen the inside before—the Red Door had always carried her someplace else.

  “Got that right,” Herc said. “Door’s gone but it’s left its mark. Look.”

  He pointed over her shoulder and she turned to see the courtyard, Truck and Marlow standing there and looking right at her. They were moving like puppets, fast and jerky, everything speeded up. She was smiling before she even knew it.

  “Last time I saw Truck move that fast was when I told him the Lawyers had started serving bacon doughnuts for lunch,” Herc said as the big guy pushed his way inside, slowing down to real time. Truck shivered, then pulled a pained expression.

  “Bastard cramps,” he grunted. “I think I’m crowning. You got a john in here?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Truck,” said Herc. “Past the altar, down the stairs. No can anymore but there’s a sink and a floor, take your pick.”

  “Gross,” said Pan.

  “Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go,” said Truck, scooting down the aisle. It sounded like somebody was playing the trumpet in his pants. “Sorry!”

  Marlow was the last, almost falling through the door. He staggered, nobody there to catch him, dropping onto one knee and gagging. Pan felt a sudden rush of sympathy for him. He’d been duped just like the rest of them, and he had that added burden of guilt on his shoulders. All of this on top of the fact that he’d been an Engineer for less than a week. The poor kid’s mind must be on the verge of shattering.

  But still, if it hadn’t been for him insisting that Charlie was safe, pleading with them to help him, convincing Herc and Hanson to let his friend into the Engine, then she’d be standing inside the Pigeon’s Nest right now—their headquarters, named for the disgusting Nazi decor left over from the war, and the legions of dead pigeons—popping the tab on a Diet Coke and watching TV with Night.

  She turned away, left him to get up by himself. The corners of the church were still crowded with darkness, impenetrable even though her eyes had adjusted. She couldn’t see anyone else here, though.

  “Who did you want us to meet, Herc?” she asked him. He looked over his shoulder, into a pocket of nothing beside the altar.

  “You won’t believe me if I tell you,” he said. “Hey, Shep, they’re here.”

  Shep?

  Pan felt something shift inside her, thought that any minute now she was going to have to scamper after Truck and make use of whichever receptacle he wasn’t occupying. Herc couldn’t mean … There was no way …

  From the shadows came a nervous cough, then a sniff, followed by a voice that was choked by its thick European accent.

  “Are you sure it is them?”

  It had lost its ring of authority, but she still stood to attention as soon as she heard it, fast enough to give herself a head rush.

  Holy sh—

  “It’s them,” said Herc. “No doubt. Pan, Marlow, let me introduce you guys to Sheppel Ostheim.”

  Pan panicked, not sure whether to bow or salute or curtsy. She did a combination of all three, feeling like an idiot. Sheppel Ostheim, the general who ran the Fist, the guy who had overseen every single operation for as long as she’d been here, the man she’d only ever spoken to on the phone,
whom nobody had met. Of whom nobody had ever seen so much as a photo.

  Until now.

  Another nervous cough, then the sound of scuffing footsteps. The silhouette of a man appeared in the dark, low and stooped, an old-fashioned fedora hat, the glint of glasses. Then he stepped into the light, and Pan had to do a double take because this guy didn’t match the image she’d had in her head, not one bit. She’d always pictured Ostheim as one of those movie stars that were aged, but not past their prime. One of the ones that looked like they could take a break from their bridge game and still kick your ass. A Tommy Lee Jones, or a Harrison Ford, or a Morgan Freeman.

  The man who stood in front of her looked more like Toby Jones—short and slightly plump, drowning in a cheap brown suit and tie. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his jacket, pushing them back onto his nose and blinking through them like a frightened dormouse. He cleared his throat, took another step forward, then took off his hat. Beneath was a comb-over of epic proportions, one that drooped over his face. He smoothed it away, then seemed to finally find the courage to walk to Herc’s side. Even when he straightened he only came up to Herc’s shoulder.

  “I am sorry for my manners,” he said. “It has been a difficult few days. It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Pan. And Marlow, yes?”

  Marlow had made it back onto his feet and he stood next to Pan, offering his hand.

  “Marlow,” he confirmed. Ostheim stared at his outstretched palm for a while, making no attempt to greet it. Eventually Marlow let his arm drop to his side, sharing a look with Pan that said, Seriously?

  “I am sorry, again,” Ostheim said. “It has been a long time since I was among people. Please forgive my rudeness, but I am not a well man.” He laughed apologetically. “Germs are everywhere, ja?”

  “No worries,” said Marlow. “It’s cool.”

  “You are fine?” Ostheim said. “Both of you, yes? You are not injured?”

  “We took a beating,” said Marlow. “My knees got grilled. Nothing we can’t handle.”

  “What happened to Night?” Herc asked. “How did she—”

  “She went out fighting,” said Pan. “It was a Magpie. Marlow tried to rescue a girl and the son of a bitch stole her body. Grabbed Night and threw himself off a bridge. She didn’t stand a chance.”

  “You sure she’s—”

  “I’m sure,” spat Pan. “She was under contract, they came for her.”

  Herc’s head fell. Ostheim gently placed his hat on the nearest pew so that he could clean his glasses again. This time he didn’t put them back, just stared at them as if they might hold all the answers.

  “I am sorry,” he said again, a broken record. “She was a brave Engineer, one of the best. A soldier. She did not deserve to be murdered like that.”

  “No, she didn’t,” said Pan, and she would have gone on except another rolling wave of sickness rippled outward from her stomach, drenching her in cold sweat. “Herc, can we just get the hell out of here?”

  “It is unfortunate,” said Ostheim. “But necessary. Herc suggested that we meet here. He never gave up hope, and I see now that he had no reason to. He said that you would make your way to Prague, sooner or later. Even if he had not, I would have suggested it. The Red Door was a knife wound in the fabric of reality, one that has been here for centuries. Even though the door has gone, you cannot rend time and space in that way without leaving a permanent wound. That sickness you feel, it is the Engine in your blood, it is crying out for the other side.”

  Great.

  “But it also serves to mask us. Mammon will be searching. He located you once by sniffing out the Engine inside you, he will do so again. But here, in the scar of the Red Door, we are hard to find.” He finally replaced his glasses, patting the seat of a pew. “Please, sit. We have much to discuss.”

  Sitting down was the last thing Pan wanted to do, but what choice did she have? She scuffed her way through the rubble and dirt, lowering herself onto the uncomfortable bench.

  “You, too, Mr. Green,” said Ostheim.

  Marlow sighed, slumping down next to her. Ostheim sat on the pew opposite, running a hand over his thinning hair again. She noticed that his fingers were trembling, until he clamped them between his legs. He blinked at the floor a couple of times, placing his hand on a leather briefcase beside him as if to check that it was still there. “I do not need to tell you how bad this situation is in which we find ourselves. How serious it is.”

  “You’re not kidding,” said Truck as he appeared from the stairs. He wafted his hand in front of his face. “I think I just opened the gates of hell down there all by myself.”

  “Truck,” growled Herc. Truck spotted Ostheim, frowning.

  “Who’s the old dude?” he asked.

  Pan almost slapped a hand over her face.

  “Truck, this is Ostheim,” she said.

  The big guy stopped dead, his mouth hanging open. To Pan’s surprise, Ostheim laughed.

  “There is no need to be startled, Truck. It is a pleasure to meet you. Please, join us.”

  Truck did as he was told, the bench bowing as he lowered himself onto it.

  “Damn,” he said again. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Pan was, too. Glad to see Herc and Ostheim. For the first time since New York she felt like she could switch off, like she wasn’t the one who had to make the decisions. The relief of it made the weight of darkness inside the church twice as heavy, made her feel as if she could close her eyes right now and sleep for a week. Only the sickness that boiled in her stomach, and the poisonous Red Door whispers that hissed at her from inside her skull, kept her awake.

  “It was my grandfather’s grandfather who first found the Engine, you know,” said Ostheim. “A long, long time ago. Long before the Nazis invaded Prague and took it for themselves. It was he who first found the Red Door of Praha, and who learned how to open it. Of course he was one of the first to be taken, when he tried to use the Engine. But his son, my great-grandfather, spent his life there, learning everything there was to know about this … this infernal creation. It was he who learned about the two groups who had once waged war—the Circle and the Fist. He searched for the facts of it, the truth that was buried inside the lie of history. And he vowed that he would do everything he could to prevent the Engine from falling into the wrong hands.”

  Ostheim cleared his throat, staring into nothing, into the past.

  “It is a burden that we have all taken upon ourselves to carry, generation after generation. Ours is not a happy story, it is one of constant struggle, and plagued with many deaths. But I like to think that without it, the world would be a very different place. If we had not fought so hard, then the Engines might have already been reunited.”

  “And now they have been,” said Pan.

  “Not quite,” Ostheim said. “Mammon will not know how to join the Engines, he will not know how to open the gates.”

  “That’s good, right?” said Truck.

  “But,” said Ostheim, raising a finger, “the Engines themselves will know. It is all they dream of, it is the purpose they serve. They were designed to be united, they were created for that one reason—to open a door into hell.”

  Pan shuddered so hard the pew creaked. She wrapped her hands around herself straitjacket-tight, leaning forward.

  “They were designed to make bargains, weren’t they?” Truck said. “To get souls.”

  “Yes, yes, they were. But this is—” He threw his hands up. “I don’t know, this is just fluff. Filler. It is like saying that the purpose of a car is to keep you dry during a storm. It will, but it is designed for so much more. As far as we are aware the Engines were built this way so that men would never lose them. An old machine, buried beneath the ground, can be easily dismissed. Ja? But a machine that can grant any wish, not so easy to forget.”

  “But who?” Pan asked. “Who could have built them? I mean … I mean not that.”

  “The Devil?” Ostheim fixed his
small, blinking eyes on her. “We do not know, child. Who can say? Not even in all the books we have found, in all the histories of all the world, have we discovered the answer to that question. But ask yourself this: With everything that you have seen, everything that you have experienced, everything you have fought, and everything you have lost, who do you think built these things?”

  This time it was Ostheim who shuddered, a spasm passing through him hard enough to knock loose those lonely strands of hair from his oily scalp.

  “I have said this to all of you before, the divide between our world and theirs is paper thin.” He waved a hand through the air. “The demons are here right now, teeming on the other side of the void. Old magic keeps them there, the first rules of the universe. But all it takes is one tear, one rip, and they will flood the world in an ocean of blood.”

  “Hey,” said Marlow. “Like that girl’s knife, the redhead. She was jabbing it in stuff and demons were coming out.”

  Ostheim’s eyebrows nearly launched themselves off the top of his head. “This is true? I did not think it was possible. A knife, made from the Engine, yes?”

  Pan shrugged, saying, “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Then the Engines are indeed growing more powerful. If a piece of them can open a rift to hell—even a small one such as that—then it means the mechanism is orienting itself to open the gates. You see, the Engines were created to be the blade that makes such a tear, to let the demons through. And they will not come alone.”

  Pan closed her eyes and saw it, the creature inside the Engine—never up close, never in detail, just a mountain of madness on the edge of her vision, one that studied her with a clutch of eyes that looked like festering holes in meat, who asked her in a million voices what she wanted to trade her soul for, and whose laugh was the sound of a million bones breaking at once. She’d always known it, past the exhilaration of getting a new contract, past the adrenaline of each mission. Mammon and the enemy Engineers were just pawns. This thing was the king.

  “Mammon will be working hard, he will be locked away, focused on discovering how to bring the Engines together. But—”