Darksiders: The Abomination Vault (23 page)

“I found her holding one of her master’s prized weapons, coated in a fine spray of his own blood, yet calm as a drugged statue. She told me that she had done this so that nobody would interfere with my own plans for creation and Making, and that she would be fascinated to see the results. She’s been one of my more useful and reliable servants ever since. Until recently.”

“Let me guess. Her interest waned when the Charred Council scoured that knowledge from your mind.”

“You needn’t sound quite so gleeful every time you reference that, Death.”

The Horseman shrugged. “I find the image to be a soothing one.”

Lilith’s face pulled in three different directions at once, until she apparently decided it wasn’t worth taking any further offense. “And yes, you’re correct. Belisatra was more frustrated by my loss of ability than I. Oh, I fumed for a time, I won’t deny it. But I’ve moved on.

“She has not. Long after I told her to abandon it and focus her energies elsewhere, she’s continuously searched for ways to restore my creative powers to me. Or perhaps to earn them for herself; it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“And you allowed such overt disobedience? Why, Lilith, are you growing soft in your old age?”

“You are
truly
straining the last of my patience, damn you!”

Death gently shook his head, so that a few locks of black hair drifted across his mask. “I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t believe that you’re straining my patience?”

“I don’t believe that you
have
any.”

Again the demon’s lovely face twisted in a very
un
lovely scowl. And again, just as quickly, she burst out laughing.

“You truly enjoy having the better of me in this little discussion, don’t you, Death? Very well, I can be a good sport.” Her mirth vanished as surely as if the Dark Prince himself had appeared to claim her soul. “So long as you understand that this is a hand you only get to play once. Try to coerce me in this fashion again, and I’ll destroy you and everything the Charred Council can throw at me, even if I die myself in the effort.”

“Understood.”

“Good. Well. There’s little more to tell, actually. Yes, I tolerated Belisatra’s obsession with the matter, because she still proved useful in creating all sorts of goodies for my soldiers and me throughout the centuries. And because, of course, if she
did
find a means of undoing the Council’s edict, I certainly wanted to know of it.

“All this finally came to a head a short while ago, when that peculiar angel arrived.”

For all his efforts, Death couldn’t quite keep the sudden blaze from his eyes. “Angel?”

“Oh, yes. He thought I wouldn’t be able to tell, just because he had his wings strapped down and hidden beneath a
voluminous robe. Ha! I can identify any creature alive by the way it moves, speaks, even stands.”

“Or the smell of its musk,” Death added helpfully.

“He’d hoped to enlist
me
as an ally in his little quest,” she continued, ignoring him. “Naturally, I had no interest, and told him as much. But that was the last day I saw Belisatra.”

Death began to pick idly at the traveler’s dirt lodged under his nails—mostly because the width of the stairs wouldn’t allow him to pace. “Then you were not surprised when I told you. You
knew
what Belisatra was doing.”

“I suspected. Given the timing, how could I not? But no, I didn’t know for certain—and I didn’t know that
you
knew.

“Nor do I know precisely why Belisatra would be interested in the Grand Abominations, aside from her insatiable intellectual curiosity, but I can offer a supposition or two. She may believe they have sufficient power to force the Charred Council to do as she asks. That was the leverage
I
was promised, after all. But as I said, I think she’s mostly just fascinated. Doomsday weapons, built from the remnants and the potential of a dead race? I’ve no doubt she’d kill all of us just for a
chance
of learning how they work. I’ve no idea if her partner actually plans to
use
the devices or simply to wield them as leverage, but I can promise you that
she
wants to see them used.”

“Then it’s in all our interests to find her before that happens. You’ve known her better than anyone else. Where would she go?”

Lilith pondered for long moments, one hand on her chin; the other gently caressed the soft material of her gown, as though, even unconsciously, she couldn’t long pause her efforts at overt, vulgar seduction.

“Gulbannan’s realm has long since been claimed and parceled out by other Makers,” she answered eventually, “so she cannot return there. She’d want a workshop, somewhere she
can study the Abominations and tinker with any other crafts or constructs they require. She’d settle for one of angelic construction if forced, but she’d prefer … Ah!

“I had my own laboratory, hidden in the wilds just beyond Gulbannan’s domain. It was there that I practiced and perfected the arts I won from him. I hosted her there a time or two, after she murdered her master. I took everything of value with me when I abandoned it, but the laboratory itself may remain.
That
, my dear Rider, is most probably where you’ll find her. Even if she is no longer present, I would wager a great deal that she
was
.”

“The Makers’ Realm is a large place, Lilith. How—?”

“Oh, don’t be tiresome! Of course I’ve thought of that. Have your little pet flap up here. I’ll implant the location in his mind, and you can then draw it from his. You’ll be able to travel right to it.”

Death and Dust somehow mirrored each other, studying her with the precise same tilt of their heads.

Lilith allowed herself a lusty sigh, one that anyone but Death might well have found fascinating in its own right. “I’m not going to harm the revolting little creature. I just want this done with so you can go away.”

“If you do,” the Horseman told her, “you’ll be dead before any of your guardians or any of your magics can save you.”

And Lilith, for all she strove to hide it, flinched. Had his voice boomed or lowered, had he shouted or threatened, she might have found him easier to dismiss. It was the calm, almost
explanatory
tone that chilled even the Mother of Monsters.

Dust was obviously less than happy with the idea; he sidled across the outer curve of Harvester, wings and beak spread, screeching an almost painful protest. In the end, of course, he went anyway, as Death wanted.

He appeared even less happy when he returned, and he had a wild, almost feral look about him, but he was indeed unharmed.

“Now, Death, kindly be somewhere else. I’ve grown irritated at humoring you.”

The Horseman merely nodded and began back down the steps, toward the distant hallway of flesh.
Need to report to the Council first; Lilith’s involvement, peripheral as it is, is something they need to know. Then maybe we can end this …

Lost in thought, Death paused only once, as though having just remembered some token left behind.

“Lilith? The angel who came to you … Did he happen to give his name?”

“Hadrimon,” she called back after another moment’s thought. “His name was Hadrimon.”

D
EATH AND
W
AR
, D
ESPAIR AND
R
UIN, HAD APPEARED
from the paths and the mists between worlds onto a grassy plain baked golden brown by a summer-bright sun. Sporadic trees, too few to qualify as woodland, cast pennants of shade across the landscape; sporadic hills, too few to qualify as a range, provided that landscape with contours of its own. A few of those hills, mounds of rock rather than hummocks of earth and soil, were barren save for the occasional bit of scrub. Their slopes offered no shelter; their rocky carapace was too brittle and flaking to be worked. In other words, nothing about them could conceivably interest any of the Makers who occupied the sundry regions and communities of this realm.

Which, of course, was the point.

Dust, having shaken off the worst of his discomfort but still behaving in a vague, almost fugue-like manner, had swooped from Despair’s saddle as soon as they arrived. Without once stopping to get his bearings, he’d made a rapid flight toward one of those austere outcroppings and begun to circle.

Even with Dust’s guidance—Lilith’s guidance—it took Death and War long hours of searching to locate the entrance,
so cunningly was it concealed. It blended perfectly into the rock, with layers of illusion stacked atop even its mundane camouflage. Without the crow’s vehemence, even the highly attuned senses of the Horsemen would have been fooled into thinking this was nothing but a normal hillock.

That the mechanism for opening that door was equally well hidden, doubtless fiendishly complex, and possibly even trapped, War and Death had found themselves in complete agreement.

So they would not
use
the mechanism.

Death had dropped from Despair and knelt, hands held just above the sun-dried earth, whispering words that were not words at all. The temperature dropped, and even War felt a chill across the back of his neck.

Bones burst from the soil at the Horseman’s bidding, but these were not the skeletal hands he had attempted to wield against Belisatra’s constructs. They danced in a veritable cyclone, a sandstorm of jagged edges and heavy knobs. The noise as they whirled across the stone, blasting away layer after layer, was terrible; the lust-spawned bastard of the earthquake and the tempest.

The Riders could only hope that the thick stone itself would, at least for a time, prevent those within from detecting their arrival.

The bone storm, however, exhausted Death’s energies as few of his other necromancies did, and normally served to rend flesh rather than rock. After only a few moments, when the osseous deluge had blasted only partway through, the elder brother rose to his feet and dropped his arms to his sides. Instantly the cloud scattered, leaving few traces of itself behind.

He stepped forward, placed an ear to the roughened stone, and rapped with a knuckle. “Still fairly solid. If anyone was just on the other side, I’m sure they heard us coming, but should they be farther within, we could still have the advantage of
surprise.” The scowl, unseen on Death’s face, was obvious in his voice. “If I try much more of that, though, I may not be all that useful within. I’m not sure how—”

“Step aside, brother,” War said, “and allow me to offer you a small sample of just what had the angels so furious at me.”

So Death had done, remounting Despair, calling to Dust, and waiting to see what his younger brother had in mind.

It was impressive, to say the least.

As in the White City, War wheeled his horse about and broke into a furious charge. He stood in the saddle, Chaoseater thrust forward to become a devastating prow. The summer-dry grass ignited beneath Ruin’s hooves, leaving twin tails of flame in his wake.

Ruin leapt. War bellowed. Chaoseater met weakened stone, and the stone kindly got out of their way.

Anyone within must have been shocked almost unto paralysis by the unheralded explosion of rock into their midst, and the fearsome emergence of the crimson-cloaked War and his smoldering steed from the dust cloud.

I suppose War’s brute-force approach
does
have its merits
. Though Death would never admit that to his brother aloud, of course.

Several of the six-limbed stone constructs Death had battled on the fields of Kothysos lay crushed by the explosion of the hillside. A few twitched feebly, but none would ever again prove a threat. Whether they had come to investigate something they’d heard from farther away, or whether they’d been positioned by the door and had simply proved too stupid to recognize the threat when they heard it, the Horsemen neither knew nor cared. They rode over them, trampling the few that had survived, and shot along the passageway revealed by War’s violent arrival. Ruin in the lead, Despair only paces behind, they filled the corridor with the fusillade of hooves.

It wasn’t long, that tunnel. It led not only onward but
slightly down, suggesting that the hollow hill served only as the uppermost portion of Lilith’s hidden laboratory. Between the length of the hall and the speed of their supernatural steeds, Death and War had reached their destination before the rubble at the entrance had finished settling.

In a small way, the laboratory was similar to the Argent Spire. Not remotely in size or magnificence, but simply in that it consisted largely of a single chamber, far greater in height than in width. Roughly fifteen paces across, it was more than three times that in depth. Balconies, bridges, and retractable gantries protruded from the walls at seemingly random heights, presumably so that whoever was working here could examine and manipulate their creations from every possible angle. Open archways led from those protrusions into the rocky walls, allowing access to whatever small rooms and passages made up the remainder of the facility.

The Horsemen reined in their mounts—Ruin and Despair could not possibly navigate those narrow halls and multi-leveled balconies, at least not with any alacrity. For a dramatic instant, pregnant with all manner of possibilities, they stared down into the farthest reaches of that chamber.

And from below, their horrified foes returned those stares.

The angel was familiar enough, for they both had seen him in Heaven not long ago, attempting to strike Death down. The dusky-skinned, heavily armored giant who loomed a head taller than the angel they had
not
seen before, but neither had any doubt as to who she must be.

As synchronized as if they’d practiced the maneuver, Death and War heaved themselves from the saddles and plummeted into the abyss.

Hadrimon and Belisatra, shaken from their astonishment, dived in opposite directions—the angel taking to the air, hands reaching for the weapons at either hip, while the Maker lunged
for something that lay atop a slab of stone in the enclosure’s center. A worktable, most likely, especially judging by the fire pit and anvil both positioned nearby, but neither Horseman chose to waste the time contemplating it.