Demon Games [4] (11 page)

‘And what is that?’

‘A key. A key to pass through the Fae gate. Step forward. I will have to link arms with you. We need to be in physical contact to be able to pass through together.’

‘Do all the inhabitants of the castle wear one of those then?’

Dreck gave the teenager a strange look. ‘No. Molok controls the Fae gate from within the castle. He decides who can, and who cannot, pass through this portal.’

‘But you’ve got a key?’ Trey eyed the Fire Imp suspiciously.

‘One of the perks of installing a security system is that you always know how to get around it.’ Dreck looked about them, ensuring that they were still unobserved. ‘We really must enter now.’

Trey hesitated. He stared at the blackness again and noted how the voices had gone silent, as if the Fae too were waiting for him to make up his mind.

‘I’m not going in there with these things on my wrists,’ he said, looking at his guide.

‘I think it would be better to keep them on.’

‘I don’t.’

Dreck stared at the boy for a moment before giving a little shrug. ‘Fair enough. I suppose they’ve served their purpose now.’ He stepped forward, pulling a small key from a pouch hanging from his belt. He undid the handcuffs and stepped back, watching the boy massage the feeling back into his hands and forearms. ‘Shall we go, or shall we stand here in plain view of anyone who comes along?’

Trey looked at the Fire Imp’s outstretched hand. He paused a moment, and then took it in his own.

The voices started up again. They were louder now, and the imploring tone had gone, replaced with an undisguised anger. The creatures, hidden in the darkness, hissed and spat. Some screeched, their words impossible to make out among the cacophony of noise and ire. But while Trey was unable to pick out what they were saying, he was aware that their hatred was directed not at him but at the nether-creature at his side. He caught the words ‘traitor’ and ‘deceiver’ as Dreck pulled his hand and they stepped into the darkness.

Lucien hit the djinn, backhanding the creature with a blow that was meant more as a means of getting its attention than an attempt to hurt it in any meaningful way. The Grell spat out a mouthful of black gore and smiled back at the vampire through bloodied teeth. Lucien had been questioning the nether-creature for nearly an hour now, and it showed no signs of revealing the information that he hoped it knew.

‘You can hit me as much as you like, but I will not betray Caliban to you. Should I do that, the punishment that he will mete out would be far greater than anything you could do to me.’

‘I shouldn’t be too sure of that, Grell,’ Lucien said, glaring at the creature tied to the chair. They were in a basement beneath a building, which Moriel had suggested would be an ideal place for the interrogation.

They’d had a tip-off from one of Moriel’s spies suggesting the Grell was close to Caliban and might know his whereabouts, and the Arel had acted swiftly to capture it and bring it here. The vampire had convinced Moriel to let him talk to the demon first, and to his surprise the battle-angel had agreed. When Lucien had walked into the subterranean vault, closing the heavy door behind him, he was in no doubt that it had been used by Moriel before: large metal rings were set into the walls, and from these hung heavy chains and manacles. The stone floor beneath these was stained almost black with dried patches of what he assumed to be blood. The place had an oppressive feel to it, but if the Grell was intimidated by its surroundings, it was doing a good job of hiding it.

‘This is your last chance. I won’t ask you again,’ Lucien said, leaning in close to the Grell and trying to ignore the foul smell emanating from the nether-creature. ‘So I suggest you do your best to remember something of use to me, something to help me locate my brother.’

The Grell’s response was to spit in the vampire’s face, and Lucien straightened up, pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiping away the blood and saliva.

‘That wasn’t very nice,’ he said, the coldness in his voice unmistakable.

‘It won’t work!’ the Grell said defiantly. ‘You don’t have what it takes to torture me. You’ve gone soft, Charron. Living with the humans has made you soft and weak. You’ll never make me tell you anything.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Lucien said, returning the handkerchief to his pocket. He turned towards the door, adding over his shoulder, ‘Maybe I have lost some of the cruelty that my kind is famous for. That’s why I brought my friend along.’ He opened the door and looked up into the face of the battle-angel. Moriel gazed over the vampire’s head at the nether-creature in the centre of the room and smiled.

‘I told you you were wasting your time,’ she said, moving past the vampire. ‘My turn now.’

One look at the Arel was enough to set the Grell shouting out to Lucien. There was desperation in its voice as it pleaded with him not to leave it alone with the battle-angel.

‘Please, Lucien. I didn’t mean what I said. I think I can remember something now. Yes, I’m sure I can tell you something. PLEASE! Give me a chance. Don’t leave me in here with her.’

‘Too late,’ the battle-angel said, slamming the door.

Lucien glanced at his watch as the Arel stepped out of the cellar, closing the heavy door behind her. No more than six minutes had passed.

‘That was quick,’ he said, glancing back in the direction of the door.

Moriel shrugged and continued to wipe her hands on a piece of old cloth she’d found somewhere.

‘Did the Grell tell you anything?’

‘It told me
everything.
Everything it knew, anyway – which wasn’t much.’ She threw the rag down and started to walk towards the steps that led up from the basement. ‘Caliban enlisted the help of a demon – aPit-Shedim – after the creature claimed not only that it knew where the crypt containing Helde’s heart was, but that it had uncovered the secret to bringing her back to life.’

‘And where is this Pit-Shedim now?’

‘It seems to have disappeared,’ Moriel said, giving Lucien a look. ‘It went off with Caliban, presumably to take him to the crypt, and hasn’t been seen since. Neither has your brother. They’ve both disappeared.’

‘Caliban would not want anyone to know his plans. He’s aware that there would be opposition to any attempt to bring Helde back to this realm.’ Lucien paused, ‘I’m surprised the Grell was allowed to live, knowing such a thing.’

‘Caliban did not know that the djinn had overheard his conversation with the Pit-Shedim. He has kept his plans secret.’

‘Hag knew,’ Lucien pointed out.

Moriel smiled. They were leaving the building now and the earth was bathed in the sickly red light cast by the dull globe overhead. ‘Hag knows everything,’ she said, pulling the vampire to her and leaping into the air, her huge black wings unfurling as they soared into the night sky. ‘That’s why we’re going to go and see her now: to reveal to her what we have just found out and ask her if she has any idea where Helde’s crypt is. I only hope we are not too late.’

Alexa’s nose was the first thing to tell her that there might be an opening somewhere up ahead. The tiniest breeze of fresh, clean air had entered the tunnel and she paused for a moment, not daring to let herself hope she might be close to escaping this hell. She guessed that she’d crawled and slid on her belly through the pitch-black tunnel for almost an hour now – not that she’d gone far in that time; the narrowness of the shaft made any kind of progress extremely difficult. She was exhausted. For a while after the outside door had closed and trapped her she’d invoked a glowing ball of light, holding it in the palm of her hand as she fought to control the panic of her claustrophobia. It was simple magic, but it stopped her making her way forward, and she’d eventually foregone the light as she remembered the Ashnon’s warning about being in the shaft when it was next filled. So she’d inched forward in complete darkness, eventually closing her eyes – finding it somehow easier to concentrate like that.

But she opened them now, and her heart jumped in her chest as she made out the square outline of light up ahead. It had to be some kind of door or hatch, and the sight of it spurred her forward. Her way had become harder as the tunnel became steeper and steeper, and Alexa had been forced to jam her back against the roof of the passageway, wedging herself to ensure that her hard-fought progress was not lost by slipping backwards. The tunnel’s incline was already becoming difficult to contend with, but the pitch that it increased to in the last section up to the door would be impossible to climb.

Alexa’s heart sank. She let her head fall forward, not caring that her hair was now lying in the crud and filth that lined the tunnel, and gave in to the tears. She would die in this place. She would be thrown back down its length when the next wave of rubbish filled the chute, and she would drown in that muck; it would fill her nose and mouth and lungs, and she would suffocate in it, only to be added to the great pile of rotting filth outside when the doors finally opened again.

There was a scraping sound above her head. She stifled her sobs and listened closely, and heard it again. She gasped, screwing her eyes up in pain as light flooded the darkness. They were about to fill the chute! She opened her mouth to scream – knowing it would be the last sound she would make before succumbing to the fate she had just imagined – when something soft landed against her head. She squinted through the slits that she’d made of her eyes to try to make out what the thing was.

A knotted rope hung down the tunnel, the other end disappearing into the brilliant square of light overhead.

Then she remembered what the Ashnon had said to her from the other side of the tunnel seal: how it would somehow make its way inside and find her.

She reached out and gratefully took hold of the rope. Using every last bit of her strength, she stretched to grasp one knot and then another, pulling herself up through the last section of tunnel and over the lip of the open hatch. She fell face down on the floor in a heap.

‘Thank goodness you came,’ she said in a small voice.

She looked up to see three Maug guards grinning down at her. It was the last thing she saw before one of them swung its fist into the side of her head and plunged her into a new kind of darkness.

Trey reluctantly followed Dreck into the Fae gate, passing from the sickly red light of the Netherworld into the blackest of blacks, and into a place that was as different from the demon realm as it was from the human one. It was icy cold, and he was sure that if he could make anything out he would see his breath billowing out in front of him. He had the odd sensation of floating, as if there was nothing of any substance in this place; space with no stars or moons or planets – nothing but dark matter.

‘Whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand,’ Dreck said. His voice seemed very far away, as if they were separated by much more than the arm’s length between them.

There was nothing to suggest which direction they should head in to get through to the other side. There was nothing to suggest that there
was
another side. Just blackness.

And then they came.

They were, like everything in this place, invisible, but Trey sensed them all around. The silent menace being directed at him and the Fire Imp was almost tangible, a threatening force of hatred and malevolence that made the hairs on the back of the teenager’s neck stand up, and caused him to look around in alarm, expecting an attack from any direction.

Dreck spoke; again his voice had that strange, far-off quality to it, and Trey was vaguely aware of being pulled along by the Fire Imp. ‘Don’t worry about them. They can’t get to us.’

As he said this, the Fae revealed themselves to the trespassers.

There were hundreds of them. Each tiny figure was illuminated by some kind of bioluminescence – a small glowing light that came from a central point inside their body – and Trey was reminded of a wildlife programme he’d once watched about deep-sea fish that used the same method to lure and kill their prey. He stopped and stared at the creatures which were slowly becoming more apparent, and saw how they shared another characteristic with those denizens of the deep: their bodies and skeletons were transparent, the glow at the centre illuminating the internal organs, visible through glass-like skin. In other ways the Fae looked similar to the fairies he’d read about in books as a small child: tiny wings, which seemed to sprout from their shoulder blades, moved so quickly that they appeared as nothing more than a blur behind their backs, enabling the creatures to dart to and fro in the air, hovering for a moment or two in one spot before switching to a new one. Tiny arms and legs hung from humanoid bodies, but what Trey had first taken to be a tail turned out to be two long, flowing tentacles that waved in the air beneath them, each tipped with its own light which glowed in the same way as the central one.

Trey’s eyes were inevitably drawn to the faces of the Fae, and here any similarities to the dainty, pretty fairies in the illustrated tales of his childhood ended. Their heads seemed too big for their bodies, with large, elongated eyes that glared out at the teenager, the pupils shrunk down to tiny black pinpricks as if even the tiny amount of light emitted by their own bodies was too much for them. But it was their mouths that Trey could not take his eyes away from: ghastly wide splits stretching from one side of the face to the other, lips peeled back over rows of deadly-looking teeth, which were also transparent, as if fashioned out of glass or ice.

One of the host broke free from the rest of the group, flying in a high arc above Trey’s head, the lighted tentacles trailing behind it and tracing a path of light in its wake. Others followed suit, matching the steep ascent and sweeping in behind the first Fae in an aerial display that was beautiful to watch. The leading Fae halted in the air, hovering some two or three metres directly over the teenager. Then suddenly it dive-bombed. The others followed suit, and Trey looked up to see a wave of living tracer bullets hurtling towards him. Worse still, he could hear a distinct
snick-snick-snick
sound as they repeatedly snapped their mouths open and shut.