Demonbane (Book 4) (34 page)

The head of some massive skeletal beast, as big as a carriage, emerged from the fire and smoke. It leered forward hungrily like the skull of some kind of monstrous tiger or wolf. The animated, blackened bones blazed with fire. The body moved without muscles or tendon.

It turned sightless eyes on them, and opened its mouth in another guttural, horrible roar. Skeletal wings flexed out to either side of its hideous shape.

From behind it came the babbling laughter and endless screams of hundreds, if not thousands, of demons, bubbling forth just on the other side of the rift.

“Back!” Joseph screamed. He grabbed Kara, bodily pulling her back towards the shelter of the street.

They all ran, hearing the terrifying screams of the skeleton-demon behind them.

The fire increased from the sky, slashing downwards in ribbons of flame that pelted against the roofs of the nearby buildings. Already fires were erupting everywhere, out of control and devouring the entire city. Flashes of lightning came again and again, with no thunder to accompany them.

“Go for cover!” Joseph shouted.

Kara and the gendarmes ducked back under an overhang in the street. Gradine and a handful of the gendarmes were still cowering in what shelter they could find, too frightened to move.

Joseph glanced back for Kendril.

The Ghostwalker wasn’t there.

The gendarmes and Kara were all staring back at the plaza.

“Demonbane,” one of the soldiers whispered in awe.

Joseph pivoted his head around.

Halberd in hand, Kendril was charging straight for the demon.

The heavens were raining fire, and Vorten was burning.

Baron Dutraad watched in horror as his men abandoned weapons and ran in sheer panic. He could only imagine what the civilians trying to leave the city were doing. Things were devolving into chaos.

He swept his eyes across the horizon of the city. Flames leapt up in all directions, spilling black smoke up into the night sky.

Vorten was lost.

Even if they won, even if they somehow managed to beat the cultists and kill the demon, there was no way they could put out this many fires.

More obscene faces formed in the clouds above, silently laughing, weeping, crazed. It made Dutraad’s mind spin to look at them.

“Baron!” Olan shouted, ducking back from the falling fire. “It’s a Void gate! They must have been—”

Dutraad’s horse reared back in sudden pain and fright, kicking and neighing wildly.

The Baron tumbled off and fell to the hard, wet ground.

Wet
. The intense heat from all the fires was actually melting the snow.

He staggered to his feet.

The horse galloped off, its tail and back end burning with fire.

Olan grabbed his arm and pulled him beneath an overhanging roof. “We have to go back!” he shouted into Dutraad’s ear. “We need to close the gate before—”

“Close the gate?” Dutraad stared at the Ghostwalker in shock. “Through
that
?” He pointed a finger towards the flaming city.

Olan stared at the epic conflagration, momentarily speechless.

“We need to get out of the city,” Dutraad gasped. “Before we all die.”

A cultist ran aimlessly across the Plaza, burning and screaming.

The skeletal demon lashed its mouth down in one quick stroke and bit the man in two. It threw back its head and bellowed in victory, its flightless wings lashing and cracking like whips.

Kendril ran.

Fire flashed all around him. He could feel the heat on his back, to his front. His cloak smoked. The beast was right in front of him, towering and menacing.

The first of many that were coming through that gate.

“Eru is my strength and shield,” Kendril said as he moved. It was a song, a children’s song. He hadn’t mouthed the words in years, but now they were coming out of his mouth in desperate bursts. “My help in trouble, a light in dark—”

He hammered the halberd into the beast’s foreleg.

The bone splintered and cracked.

The demon snapped its giant head around towards Kendril and opened its mouth.

“—places, I will not be afraid—”

Kendril struck again, feeling the heat of the burning beast on his face and hands.

The leg bone shattered.

The beast toppled, giving a wailing screech. Its wings flopped and waved, tearing up nearby cobblestones. One of the wings lashed out and took the top off the plaza’s fountain.

It fell with a crash.

Kendril didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t quit.

“—You are with me,
I am not alone
—”

The demon screamed from a mouth with no throat and no lungs.

Kendril brought the halberd down on its head in a mighty two-hand blow.

The skull was wrenched open by the steel blade.

Kendril hammered the weapon down again and again on the creature’s head.

The beast gave one last strangled roar, then lay still.

Kendril turned towards the rift.

He could see into it, right into the Void. The sight almost drove him mad, almost caused him to fall to the ground in a crazed stupor.

There were legions of them. Legions of demons just inside, waiting for their first taste of the mortal realm, waiting to take back the world they believed was theirs.

Smoke stung Kendril’s eyes, the falling fire burned at him, wisped all around him like flaming raindrops.

“You are not alone,” he gasped, repeating the words over and over. “You are not alone, you are not alone, you are—”

Then he saw it. Through the fire, through the smoke, in the near-continual flashes of lightning.

The high priest, the one Kendril had shot. His body hung in the air just in front of the gate, still burning like a piece of slowly melting wax.

It was
him
, Kendril realized. That man, his
body.

The blood from the sacrifices had broken the veil between the Void and Zanthora. But something else was needed, a token to keep the gate open, to establish a physical link between the worlds.

For Indigoru, it had been the Soulbinder itself, merging the demon with Lady Dutraad.

Here, it was the priest.

His burning body was acting as a huge Soulbinder.

Joseph started forwards.

Kara grabbed the scout’s arm and yanked him back.

“Let me go!” he shouted. “
Kendril
—”

Maklavir took hold of Joseph’s other arm and helped pull him back under cover of a building. “Kendril’s mad!” the diplomat shouted over the din. “If you go out there you’ll be killed too!”

As if to punctuate his words, a flaming house across the street collapsed, sending up a whirling furnace of smoke and sparks.

Joseph turned, an angry response already on the tip of his tongue.

It evaporated as soon as he saw Kara’s face.

“Joseph,
please
—” she urged.

He looked back towards where Kendril had vanished amid the clouds of smoke in the plaza. Fire was falling fast and furious from the purple sky above. The whole city was one flaming inferno as far as the eye could see.

Joseph glanced back down the street, only to see a wall of fire blocking the way to the bridge.

They were trapped.

The heat increased with each step Kendril took. It scorched his face and his hands. Sweat covered his body, made his hands slick on the handle of the halberd.

He turned his face, unable to stand the intense glare and wave of heat that emanated constantly from the open gate.

Kendril knew what he had to do. He had to close that gate. There was only one way to do it.

And his time was running short.

Another ear-shaking roar erupted from the Void gate, followed by a myriad of cackling screams.

The demons were coming. In seconds they would rush through, first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands.

Kendril kept moving forward.

The heat was intense. Steam wisped up from the ground. The air shimmered and danced before him.

Kendril’s face felt scorched, as if someone had pressed a hot iron against it. He turned his head, raising the halberd to strike. His black cloak was actually smoking. So were his gloves.

Before him was the burning body of the cultist priest, hanging impossibly in the air just a few feet off the ground. A low, sonorous chanting came from it, as if in death the cursed soul of the man was damned to repeat the same spell over and over.

Kendril could see the demons through the gaping tear in space just beyond. There were dozens more of the gigantic skeleton-demons, pawing the ground and roaring. The sky on the other side was black with the winged bat-creatures. There were tens of thousands of them, more than could be counted. Other things moved in the dark fire of the Void, impossible monstrosities that snaked and lumbered, skittered and crawled. A cacophony of noise jittered out of the rift.

Kendril screamed from the pain. Fire erupted on his cloak and over his left arm. His face was burning, burning—

He kept moving, trying to protect his body with his outstretched arm.

You are not alone.

Kendril brought the halberd down on Dannon’s burning form.

There was hideous scream and a flash of blinding light.

Kendril felt pain, then nothing at all.

Chapter 20

Snow fell in the open plaza. It was dark, gray with the ashes of the smoke that hung like a shroud over Vorten. The city was burning. Fire was blazing in every direction, but the purple clouds were gone. The raining fire had ceased.

The Void gate had closed. Where once there had been a huge gaping hole between worlds, there was now nothing at all. If not for the scorched cobblestones it would have been impossible to tell anything had ever been amiss there.

Joseph ran out into the open plaza, feeling the snow pelt against his face. Kara and Maklavir ran behind him, followed by Gradine and the handful of gendarmes that were left.

Kendril lay in the middle of the Plaza, face down. His black cloak was smoldering.

Joseph ran up to him, and patted out a fire that was still simmering on his friend’s arm. He turned Kendril over.

From behind, Kara gasped.

Maklavir stared, his face pale. “Great Eru,” he whispered.

Joseph stared at his unconscious friend for a long moment.

Kendril was badly burned. The left side of his face was a twisted, raw mess of scabs and blisters. Almost half the hair from his head was missing, fused into a lump of scorched red skin.

Joseph bit his lip. He gently tugged on Kendril’s smoking sleeve.

Parts of the Ghostwalker’s left arm and hand were similarly burned.

Maklavir staggered to one side. He looked as if he was going to be ill.

Kara dropped down to her knees on the wet cobblestones. Her eyes were filled with tears.

Joseph tugged loose his herb satchel. It was almost empty. He rummaged inside, then pulled out a small bottle of white cream. He scooped his fingers inside, trying to get as much out as he could.

“It’s done.” Gradine stared around the plaza blankly. “It’s…over. He closed the gate.”

Joseph applied the white cream Kendril’s burned face. It was a special honey herbal mix, designed for burns. It would help numb the pain and hopefully prevent an infection.

Still, the pain would be intense. Joseph was grateful his friend was unconscious.

A lone screeching wail rose above the firestorm that covered the city. It echoed through the inferno, utterly inhuman.

“What on Zanthora was that?” Gradine clutched his soot-covered carbine. “Another demon?”

Joseph looked grimly towards the north. “The
only
demon left in Zanthora.”

Maklavir adjusted his cap nervously. “Indigoru? She sounds…upset.”

Kara readied her bow. “We have to go. We can’t stay out here in the open.”

“Go?” One of the gendarmes gave a harsh laugh, his face red from the heat. “Where are we going to go? Look around.”

Joseph stood, wiping soot from his face.

Fire danced crazily in blazing vortexes over the buildings all around the edge of the plaza. In each direction there was nothing but a burning wall of death.

“There must be…” Maklavir stared paled-faced at the destruction all around them. “There must be hundreds of dead out there.
Thousands
.”

The keening cry, eerie and ghostlike, came again over the fires to the north. It was filled with rage.

Kara lifted her head. “It’s getting closer.”

“Great Eru,” Gradine swore. “She’s coming this way.”

“We did just destroy her Void gate,” Maklavir remarked drolly.

Kara arched an eyebrow. “
We
?”

Joseph sheathed his rapier. “The sewers.”

Kara looked at him. “Underground? We’d be safe from the fire, at least…”

“Safe?” The gendarme pushed back his bearskin hat, his eyes wild. “What if the sewers collapse? Or fill with smoke? We’ll suffocate.”

Maklavir nodded sagely. “An enclosed tunnel could become a deathtrap if fire gets inside.” He gave Joseph a sidelong glance. “No to mention if a pocket of gas down there ignites.”

“Lucky for you all, then, I’m here,” said Joseph with a humorless smile. “If I can find my way through a forest I can get us through a sewer well enough.”

The wail came again, long and clear. The sound was definitely getting closer.

“It’s not ideal, but the way I see it we don’t have another good option.” Joseph glanced around the open space of the plaza. “Going underground is our best chance to get out of this city alive. Unless, of course, any of you want to face down Indigoru when she comes.”

Kendril moaned.

Kara knelt down next to him. “Kendril?”

The Ghostwalker coughed, then gasped in pain.

“Lie still,” Kara warned. She looked up at Maklavir and Joseph helplessly.

“Fire…my
face
…” Kendril cried. He tried to get up, but collapsed back down with another gasp.

Joseph grabbed Gradine by the shoulder. “Quickly, find us some kind of sewer grate somewhere on the edge of the plaza.” He got down by the injured Ghostwalker. “Kendril, you’re not on fire. You’ve been burned across your face and arm. I’ve spread an ointment on it, but you have to rest.”