Die and Stay Dead (51 page)

Behemoth turned his attention to the news chopper next. It was already retreating, but it didn’t get far before Behemoth caught it in a gravity field. He crumpled it, too, and sent it soaring toward the city. It struck the corner of a multilevel storage facility on the other side of Twelfth Avenue, exploding and knocking great chunks of glass and concrete from the building. More screams, more screeching tires. The streets glowed with fire.

Isaac was wrong. He’d warned us it would be catastrophic if Behemoth got off the ship. But Behemoth didn’t
need
to get off the ship to show us exactly what being Lord of Ruination meant.

“We need a plan, and we need it fast,” Bethany said.

“Did the binding spell work, or did the helicopters interrupt it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Bethany said. “We have to assume it worked.”

I looked up to the top of the island, where Arkwright stood on vulture’s row. If the binding spell worked, I knew what I had to do.

Behemoth swept one arm before him. The F-14 Tomcat we were hiding behind was knocked clear off the ship by a gravity field, falling off the port side and crashing onto the cement pier below. It left us out in the open and vulnerable. Hanging back and playing defense was no longer an option. Gabrielle and Philip attacked the demon first. She struck from the air, pounding Behemoth with shock waves. Philip attacked from the ground, using his immense speed to land blow after blow on the demon’s lower, centipedelike segments. Together they tried to drive Behemoth backward, off the ship and into the water.

Bethany stayed behind to protect Isaac, who was still too weak and too drained to fight. I ran for the stairs on the side of the island. I sprinted up them, the fire sword blazing in one hand. There were probably still fifteen to twenty lesser demons standing between me and Arkwright. They might be frightened of Behemoth, but they still served their master. They would fight to protect him. As if on cue, I heard the clatter of lesser demons’ feet as they raced down the steps toward me. There was no way I would be able to fight my way through all of them, but I didn’t need to. All I needed was for them to capture me and bring me to Arkwright. All I needed was to get close.

The demons were faster than I was. I’d only climbed as high as the flag bridge on the first level of the island when two of them reached me. I swung the fire sword right for their eyes. The demons parried and fought viciously. With unbelievable speed and strength, they beat me back. These demons were stronger than the ones I’d fought at Bethesda Fountain. I wondered if being this close to the doorway between dimensions was somehow feeding their strength.

The demons forced me back up against the railing. They both brought their swords down upon me simultaneously. Holding the fire sword horizontally, I managed to block their attack. But they kept pressing forward, their combined strength driving the fire sword closer to my own throat. I strained my arms, trying to push back, but I was outnumbered. In a few seconds, the fire sword would cut into my neck.

I gave one final shove against their blades and threw myself backward over the railing. Luckily, I hadn’t climbed that high. When I landed on the deck I wasn’t in any danger of smashing my head open. My ankle was another matter. I landed wrong, twisting it. My ankle didn’t break, but it hurt like hell.

From the landing above, the lesser demons laughed at me. Apparently assholes existed among demonkind, too.

Behemoth’s angry roar caught my attention. I turned to see Gabrielle pummeling him with shock waves. She managed to knock him back a step, but the demon seemed more annoyed than injured. He extended a hand toward her. She tried to fly away, but it was too late. Behemoth caught her in the same gravity field he’d used to crush the others.

Forty

Hanging in midair, Gabrielle struggled against Behemoth’s gravity field, but she couldn’t move. I jumped to my feet—then fell again. Damn. My ankle was weaker than I thought.

Across the flight deck, Philip sprang into action. He grabbed the wing of a fighter jet near him and pulled, gritting his teeth with the immense effort. A jagged chunk of metal tore off the wing. He hurled it at Behemoth. The colossal demon didn’t see it coming until it struck him in the face. He reeled back with a roar, breaking his concentration and freeing Gabrielle from the gravity field.

A line of oily red blood appeared on Behemoth’s cheek where the sharp metal had cut him. I was surprised that anything could make him bleed. But it gave me hope that maybe we could stop him after all.

Gabrielle flew away quickly as Behemoth turned his fury on Philip. He pointed at the vampire, and Philip fell to the flight deck, unable to move. Behemoth lifted one massive centipede leg and slammed it down on Philip’s stomach. Philip cried out in pain, but the appendage didn’t go through him. Apparently Behemoth was more interested in crushing him to death than impaling him.

I got to my feet again. My twisted ankle screamed at me, but I forced myself to ignore it. I hobble-ran across the deck toward Philip. I didn’t have a plan. All I had was the fire sword, which I was pretty sure would be useless against Behemoth, like trying to stop a rampaging bull with a match. I had no idea what I would do once I got there.

But Behemoth didn’t let me come any closer. One of his immense centipede legs kicked out, knocking me to the floor. I skidded across the deck portside, stopping between two fighter jets. Wincing in pain, I turned onto my stomach and tried to push myself up. My ankle had other ideas. Unable to get up, I looked back at Philip, hoping he was still alive.

He was. Philip dug his fingers into the hard cartilage of Behemoth’s centipede leg. He grunted with effort, muscles and veins bulging beneath his skin. Then, with a loud
crack,
the leg broke, its tip jerking suddenly at an unnatural angle. Behemoth roared in pain, releasing Philip. The vampire ran away in a blur.

I sank back down to the deck. Something under one of the fighter jets caught my eye. It was a lump of burnt cloth, the charred remains of Philip’s coat. Next to it was Nightclaw. This was where Philip had dropped the dagger. I began pulling myself toward it—

Something grabbed me from behind and dragged me away from Nightclaw. The next thing I knew, I was rising into the air in a gravity field. Apparently Behemoth was no longer interested in sparing my life. Instead, the demon hurled me through the air toward the side of the island, just as he’d done to Philip. But unlike Philip, I wasn’t a vampire. I wouldn’t survive a high-velocity collision with a solid steel wall. I braced myself for the impact and hoped the others knew enough to stay away from me when I died.

Gabrielle caught me in midair. My momentum knocked her backward. I held on tight as she regained control and flew me to the opposite end of the ship from Behemoth. The others had already gathered there. She set me down safely.

“Thanks,” I said.

Isaac was holding onto Philip for support. He looked worse than before. He’d torn a piece of cloth off his shirt and tied it around the stump of his arm in a makeshift bandage. He was as pale as paper. It wasn’t blood loss. The fire sword had cauterized the wound. But Isaac had been fighting off shock for as long as he could, and now it looked like the shock was gaining ground. A stiff breeze could have knocked him down.

“We have to … stop Behemoth,” Isaac said.

“I found Nightclaw,” I said, “but I didn’t get a chance to take it. It’s still there, under those jets.” I pointed.

“How the hell do we get to it?” Bethany asked.

“A diversion,” I said. “Gabrielle and Philip can keep Behemoth distracted while you and I—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Philip interrupted. “I’m staying with Isaac.”

“No,” Isaac said. “You have to. They—they need…” He started coughing and hung weakly against Philip.

Philip helped him upright again. “Like I said, I’m not going anywhere. I mean it this time.”

“Let Philip stay. I can distract Behemoth on my own,” Gabrielle said.

I nodded. Gabrielle took to the air again. Bethany and I started running for the dagger. We didn’t get far before Behemoth did something that stopped us in our tracks. Something that told me we couldn’t win. That, in fact, we’d already lost.

The giant demon raised his hands over his head, gripped together in a ball. Then he slowly pulled them apart. Something appeared between them, growing larger as he spread his hands.

Gabrielle landed next to me, gaping at it. “My God, is that…?”

I could only nod dumbly. We’d made a terrible mistake. Arkwright told us Behemoth had his own way of tearing the world apart. We should have listened. Behemoth could manipulate gravity. But gravity could do more than crush or repel. It could do more than destroy. It could create things, too. One thing in particular. One terrible, unstoppable thing.

The object growing between Behemoth’s hands was a black hole.

Light and dust swirled around it, falling toward it, stretching, fading. The air seemed to bend and distort as it was sucked inside, creating a vacuum that sucked us forward. As it picked up speed and power, Bethany, Gabrielle, and I were pulled off our feet and dragged. A piece of metal debris skittered across the deck, jumped into the air, and soared directly into the black hole. We would follow shortly. That was how black holes worked. They ate everything around them, until there was nothing left.

With one hand, I managed to grab the chain mooring one of the remaining fighter jets in place. With the other I caught Bethany by the wrist. Gabrielle slid past us, but Bethany grabbed her with her free hand. Together, the three of us held on, a human paper chain. But I didn’t know how long I could do this. My shoulders were being pulled in two different directions. Already they felt like they were being yanked out of their sockets.

At the top of the island, Arkwright held onto the railing around vulture’s row and laughed with sheer, spiteful joy. The lesser demons held on, too, but three of them were pulled off. They flailed through the air toward the black hole, their screams cutting off instantly as they disappeared into it.

Over the howling wind and clatter of debris I heard the sound of wheels. An immense black shape rolled forward along the flight deck. A huge A-12 Blackbird stealth aircraft had been caught in the black hole’s gravitational pull, dragging its broken mooring chain behind it. The Blackbird tipped up, then tore through the air. As it approached the much smaller black hole, the Blackbird seemed to stretch out, pulled into the center, and then, without a sound, it was gone. Just gone. Swallowed whole.

All the while, Behemoth stood directly beneath the black hole that grew between his spreading hands, unaffected by its gravitational pull. Maybe that was part of the demon’s magic.

The chain I was holding onto didn’t break, but the jet it was mooring began to slide. Its rear section swung around one hundred and eighty degrees to face the black hole. The chain twisted in my hands, grinding the skin of my palm. I forced myself to ignore the pain and not to let go. Overhead, more debris rocketed past us into the black hole. The stars in the sky, the bright windows of the New Jersey skyline across the river, even the
Intrepid
itself, they all began to look distorted as the black hole pulled in more and more light.

This was it. This was what the oracles had foreseen that sent them running. This was what Biddy, in his madness, had believed the trembler could protect him from if he fed it enough women. This was what had sent countless supernatural entities fleeing to the Nethercity. This was the end.

The gravitational pull lifted Bethany and Gabrielle off the deck. The only thing that kept me from joining them was my grip on the chain. The pain in my shoulders extended all the way down my arms, but I held onto Bethany’s wrist as tightly as I could. Our eyes met. A thousand unspoken regrets passed between us. We’d wasted so much time.

“I can’t hold on!” she shouted over the wind.

“You have to!” I squeezed her wrist tighter. “Bethany, you have to!”

“It’s too strong! It’s pulling me apart!”

I tried to pull her back toward me, but I couldn’t. My arm felt like it was on fire. She was right, it was too strong. Her wrist started to slip out of my fingers.

“Trent!” she shouted.

“Bethany, hold on!”

From Bethany’s other side, Gabrielle shouted, “Let go, Trent! You have to let go, or you’ll die, too! It’ll tear you to pieces!”

“No!” I tried to pull them back again. The muscles in my arms and shoulders burned with pain. I ignored it, squeezing my eyes shut and pulling with everything I had. I didn’t care if it tore me to shreds. I didn’t care if I died and never came back. I refused to let go. I refused to let the black hole take them. I’d already lost Jordana because I couldn’t hold on. I wasn’t going to let it happen again.

“Trent.” It was Bethany’s voice. She sounded remarkably calm. I opened my eyes. She was there in front of me, off the ground, her hair flying all around her face, her bright blue eyes focused on me. Tears ran down her cheeks. “She’s right. You have to let go. Just let go.”

I shook my head. Now there were tears on my face, too.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s not your fault, Trent. Please don’t ever think this was your fault. You tried. But you have to get away, so you can stop Behemoth before more people die. You can’t do that if you don’t let go. And then it will all be for nothing.”

“No!” I shouted, shaking my head again. But I could already feel her small hand start to slip through mine. “Bethany, hold on! Please! Bethany, I love—”

And then she was torn away from me, she and Gabrielle both, and there was nothing in my hand but the rushing wind.

Forty-One

It was Isaac who saved their lives. In the end, it was Isaac who saved everyone.

Behemoth roared suddenly in pain and anger. The intense gravitational pull of the black hole stopped. Debris fell out of the sky all around me. So did Bethany and Gabrielle. They tumbled out of the air just a few yards from where the black hole had been.