Hellraisers (15 page)

“What happened?” Marlow asked once Charlie had squirmed loose. “You disappeared.”

“I have no idea,” he replied. “One minute I'm kicking the crap outta that guy and the next I'm all the way up in the art room. Man, I black out or something?”

“Something,” Marlow replied.

With an almighty crack the lobby doors blew off their hinges, tearing through a bank of lockers and cartwheeling down the hallway. Marlow dived out of the way, looked up to see that all hell had broken loose in there. The lobby looked like it was burning up, flames licking the walls and an upside-down flood of thick, black smoke billowing out. There were shapes in the chaos, forms that swept back and forth so fast and so erratically that they could have been made of shadow and smoke.

“Come on,” said Charlie. “We gotta get out of here.”

A burst of light burned its way into the hallway and suddenly Patrick was there, just yards away, engulfed in a ball of fire. He managed to shrug off his coat before a blurred shape streaked out of the lobby and thumped into him. They crashed into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Through the dust Marlow could make out the girl from the roof sitting on the guy's chest, her fists as fast as a pneumatic drill. Patrick managed to get a hand up but the girl was too fast, disappearing into a fizzing silhouette of light. The wall behind her vanished as if somebody had willed it out of existence. With a groan like a dying whale the ceiling cracked and drooped, the windows blowing out in a hail of glass.

Patrick struggled to his feet, barely sparing Marlow a glance. He ran for the hole in the wall but the girl blazed in front of him, tripping him and sending him sprawling. Then she was on his back, those hammer blows pummeling his face into the floor. Patrick growled and vanished, reappearing an instant later behind the girl. He looked exhausted but he had enough strength to grab her around the neck, choking off her cry. She pushed herself back, sending them both flying into another bank of lockers, caving a hole in the metal. But he didn't let go, squeezing so hard her face was turning blue.

“Hey!” Marlow shouted. “Get off her!”

Patrick didn't even hear him. Marlow started toward them, not sure what he was planning to do but knowing he had to do something. The smoke from the lobby curled into his lungs like fingers.

“Marlow,” he heard Charlie behind him, “you crazy? Come on!”

There was another explosion from the lobby and Marlow turned to see a man bulldoze his way out of the fire. He was huge, like bigger-than-Yogi huge, and he had a face like a bulldog that had swallowed a mouthful of bees. He bowled down the hallway, gaining momentum with every step. The big guy reached out with a fist the size of a catcher's mitt, engulfing Patrick's face and hoisting him into the air. He threw the man like he was a rag doll, hard enough to punch him through the doors at the far end. Then he crouched down beside the girl, who was recovering her breath.

“You okay, Night?” he asked in a voice that rolled like thunder. She nodded, letting him help her up. Both the guy and the girl turned and looked at Marlow, dismissing him in a way that made him feel relieved and disappointed all at once. “I'll get Patrick,” the guy said. “Go make sure Pan's all right.”

They split up, but only for a second. After a couple of steps the big guy stopped walking, putting a hand to his head like he was in pain. He staggered, collapsing against the wall. Then he turned, lurching back the way he'd come. There was something different about his face, his mouth drooping, his eyes unfocused. And the way he walked reminded Marlow of the old zombie films. It was almost comical, until he drew level with Night and wrapped his tree-trunk arms around her in a bear hug. She screamed as he lifted her off the floor, struggling against him.

“Truck! Stop! What are you doing?”

“Not…” the big guy grunted. His nose was leaking blood. “Not … me…”

The girl was wriggling so furiously that she was just a blur again, like the guy was holding on to a mirage. It was making Marlow's eyes hurt just to look at it. He backed off a step, feeling Charlie's hands around his arm, tugging him.

The blond girl emerged from the lobby. Her face was bruised but her eyes were colder and more focused than ever. She was weaving her fingers in front of her, like before, whispering something under her breath. What had Pan said, up on the roof? That the girl was a
Reader
? Each movement of her hands held an invisible string, like she was a puppet master and the big guy was her plaything. He squeezed and something inside Night cracked like a pistol shot.

“Kill her,” the girl was saying. “Kill her kill her kill her.”

Marlow shook Charlie loose, grabbing the first thing he could see—a fire extinguisher. He wrenched the pin out of the handle like it was a grenade, then fired it. A white plume of carbon dioxide jetted out of the end and filled the corridor. He tried not to breathe it in but there was nothing he could do, the acrid taste filling his mouth, scouring his damaged lungs. He fired it again, marching forward and directing the flow right at the girl.

She coughed, using a shoulder to wipe her watering eyes. But her hands were still working away, pulling Truck's strings. Marlow hefted the fire extinguisher above his head and charged at her, ready to KO her out of the equation.

He never got the chance.

The girl suddenly cried out, collapsing onto one knee. She put her fingers to her shoulder and Marlow could see some kind of arrow sticking out of her uniform, slick with her blood. Pan strode out of the lobby, reloading her crossbow as she went.

“Truck, you okay?” she said as she walked, lifting the bow and aiming it at the mousy girl's head. Truck was looking at his hands like he no longer trusted them, the girl called Night now lying in a puddle of quivering limbs at his feet.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry.”

Patrick's sister was trying to get back to her feet, one hand rising up, trembling like it belonged to an old woman. Marlow felt a pang of agony lance across the front of his head, realized he was staggering down the corridor toward Pan, somebody else at the wheel.

No!
He barked the order at his brain and felt the girl's telepathic hold waver—not by much, but enough to let him wriggle free of it. He swung the extinguisher. It was a lucky shot, catching her in the temple and knocking her to the floor. She lay still, only the soft rise and fall of her chest letting him know he hadn't just become a killer.

His weapon hit the floor with a clang and he reached for his inhaler, shaking it. There wasn't much left. Another bout of vertigo hit him and he had to sit down on the ledge by the window to stop the world doing cartwheels. Charlie perched next to him, his face a mask of shock and disbelief, as if he'd just been pulled out of a car crash. Marlow guessed his own face looked exactly the same. Only it wasn't a car that had crashed, it was reality.

Pan reached the girl and toed her with her boot to make sure she was unconscious. She grabbed the crossbow bolt and tugged it free with a spurt of blood. Wiping it on her trousers, she slid it into her pocket, then held a hand out to Night.

“You good?” she asked, hauling the smaller girl up.

“I'm fine,” Night wheezed, her voice a crone's cackle. She coughed, looking up at the big guy. “Not the first time he's got a little too friendly, right, Truck?”

“Hey,” he said with a sheepish shrug. “What can I say, I'm a hugger.” He looked over his shoulder toward the far end of the corridor. “We still got one loose, and he'll be … Yeah, I thought so.”

All eyes turned to see Patrick stagger back through the doors. He looked like he'd been hit by a train, one arm hanging by his side—too loose, probably dislocated—the other feeling its way along the wall. Pan stepped to the front of the group, aiming her crossbow at him. It would have to be a good shot from here, maybe twenty yards between them.

“Let Brianna go,” Patrick said, spitting out something that might have been a tooth. “Don't you dare…”

“Dare what?” Pan said, swinging the crossbow back until it was pointed right at the girl's head. “Kill her? Why not? You were going to kill me, kill us.”

Patrick staggered forward a few more paces, grimacing. His good hand was flexing but whatever magic he had possessed before seemed to have dried up. He stopped halfway down the corridor.

“She's my sister,” he said, almost pleading. “Give her back and we'll go, I promise.”

“Too late,” Pan replied. “You play the game, you take the pain. You can go. But she stays with us.”

“Please,” he said.

Pan tilted her head, like something had buzzed into her ear. She brushed at it with her free hand. Marlow could feel it too, a soft hum deep inside his skull, like when you could hear the subway rumbling through the grates. He shook his head, trying to ignore the sensation of something crawling inside his brain.

“You got three seconds,” Pan said. “Get out of my sight or I swear to whoever built the Engines I'll put a bolt right through her head. One.”

Patrick must have seen something in her expression because he straightened, his eyes so full of hate that they didn't look human. He pointed a finger at Pan and she shook her head in a warning.

“Uh-uh,” she said, her head still twitching in discomfort. “That's two.”

“Brianna, I'll come back for you, I promise,” he said, almost in tears. Then, to Pan, “And you'll pay for this.”

She snorted a bitter laugh.

“Yeah, we'll all pay for this. Goddammit what
is
that?”

The sensation was getting stronger, a tremor that seemed to fill up the whole corridor. What little glass was left in the windows was rattling, the rest trembling across the floor like a river of ice. It was more like a subway than ever, like there was a train hurtling their way. Only whatever was coming was worse than a train. Marlow could feel it in his gut, a sickness born of fear, some primal instinct demanding that he run, run and never stop. Everybody seemed to be feeling it, whatever it was, Pan and her friends casting nervous looks at each other. Marlow glanced at Charlie but he was wearing a thousand-yard stare, lost in the horror of the last twenty minutes.

Patrick started to back away, then his hands shot up to his head, clutching it like he was trying to stop it popping off his shoulders. He seemed to go three shades paler in as many seconds.

“No no no no,” he muttered, staggering back. “No no please no no not yet no no no.”

He looked back at Pan and this time his expression was one of pure horror.

“Get my sister out of here,
please
,” he yelled. He turned so quickly he almost tripped on his own feet, pushing through the doors, his shrieks echoing back to them down the corridor.

“He's coming. He's coming.
He's coming!
”

His fear was contagious, Marlow's skin growing cold, his scalp tightening. He stood up, turning to Pan. She too was shaking her head, and when she looked back at him her eyes were wide and full of fear.

“Herc,” she said, speaking into a radio on her collar. “Please tell me he's wrong.”

She listened to a reply and collapsed against the ruined bank of lockers. The whole school seemed to be shaking now, like a giant steamroller was about to crush the building into dust. There was more buzzing inside Marlow's skull, a thousand bluebottles feasting on his brain.

“What's going on?” he asked. “Pan?”

She pushed herself off the lockers, stumbling away, her eyes never leaving Marlow's.

“He's coming,” she said, her voice that of a child who hears something beneath her bed in the middle of the night. She looked about half her age, a little lost girl. “Oh god, he's coming.”

“Who?” asked Marlow. The ceiling cracked overhead, filling the corridor with billowing clouds of dust, like it too needed to find a way out fast. “Pan, who?”

“Him,”
she said, the word just a sob.
“Mammon.”

 

MAMMON

Pan had never felt fear like this before. Not even her first time in the Engine, sinking into the infernal blackness of the pit and not knowing whether she'd make it out alive. Not the first time she'd seen
it
, the creature that lived inside the machine, the one that craved her soul. Not the first time she'd seen the demons, hefting their bulk from the shattered remains of the world they possessed. Not even when she was a kid, watching her parents arguing, seeing her drunken father bunch up his fist and unleash his fury on her and her mother.

This fear was something else, something so unfamiliar that it was almost alien. It was a physical thing, a cold fire inside her stomach, a painful tickle like somebody's dirty fingers were burrowing between her vertebrae. Her head was a mess of white noise.

He
was coming.

She forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, but even that was a struggle. Her body—her mind—was on the verge of a complete breakdown. All it wanted to do was lie down and die, because anything—literally anything—was better than seeing
him
. Her vision went dark, hallucinations of moldering flesh flashing up against the ruin of the corridor.

She tried to ignore them. Ostheim had warned her it would be like this, if she was ever close to one of the Five. The Pentarchy were freaks, monsters who had used the Engine too many times. They weren't human, not anymore. They weren't Engineered, and they weren't demons. They were something horrific that lay in between. And Mammon was the worst, a force of utter wickedness who corrupted everything he touched. All he had to do was smile at you, Ostheim said, and your soul would rot.

Mammon.

Just thinking his name made the corridor shake more violently, the floor vibrating so hard that she almost lost her footing. She braced herself against the wall, screaming when she felt something soft and wet there, something
moving
. The plaster was crumbling away, a solid mass of maggots squirming beneath, like the building was made of them. She recoiled, watching as more of the façade fell away, unleashing a torrent of insects and spiders that poured to the floor. More dropped from the ceiling, pattering down onto her head like big, fat drops of rain. Something squirmed its way down the back of her suit and she almost gagged. It couldn't be real and yet it was—the Five made a mockery of physics.