Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series (19 page)

He grinned weakly on seeing Beelzebub, but though there was effort in his smile, there was little joy.

‘I lost.’

It took Sam half an hour to tell his story. He described everything, through the quest to find who, in addition to Odin and Jehovah, might want the Pandora keys, right up to his defeat in Kaluga.

‘What will you do now?’ asked Bubble.

He shrugged. ‘It’s not as bad as it seems; I will regenerate. Then there are several things I can do. Firstly I’m going to get back my sword and crown. They can’t destroy them, and they know that I can find them anywhere. So if they’re clever they’ll have thrown them away. But I
will
have them back.’

‘And then?’

Again, a wan smile. ‘They made a mistake. To convince me of my own safety they summoned fog, as Whisperer would have done. Then they sent a jinniyah to pick me up, with some story about trouble. I tagged the jinniyah’s car, and before I left Earth I probed for it. The tag is still there.’

‘So. You will continue in this battle, even though you are outnumbered and outgunned.’

‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘For Freya, for Whisperer and for my own small-minded little pride, I will go on.’

‘When will you return to Earth?’

‘As soon as my back stops hurting.’

‘When is that?’

‘A few days? Regeneration is almost complete, and I’ve been using a few spells. Most of the work was done in trance.’ He wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘A week in a rubbish tip.’

Beelzebub was silent again. Finally he stood up. ‘Can you walk?’

‘I got here, didn’t I?’

‘Can you walk comfortably?’ he demanded, exasperation only slightly tainting his voice.

Mostly there was concern, and Sam was duly flattered. ‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to show you something.’

Sam wrapped himself in a warm cloak, attempting to stand tall despite the twinges that shot through his back.

Bubble was unreadable, but the firelight revealed the weariness in his eyes, and at the door his groping hand failed several times to catch the handle.

Sam caught his arm and opened the door. ‘You’re not well,’ he said.

‘I am old. It’s something you wouldn’t understand, Lucifer. Not physically, at least. Come. This is important.’

Sam followed Bubble up the corridor. His mind was already wheeling with possibilities as to what this ‘important’ sight might be. And with concern for his oldest demon friend. It hadn’t occurred to him until that minute to consider exactly how old Bubble was.
When Bubble dies, then
demonkind
really is nothing more than a collection of savages.

Moving with an old man’s stately gait, Bubble led the way up a flight of stairs. Sam trailed behind with the youngster’s shuffle that cries out for more speed. To look at them, no one would have thought Sam the elder, for all the injuries that time or war had inflicted on the pair.
We are wounded soldiers, coming to observe the battlefield
, Sam thought, and then chided himself.
We are who we are; don’t try to romanticise a bullet in the back or the weight of age
.

At the summit of a long twisting stair, they made their way out on to a tower. A guard saluted sharply, but was waved away by Bubble, saying they didn’t wish to be disturbed.

It was bitterly cold. Ice was already forming on Sam’s wet hair, giving it the appearance of a strange helmet. The city of Gehenna was laid out below them, with every street corner marked by a burning fire. In the hills beyond, a pack of hunters riding their huge, shaggy beasts were returning from a kill, and watchfires burnt on the horizon.

‘What is there to see?’ asked Sam, peering over the battlements and shivering.

‘There.’ Bubble pointed. Sam followed his finger until his eyes settled on the castle’s small forge. Through the darkness his eyes picked out a heaving mass of soldiers, talking loudly. Outside the smithy a clerk was handing out heavy shields and long swords. And now that Sam had detected this, his gaze automatically flew over the second curtain wall to the space between the gatehouses and the keep. Even at this late hour, now that he was listening for it, he could hear the clash of weapons. The deep roar of shaggy beasts being fitted with harness. The yells of instructors relentlessly drilling their men.

‘Asmodeus is recruiting all across the land. A thousand men enrolled in the first week, two in the second. A raiding party captured a border soldier, who was tortured for information and publicly executed. Belial is screaming for blood. War has been as good as declared.’

‘He’s a fool,’ growled Sam.

‘There’s more. The council tried to resist him. He’s had two members arrested and the rest sent home. He told me you weren’t coming back; seemed very confident of the fact.’

Sam turned on Bubble. ‘His words. Give me his exact words.’

‘“I am not as ignorant of the affairs of Earth as you think. Lucifer is never coming back.”’

Sam realised he was trembling. He turned several times like a caged animal, staring down at the castle he had built so long ago, then looking beyond to the snow-covered horizon. ‘Bubble, I want you to get out of here,’ he said finally. ‘You know the safest places to hide.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Have a little word with Asmodeus. Or even a big one.’

Beelzebub nodded. ‘I know where you can find him tonight.’

Sam’s back was throbbing alarmingly by now, but he ignored it. Striding through darkened corridors, fire in his eyes and his face clenched with anger and suspicion, he gave no sign that, only hours ago, he’d woken from a long trance.

The doors to the soldiers’ hall slammed back with a suitably dramatic boom of wood on wood. The centre of the floor had been cleared and there was Asmodeus, cheering on a pair of demons stripped to the waist as they wrestled for a prize. The prize was a girl, from the desert judging by the patches of red scale across her neck and face, huddled in a blanket by the roaring fire and shivering in the unaccustomed cold. At Sam’s appearance, everything came to a stop. The wrestlers disentangled themselves, the roaring of appreciative demons fell to a hush and the thumping of mugs ceased.

‘Everyone get out!’ roared Sam, sparks flashing from his fingers and his hair. In the grate, the fire leapt up in sympathy for his magic. As the soldiers scuttled past Sam, Asmodeus stayed seated, insolent in his chair. When the last soldier had gone and only the slave-girl, Asmodeus and Sam were left, Sam raised one hand and the doors slammed shut behind him on the watching faces outside.

‘How kind of you to join us,’ said Asmodeus, cool as only a frost demon could be. ‘Care for a drink?’

In a few paces Sam had crossed the floor, strode to the table where Asmodeus sat and seized him savagely by the collar, pulling him bodily over the tabletop. ‘Tell me what you know and what you’re doing,’ he whispered, ‘and there’s just a chance I won’t kill you here and now.’

To his surprise and discomfort, Asmodeus laughed. ‘Don’t threaten me, old man,’ he said. ‘Your power is dwindling, everyone can see that.’

‘My power? Don’t you dare lecture me on my power,
little
demon, else you’ll discover exactly what it is that’s given me my name.’

‘Don’t threaten me!’ Asmodeus repeated, wrenching himself free from Sam’s grasp and skipping out of his reach. ‘I have more powerful friends than you.’

‘Who? Who told you I wasn’t coming back? Who was so sure I was going to die?’

‘You try to hurt me and they’ll hunt you down,’ warned Asmodeus. ‘I don’t know how you escaped them this time, but if you do me the smallest harm they’ll come after you. And they have no qualms about killing.’

Sam raised his hands again, palms towards the demon Prince. As Michael had been all those centuries ago, Asmodeus was picked up and flung through the air. He thudded against a wall, where he dangled, feet trailing a few inches above the ground.

‘Tell me!’ roared Sam. His voice softened, became menacing and low. ‘I made your kingdom. With blood and ruthless war I made it, and if you think I’ll be inhibited about calling on that same blood and ruthlessness you clearly don’t understand the land you rule.’

‘You can’t touch me,’ sneered Asmodeus. ‘My friends will kill you if you do.’

Sam brought a hand slashing down, and the demon’s head was flung round as though punched. ‘If I have to play by your rules to find the truth, so be it!’ he warned, bearing down on Asmodeus. ‘Tell me who your friends are! What man or woman has told you to go ahead with the war?’

‘Seth,’ whispered Asmodeus. He was bright with pride and glee. ‘Seth is fighting for
my
cause, Seth will redeem me.’

Sam’s spell trembled, faltered. Asmodeus fell sprawling to the floor.

Seth, Son of Night. So it was true what Bubble had said about Seth somehow sticking his nose into Hell business. Seth was doing what Sam had always dreaded – walking that last little step into
his
world.

Why isn’t anyone interested in taking over the Earth?
 

You’d rather they did?
 

He hadn’t answered Annette’s question fully. No one takes over the Earth because it is a mere shadow of the glory of Heaven, twisted, transformed. And Hell is a crude shadow of Earth. If you cannot take Heaven, you reluctantly take Earth. If you can’t take Earth, you are desperate indeed to be forced to Hell.

And now Seth, the ultimate recluse, suspected criminal, old-time friend of imprisoned mischief-maker Loki, was indeed interfering in Hell, in
his
Hell.

‘What did Seth tell you?’

‘He said his brothers were after you, that between them he and they would kill you. For plotting with a traitor princess. He said he would help lead my armies to victory.’ Asmodeus was glowing with triumph, mistakenly believing that he had in pay his very own Son of Time.

‘Why? Why the hell is Seth bothering with Hell? Hell is
beneath
him, he cares nothing for it! So why bother? What’s of value in Hell for him?’

Asmodeus didn’t answer.

‘For Time’s sake! Do you want me to discharge the Light? And read the answer straight from your pathetic little mind?’

‘He’s… looking for power.’

‘That’s splendidly mysterious,’ Sam growled. ‘But now try being precise.’

‘It’s – he wants – a particular artefact.’

‘There are numberless “artefacts”, even in Hell. Some invented by bored witches to kill cockroaches, some devised by mad wizards to extinguish suns.
What
artefact could be so valuable that Seth would bother coming here, to wage proxy war… alongside
you
?’

When Asmodeus didn’t immediately answer, Sam, losing patience, raised one hand. Light, not burning white, but gentle and warm, promising worse to come, sprang in his palm. ‘I will do it,’ he hissed. ‘Don’t think I won’t.’

‘The… fourth key.’

‘Fourth?’

Asmodeus didn’t need to answer. He could see the fear in Sam’s eyes. But he spoke anyway, fascinated by the sudden terror that filled Sam’s gaze. ‘Cronus. He’s going after Cronus.’

Sam took a seeming lifetime to answer. Several eternities, by the reckoning of his frozen heart. ‘Cronus? He wouldn’t… he doesn’t
dare
.’

‘We’re going to find Cronus,’ said Asmodeus softly, recovering himself at seeing Sam so affected by his words. ‘To overthrow Time, overthrow Fate, Destiny, Death… And you can’t stop it. You’ve nothing left.’

‘Cronus’s key… in Hell? That’s it, isn’t it? Cronus’s key is hidden in Hell, and Belial has refused to help Seth find it. So you’re helping him instead. That’s why you’re raising this army and going to this stupid war. You’re not marching to try and overthrow Belial, you’re out to take the key – that’s why Seth’s here!

‘You fool! You’re handing Seth the means to destroy us all! You’re giving him the army he needs to uncover the end of everything!’

‘Not everything,’ hissed Asmodeus. ‘The end of everything
as we know it
.
Cronus is just another way of existence, another way of life, and he rewards his friends!’

‘Where is it? Where in Hell is the key? In the middle of the desert, buried under a few thousand tons of sand? In the mountains? In the Whirlpool Ocean, in Tartarus, in Pandemonium – where is it? Don’t think Seth’s above feeding you to the wolves if necessary. So where is the key?’

‘I don’t know! Only Seth does!’

‘You fool,’ whispered Sam. ‘You are going to die.’ As if such a small thing counted, in the face of the horror that now threatened.

Asmodeus pulled himself upright, tilting his chin defiantly. ‘You dare not hurt me.’ Sam almost had to admire his stubborn stupidity.

‘I am not the one who will kill you. Either Belial, Seth or your own hand shall deliver the blow.’ It was a guess, not a prophecy, but Sam knew he was right. ‘There is nothing I can do to prevent it.’ Turning, he threw up his hands in despair, the doors opening before him at a silent command. ‘I tried to build a safe kingdom for you, but now there’s nothing more to be done! All I fight for now is my own!’

‘Lucifer!’ Asmodeus called, not knowing why as the dark shape stepped out of doors into the bitter cold.

Sam spun, an accusing finger levelled at Asmodeus’s face, so that the demon almost ducked for fear that flame would spew from it. ‘You fool, Asmodeus! You small-minded, primitive fool! You’ve sold your whole land out as mercenaries to a battle being directed from another world!’

‘Lucifer!’

Sam laughed and turned away, striding through the thick snow that swirled around him. ‘All those who would be safe leave this place!’ he yelled as he went. ‘Do not follow your Prince!’

‘Lucifer!’ Asmodeus shouted, running after him. Snow was falling more heavily yet, seeming to wrap itself round Sam as though trying to protect its master, until the only evidence of his existence was the voice resounding through the castle.

‘Run while you can! The Son of Night wears your crown!’

‘Lucifer!’ screamed Asmodeus as the guards flocked around him, uneasy and confused. ‘Lucifer, you’ve lost even your own battles! You’re nothing!’

All that answered him was the gentle fall of snow, and when the guards broke down the door to Sam’s locked room, the bed was neatly made, the wardrobe empty.