Happy End of the World (Demon-Hearted Book 3) Read online

  “So,” I said to Percy, leaning against the counter and helping myself to one of my dad's beers, “your dad's a friendly guy, huh?”

  Percy grinned. “He's old-school, that's all. He'll have a field day down there planning, just like he always does. He'll know where we're going to set the traps and when to spring 'em before we even leave this place.”

  Joe nodded, peering down into the basement where Kubo and Malcolm were chatting loudly. “Cool. Do you think he'll find a way to trap this Manticore thing, then?”

  Arms crossed, Percy declined to answer at once. “Yeah, I don't really know. Dad's pretty confident, but I don't think he's ever encountered anything quite in this category. Hunting a Manticore... it's like trying to trap a hurricane. No amount of planning is going to make this neat and tidy, anyhow. Even if we do win out in the end.”

  Let's see here. The fate of the world was hanging in the balance. We were facing a legendary foe with enough firepower to raze the planet and weren't sure whether we could stop it in time. “So, business as usual, then?” I raised my beer. “I feel like we've been through this before.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  16

  Three beers and several hours later, I awoke from a catnap in my dad's recliner. The sky was darkening and both Joe and Percy were hanging out in the kitchen, tapping into my dad's reserves of kettle-cooked potato chips. I stumbled out of my seat and headed down to the basement. “Guys, it's getting late. My dad's going to be home soon,” I said as I descended the stairs.

  I froze.

  Germaine was riding around in the same trolley I'd left him in, going “whoo-hoo!”, while Kubo and Malcolm were jotting things down on the maps they'd spread all over the floor.

  But that wasn't all.

  Someone, Malcolm from the looks of it, had marked more than a dozen spots on my dad's diorama with large, silver X's. The old hunter was still holding the silver Sharpie marker between his teeth as he fed Kubo precise coordinates and drafted battle plans.

  “G-guys...” I began, stumbling towards the diorama. “What have you done? My dad's going to be home soon, and he's going to fucking kill me. Why did you...” The damage was pretty severe. Malcolm had pulled up some of the track so as to better access the deeper sections of the miniature city, and I found my father's precious trains scattered about the carpet. He'd even used one of them as an ash tray.

  Which was another thing.

  “Malcolm, dude, why have you been smoking down here? My dad has asthma, hates smoking! It reeks!” There were no windows for me to crack, no way to let this headache-inducing haze out of the room. I coughed a little, picking up the trains on the floor and setting them gingerly onto the track. Fiddling with the remote, I managed to shut off power, bringing Germaine's trolley to a halt.

  “Oh, come on!” complained the spider. “I just wanna go around for another circuit real quick. Just one. At least send me around long enough to catch sight of that teeny panini shop one more time. Your dad's a real artisan, has an eye for detail!”

  Hyperventilating due in equal parts to the lack of breathable air and the shit-fit my dad was going to have at finding his diorama vandalized, I tugged at Kubo's arm. “Chief, we've gotta go! This is... oh, man, this is going to be bad.”

  Malcolm tossed the marker aside and lit up a final cigarette. His shirt was half-unbuttoned, allowing me to glimpse the thin chainmail he wore underneath. “All right. Let's ship out.” He patted Kubo's arm. “You alert your guys, have 'em fly some patrols in the areas we talked about. Then, if they find something, we're going to strike.”

  I followed the two of them up the stairs, Germaine close behind. “My dad is going to flip his shit, guys.”

  Kubo didn't pause to listen to me, he simply headed out the front door for the SUV. He dropped his stack of hastily-folded maps into the trunk and had his phone up to his ear before he'd even stuck the key in the ignition. The rest of us clambered out of the house after him, piling into the vehicle and starting down the street just as my dad's hatchback came into view.

  “Floor it!” I urged under my breath.

  We were out of the neighborhood within the next minute, cruising down a main street and headed for God knew where.

  Prior to sitting down, Malcolm had unearthed a black trunk from the rear of the SUV. It now sat in his lap, and as he opened it, I couldn't help but marvel at the monstrous weapon held inside. It was a gun in the same way a bazooka might be called a gun. More accurately, this thing was a hand-held cannon. Pulling the trigger, though, seemed a risky proposition. A gun like this one looked like it could blow your arms off with its recoil. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen, obviously a custom job. Malcolm took to polishing the dark steel of its barrel, holding the bulk of the thing still with his thighs. “So, if your patrols find anything, we're gonna pay it a little visit, see what it is we're messing with.”

  Kubo hung a tight left. “What about the bodies of the victims? Wouldn't you like to inspect their wounds?”

  “No time for that shit,” was Malcolm's reply. “Can't do squat for 'em if they're dead, now can I? I'll know what we're dealing with once we meet it in battle. Ain't no need to go inspecting bite marks.” There was a cigarette dangling between his lips, from which he took a long, happy drag. Did this asshole ever stop smoking? “Anyhow, when we find it, we're going to see what it's made of. You familiar with the Binding of Hekatonkheir, Kubo?”

  Kubo's foot grazed the brake for a moment. He gave an uncertain shake of the head. “I mean, I've heard of it, sure. It's a legendary binding spell. I've never seen it actually performed, though.”

  Malcolm was checking his ammunition. The shells that went into that honking boomstick? They may as well have been grenades. “It's a real spell, make no mistake. I saw it performed once. Way back, before Percy was even born, I was on a hunt with my old man, lookin' for a fearsome lil bugger by the name of Tarasque. Real nasty sumbitch, and we needed some muscle to keep it still while we stepped in for the coup de grace, you know? Well, my old man, he'd contracted this mage to come along with us, a real famous guy called Masafumi, and he cast the Binding of Hekatonkheir to leash the thing till we could find a way to kill it. Takes some real balls to cast a spell like that. You've gotta use some of your own life-force in it, and if you do it wrong...”

  “It kills you,” said Kubo, his grip tightening not imperceptibly on the steering wheel. “I understand the spell's properties in theory. Like anyone with a scholarly interest in the craft, I've read plenty about it. Performing it is another thing altogether, however. I've never been stupid enough to try my hand at it. It's a godly spell, something that was never intended to be cast by an Earthly hand.” For the benefit of everyone else in the vehicle, Kubo glanced into the rearview and elaborated a little. “The Binding of Hekatonkheir is the spell the ancients used to bind the almighty Hekatonkheires of Greece, mythical giants whose immense strength surpassed even the Titans, to Tartarus. It's the mother of all binding spells, and if you do it wrong, you're dead. In fact, when you're channeling this amount of power through your body, if you aren't careful, even doing it right might kill you.”

  Malcolm was unmoved. Life and death struggles were thoroughly ordinary to him, evidently. “Got no choice but to pull out the fancy stuff when you're hunting big game,” he said with a click of his tongue.

  Kubo's cell began to chirp loudly. He picked it up immediately, eyes glued to the road. “This is Kubo.”

  I knew what was up before he'd even gotten off the phone. Someone had spotted the Manticore. I looked to Joe and Percy, my stomach not quite right. For a while now, Gadreel had been silent, calm, operating in the background. As my pulse hiked up and the prospect of meeting that beast face-to-face again loomed, I could feel him getting restless. I clutched at my chest. Calm down in there. We're headed into this with a plan. As long as we work together with everyone, this monster will be no big deal.

  The demon didn't seem so convinced, floppin
g in my chest. I thought I heard a voice in the back of my head, an airy suggestion of speech, but the sound of Kubo's voice distracted me.

  “They've spotted it,” he said, turning to Malcolm “It's in a rundown part of town, couple miles outside of Hard Row. We can be there within twenty minutes if we avoid traffic. They're keeping an eye on it, trying to give it some breathing room. I guess it was perched on an old building.”

  “Getting ready for moonrise, no doubt,” replied Malcolm, cracking the passenger side window and sucking in the fresh evening air. “Don't care if it's a beast of legend. Still an animal. Still stops now and then to smell the roses. That's when we're going to get it. Rule number one when hunting big game is that you've gotta be relentless. Ancient humans, you know, we were persistence hunters. We'd chase and chase our game to the ends of the Earth, would overcome our targets with superior endurance. And that's what we're gonna do here. We'll chase it till it slows down and then we'll hit it like the wrath o' God.”

  Kubo drove on in silence.

  In my pocket, my cell phone began to vibrate. I plucked it out and glanced at the text message that'd just come through. This wasn't the type of thing I wanted to field just as we were heading into battle against a monstrous foe.

  It was from my dad. All-caps.

  LUCIAN. WE NEED TO TALK. ABOUT THE TRAINS.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  17

  “You're going to walk around with that thing out in the open?” asked Joe, nodding to Malcolm's elephant gun.

  The old hunter slung it over one shoulder, the weight of the thing threatening to topple him. “Who's gonna have the stones to say anything?” he asked. “If some gangbanger wants to get smart, I'll show him how it works.”

  We exited the SUV. Though Kubo had the exact coordinates for the Manticore's last-known whereabouts, he wanted to keep the SUV from getting crushed like my Corvette had been, and so he parked a little ways out. Wanting to approach the beast from a more or less even-footing, we zeroed in on a seemingly abandoned apartment building and took turns climbing up the rickety fire escape. I was the last one up, pacing across the roof and looking out over the city. This was a rough part of town, probably the best place for us to tangle with the beast. There weren't too many people here to get caught in the cross-fire, and those that did hang out around this part of town were mostly hardened criminals. Hardly what we'd term collateral damage.

  Kubo had his phone up to his ear the whole time, his gun in the other. He walked along the edge of the roof, staring out into the night and waiting for this nightmare to materialize. “Do you have our current position? How far is the creature, then? Uh-huh... OK, good. We'll have a look.” Kubo peered at our surroundings through a pair of large night-vision binoculars, looking like a character in a first-person shooter. After a minute or two of focused scanning, he lowered the binoculars and growled into his phone. “I'm not seeing any sign of it.”

  Malcolm had lit up again, was on his second or third Camel. Each time he finished one, he'd flick the glowing filter over the edge of the roof, watching it spiral into the dark streets below. “Did your boys scare her off?” he asked.

  Kubo ignored him, his gaze stony as he continued talking to the guys on patrol. “Well, get eyes on it again, then. Come in closer if you need to. We want to have eyes on it at all times. It's the size of a fucking truck, I don't know how you could have possibly lost sight of it.”

  Germaine was getting antsy, peeking out at the world from the pocket of my fur coat. He tapped me on the hand, drawing my attention. “Don't they know where it is? Losing track of a nasty thing like that ain't wise. Tell Kubo to call in an airstrike for God's sake. Let's break out the napalm or something.”

  It wasn't that I didn't agree with him. That the helicopters should have lost sight of the Manticore was concerning. My heart was thumping steadily, and I was busy trying to calm myself down just in case we were about to head into battle. “Give them a minute. I'm sure they'll find it soon. We've got Black Hawks all over the city, thermal imaging tech... it can't hide for long.”

  I took in one deep breath after another, closing my eyes and attempting to fall into a meditative state like I'd done so many times in Tibet. I pushed my thoughts away, quieted my fears and focused solely on darkness. The cold wind rushed past me, but for a brief time I no longer felt it. Percy, Joe, even Germaine faded into the background. It was just me standing on that rooftop, my head's contents spilling out my ears.

  It wasn't Kubo's voice, nor anyone else's that made me open my eyes. The voice I heard came from inside me. It was Gadreel's.

  It's here.

  I opened my eyes and saw my surroundings immediately thrown into chaos. The air tasted different, was shared by something that hadn't been there just moments ago. Kubo began screaming into his phone. The patrols had sighted the thing again. He soon dropped the device however, taking a few quick steps away from the edge of the building and clutching his gun tightly in both hands. He narrowly avoided a swipe from a large, reptilian arm.

  The Manticore was scaling the side of the building.

  “Holy shit!” cried Germaine, burying himself in my pocket. “Lucy, dude, we need to get the fuck outta here!”

  Like the others, I took a few steps back and watched as the enormous, lion-esque face of the Manticore came into view. Its penetrating eyes, a glowing red, sawed through us with intensity, and I doubt there was one among us who didn't feel like turning tail.

  Malcolm didn't waste a beat, kneeling down and leveling his boomstick at the thing. “Well, what have we here?” he said with a grunt. He closed one eye and took aim.

  Before he could pull the trigger though, the Manticore took flight, jumping off the side of the building and gaining altitude until was several stories above us. Its titan frame blotted out the moonlight.

  It was go-time.

  * * * * *

  Malcolm's gun was nearly as loud as the Manticore's roar. It produced an ear-shattering boom the likes of which I'd only ever heard in war documentaries. The building underneath us shook as he fired it for the first time. How his frame managed to weather the recoil is a mystery to me. He bared his teeth, the lit Camel still hanging off of his lips, and held onto the weapon for dear life.

  The shot missed, of course. The Manticore slipped to the right, narrowly avoiding a round to the belly. Loosing a roar that was one part lion, one part heavy metal scream, the Manticore set its sighs upon us and began to descend rapidly.

  It was a missile, prepared to crash into the building upon which we all stood.

  Kubo emptied a clip's worth of blessed silver bullets into the beast, but if they connected at all there was no effect to be seen. The sharp smell of butane caught my nose as Joe cranked his Zippo and pinched off a fireball. Taking a moment to grow the flame, Joe reared back and threw it overhand, a volleyball-sized knot of energy with enough stopping power to take down a charging Rhino.

  Not a Manticore, though. The fireball struck the beast dead-on, singed its wild mane, but it kept on diving all the same, segmented tail swinging this way and that as it drew near. The reddish knob on the end of its tail acted as both a stinger and a wrecking ball, and the beast used it to try and knock us from the roof.

  Percy swung his sword, catching the tail awkwardly with the edge of his blade. He only succeeded at getting thrown by it, landing with a thud. The Manticore had too much muscle; even I hadn't been able to struggle out of its grasp. “The tail's a killer! Watch out for it!” I warned.

  Malcolm pulled the trigger again, a cacophonous blast streaming from the barrel of his gun and landing him on his ass. It went wide, but only barely. If the Manticore had stayed put for just a moment, it would have caught a round to the side of the face. Malcolm would have been the first to say that close wasn't good enough, though. Cursing, he backed away, fishing out two fresh shells from his pockets and reloading with a practiced finesse.

  I wasn't sure what I could do to the thing.
I'd met it in battle once and had gotten whooped, royally. I also didn't want to attempt anything too risky with Germaine in my pocket. A lightning strike? I thought. No... at this proximity, I might hit the others. And anyway, the Manticore had been immune to that attack before. Maybe I could let Germaine run off and take a running jump towards the thing, punch it in the snout, the eyes. Spit some acid in its face. But would it work? Getting that close to the beast was a gamble, because if my demonic spit didn't hurt it I'd be in for a thrashing.

  It was while I stood on the sidelines, indecisive, that everything got a whole lot harder.

  From the shadows near the edge of the fire escape, I watched something emerge. Something dark, thin, man-shaped.

  A white, featureless mask leered down at me as the cloaked figure stood to its full height, black eyes looking straight through me.

  “G-guys!” I shouted. “It's him!” I pointed at the dark figure, the one Kubo had called Whiro, and then balled my fists. The Manticore was a bit too much, but this Whiro fellow looked eminently poundable. Cutting Gadreel's leash, I let the demonic energy surge through me before breaking into a sprint.

  Percy was closer, though, and decided he'd attack Whiro first. His sword reflected the moonlight as he raised it over his head, both hands locked around the ivory bone. Giving a war cry, he brought it down in a mighty swing, his technique as smooth and precise as I remembered it. Percy had been born to swing a sword, and in his every move I could see the foundation he'd built through many thousands of repetitions in both practice sessions and life-or-death bouts.

  But he whiffed.

  The dark lord did something I'd never seen before, and I stopped in my tracks, immediately second-guessing my offense.