The Devil Dances, page 19
part #2 of Nick Englebrecht Series
“Viiiiiiviiiiiiaaaaan!” I bellowed into the woods like an idiot.
Something crackling in the not-too-distant trees was my only response.
Fine. Don’t panic, Nick. You gotta think straight, think this through, not react stupidly. No panic allowed.
I stopped under a tall spruce and took a few deep breaths. Okay. Think it through. I could do that.
I couldn’t possibly find Cernunnos. This was his stomping grounds. He knew these woods better than I ever could. But if I got to his anchor, Abraham, that would cut him loose from this world.
Kill Abraham. Kill Cernunnos. Or, at least, I hoped it worked out that way.
I had to get back to the colony, then.
I knew we’d been traveling westward for about an hour, and I knew we’d covered a little over a mile, maybe a mile and a half—but that was probably being generous. All right, let’s say a mile and a quarter. I knew moss grew on the north sides of trees—though I also knew you couldn’t always rely on that as an accurate indication of direction. If there had been fauns or satyrs in these woods, I would have called on my familiars for aid, but as it was, these woods were virtually lifeless. Even the insects seemed few and far between. It was like Cernunnos had chased all the other fauna from the region, sucked the life from it.
What did that all add up to?
I was hopelessly lost.
Again I heard a twig snap, much closer now.
“Fuck me.” I scouted around under the trees, looking for the trail we had made as we’d trampled blindfolded through the foliage. I didn’t find it, but squinting at the ground, I did find Cernunnos’ hoof prints. That compromised my situation, because a part of me wanted to go after Abraham, but another part of me—the part that knew Vivian had only a short time at Cernunnos’ hands, wanted to go after him.
More forest litter crackled underfoot, and some low-hanging tree branches shifted ominously. I knew the fucking angel was on its way, that it was tracking me like a heat-seeking missile. Since the hoof prints went in the opposite direction, I figured I’d follow them. Even in the shoddy, moonlit forest they weren’t that hard to find—I could almost step from one to the next. The forest had seen rain a couple nights ago, the ground was still plenty damp here, and Cernunnos was a heavy fucker. I tracked the prints for several hundred feet, but eventually they ran out and I had to conclude that he’d blinked out, gone to whatever place he went to when he wasn’t here—which, by the way, I thought was entirely unfair. I was left with no other option except to scale a tree and try to get my bearings; otherwise, I might wander in these woods for days.
I found a sturdy pine with a lot of low-hanging branches and started my climb. Honestly, I wasn’t much of a tree-climber, but I could do it in a pinch since it relied mostly on upper body strength, which I had. It wasn’t hard, but it was slow-going at first. Needles stabbed me in the face and groin, and no-see-ums kept crawling over my hands and the back of my neck, making me grunt and swipe at them while trying to maintain my hold on the thin, whippy branches. I was halfway up, the tree shivering under my weight, when I heard the unmistakable crackling of dry branches under the foot of someone walking zombie-slow in the forest below. I knew only one being who might be doing that.
I clung to the ragged, sappy bark of the pine tree and held very still, trying not to breathe and give myself away. The footsteps grew much louder as they approached, and a faint, ghostly light pulsed out of the corner of my eye. They angel passed right under my tree on its steady, determined, unstoppable mission. I kept my eyes sealed shut and mentally hurried it along. I wondered where Isaac was, and I hoped it was far, far away—at the ranger’s station, at this point. Then I tried to wipe all thoughts and worries from my mind and slowly wormed my way up a few more feet.
The moon was kind enough to scuttle out from behind some low-hanging clouds, and I finally saw the jagged tree line giving way to a larger, flatter plain about a half mile away. I figured that was the vale where Cernunnos’ broken altar rested. If you’re familiar with military or police-style training, you probably know about something called “mind maps”. If you’re lost, you’re supposed to climb a tree or get to a high place and calculate your direction by memorizing the ridges of the treetops.
After I’d plotted my path, more or less, I started scrambling back down the tree, monkey-style, arm over arm. I had gotten down to the last ten feet or so when I heard crunching through the pine needles once more. I swore violently under my breath. I was getting just a little sick of these fucking angels. Balancing as best I could in the deep Y of the tree, I slid out of the remnants of my coat. I was too tired, sweaty and pissed off to be scared anymore. Instead of scared, I wanted to be proactive. I heard the footsteps stop under the tree as someone checked out the sound of my wobbly balancing act, but by then it was too late; I’d tossed the coat down and jumped, landing atop it.
The angel—or what I thought was the angel—collapsed with a sharp cry. “Nicholas!” it said, and I found myself scrambling off the body while it flailed and punched at the air. I was pretty sure the Ophanim didn’t do things like that, and as I ripped away the fabric, Isaac sat up, his hair mussed and his eyes blinking myopically in the dark.
“What the hell are you doing back here?” I hissed.
He let out a shaky breath as I offered him my hand. He took it and I hauled him, limping, to his feet. “I came back to help you. And Vivian.”
“You were supposed to get to the ranger’s station!”
I expected him to shrink. Instead, he offered me an angry, determined look. “I don’t want to go and leave you here. I want to help you stop them. I don’t want to run away anymore.” He clenched his fists until his bones crackled alarmingly. “I’ve been running away my whole life. No more!”
“Well, I’m going back to the altar.”
“Let me come with you, then. I can help you get there, at least. I know these woods like the back of my hand.”
That was his polite way of telling the city boy that he had no business in these here woods. I sighed. “Fine. But let’s go.”
Isaac led the way and I followed him through the thick, scraggly underbrush. The two of us kept listening for the sound of advancing footsteps. The only advantage to dealing with the Ophanim was that they were slow as hell and didn’t seem to care how much noise they made tramping through the forest.
Ten minutes into our hike, Isaac said, “When you go back to Blackwater, do you promise to take me with you?”
“I’ll take you if you want,” I said as I ducked under the sagging arm of a birch to keep it from hitting me in the face. “But what about Ruth?”
Isaac was silent a long moment. Then he said, “She and I… we’re not like you and Vivian.” He stopped to listen to the forest a moment, then added, “I told her about me and Caleb. I told her I couldn’t do this, that it ain’t me. She wasn’t surprised or anything.”
“Weren’t you a little afraid she might freak out?”
“Yah, but… I want to be honest. No more lies. No more ‘good enoughs,’ you know? You should always try and be honest, shouldn’t you?”
I grimaced in the dark. I’d been less than honest with Vivian.
“She was very understanding, Ruth. We’re still friends.” Isaac nodded to himself. I noticed he moved like a smooth juggernaut through the forest, hardly disturbing anything. I, on the other hand, stumbled along with all the grace of a hippopotamus. “She said to me, ‘If you must go, then go. You should be happy, too…’”
He stopped speaking as we stepped from the trees and into the basin I was now all too familiar with. About five hundred feet down the incline lay the ruins of the altar. Vivian lay atop it, looking like a curvy, redheaded Barbie doll that some child had carelessly flung upon the stone. She lay on her back, with her head and upper body lolling off the altar and a streak of blood, bright in the moonlight, glistening down her face.
I half expected to find Cernunnos atop her, hurting her, but he stomped and snorted a few paces away, shaking his head like a shaggy, irate bull as swarms of insects crawled over him in a thick veil—Vivian’s familiars were bravely trying to defend and protect their mistress. They would descend upon him, he’d shake his head, and the thick, glistening shell of insects would burn up under his power. Then the next swarm would zero in and the cycle would begin all over again.
I thought how brave those little insects were, trying to protect her like that, sacrificing their lives to save her. And just for that, I wouldn’t be swatting anymore mosquitoes—well, assuming I lived through this, of course.
I stood at the top of the vale, thinking about all the things I could do. I thought about throwing rocks at Cernunnos like an angry kid, or tossing fireballs like I was doing video-game-style wizard wars. But you know what? That really wasn’t my style. What had Abraham called me? A thug? Well, that was about right. I was a thug and a punk, and in my own mind, at least, a real badass motherfucker. I liked taking the bull by the horns—or antlers, as in this case. I liked meeting a challenge head on. Simple-like. Direct.
My fingers clenched around the hilt of the angel-eating athame in my left-hand fist. I snorted out a deep breath and turned to glance at Isaac beside me. He locked eyes with me and we shared a moment of total understanding between us. He nodded his head in encouragement. He knew I had to do this. He knew that, were Caleb still alive and in trouble, and had he been able to help his lover, he would have done so.
Whatever it took, man. Whatever it took.
I took off running toward Cernunnos, swiftly closing the last few hundred yards of distance between us. My rage mounted higher with each step. My mouth watered for his blood. I gripped the athame underhand style, ready to bring it around in an arcing flare. I wanted to spill the god’s life. I wanted to fucking end him.
But Cernunnos must have spied the blade flashing in the moonlight from the corner of his eye, or detected me in some other preternatural way, because he turned his head at the last moment and saw me. His mean little beastly eyes centered on me. He started to bellow in rage and surprise, but I was already upon him by then. I lunged at his head and brought the knife down with both hands, aiming for his face and sinking the point of the blade squarely into his left eye socket with a surprisingly loud popping noise. It fit exactly, like the socket had been made for my knife.
Cernunnos screamed as a geyser of ichor burst skyward, splashing bitterly across my parted lips. The sound rose and rose, ballooning out over the forest like a shockwave, making the trees shudder and most of the bare, burned sticks drop en masse to the forest floor. He screamed out in agony, like the sound was being ripped from the base of his spine, and his clawed hands flashed up to grab me, but my momentum had actually lifted me up off my feet so I was able to wrap my legs around his thick, muscular neck. He grasped blindly at nothing. My momentum canted his head of big, heavy, moose-like antlers back, knocked him off-balance, and he dropped like he was made of stone to the forest floor, with me sitting atop him.
“Fucker! I told you not to mess with my woman!” I roared as I drew my knife back and plunged it back into him, two-handed-style. I stabbed him in the eyes, in the face. He screamed and the vale echoed with his pain and anger. I realized I was screaming back at him, cursing him, calling him every ungodly thing under the sun, like that kid in The Christmas Story who totally loses his shit and starts pummeling the schoolyard bully into the dirt. And that’s what he was to me: just a bully. Nothing more. Well, his time for bullying was up. He roared and bucked like a mechanical bull, clawing my back raw with his nails and shredding my coat and shirt, but I didn’t care. I didn’t relent. I didn’t give up.
Finally, at long last, I was angry. I was pissed.
No, I was crazy-mad, the kind of mad I only got when I’d been pushed too far, when something had pushed my special rage buttons. Go after those little girls? Go after Elsie Knapp? Go after Vivian? Go after me, fucker? You get this. You get my rage. You get my outrage, which is a hundred times worse than my rage!
I hadn’t felt his kind of fury since the night I had waited for my foster father to come home and had swung that stickball bat into his shin bone, the sickening and yet oddly delicious sound of his femur cracking, splintering apart like a dry log, being destroyed under my outrage and power.
I stabbed and stabbed until Cernunnos’ arm flailed up, connected with the side of my head, and knocked me right into the altar stone. My body slammed down hard, but I was too high on adrenals to suffer the impact, though I knew I would later on. Before that could happen, I scrambled up and threw myself at the monster rearing up before me, the enraged god full of blood and fury. He was much faster than I’d anticipated as he tried to defend himself, like he actually feared me, but I was smaller than he, and faster still. There was no getting away from me now.
As he threw his arms up to protect his face, he left his body wide open to me. I brought the athame up and down in a screeching arc, embedding it in his belly. He tossed his head and his hands reached down and knocked me away. He raked them over the hilt of the athame even as purplish ichor poured out of his ruined face, poured down over his abs and into his dirty brown fur. His flailing hand knocked the knife loose. “You little cockstain!” he roared.
“Fuck you, bitch!” I roared even as I grabbed up a handful of loose rocks from the altar and flung them at him. They pinged and popped off his face and antlers. I didn’t wait for a better opening. I jumped at him, wrapping my arms around his neck. He began thrashing from side to side. I actually managed to stay aboard for about eight seconds, like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronco, before he threw me down and kicked at me. I rolled out of the way of his massive hoof, but his clawed hand came around and clocked me under the chin.
I fell against the altar like a ragman. This time, when his kick came, it landed solidly in my abs.
The flare of dizzying pain made me gag and double over. I spit blood from the ruptured something inside of me. I tried to claw my way to my feet, but my legs gave out like bits of kindling with no power to hold me and I collapsed to my hands and knees instead.
Someone was grabbing up the bloody athame lying in the grass. In the new, watery grey light of oncoming dawn, I saw a pair of long, black slacks cuffed in mud. I tried to warn Isaac back, to tell him no, don’t do it, but he was as determined as I was. As angry as I was. When he turned to face me, I saw the set of his face, the bloodlust in his eyes. He was doing this for Grandma Knapp, I knew, for Caleb, for all the women of the colony who had suffered because of the beast looming before us. He picked up the knife and lunged, screaming in a fearless frenzy of rage, at Cernunnos.
The sun was just peaking up over the Lehigh mountaintops, so as Isaac threw himself at the god, he was caught in a kind of lighted, unearthly halo, his legs scissoring apart, his work-hardened, powerful forearms raised high with the sacred knife held aloft in his two hands. I saw his eyes shrink to fierce pinpricks. I saw his muscles writhe under his clothes. I watched him, and in that moment, I realized he was beautiful. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he could do it, he could inflict some sort of damage on Cernunnos before the god could finish him off.
But Cernunnos dropped his head, and as Isaac fell upon him, he also fell upon Cernunnos’ enormous, sprawling set of black antlers, as hard and unforgiving as onyx. The antlers caught Isaac’s fall, speared him through the face, shoulders and belly. In that micro-second just before true dawn, Isaac became one with them. His hand trembled and his fingers opened, the angel-eating athame falling harmlessly to the bloodstained grass. Then Cernunnos, snorting and grunting with his injuries, face ravaged from the knife, belly bleeding all over the ground, raised his head, lifting his victory skyward, and bellowed in defiance to the rising sun.
“You bastard,” I hissed.
Ignoring me, Cernunnos tossed his head, throwing Isaac’s mangled body a hundred yards away so it fell, crumpled, to the edge of the forest like some half-crushed insect. He turned to face me once more and his eyes were small and mean and powerful.
He blew snot and blood in a web through his massive nostrils. “You challenge me?” He stomped forward and laid into me again, landing his first kick with the force of a hydraulic hammer into my ribs. I felt the snap and splinter all the way down to my soul. If I could have gotten my breath, I would have screamed myself hoarse with pain. As it was, all I could muster was a pathetic squeak and some more blood-splattered phlegm from my mouth and nose.
“You? You who were cast down to the Underworld? You, Fallen One, who became a vagrant angel and an enemy of the One who made you?”
Again, he kicked at me. My ribs, my balls, my body—all of it rocking and rolling with the seemingly endless impacts. I balled myself up, my best defense against his machine-like blows, but they kept coming and coming, turning my insides to blood soup. Finally, the hoof came down atop me, this time in the middle of my back. Again, I experienced that crackle of bone, but this time, it wasn’t followed by a jolt of pain. Suddenly I could feel nothing below the waist.
I sort of sighed as I collapsed to the ground on my side and lay there, barely able to breathe through the red haze of agony that surrounded me. My chest felt like it was full of broken shards of glass, and my breathing was little more than an almost-airless gasp. My body felt loose and disjointed, broken. Darkness danced around the corners of my vision, and for the first time in my life, I truly wished I was dead. No… I wished that I had never been born.
“You challenge a god? This is what you get, little Lucifer!” Cernunnos bellowed. He laughed as his shadow fell over me, as he pissed on me, a brown freshet of the most foul-smelling animal urine I had ever had the misfortune of smelling. Then he gave me one more sound kick that I didn’t feel at all. It tossed me effortlessly over in the grass, my whole body a leaden, throbbing mass of bone, blood, and relentless agony.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could do was lay there in the mud and weeds and suffer while Cernunnos shambled over to Vivian, who was just now starting to come around. She sat up on the altar, blood pouring over her face. She threw up her hands as the god approached her, and I could see her making a last ditch effort to summon her familiar, her power, something that would protect her, but even she—the Devil’s daughter—was no match for an Old One. An idiot god who lived on the edges of space and time, driven by a hunger no one on earth could understand.
