Don't Fear the Reaper, page 19
Victor
Something was… not right with Noira. Beyond the fact she was spinning and cutting through the possessed like a tornado full of blades, the vibe I got from her was wholly unhinged. If I didn’t know her from five minutes ago, I’d have assumed it was a demon fighting other demons down there. Everything about her sharpened and hardened and twisted to some inhuman form with every second she fought.
The ice barricade behind us shuddered again, tiny shards falling as the possessed on the other side rammed against it bodily. Not that I didn’t trust Noira’s power, but we needed to find a place to defend ourselves instead of sitting around waiting.
“I’m getting out of here.”
Sophie’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Are you fucking nuts? Do you see the shit going on outside? It’s literally the end of days! I can’t even count that high, that’s how many monsters are out there!”
“Something is wrong with Noira!”
“Fuck that lady!” She spat hatefully. “She’s just like them, look! We just need to wait and let them all kill each other—“
“Then what?” I didn’t mean to sound as mean as I did, but there was something unsettling that tumbled around behind my rib cage. A restless energy I couldn’t get rid of. A need to do something. “We’re just going to wait around until something crawls up to the window? Or busts down the door? Where the hell are we gonna go?”
She seemed properly stumped.
“Look, our best bet is to get out and find a better place to set up and defend ourselves. Somewhere there’s only one way in or out. Right now we’re just sitting ducks and Noira has to stay below the window so nothing can climb up and kill us.”
I scanned the decrepit courtyard, trying to sift through the chaos to find a place to evacuate to.
“Could we find a way to the roof of this building?”
Precious seconds sped by as I chewed the option over. “It’s worth a shot. Are there stairs that keep going up?”
“There were some at the end of the hallway with an emergency sign, maybe they’re still intact?”
I ducked my head out of the shattered window, careful not to catch myself on the broken glass shards clinging to the frame. There were windows on either side of ours, the one on the right also broken already. “Do you remember where the stairs are in relation to us?”
“Uh… right, I think.”
“Perfect.” I leaned back in and turned to face Sophie, trying to keep my cool in the face of her nervousness and Noira’s whatever-she-was-doing that made me want to bang my fists against my chest and scream. “There’s a lip outside that I think we can climb on to the next window. I’ll go first and pull you in, then we can go through to the hallway and make our way up to the top.”
She didn’t seem sold on my plan. “I don’t know. What if we fall off…”
“Sophie,” my hands gripped her shoulders and I gave her a small shake to knock away some of the fear in her eyes. “Trust me. I won’t let you fall. I’ll go first. You can hold my hand.”
She seemed skeptical. At least, until the door shook again and hairline cracks began to scatter along its surface.
“Fine, fine! Damn it, this sucks! If I die I will never forgive you.”
“If you die, you won’t have to worry about it,” I snipped back and hoisted myself up onto the window ledge. “Hold this.” I handed her my makeshift weapon from the broken desk.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t decide to brain me with it.
The brick ledge I spotted earlier was barely a toehold, jutting out from the building maybe four inches and crumbling in some places. Gingerly, I stepped on it and twisted myself around to face the building. My heart beat so hard in my chest I was afraid it would punch straight through my rib cage. Sophie moved to the window and watched me shuffle over to the next window about eight feet from ours.
Even as slowly as I stepped, a piece of the ledge broke off and fell away to shatter on the ground.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I instantly regretted this idea, but I was already out here. Some of the possessed noticed my precarious position and ambled over to the wall beneath my feet, howling and stretching their mutated hands up as far as they could go to rip me off the building. Their claws were mere inches from the soles of my boots. If they figured out how to jump, I was totally fucked.
Three feet. Two feet. One foot, and I was close enough to grip onto a piece of the window frame that broken glass wasn’t still clinging to. A shaking breath left my lips in a rush.
Shit, what if there are monsters in this room?
Obviously, I didn’t think this plan through.
Thank whatever divine entity was watching over my dumb ass, because the room was blessedly empty. For a brief moment, I berated myself for being only slightly smarter than the slavering beasts huddling beneath me as I pulled myself into the shabby room. It was surreal, seeing how well-preserved my old dorm room was in comparison to this place. The bedding was shredded and scattered around the filthy floor, all the furniture smashed to pieces and rotted by time and the elements. Absolutely nothing remained of value, if there was anything to start with. I only hoped whoever lived here—I think it was a couple of soccer players in this suite—managed to evacuate when they had the chance. The ceiling sagged ominously toward the middle of the room as I cautiously skirted around to the opposite door. This time I was a little more strategic as I opened the door, peeking out into the shared living area before moving to the door leading out into the hall.
The entrance creaked loudly and my shoulders hiked up to my ears, bracing myself to be tackled by whatever may have heard the noise when I pulled the door open. The small crack barely gave enough space to check if the hallway was clear.
A massive boom echoed outside and shook the very precarious foundation of the dorm, pulling me back to the window to see what was happening.
Everything in the courtyard was burning. And right in the center of it all, in the middle of a smoldering crater that definitely wasn’t there two minutes ago, stood an unnaturally tall man engulfed completely in black flames. Even from the second floor up, I could feel scorching waves of heat wafting from his still form. His sights were locked directly onto Noira, not even noticing the monsters he lit on fire with his entrance. He didn’t care that his own minions were burning.
What a horrifying power.
Sophie was leaning out of the window, watching the scene with abject horror clear on her face, when I returned to help her across. Looking down, I noticed more possessed had found the hole in the wall we had used to get into the building and they were trickling inside to join their friend banging on the door where Sophie was. We were running out of time.
Luckily, the new boss didn’t seem interested in us. He was too busy perusing his kingdom from his crater over there. He didn’t even seem to pay Noira any mind as she hacked the demons to pieces with her sickle. There was something about her movements now that was slightly unsettling, as she stabbed and sliced with a kind of frenetic energy that wouldn’t slow.
“Grab my hand!” I leaned out as far as my body could stretch, crossing a considerable amount of the distance between windows. “Hurry, we need to go!”
She had noticed the monsters swarming the opening too. The tough façade she had been trying to keep up was slipping and tears sparkled in her brown eyes. “Okay, okay! Shit! Is now a bad time to admit I’m afraid of heights?”
“I won’t let you fall!”
Even as tears wet her face, Sophie turned to back out of the window and onto the narrow brick ledge. As she reached out, her hand trembled violently. I leaned just the tiniest bit farther, trying to encourage her to shuffle along the exterior wall. “I’ve got you! Keep going!”
Just as her gloved fingertips brushed mine, the brick beneath her left foot crumbled and a piercing scream burst from her chapped lips. Sophie began to fall backwards as she was thrown off balance.
“No! Sophie!”
Desperately, I tried to grab one of her pinwheeling limbs as she flailed, gritting my teeth in concentration. Her fingers brushed my palm and I snatched at them, thinking I had caught her hand. Gravity, however, had a different idea.
Between one breath and the next her glove slid off, too loose from daily wear against the northern winter, letting her body falling away out of my reach toward the writhing collective of teeth and claws and protruding horns of the monsters below. Pure fear and disbelief covered her face as she stared up at me, reaching out with that hand I almost held, until the last moment her body was engulfed. Sophie’s screams were almost instantaneous, telling of unimaginable pain as they rose above the chaotic noise to burrow themselves in my ears. She was torn apart in the most graphic, merciless fashion, blood spewing in every direction until there was nothing left but scraps of skin and chunks of muscle scattered on the ground to be trampled beneath restless feet.
I couldn’t look away, both out of shock and a twisted sense of penance, burning tears of my own a mere ounce of the emotion clogged in my throat and constricted every muscle in my chest. This was my fault. I let her fall. I let her die.
“Sophie…” her name was a mournful whisper I finally managed to squeeze between my lips pressed so tightly together they hurt beneath my teeth. I was frozen in place with despair and regret, hand still outstretched, eyes locked on the last place I saw her in one piece with the look on her face forever burned into my mind.
The crimson threads still connecting me to Noira’s sickle contracted painfully, physically jerking me forward so roughly it almost pulled me out the window to join Sophie. The link between us grew taunt and pulsed an angry red. From deep in the violent throng, Noira whipped around to find what was restricting her frenzied hacking. The gaze that locked on me was unlike anything I had ever seen her express. Her whole face was unrecognizable. Rage was too docile a word for the fire burning in her eyes—now flaming red as if lit on fire in her skull—and the skin of her face had been pulled taut against the bone to make every angle that much sharper.
Something happened to Noira, and the metamorphosis was absolutely terrifying. Black horns ringed the top of her head in a grotesque version of a crown, framing two curving horns arching high above the others. Fangs had sprouted from between her lips and dripped with the black ichor of enemies she had torn into. Even along her shoulders and down either forearm massive spikes had grown as they would on a human possessed by a demon. It was like the armor woven around her by the threads had taken on the mutated form of the very monsters she fought and embedded itself straight into her skin. The red cloth under her breastplate was becoming tattered and stained with all matters of gore.
“Shit…” My brain couldn’t comprehend anything. My heart couldn’t deal with any more misery after losing Sophie, only to lose Noira to whatever madness seemed to take her over. Even as I watched, something insidious and disgusting trickled down the connection between us.
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance, as one would give a bug that kept buzzing around their head. The possessed continued to thrash and writhe around her, impaling themselves on the spikes she had grown in retaliation. Noira’s redirected attention brought another even more unpleasant gaze my way. His gaze.
Azazel’s lips curved in a disgusting parody of a smile, made more disturbing by the fact he seemed almost wholly human. As his lips parted, rows upon rows of pointed teeth crowded inside.
Unbidden, a Nietzsche quote from a long-forgotten memory crept from the dark recesses of my mind. Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
That’s what looking at Azazel felt like, looking into a bottomless abyss of pure evil. This was the most murderous, emotionless killer the world had ever seen. And he was staring me down like his next plaything he was delighted to be given.
Then he began to walk toward me, a casual stroll that did not fit at all with the scenery around him. Noira, her face morphing into one of absolute rage, shook off the demons piling on her and strode to intercept his path to the building.
“Oh, shit!” I scrambled back from the window and tried to shake off the dark fog that had overtaken my mind at the loss of Sophie. If I didn’t get my shit together, I was going to wish I’d just been torn apart. The look on Azazel’s face promised the worst kind of torture.
Frantic, I looked around the room in search of a new weapon. Buried under crumbled drywall that had fallen from the ceiling in the corner of the dorm room peeked a metal rod speckled with the orange spots of rust. Digging through the rubble desperately revealed the rest of the hidden treasure. It was an old golf club.
The building shook suddenly, pieces of old wall falling around me and making the scant few supports creak in complaint. It felt like something had been slammed against the exterior wall below the window I had crawled through. Demonic chattering grew to a fever pitch, pushing me to rush to the door leading out into the dank hallway. I caught a glimpse of another possessed running into the suite Noira slept in as I glanced through the cracked door, waiting for my chance to make a run for the emergency stairs.
BOOM!
The massive explosion behind me removed any hesitation I had left to dart into the hall. “God damn it! Fuck off!”
Intense heat billowed from the bedroom, leaking through the thin wood of the door as I spun around to slam it shut behind me. Immediately, I felt like a damn idiot, like a fucking door is going to stop a demon overlord. I sprinted down the hall to the emergency exit, the door hanging off its hinges precariously. The memory flashed of the last time I stood near this stairwell; the first time I saw Noira walk down the halls to collect souls and realized there was a world beyond our own.
“Come out and play, human. I want to see how breakable Noira’s pet is this time.”
His voice grated against my eardrums like an avalanche of junk metal, screeching and clashing against each other as they tumbled and crashed to the ground. It set my teeth on edge and drove me to pump my legs even harder as I sprinted down the hall. I knew he was still meandering through the suite at his own pace, but the sheer volume of his voice and heavy weight of his presence felt like he was leaning against my back bodily, trying to push me to the floor.
“You gotta catch me first, motherfucker!” I threw the challenge over my shoulder and entered the decrepit stairwell. Even if my conviction didn’t send me upward, the stairs heading down were long since collapsed. My right arm—still bleeding slightly and aching from the unnaturally rapid healing Noira’s connection seemed to give me—twinged in protest as I gripped the railing and swung myself up to take the steps two at a time. Flames burst from the doorway I had just exited like hell itself had opened up its gates, steam from the soaked carpet sizzling and bellowing from the hall under the intense heat.
Just beneath the roaring of the fire came a roar that hit several octaves all at once, as if a chorus of warriors screamed their battle cry together. With the disconcerting sound came a bitter taste of violence strumming along the chords still pulled taut in my chest. It went straight through the walls as if they were insubstantial but connecting me to that perverse version of Noira all the same. Although I couldn’t see her, I knew she had followed Azazel through the window into the building.
Determined to reach the roof, I pushed the distracting bloodlust to the side as much as I could and kept my eyes locked on the top landing.
I had to keep myself alive. For my sake, and for Noira’s.
Chapter 24
Noira
Die. Die. Kill them all.
The seething anger of the souls surged like a relentless storm, battering against the crumbling barriers of my sanity and driving my mortal body to its limit even as I tried to pull back from the edge. By my very nature I was highly sensitive and attuned to spirits, but never had I been exposed to the wrath of so many tormented souls at once. Azazel’s predatory advance toward the dorm building, where Victor lay hidden, jolted me out of my trance and helped center my focus, redirecting that vengeful energy to where it rightfully belonged. It was like trying to stop a raging river after a torrential downpour. I gritted my teeth against the tide to avoid being dragged into madness again.
The possessed around me were little more than annoying bugs I swatted away as I moved through the swarm to follow Azazel. Even as I closed the distance between us, the threads binding me to Victor grew tighter and more twisted together. The bond was becoming too strained to maintain in this mortal form for much longer. I was running out of time.
Using a lumbering possessed as a springboard, I leaped up onto his shoulder and launched myself off to grip the lower edge of the window Azazel had also entered. Pulling myself through one-handed was much more difficult without the supernatural strength I was used to. Azazel was waiting in the middle of the room, watching me with an amused smirk as I gracelessly scrambled through the frame.
He looked so different from the last time I confronted him. This body looked much more unassuming as a tall, tanned man with broad facial features and a toned body, walking a fine line between muscular and svelte. His head was bald, save for two small horns sprouting near his temples. However, rows of needle-like teeth crowded his grotesque smile, and a hellish fire replaced the color of his eyes. A plain button-up covered his smooth chest partially where it was buttoned, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. It was paired with black slacks he had tucked his hands into the pockets of, and dress shoes.
This appearance was a far cry from the sinister power hidden beneath attractive packaging.
His voice, dripping with contemptuous charm, sent shivers down my spine as he purred, “Azrael, what a beautiful form you have taken. So vile and twisted, you may as well be my kin.”
My lip curled and the voice that rasped from my throat was more of a growl. “I will take whatever form I need to banish you back to the cesspool you crawled out of.”
“I will happily have a repeat of our last encounter, love.”
