Harry felt his body freeze. Not in attendant terror, but in a physical response to an unheard utterance. He made to move, to shout, to save his friends from the same fate, but he could do none of these things. He could only feel his body turning, against his will, to face the furious battle that raged overhead. The Priest had ensnared Harry. He was in thrall to the Cenobite’s edict: witness.
Harry had objected to the Priest’s demands but, from the very outset, had played directly into them, he now realized. He had borne witness to the Priest’s great exodus, the resurrection, and was now forced to watch the final victory. The Priest, it was clear, was not about to let Harry escape until this terrible story was at its end. It would seem Dale’s prescient advice was for naught. Now, when the will to look away was strongest, Harry was powerless against his body’s dictate.
And then he heard his friends’ voices in the distance.
“Fuck a duck,” Dale said.
“Fuck him!” Caz shouted. “Let’s keep moving. What’s he gonna do, stop fighting the Devil?”
“Caz!” Lana shouted.
“Don’t look back! It’s what he wants.”
“No! Caz!” Norma protested. “It’s Harry!”
“We have to keep—” Harry heard Caz’s words escape him and then, “Harold! What the fuck?”
Harry put every ounce of faltering strength into his muscles, screaming at his body to listen to him. One last favor was all he asked, and then he’d be content to do its programmed bidding. His muscles twitched and strained, but he felt them moving, slowly, painfully. At last his eyes met Caz’s. Tears fell from Harry’s eyes and his lips struggled to find the freedom to speak. In a tortured drawl, Harry uttered a single word:
“Go.”
“No fucking way, Harold!” Caz began to protest.
“Promise me!” Harry begged.
Caz reached for him and a shock wave spat forth from Harry’s body, sending Caz flying back and to the ground. Harry apologized with his eyes. Had he the power to change this, he would, but he only had power enough for one more word:
“Promise.”
At that, his head snapped back into its requested position and he watched the respective blades of Priest and King spark as they struck each other once more. Harry steeled himself, ready to watch this tableau play out to its bitter end, while in the distance he heard his friends continue their getaway, mournful sobs escaping them as they exited the sanctuary.
10
Lucifer and the Hell Priest were still locked in battle, though it was clear from the slow strikes of their weapons, and the way their heads hung down between each strike of blade against blade, that they were fighting with the very last resources of energy they owned.
The Hell Priest had begun to utter what sounded like a cross between a chant and an equation: numbers and words intertwined. As he spoke he moved with startling speed around his enemy, avoiding Lucifer’s blade and dropping down as he did so until he was standing on the bodies below. The combination of words and numbers he was giving voice to was working some abnormal change in the dead and the dying. The process of decay seemed to have quickened in their flesh; their muscle was seething as though flies had taken it for their laying place.
He cast his swords away even though Lucifer was circling above him, preparing to swoop and deliver the killing stroke. The Priest then stretched his arms out in front of him, palms down, and lifted his hands up to his chest. Whatever life-in-death he had seeded in the killing fields on which he now stood, he was taking it back and sowing it into himself.
At his feet the dead twitched violently as the Hell Priest’s litanies and equations drew back every last bit of demonic force from their desiccated corpses. It made a furnace of his body, in which the bones blazed bright and his organs liquefied any impurity found within the vessel that was his body. The impurities spilled from the confines of his anatomy. He bathed in them as they flooded out of his pores, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, cock, and asshole. His body purged every last bit of imperfect flesh from every opening it could find, creating a being beyond entropy. A being that no longer had need of lungs for breathing and bowels for shitting. A being that fed itself its own blazing substance.
And, as Lucifer touched down and prepared to strike, the Priest’s flesh let off a blinding brilliance. Lucifer shielded his eyes, as did every other living thing in the room save for the Hell Priest, who welcomed the death of his old body. He was still spilling the sequences of syllables and numerals that had initiated the working, the corpses beneath him twitching and rolling in response to his instructions, but suddenly, the sequence of words and numbers reached a point of no return, and the blazing transfigurations in the Hell Priest’s body became a single rushing motion, each bright strand of ligament momentarily clear to Harry as a soul, stolen from the heap of corpses on which the Hell Priest had prepared his last show of empowerment. Then he was looking at Lucifer, who was eagerly preparing the next phase of this battle.
As the Devil began his assault, however, the Hell Priest reached out with limbs of fire and caught hold of Lucifer by the neck. Lucifer stabbed at him from left and right, but the Priest’s body was no longer susceptible to such assaults. Tongues of white fire emptied from the wounds, spilling out and knotting themselves around Lucifer’s sword and up around his hands and arms. Lucifer let out a bellow of rage and struggled to free himself, but his enemy’s protean body spat fresh cords of flame that caught him by his genitals.
Lucifer made one more attempt to press the point of his sword into the priest, shifting its target from torso to head. The Hell Priest responded by bending Lucifer’s arms behind his back on themselves, grinding their joints to bloody dust, and cracking the bones in a dozen places. The sword fell from Lucifer’s grip, and the Priest with one quick motion snapped every finger on each of his opponent’s hands to be certain they would never pick up another weapon.
Harry watched in breathless anticipation of Lucifer’s reprisal. But, much to Harry’s horror, none came.
“Is this the end then?” the Hell Priest said.
If Lucifer had any answer, he was beyond giving it in words. All he could do was raise his heavy head to meet the Hell Priest’s gaze.
“Death, be not proud…” the Hell Priest said.
As he spoke a host of fiery forms sprang from his body—some little more than threads of incandescence, others like the multi-jointed limbs of insects in fire all barbed with flame—which wove between one another in their thousands as they leaped a dozen feet clear of their master’s body before turning and speeding back toward their victim.
Harry’s trance upon the spectacle alone had been so intense that he had noticed nothing else, and he watched the imminent execution with dread. There were even more piercing extractions from the Hell Priest’s body now, all swaying in the same tide as they awaited the instruction to deliver the coup de grâce.
Lucifer seemed unwary of their presence. He no longer strained forward to address his executioner but let his head sway back, his eyes rolled up beneath his fluttering lids, while further cries, all diminishing in volume, escaped his open mouth. With the battle won and the coup de grâce his to deliver when he chose, the Hell Priest surveyed the angelic form before him.
The Cenobite closed his eyes for a moment, his lips moving, as though he was offering up a silent prayer. Then, as he opened his eyes, the weapons of execution that he’d called up out of his own flesh—from the finest thread to the most brutal barb—flew at the Morning Star.
No part of his body was exempt from the assault. The largest of the Hell Priest’s weapons punched its way through Lucifer’s chest and, writhing wildly, burst out between the scars on his back where his wings had once been rooted. The assault was merciless: one mote struck his Adam’s apple, three flew between his teeth with unerring accuracy, another pinned his tongue to his lower lip, and a scalpel-headed dart punctured the sighted sac of his left eye, its bloodied fluids spilling down his face.
Lucifer
spasmed and writhed as the first weapons pierced him, but the more he was struck the less he responded, and soon he was no longer moving at all. Wounded in perhaps a half a thousand places, he lay still at the Priest’s feet.
The Hell Priest scanned the cathedral, which was still lit by the energies this struggle had loosed. For all the slaughter that had gone on here, there were plenty of survivors. Many wore wounds that would have killed a mortal man, but there were enough who had survived the battle with barely a scratch.
All remaining eyes were on the Hell Priest as he stood triumphant over his enemy. Cords of energy that had spilled from his anatomy to bring Lucifer down hung slackly from his body, still connecting the two, like a napalm umbilicus. The Hell Priest let that hang there, proof to all who had eyes in their heads that he had indeed been the author of Lucifer’s second fall.
Then, spreading his arms, he delivered his soliloquy:
“I know that many of you brought ancient enmities into this place. You had scores to settle, and you came here not because you cared who sat on the throne of Hell, but because you wanted to murder some enemy under the cover of battle.” There were plenty of guilty glances exchanged here and one or two even made to speak in their defense, but the Hell Priest had more to say. “I am your King now. And as such, I command you to put your vendettas away, forget the past, and follow me out of this place to do a better, more terrible work.”
The silent seconds passed. And then a great battle cry of affirmation rose from every direction.
11
The husk of flesh that was now the Morning Star reached out and caught hold of the Hell Priest’s foot.
“Enough,” he pleaded.
For a moment the Hell Priest simply stared down at his adversary in disbelief, and then he began to struggle to free himself.
But Lucifer, despite his injuries, had no intention of letting the Hell Priest go. He reached up with his other arm, which had acquired in its shattered state the uncanny fluidity of a tentacle, and seized the vestments he’d once lain down to die in. With his grip on them secured, he lifted himself up and stood face-to-face with the Hell Priest, his body still pierced in countless places, blood running freely from his wounds, gathering in rivulets that coursed down his legs.
Lucifer drove his hands into the Hell Priest’s abdomen. The Hell Priest screamed as Lucifer took hold of his guts. The weapons the Cenobite’s body had produced to bring the Devil down withered now, as the Hell Priest recalled energies that had fueled them, in the hope of putting up some defense against Lucifer, but the Devil had him in his grasp now, and he wasn’t about to let his wounder go. Lucifer reached still deeper within the body of the Hell Priest, taunting him as he did so.
“Spit out some magic, fool.” He dragged a length of gut out of the Hell Priest’s belly and pulled it, uncoiling the demon’s entrails. “And stop that wretched din. I thought you liked pain.” He let go of the gut, leaving the loop to fall between the Hell Priest’s feet. “Why would you have these”—he ran his bloody broken fingers over the nails in the demon’s head—”if it wasn’t for the pleasure of the pain?” He then balled his fists, snapping the broken ligaments of his fingers back into place. He brought thumb and forefinger to the Cenobite’s face and selected one of the nails from the creature’s cheek. He pulled. With a little persuasion, he worked it out and revealed that more than half of the nail’s length had been buried into the Cenobite’s bone.
The Hell Priest was too stricken to do anything by way of reply. Lucifer dropped the nail and chose another, working it free and dropping it again, then moving on to a third and fourth. Blood ran down the grid of scum that covered the Cenobite’s face. He was no longer screaming. Whatever agony he’d felt as his entrails had been torn from him was inconsequential compared to the defacing he was now enduring. Lucifer was plucking the nails out randomly, his pace quickening. Finally, the demon spoke.
“Please,” the Hell Priest begged him.
“A protest you’ve no doubt heard a thousand thousand times.”
“I have.”
“You traveled across the wastelands of Hell and battled Lucifer. You are unique, Cenobite. And yet your life is in my hands and you’re reduced to a simpering cliché.”
“It’s…”
“Yes?”
The Hell Priest shook his head. Lucifer replied by plucking another nail, and another and another. Desperate to stop him, the Cenobite began his confession again.
“It is who I am.”
Lucifer paused to look at the nail he’d just pulled free of the Cenobite’s face. “This rusted piece of metal? My apologies. You should have it back.” He tore away the collar of the vestments, and drove the nail into the Priest’s throat, hammering it all the way in with the heel of his hand.
At that, Harry felt the Cenobite’s thaumaturgic grip on his body released. Harry fell to the ground and sucked in great gasping breaths. Even his lungs had been in service to the Priest’s whim. Harry collected himself and, content in the knowledge that he had witnessed the end of this scene and indeed the end of an era—and potentially a war that might have spread over Heaven and Earth—he began to crawl in the direction of the nearest felled wall. He had no need to watch the killing blow. He only wished to be again with his loved ones.
As Harry made his way out of the sanctuary, the Hell Priest reached up to Lucifer’s face and would surely have put out the angel’s unwounded eye if he’d had the chance, but Lucifer was too quick to lose the advantage. He batted the Hell Priest’s hands away.
“You had your moment,” he said. “Now it’s gone and it won’t come again. Say your prayers, child. It’s time for bed.”
Harry exited the cathedral. He could hear all manner of sounds: shouts were heard from demons watching the final struggle of the Hell Priest and Devil, moans unintended from the dying, and other sounds that perhaps emanated from Lucifer’s attack on the Cenobite—the tearing of fabric and of flesh, the breaking of bones.
Harry clambered up and over the last heap of bodies and came in sight of his exit. There were still demons lingering around the threshold, apparently uncertain of whether they should venture in or not. Harry wove his way between the loiterers and out into the open air. There his friends were waiting for him at the edge of the lake.
“Harold! Thanks fucking Christ!” Caz said as he ran to his friend. “I fucking told them I was giving you five more minutes and I was coming in to get you!”
Harry took in the scene. Despite the colossal tree that had been placed across the lake, and the hordes of demons who scrambled to cross it as they fled from the infernal war zone, the lake was a bit more placid than it had been when Harry and his cohorts had first ventured around the cathedral and the Quo’oto had been turning the waters white in its frenzy. The sight of the dark lake and the starless sky above it was wonderfully soothing after the slaughterhouse scenes they’d left behind them. Caz walked Harry toward the water’s edge and stood staring out at the tabula rasa before him.
“Done dancing with the Devil, D’Amour?” Dale asked.
“Never,” Norma said, answering for Harry. She was more right than he cared to admit.
“What the fuck happened in there?” Lana said.
“It’s not important,” Harry said. “Here’s something you’ll only hear me say once: let’s follow these demons.”
Norma laughed. “That’s the fourth time I’ve heard you say that.”
“I missed you, Norma,” Harry said. “Let’s get you home.”
The Harrowers turned toward the makeshift bridge, where the large number of survivors had decided to retreat from the cathedral, many with blood streaming from their wounds and still carrying a knife or a sword to defend themselves if the need arose, but there was little antagonism among the exiting crowd. They were too anxious to be out of the cathedral—away from whatever was now happening inside—to be picking fights with one another, or anyone else for that matter.
As Harry and his Harrowers moved to
cross the bridge, from the cathedral Lucifer’s booming voice could suddenly be heard:
“I was an angel once! And I had such wings! Oh, such wings!”
Everyone looked toward the cathedral, where cords of light now danced against the few walls that remained.
“But they are just a memory now,” he continued, “and I am left with a pain I cannot endure. Do you hear me? Do you hear me!”
The repetition of his question was painfully loud, even to those standing outside the cathedral’s walls. The building, for all the pillars and buttresses that supported its immensity, shook as the Fallen One’s voice grew louder. Stone dust fell in fine dry rains, the escalating growl of stone grinding on stone.
“I was finished with my life,” the Devil said, “finished with this Hell I built. I was dead, and happy. But it seems I cannot be certain of death until I bring all of this down on our heads, and there is no Hell to call me back again.
“Hell is finished. Do you understand? If you have other places to go, then go while you can, because there will be nothing left when I am done. Nothing!”
12
By the time the quartet of Harrowers, plus Norma, began their return journey away from the cathedral, all of Lucifer’s audience had grasped the profound seriousness of their situation and were departing by any means available. There were fissures in the walls now, rising from the ground like black lightning, the flying buttresses crumbling as the connecting stonework fractured and fell away, the capitulation of each buttress putting the central structure in even greater risk of complete collapse upon itself.
“What happens when we get off the island?” Caz said as they went. “How do we get back home?”
Harry threw him a despairing glance. “I don’t have a fucking clue. But that old demon woman mentioned something about getting home, so I think we need to pay her a visit. As far as I can tell, we did make it out alive.”