Daemons Are Forever

“You do know he’s infected?” said Roger.

“I used to be,” Truman said haughtily. “I destroyed it with my augmented brain.”

“Actually, no,” said Roger, looking thoughtfully at Truman. “With my amazing demon X-ray vision, I can See it’s still in there. Hell, I can practically smell it, it’s so advanced. It just let you think you’d destroyed it, so it could grow and influence you undetected. Sorry. There’s never any cure, once you’re infected.”

“Never?” said Molly.

“Not a chance in Hell,” said Roger, still looking at Truman.

Truman started to say something, and then stopped. He looked distracted, as though listening to some i

“Kill me,” he said. “I will die a human being, and myself; not some damned alien thing. Kill me!”

“Glad to,” said Roger Morningstar.

He leaned over the desk, grabbed the steel halo co

Harry glared at him. “There was no need for it to be that brutal!”

“Oh, no need,” said Roger. “But it was fun.” He smiled at me. “You can’t tell us you never dreamed of doing that, Eddie.”

“No,” I said. “I never dreamed of doing anything like that, hellspawn.”

“Oh well,” said Roger. “No point crying over spilled brains.”

“I could kill the hellspawn for you, if you like,” said Mr. Stab.

He might have been discussing the weather. Roger started to say something, looked at Mr. Stab, and thought better of it.

“Thanks for the thought,” I said. “But no.”

“We have to get to the tower,” said Molly, her voice cold and focused. “It’s not far. I can feel its presence with my magics.”

“Then lead the way,” I said.

We followed Molly through the maze of steel corridors, and down into the deepest part of the underground bunker, until we were in a great steel-walled chamber directly under the standing Stones of Stonehenge. And there it was, sunk deep into a pit hollowed out of the bare earth; tall and complex and u

Already a gateway was forming, an opening to another place. I couldn’t see or hear it, but I could feel it on some deeper, primal level: like a great eye watching me, like a wound in the world, like a door into Hell. Like a great cold wind blowing right at me from a direction I couldn’t name, chilling me down to the soul. Slowly I became aware of sounds too. I don’t think I was hearing them with my ears. Voices; howling, screaming, laughing, coupled with the sounds of tearing flesh and great siege engines slamming together forever. All the sounds of Hell on earth.

Molly grabbed me by the arm and shook me fiercely, and I came to myself again. Harry and Roger and Giles and even Mr. Stab were still staring wide-eyed and entranced at the forming gateway, as strange energies swirled and coalesced around the tower.

“We’ve got to do something!” said Molly. “The gateway’s opening! They’re coming!”

“I guess Jacob and Jay never got through after all,” I said numbly.

“Eddie …!”

“I know,” I said. “I know.” I looked at her. “How do you feel, Molly?”

“I’m still me,” she said, meeting my gaze squarely. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”

“Then let’s do it,” I said. I reached into my jacket pocket and brought out Janissary Jane’s weapon of last resort, the Deplorable End. It still didn’t look like much.

“Do we have the right to destroy our whole universe, just to wipe out the Hungry Gods?” said Molly.

“Hell no,” said Roger unexpectedly. He’d torn his attention away from the tower and was now looking at the thing squatting on my palm. “Is that what I think it is? Eddie, you can’t use it. Not while there’s still a chance, any chance…”

I had to smile. “A demon who still believes in hope. Now I’ve seen everything.”

“I believe in him,” said Roger, looking at Harry. “I have to hope… that we can find a way to be together. Not even a half demon is automatically damned for all time. You have to save the world, Eddie, so we can have a place to grow old in.”

“If the Hungry Gods come through, they’ll destroy this world and everything in it,” said Molly. “And then move on, from world to world, until there isn’t a living thing left anywhere. That’s what they do. Cosmic locusts.”

“I have no intention of destroying this universe, or this world,” I said. “I never did. I think… I’ll wait till the gateway has opened enough, and then I’ll go through it into their universe, their world; and blow it all to shit before they can come through.”

“You’re not going in there alone,” Molly said immediately. “You’ll need my magics just to survive in their world long enough to press the button. I won’t let you die alone.”

“Molly…”

“What reason have I got to live without you?” said Molly. “What reason have I got to live, as I am?”

“And you’re going to need me,” said Giles Deathstalker. He had Harry and Mr. Stab by the arms, pulling them away from the tower. They were both shaking their heads, coming to themselves again. Giles looked at me calmly. “You’ll need me to help you survive and operate in an alien environment. You’re not used to that. I am.”

“Fine by me,” said Harry, blinking his eyes hard, careful not to look directly at the tower. “Roger and I and Mr. Stab will stay here, and…guard the situation.”

“Quite right,” said Mr. Stab. “I know my limitations.” He nodded briefly to me. “You, of course, are a Drood, and therefore have no limitations. Everyone knows that.”

I looked at Giles. “I didn’t bring you here, across thousands of years, just so you could die fighting for someone else’s cause.”

He shrugged easily. “I am a warrior. Fighting is what I do. And besides, this is about family as well as saving humanity. You took me in, made me feel like one of you. I never knew that before. Never really had a family, before. You taught me the worth of duty and honour and responsibility. You have shown me what it really is to be a man. To be a Drood, and a Deathstalker. So I will fight, and if need be die, for what you gave me. Anything, for the family.”

Roger looked around sharply, glaring at the tower. “It knows we’re pla

We all looked around sharply as, from back inside the bunker, we heard something moving. The sound of bodies rising up, and slow dragging feet…and I just knew what it had to be. All the dead bodies in Truman’s base, raised up by the tower’s power, and summoned to defend it in its time of need. The dead, called to strike down the living. I gri