Hell's Heroes

Kernel tries his old vomiting trick, hitting Lord Loss with a spray of puke that turns to acid, like the snot that finished off Shark. But the demon master has seen Kernel in action before, and he’s prepared. He freezes the vomit and it falls away in a thin, brittle sheet, to shatter on the floor.

But the vomit distracts the heartless monster and buys us a couple of seconds. Steeling myself against the pain, fighting the disorientation, I grab Bec and lob her at the mouth of the tu

The walls of the tu

I pick up Bec and stagger into the pulsing mouth of the tu

I ignore the pain and focus on Bec. I feel Kernel draw up next to me, then his magic links with mine and we pour it into the struggling girl. I want her to explode in geysers of flesh, bone, blood, and magic. For a moment, as her flesh ripples, I think we’re going to succeed. But then she smiles and stops struggling. Our magic flows into her, but instead of bursting through her, it circles within the girl, then returns to us, stronger than before, but having caused no harm.

I try again, but although I pump more power into her than I did the first time, it doesn’t hurt Bec, just comes back at me with interest. Lord Loss settles beside me and lays a couple of arms across my shoulders. I glare at him, but he doesn’t strike, merely smiles wickedly.

“What’s happening?” Kernel yells as more and more energy builds between and around us.

“Time to unleash the full power of the Kah-Gash,” Bec gurgles, her teeth red with blood from the pounding she took.

“She’s using us,” Kernel screams, trying to pull away but held in place by the magic that continues to build. “Kill her, Grubbs, kill her!”

I try, but I can’t focus. At least not on Bec. I sense the power fa

I have to stop this. The Kah-Gash is the ultimate weapon. Our world will fall, no matter what, but if Bec gets her hands on the Kah-Gash, she can a

I start to cut off the power flooding through me, to thwart Bec’s plan. But just as I’m about to take my finger off the trigger, Bec catches my eye and… winks.

The wink u

It’s crazy. I should stop this, as I intended. Too much is at stake to gamble recklessly. But the promise in that quick wink… the spark of humanity I thought I saw lurking behind the shadowy veils of Death…

With a desperate, confused, horrified howl, I make what’s probably the worst decision of my entire life, or anyone else’s. Instead of freeing myself from the clutches of Bec and Lord Loss, I draw even more power from the air, giving the Kah-Gash all the kick it needs to flare into life and wreak universal havoc.

With a sudden, sickening lurch, a ball of raw, all-consuming energy bursts from every pore of my body. Similar balls explode from Kernel and Bec. The three parts of the Kah-Gash join, sizzle in the air, then strike hard at the heart of the tu

Everything hits the fan.

WITH A BANG

We needed words when we previously unleashed the full power of the Kah-Gash, spells to direct it. Not this time. We’ve moved beyond that. Grown, matured, fused completely with the weapon. There’s no pulsing sky, clouds bursting into flames, melting rocks. Instead we skip straight to the exploding-into-colors stage.

My body shreds and I know instinctively that I’ll never have a use for it again. Grubbs Grady is dead and gone. So are Kernel Fleck and Bec. We’re the Kah-Gash now, a bodiless force, purer than light, free of all constraints. We didn’t go this far the first time. We didn’t understand what was happening. We tried to fight the loss of control, the madness. Now we just swing with it, leaving our humanity behind, bursting forward at a speed I can’t begin to describe.

We smash through the tu

We’re in a subuniverse of billions of flashing patches of light. We careened from one to another when we entered this realm before, but now the transition is fluid. Patches join and form windows. We shoot through without pause, picking up speed, the windows becoming a blur, sucking the remains of the world after us… other planets… stars… the universe… all matter… even time itself. And not just the human universe—we take from the Demonata’s realm too. Everything is sucked along in our wake.

A voice whispers, “The Crux.” It takes me a few seconds to realize it was Bec who spoke. It seems our individual selves still exist on some kind of level. We’re not entirely the single entity I thought we’d become.

“The Crux,” Bec says again, insistently.

“Why?” Kernel asks.

“I’ll explain later. Just direct us there.”

“But if we go to the Crux and take everything with us…”

“Trust me,” Bec says. “This is the only way. Bran hatched a plan.”

“Grubbs?” Kernel asks, still uncertain.

I’ve no idea what’s going on, what the plan might be, if Bec’s really on our side or playing us for laughs? But what choice do we have? “Make it so,” I mutter in my best Captain Picard voice.

Kernel sighs. I get the sense that we’ve adjusted our position. Our speed increases, the windows becoming a buzz of white light, noise building around us, drowning everything out, making it impossible for us to talk to one another.

I have a bad feeling about this, but it’s too late to stop, so I continue supplying power to the Kah-Gash. I take it from the lights and everything behind us, draining the universes dry, using energy, magic, time, and all the rest to propel us forward faster. Kernel’s guiding us. Bec… I’m not sure what the spirit of the Celtic girl is up to, but I get the impression that she’s busy too. Her mind seems to be focused on the flotsam behind us. She’s absorbing something from the spiraling remains of the universes. Not energy or magic. But what else could it be?

Before I can pursue the query, a fiery ball materializes in the distance. From Kernel’s description, I recognize it as the Crux, the center of all things, the place where the Big Bang happened. There was only one universe originally, sixty-four zones, half black, half white, demons in the white zones, Old Creatures in the black. No other life-forms. No time either. During a war between the demons and the Old Creatures, it exploded, creating life and the universes as we know them.