Hell Breaker (Shadow Detective Book 9)
Date: 2018-04-15 16:00:00+00:00
Rights: Copyright 2018 WILLIAM MASSA. All rights reserved.

Hell Breaker

A Shadow Detective Novel

WILLIAM MASSA

Critical Mass Publishing

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Afterword

About the Author

Also by WILLIAM MASSA

Copyright © 2018 by WILLIAM MASSA

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

1

A bulbous full moon, like the blind eye of a witch, hung over the Cursed City as Archer descended the stairs of the downtown subway station. Stale air filled her lungs when she arrived on the empty platform below. She was alone, the only soul willing to brave the transit system at this hour.

She scanned the deserted station and the endless tunnels that stretched into the darkness beyond. A yawning silence greeted her, and for a surreal, frightening second, she felt like the last person on Earth.

What was she doing here?

The answer was simple—her job.

Twelve people had vanished over the last week. Men and women, young and old, all races, all creeds. Nothing connected them except for one detail—they had all been last seen boarding the number 9 train in the wee hours of the morning.

Coincidence? Archer didn’t think so. Nor did she believe the culprit was a human killer. She had experienced too much weird shit to believe in a rational universe. The nightmares were real, and so were the victims.

Something dwelled within the bowels of the city. Something that had developed a voracious appetite.

There were no bodies, no blood, no sign of violence. No one had seen or heard anything. But these people hadn’t vanished into thin air. Something had happened to them. And Archer intended to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Her impressive arsenal matched her steely resolve. She’d brought her three favorite weapons along for the mission: a Glock loaded with blessed silver bullets, the mystical Witch Whip made from a noose used for hanging witches and warlocks, and BloodSlayer, the silver stake feared by both vampires and other supernatural creatures.

She was ready to face whatever evil had turned the number 9 train into its hunting ground. Or so she tried to tell herself.

In truth, her stomach churned with anxiety, and a growing sense of dread tugged at her mind. If she was honest with herself, she wished she’d been able to recruit Raven for this monster hunt. But her lover was a tad preoccupied.

Three weeks had passed since they had battled the Crimson Circle. Even though they’d defeated Morgal, the demon had managed to drag Skulick’s soul into Hell with him. She couldn’t imagine a worse fate.

Raven had become obsessed with saving Skulick. And who could blame him? She knew he’d do anything to help his partner—even following him into the pits of Hell. It sounded like madness, but Cyon, the demon who was currently hitching a ride inside Skulick’s body, believed it was possible. One thing was for certain. Raven wouldn’t rest until he could break Skulick’s soul free and destroy Morgal.

Not surprisingly, their relationship hadn’t been his first priority lately.

She was beginning to understand why Raven had been so reluctant to get closer. The war against the darkness made it impossible to have a personal life. This calling demanded everything from them. She had never held any illusions about her future with Raven, knew a white picket fence wasn’t in the cards for monster hunters. Her eyes welled up, and she furiously blinked the tears away. Dammit, what had gotten into her?

Hey, you’re just human. You’re allowed to feel lonely from time to time.

She was determined to make a difference in the war against the darkness but did it have to come at such a high price?

She shook her head and gritted her teeth, anger replacing sadness.

Girl, you better cut out this Lifetime channel bullshit.

The air stirred, and the rumble of an incoming subway train grew audible, thrusting Archer out of her grim thoughts.

The train rattled into the station with a bone-jarring shriek of metal and ground to a halt. A rush of tunnel air buffeted Archer’s body. The doors hissed open, and Archer boarded. She shared the car with two other passengers. One was an obese man with long hair and bad hygiene busy picking away at a bag of French fries. The other was a middle-aged Hispanic lady in a brown jacket, sporting a vacant, tired expression.

The man’s gaze lingered on Archer even though she had done her best to downplay her attractiveness. Her hair was pulled back, she wore no makeup, and her black trench coat hid her curves. She didn’t want to attract attention from the wrong type of predator. There were plenty of human scumbags who roamed the subways late at night, searching for easy marks. Thieves, rapists, young males hopped up on drugs and booze, itching for a fight or some sadistic fun. If any of them mistook her for prey, they would be in for a rude awakening.

For now, she ignored the greasy-fingered creep’s leering grin. On your average day, she would be more than open to teaching some asshole a lesson in manners, but she worried that a confrontation might chase away the real monster. Her plan was to draw out whatever had made those twelve victims disappear.

The door zoomed shut behind her, and the train lurched into motion, rattling down the dimly lit tunnels again.

“Hey there,” the long-haired creep began.

She met his gaze with fire in her eyes, and he turned his attention back to his fries. That’s right. Focus on attainable goals.

Archer stayed in the car for another three stops. The long-haired man left, and so did the woman. She was alone now.

A chill rippled down her back, and dread pooled in her stomach. She drew little reassurance from the rhythmical rocking of the train. For crying out loud, she’d hunted the vampires of the Cursed City to extinction. There was no reason for her to be so unnerved.

What’s wrong with you, girl?

She hadn’t been the same since the incident in the church. The cultists had caught her off guard, and if Raven had arrived ten minutes later, she would have died that night. She vividly recalled the leather tail of her Witch Whip wrapping tight around her neck. She could still feel it digging into her windpipe, cutting off her air supply as it pulled her into the air. Morgal had almost hanged her with her own damn whip.

Despite her training and her weapons, she was only human. A mortal fighting ancient nightmares armed with teeth and claws and powers beyond her imagination. Part of her wondered if she was in over her head.

No, I can do this, she told herself.

As if to prove the point, she got up and turned toward the subway door that led to the next car. She ignored the warning sign and opened the door. A gust of cold air rushed up at her from the rails. She welcomed the sensation. It meant she was alive. Determined, Archer stepped into the open space between cars as the train blasted down the tunnel.

A strange sense of peace overcame her. The wind and the darkness and the sound of metal grinding against metal drowned out her dark thoughts. She almost wanted to linger, but she had a job to do. People to protect, monsters to slay.

She gave herself an internal push and entered the next car. A group of club kids on their way home from a night of partying eyed her through a haze of booze and god knows what else. They quickly lost interest in her. A middle-aged bald man sat across from the three twenty-somethings, listening to music on a pair of headphones.

She flashed the club kids a smile as she brushed past them. For a brief moment, she was reminded of her rookie cop days when she would patrol the trains in her police uniform. She had never forgotten the power of that uniform, how people stopped seeing the person and solely acknowledged the badge. As a plainclothes homicide detective, you could blend in, be just another person until you had to make an arrest or confront a perp. But when you wore a uniform, folks treated you differently. You ceased to be a person and became a symbol. You felt the energy change between people when you glanced in their direction. Their guard went up even if they were law-abiding citizens. Not even the innocent had clean consciences.

Archer sighed. Those uniformed days seemed like a lifetime ago. And perhaps that was for the best, but she missed the idealist she’d been back then. It was a time in her life unencumbered by the horrors she now chased.

As she prowled the car, her frustration grew. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. Why would some creature of darkness target one particular train? Could it be a haunting of some sort, a lost spirit lashing out? But then there would be bodies, wouldn’t there?

The bald man left the subway car at the next stop, and only Archer and the three clubbers remained. The train rocketed into motion again, gaining speed as it blasted through the rotting bowels of the city. Five minutes later, the subway made another stop, but this time no one got in. The journey through the city’s innards continued.

Archer took a seat and her eyes grew heavy. Great. She better not doze off. She had downed three cups of strong coffee before heading out, but they weren’t doing shit. Her habit of mainlining caffeine must be catching up with her.

Without warning, a strange heaviness took hold of her, and the air shimmered and swam out of focus for a beat. The subway seemed to elongate and stretch before snapping back to its regular appearance. It all happened so fast that she didn’t know if her imagination had played a trick on her.

The experience jolted her wide awake. Eyes alert, her fingers strayed toward the silver-loaded Glock.

The train’s lights buzzed and flickered as it began to slow down.

The club kids swapped a questioning look with her. Judging by their confused expressions, they had experienced the same strange distortion of reality.

“What the fuck just happened?” one of the clubbers asked.

I wish I had the answers, kid.

Archer sprung to her feet as the train came to a halt.

The door slid open with a hiss, and a woman’s terrified scream pierced the subway tunnel.

2

Archer clenched her jaw as she spotted the screaming figure on the dark platform. From this angle inside the subway car, she couldn’t make out any details. But something was after the desperate woman as she limped toward the subway train.

Archer whipped out her Glock and Witch Whip while she gave the freaked-out club kids a commanding glare. “Stay put!”

They nodded weakly, events no-doubt unfolding too swiftly for their alcohol-addled brains to process. A beat later, Archer was on the platform. She still couldn’t detect any signs of the pursuer in the dark, but she finally got a good look at the woman who had been screaming. She had to be in her early twenties, of Asian heritage, and wore a pair of torn, mud-caked jeans and a ripped T-shirt. Blood masked her horrified features. With horror, Archer realized the woman was barefoot, her feet bloodied and raw.

“Help me,” the woman begged.

She looked up with saucer eyes as Archer reached out. Words tumbled from her cracked lips.

“You can’t stop them! No one can! You have to run…run and hide before it’s too late!”

Archer’s eyes widened as she recognized the face buried beneath a layer of grime and gore. Her name was Parker Wang. She was one of the missing people.

“Parker? You’re safe now. I’ll protect you…”

Archer held up her gun for good measure. The young woman eyed her for a second and then shook her head with grave certainty.

“You can’t stop them,” she proclaimed.

A keening wail sliced through the station. For a split second, Archer thought it might have been the train, but the sound built with eerie intensity. No machine generated this noise. There was something organic about the bestial shriek, a wet rasp that made Archer’s skin crawl. The sound was both alien and familiar, like something she might have experienced once in a long-forgotten nightmare.

Goosebumps exploded over her skin as wind whistled through the desolate train station.

Where was the sound coming from? And what the hell was making it?

These thoughts were still running through Archer’s mind when an invisible force slammed into her and knocked her off her feet.

For a disoriented moment, she lay crumpled on the ground. Then she forced herself to get up, eyes scoping the station for her attacker.

Show yourself, you bastard!

Archer reached for her whip and realized she’d dropped it during the attack. And that’s when her eyes landed on Parker Wang. The terrified woman had scooped up her whip and held it up like some protective talisman, perhaps instinctively sensing the weapon’s mystical power. Parker Wang lashed out at the shadows, and a deep bellow burst from the darkness. The whip had hurt the creature, whatever it was.

Good girl.

Encouraged by her tiny victory, Parker pivoted on her heels and rushed toward the waiting train.

Archer watched in grim silence as Parker stumbled into the train, the door slamming shut behind her. The club kids looked like ghosts in the subway car, which now seemed a million miles away, frozen in place by the eerie spectacle unfolding in the station.

Panic gripped Archer, realizing she was about to be left behind.

Too late! The train groaned and creaked out of the station.

Archer traded a final glance with Parker. With horror, she saw the woman’s eyes turn into black orbs as the train rumbled into the tunnel.

What the hell did that mean? Had the subway station’s evil infected her somehow? She prayed the woman didn’t pose a threat to the club kids. Had she doomed them by leaving the car? And what about herself?

The subway stop looked like it had been abandoned for years, maybe decades. She was stuck in this place, and her gut told her it would be quite some time before another train pulled in this haunted station.

If ever.

Archer flinched as the terrifying wail shook the walls of the station again. There was anger in the creature’s voice now. No, more than anger. Unbridled hatred.

Archer whirled, gun up and ready. At least she still had her trusty Glock and Bloodslayer, which remained strapped to her back.

Show yourself, goddamnit, she thought.

The baying sound changed, swelling into ominous laughter. Archer bit her lip, tasted copper. She resisted the impulse to empty her magazine into the encroaching darkness. No point wasting precious ammo. Between the fully loaded Glock and the spare magazine, she had just thirty bullets. She had to make her ammunition last.

Archer could sense something shifting in the dark. An invisible presence closing in on her, preparing to attack.

And then the laughter died down, giving way to silence. Somehow, the eerie stillness was even worse. Sweat pearled down Archer’s forehead. Her hands shook. Each ragged breath required greater effort as the seconds ticked away.

Her finger whitened on the trigger.

She bit her lips, tasting copper.

Where the hell are you?

The silence stretched. A palpable sense of menace filled the air.

Something lurked in the darkness.

Biding its time.

Waiting to strike…

“I know you’re there!” Her scream echoed in the desolate station.

She sensed movement and reflexively fired. The bullet vanished in the dark.

Reverberated.

Followed by renewed silence.

And all at once, the heaviness lifted, and she could breathe again.

What the fuck just happened?

The presence had retreated. But why? Why not attack?

Slowly regaining her equilibrium, Archer processed her surroundings. She tried to read the street name on the station’s sign, but it was covered in dirt. Her searching gaze ticked to the turnstiles. They were shrouded in dust and cobwebs. Definitely abandoned.

Over the course of the last century, certain stations had fallen into disuse or had been abandoned by the transit authority. These forgotten stops rotted away in the darkness and could only be seen from passing cars. So why had the subway train stopped here in the first place? Had the conductor responded to the screaming woman? Archer doubted he would have been able to pick up Parker Wang’s cries for help over the sounds of the moving train.

And now the train had left without her, and she was trapped underground.

Archer chided herself for standing her ground against the unseen presence instead of getting back on the train. That’s what she got for playing hero.

Jaw set tight, Archer approached the dirt-covered station sign. First order of business was finding out where she was. Then she could worry about getting out.

She wiped the thick grime from the sign and gasped. It was blank. Who would bother to post an empty sign? It didn’t make any sense. She had to be somewhere.

The dark laughter from before seemed to resound through her mind, the memory mocking her. She understood now why the creature hadn’t attacked. Seeing her suffer like this was probably a lot more fun.

She steadied her breathing and let her mind return to her worst memory, to the horrible night when, while infected with vampire blood, she had murdered a police officer. Whatever dwelled within these shadows, it could not be worse than the dreams that haunted her every night. Right? Right.

Archer shifted her attention from the empty tunnels to the grime-encrusted turnstiles. The rusting metal creaked as she pushed through it. A shadowy staircase awaited her. Footprints marked the dust-covered floor. She figured Parker Wang must’ve left them when she sought refuge in the station.

The woman had vanished only a few days ago, but she had looked aged and ashen, like she’d been to Hell and back. What had happened to her? Where had she been? Determined to get some answers, Archer climbed the stairs to the surface.

To her surprise, light spilled down the stairs. It was way too bright to be moonlight. But how could the sun be up at this time of night? Only about thirty minutes had passed since she first boarded the train. It should be hours before dawn.

Tentatively, she continued her ascent, hand tight around her Glock. She emerged from the staircase and gasped at the blazing sky which greeted her. The firmament had turned red, fireballs bleeding across the sky.

The strange crimson light was only the beginning of the weirdness.

For a beat, Archer refused to accept what she was seeing. The skyscrapers of this strange, deserted city were not made of glass or stone. A mosaic of human skulls made up the surface of a nearby tower. Correction, not just skulls. Bones of all shapes and sizes had been used as building materials. Arches constructed from vertebrae, walls fashioned from femurs and rib cages.

Eyes wide, adrenaline surging, Archer’s attention swept over the other ivory structures that made up the city. Every building stretching out before her in the blood-red light was made from human bones.

This place was a city of the dead, a giant ossuary, a nightmare come to life.

Where the hell am I?

Possible explanations raced through her brain. Had she stumbled into some horrific parallel world, or had some terrible spell transformed the city she called home?

Archer shook with terror, panic taking hold of her racing thoughts. Desperate to get out of this bone metropolis, she wheeled toward the subway stop and found it…gone.

No fucking way!

There was no subway entrance, no stairs, not a single sign suggesting a train ran beneath this nightmare landscape. The station had been erased from reality, almost like it had never existed in the first place.

In the distance, thunder rumbled, and spectral green lightning split the scarlet sky. And for a terrible moment, the deafening peals of thunder sounded like the demented laughter of a mad God.

3

My eyes snapped open and fixed on the shadow lurking in my bedroom. I gasped as the darkness shifted and reconfigured itself into a human shape—and then Skulick stood at the foot of my bed. My former partner’s spectral body loomed silently, a haunted expression carved into his features. He extended one arm toward me, his eyes pleading, desperate. This pathetic figure wasn’t the confident badass who had spent decades whipping me into a monster hunter. I was looking at a lost soul seeking the eternal peace Morgal had denied him.

“Skulick,” I croaked.

Then the darkness behind the ghostly figure parted, revealing a fast-moving serpent. I was looking at Morgal in one of his many earthly incarnations. The giant snake wrapped around Skulick’s anguished ghost and brutally sucked him back into the shadows. My partner cried out. His pitiful scream shook me to the core.

Sweat poured down my face as I tried to free myself from the tangle of sheets. I was about to go after my partner when my room erupted into a roaring fire. Flames consumed the walls and floor, and I could feel the heat singe my eyebrows. And up ahead, where Skulick had vanished in the blackness, a giant red eye of swirling flame appeared. I felt like I was staring into the churning core of a volcano.

I knew instinctively that it was a portal to another realm. A gateway to hell.

Moans emanated from the darkness, and disembodied human hands reached out from the carpet of flames to claw at my blankets, pull at my sheets. Inhuman fingers snapped around my ankles and wrists. They were going to wrench me off the bed, into the fire. Determined to drag me into the raging inferno. Drag me into Hell.

A bloodcurdling scream burst from my scorched lungs…

* * *

My eyes jerked open, and once again I found myself in my bedroom. But there was no fire, no clawing ghost arms, no serpent demons and no trace of my partner. It had been a nightmare. Or perhaps a vision from beyond our world? Had Skulick been trying to communicate with me from Morgal’s realm of darkness?

I’d seen enough freaky shit during my tenure as a monster hunter to know that anything was possible. I shuddered, the remembered fear of the dream washing over me in an icy wave. I’ve faced nightmares for most of my life, so serpents and fire normally didn’t quicken my pulse. But seeing the raw terror in my partner’s eyes, his naked panic and desperation, hit me where it hurt.

I rocked back and forth, hugging myself, and allowed the horrific visions to fade, before I eased from the covers and got up. I grabbed a large bottle of mineral water, which I kept next to my bed, and took a few gulps. The foul, parched taste in my mouth subsided somewhat. I eyed my flashing cell phone and realized Archer had called around one o’clock. I must’ve been out cold when she left her message.

My curiosity piqued, I listened to the voicemail. Apparently, a group of people had vanished on the number 9 subway line, and Archer was going to check out the train. Had she carried out her plan without me? Knowing her the way I did, she probably had. She didn’t waste time when innocent lives were at stake. To be honest, I doubted she needed me to tag along on a case like this. Archer was more than a capable of handling a monster hunt on her own.

No, this sounded more like she’d wanted to pull me out of my funk. Nothing chased away the nightmares like shooting a monster or two in the face.

Reminding myself to return Archer’s call once I got some caffeine into my system, I limped toward the bathroom. I refused to spend an extra minute in my bedroom. The walls felt like they were closing in on me, and I struggled to breathe. I needed fresh air, a change of scenery. Anything to put the nightmare behind me.

I quickly got dressed and stepped out of my room. As soon as my bedroom door slammed shut, I could feel my spirit lifting. Early morning daylight streamed into the loft from the row of windows. Brick, glass, and steel glittered in the sunshine. At the center of the high-ceilinged space, a familiar figure reclined behind a bank of flashing monitors.

I stopped dead in my tracks, unable to wrap my brain around what I was seeing for a moment. Three weeks had passed since our climatic battle with the Crimson Circle, and I was still struggling with the idea that Cyon had hitched a ride in Skulick’s body.

I gave myself a push and drew closer.

Upon first glance, one might think nothing had changed, but the devil was in the details—no pun intended. First, the wheelchair was gone. When Morgal had first possessed Skulick’s body, the archdemon had fixed his spinal injury and rejuvenated my partner’s body. Freakily enough, Skulick now looked to be only a few years older than me, the spitting image of the monster hunter who had first taken me under his wing when I was a kid. This Skulick was strong, virile, dangerous.

But those surface details were merely the beginning. Unlike my real partner, the new-and-not-so-improved Skulick didn’t care for coffee. God, how I missed the delicious smell of my partner’s brew, which ordinarily enveloped the loft at this time of day. Nowadays, I prepared my own cup of joe, a pale imitation of the magic Skulick used to pull off with some java beans and water.

Stepping even closer, a final glaring difference between old Skulick and this impostor became clear. This new Skulick didn’t spend his waking hours reviewing TV and internet newsfeeds for signs of paranormal activity in the Cursed City. No, the monitors flashed with very different stories and data. Obscure occult texts and scrolls flickered onscreen, complex documents in long forgotten tongues. Cyon, former witch hunter turned demon, was searching for a way to break into Hell.

Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?

It turned out even demons can’t just slip back into Hell, especially once they find themselves in our reality and inside a human host. And Hell gates didn’t grow on trees. Like myself, Cyon was obsessed with getting a rematch with his former master.

Morgal had abandoned him when the vampire Marek trapped him in a binding circle. The master vampire had fed on Cyon’s demonic blood, drained him to the brink, and despite his pleas for help, Morgal had refused to interfere on his behalf. This betrayal had led Cyon on his quest for vengeance and redemption.

I say redemption because the demon appeared to be reconnecting with the man he’d once been while alive, a medieval witch hunter who had succumbed to the charms of a spell-slinger as seductive as she was evil. Perhaps his heart (well, if demons still had hearts) was in the right place, but I would never fully trust Cyon again after some of the shit that went down during our last case. He wanted to destroy Morgal, so we had that in common, but unfortunately, he also appeared willing to sacrifice anyone for his revenge.

Would I be willing to brave Hell with this monster?

I shivered, and it wasn’t because of the early morning breeze passing through the loft. You might think being possessed by a demon would prepare a guy for a trip into the underworld, but despite having hunted demons for years, I don’t know all that much about the place where they come from. No one does. Not even Skulick.

Demonology focuses on the beasts more than their point of origin for a good reason. The human brain is poorly equipped to practice magic. And even less capable of contemplating the horrors that exist at the edges of the world. Only recently had I caught glimpses of this terrible netherworld, and I wasn’t all that eager to see more.

Venturing into Morgal’s domain sounded like suicide, but that’s why it was our only shot. The archdemon wouldn’t see us coming. He would never expect such a move. With a plan this bold (or stupid, depending on how you want to look at it) the element of surprise was firmly on our side.

I stifled a yawn, and Cyon finally acknowledged my presence.

“More bad dreams?”

The surreal experience of looking at Skulick and hearing Cyon’s voice emanating from his lips jerked me wide awake. Suddenly I didn’t need coffee any longer.

“Your screams probably woke up the whole neighborhood,” he said.

I was about to point out that our neighbors were mostly homeless bums sleeping off their latest hangovers—one perk of living in a converted warehouse loft in the deserted downtown area of the city—but decided against it. Instead, my eyes turned to the leather-bound books resting on Skulick’s desk, the three volumes of the Daemonium.

My magical ring, the Seal of Solomon, had separated the super-grimoire into three tomes again, returning Cyon’s grimoire to its original state and restoring the demon’s ability to cast spells. According to Cyon, the three books of magic were the key to defeating Morgal once we entered his infernal realm. I had to trust the demon knew what he was talking about. Cyon was in the driver’s seat now. I knew how to fight monsters in my world. Hell was Cyon’s jam, and to be honest, beyond my mental grasp.

Doubts plagued me. Could we defeat Morgal in his own realm when we had failed to destroy him here on Earth? Optimist that I am, I doubted it, but Cyon seemed determined to give it a whirl. And I would follow the demon through the gates of Hell if it meant I might save Skulick. I didn’t dare imagine the horrors my partner was being forced to endure while at Morgal’s mercy.

Although saving Skulick was my top priority, there was more at stake. We had pushed Morgal back into Hell, forcing him to abandon his human host and return to the dimension of fear. Unfortunately, his loyal demon soldiers had remained in our world. These lieutenants of darkness now controlled some of the most powerful and influential people across the globe. Who knew what horrors they planned to unleash on our reality?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the cursed relics the Crimson Circle had lifted from our vault were still out there. The cult had undone decades of hard work in one swift heist. My gut told me not all of the cultists had perished during the ritual in the church and remained at large. They were biding their time, waiting for the perfect time to strike again.

Morgal had experienced one setback, but this fight was far from over. He’d lost the battle but was winning the war on several fronts. Thinking about it made me sick to my stomach. All my attempts to learn more about the wealthy, powerful people Morgal’s demons had possessed had ended in one dead end after another. But I swore I wouldn’t give up.

No one ever said this shit was supposed to be easy.

I pushed the dark thoughts aside and stepped up to Cyon’s unholy collection of books.

“Enjoying some light morning reading?” I asked.

Cyon cocked an eyebrow. “Very amusing. I thought you’d appreciate my dedication to this task.”

I did. But it was seven a.m., and my head was pounding because someone refused to enjoy the wonders of caffeinated beverages.

“So how are things looking? Any closer to finding a doorway into Morgal’s world?”

Morgal’s world. What a lovely euphemism for the deepest, darkest pits of Hell.

“I think I’m getting closer to solving the problem,” Cyon said. “I believe there might be a way of using the breach for our purposes.”

Now it was my turn to arch my eyebrows. Two years ago, the Crimson Circle had tried to open a gateway between the city and the dimension of fear. Skulick and I had interrupted the ritual and prevented Armageddon. Unfortunately, the cultists’ ritual had still weakened the barriers between our two worlds. As a result, demonic evil could more easily slip through the breach and infect our metropolis, which explained the high occurrence of paranormal crime in the Cursed City.

“If demons can slip into this reality,” Cyon continued, “then we should be able to pull off the same with a little magical help.”

“Magical help?”

“The breach doesn’t allow demons to cross over whenever they like, but it makes it easier for ritualistic magic to draw them to this plane. Now, if some precocious child with a Ouija board can pull a demon into this world, then the reverse could hold true. We just have to give it a push.”

My head was spinning. I don’t like to start my day with a lecture on interdimensional travel. Resignedly, I said, “Go on.”

Cyon’s eyes flickered with eagerness as he continued to rock my caffeine-starved brain. The demon loved to lecture. “I believe we need to return to the warehouse where the Crimson Circle first performed their ritual. It’s the nexus point between the two worlds.”

My mind flashed back to that fateful day when we confronted Kovan Crull and the followers of the original iteration of the Crimson Circle in an abandoned warehouse near the docks. The horror of their mass suicide remained vivid in my thoughts and to this day haunted my nightmares.

“Sounds risky,” I said. “Don’t we run a chance of widening the breach?”

“That will not happen. Not if we do it right.”

Was the demon telling the truth or saying what I wanted to hear? I knew how cold-blooded Cyon could be in the pursuit of his vengeance.

The demon shifted his gaze to the three copies of the Daemonioum. “These books hold many secrets. They will show me how to tap into the breach’s power and use it to our advantage.”

I thought of Demon Slayer, the magical sword I’d retrieved from the devil’s bank during my Swiss adventure, could stop Morgal in our reality, but confronting the archdemon on his home turf would require a different weapon powered by a stronger form of magic.

The confidence in Cyon’s voice left no room for doubt. Facing Morgal wasn’t some distant possibility but a foregone conclusion in the demon’s mind. I fought back the impulse to lunge at Skulick’s desk and toss the grimoires out of the window before they could trigger some new unforeseen apocalypse. But I had to trust Cyon and hope he wouldn’t destroy the world in the name of his vengeance.

My cell chirped before I could change my mind. It was Detective Benson. Cyon had hitched a ride in the homicide detective during the most recent Crimson Circle case and nearly gotten the man killed. I was amazed that Benson was already back at work, but I figured he needed to stay busy after what had happened. He’d seen a lot of weird shit since the breach two years earlier, but working paranormal crime scenes wasn’t the same as sharing your mind with a demon. Not even close. I knew from personal experience.

“What’s up, Benson? How are you feeling?” I asked as I answered the call.

“Like I went twelve rounds with the Prince of Darkness himself.”

Benson wasn’t joking. He had literally faced the archdemon in hand-to-hand combat. If it hadn’t been for Cyon’s regenerative abilities…

“How can I help you, Detective?”

“I need you to come down to the precinct. I think your girlfriend is in trouble.”

My chest tightened. I remembered Archer’s missed call.

If something had happened to the woman I loved, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said, already moving for the door.

Hell could wait. Archer needed me.

4

When I’m pissed, especially at myself, it shows in my driving. Tearing through the city in my jet-black muscle car, I cursed like a sailor, honked at the slightest irritation, and pulled a few maneuvers I’m not too proud of. Maybe I pissed off a few fellow drivers, but I didn’t care.

Archer had contacted me last night, needing my help on a new case, but I’d been too busy catching up on my beauty sleep to pick up the damn phone.

I made it to the precinct in record time. You might wonder how I could set foot in police headquarters after what had happened about a month earlier, when the authorities had charged me with the murder of Joe Hendrix, a local special effects wizard. The cops had obtained security footage of me gunning down Hendrix in cold blood with my signature blessed pistol.

Talk about damning evidence.

To anyone watching the incriminating tape, it looked like I’d lost my shit and went all Terminator on poor Hendrix. The real killer had been a magical double who’d sprung from a cursed mirror, not exactly the type of story which goes over well in court.

Luckily the ballistics evidence wasn’t a real problem. A nifty side effect of the power of my blessed pistol is that the mystical energy released vaporizes the otherwise normal ammo when it’s fired, leaving no bullets to trace.

The security tape was the real issue here.

Stepping out of the Crimson Circle’s demonic church three weeks earlier, still reeling from my bitter-sweet victory over Morgal, I was determined to clear my name. My life was complicated enough without being a fugitive from the law.

Fortunately, I had a plan.

The first step was to return to Hendrix’s effects shop. Once there, Cyon and I entered the creepy place where I had first fought a killer doll and my evil mirror duplicate. During the investigation of Hendrix’s murder, the boys in blue had ignored the magical mirror that had brought my evil double to life.

Time to correct that mistake.

I nodded at Cyon. “Let’s do this.”

Cyon, now in control of Skulick’s rejuvenated body, unsheathed Demon Slayer. Witnessing Cyon wielding the magical sword, which I regarded as one of my weapons, felt strange. Hell, seeing my partner moving like his old self without the help of a wheelchair was blowing my mind. Keeping up with all these changes was becoming challenging. One surprise seemed to follow another. But despite the strangeness of the situation, the iron determination in Cyon’s eyes matched my own. We would do this. Together.

I inhaled deeply and faced the cursed mirror for a second time.

My eyes bored into my reflection, and a devilish grin curled the lips of the man in the mirror. Lightning fast, my mirror image burst from its glass prison, my presence having awoken the evil locked inside the old heirloom once again.

The diabolical doppelganger lunged at me from the mirror’s surface, hands locking around my throat. We both went flying in a tangle of flailing limbs. I broke the creature’s hold on my neck and pushed the double back with all my might.

My evil mirror image recoiled while I sprang back to my feet in one fluid motion. As I whirled toward the duplicate, Cyon peeled out of the shadows, sword up and ready to put my double in a world of hurt.

My doppelgänger sensed the danger, but it was too late to alter his fate. The creature pivoted toward Cyon just as the demon brought the sword down—not on the duplicate, but on the mirror itself. Magical steel shattered the glass on impact. I wished I could have unloaded Hellseeker into the mirror for good measure, but at the time the cops had confiscated my blessed pistol.

The breaking glass echoed through Hendrix’s effects studio. It was music to my ears.

The living reflection never stood a chance. A pitiful wail cut through the warehouse as the creature exploded into a protoplasmic cloud.

By shattering the mirror, we had shattered the illusion of its terrible magic. Later that day, Benson sent me a copy of the security footage of Hendrix’s murder. The duplicate had vanished from the incriminating video, banished from reality. It had disappeared as if some Hollywood digital artist had painstakingly removed my evil double frame by frame.

Without the tape, all I had to worry about was the guard I’d knocked out during my escape from the precinct. A five thousand dollar check and an apologetic phone call had convinced the officer to not press any charges. Monster hunting doesn’t pay jack, so it’s nice to have a healthy stock portfolio.

And that’s how I became a free man again.

I had not been back to the precinct since then, which explained why my stomach was in a knot at the moment. Today would be the first time I set foot in the place since my arrest nearly month earlier.

I easily found parking, thank God, a lucky break considering my volatile mood. I briskly strode into the bustling precinct, ignoring the stares, and quickly located Benson. The detective looked a lot better three weeks after the beating.

“Nice to see you looking like yourself again,” I said.

“Getting there,” he said without humor. There was a gravity about the man, a newfound sense of purpose. Not that he’d ever been a joker. But over the last two years, he’d slowly come to accept that the paranormal was real. He’d seen too much to pretend otherwise. But being possessed by a demon and facing a Duke of Hell in battle—well, nothing quite prepares anyone for such an experience. And it makes it challenging, if not impossible, to go back to one’s old life. Benson was a changed man, and I worried about his mental state.

“What’s going on?” I asked him, unable to hide the fear in my voice. “You said Archer might be in trouble. What happened?”

“Follow me. There’s someone you need to talk to.”

I fell into step with the detective as he led me into the precinct’s basement and through a maze of passageways. We were headed for the interrogation area, where I’d spent way too many hours a few weeks back. Thankfully we avoided bumping into Detective Orlando. I bet my number one fan wouldn’t approve of me being here. Luckily, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

We came to a stop in front of a one-way mirror looking into an interrogation room. During my last visit, I’d been the one on the other side of the mirror. Now, a woman sat behind the steel table, her face buried in her hands almost as if she’d nodded off from boredom. All I could make out was a tangle of black hair.

I eased closer to the observation window and tried to get a better look at her. Without warning, she stirred, and her head jerked upward. Her intense eyes met my own as if she possessed superhuman senses that allowed her to spot any observer foolish enough to watch her through the glass.

Which was impossible, wasn’t it?

“She does that a lot. Knows if someone is watching her. Or maybe she’s just paranoid.”

“Who am I looking at?” I asked. “And what does this have to do with Archer?”

“Parker Wang, age 31, disappeared two weeks ago, last seen boarding the nine train.”

I nodded, the pieces falling into place. I figured Parker was one of the twelve missing people Archer had mentioned in her voicemail.

“When we picked her up, it appeared she hadn’t bathed in weeks, and strange marks covered her body. But the real reason I called you in is that she attacked a transit officer with a whip.”

I jerked my head around to look at the detective. “A whip?”

Benson held up Archer’s mystical weapon, the Witch Whip which Skulick had gifted her a few months back. “I think this belongs to a mutual friend of ours.”

I swallowed hard. How would this woman get her hands on Archer’s weapon? Unless…

I didn’t finish the thought. Refused to.

“At two a.m. last night, a group of frightened college kids ran into Parker Wang on the number 9 train. When they brought her to the attention of a transit cop, she freaked out, went crazy with the whip. The officer had to forcefully subdue her.”

“What else did these kids tell you?”

“Nothing that makes any sense to me, but maybe you’ll think differently about it.”

“I’m all ears, Detective.”

“They say Archer stepped into the subway car around one-thirty. The kids were on their way back home from a night of drinking and dancing, so they were out of it. They quickly sobered up when the train pulled into a station none of them had ever seen before. And that’s when they saw Parker Wang. Or I should say they heard her. She was screaming her lungs out and running for her life.”

“Something was chasing her?”

“That seems to be the consensus. But no one saw anything in the dark.”

I made an impatient gesture with my hand, encouraging Benson to get on with it. “How does Archer come into this story?”

“I’m getting there. The ‘smoking babe on the train’—that’s a direct quote from a witness—pulled out a gun and rushed to Parker Wang’s aid on the dark platform. The college kids say something attacked Archer. Details are murky as no one saw the assailant in question. Parker Wang boarded the train seconds before the door closed and pulled out of the mystery station. Archer staid behind.”

Benson’s expression darkened, and he shook his head. “That’s the last anyone saw of her.”

I balled my fists, nails painfully cutting the palms of my hands. The thought of Archer alone, underground, with some creature stalking her…I had to find her. Now.

“What station was this?” I demanded

“That’s the other freaky part. They said the subway stop didn’t have a name. None of them had ever seen the stop before, and they ride the 9 train every day on their way to school. They said it was between Barnum and Chesterfield. Only one problem…”

“There is no stop between those two stations,” I finished, my voice hollow.

The number 9 train made a stop somewhere that shouldn’t exist. It seemed likely that all the missing people had fallen victim to the phantom subway stop. And now Archer was stuck there too.

“Do you have any idea what happened?” Benson asked, real concern in his eyes.

“I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”

I turned my attention to Parker Wang. She had buried her face in her hands again, seemingly intent on shutting out the world around her.

“I guess it’s time I had a little chat with Miss Wang.”

“Be my guest. I hope you have more luck than I did.”

I held out my hand. “Can I have the whip please?”

Benson nodded and handed me the mystical weapon. Whip in hand, I entered the interrogation room. A sour scent hung in the air, and I almost gagged. Sweat, dirt, and a faint hint of the rotten-egg stench of sulfur. Twenty years ago, the demon Morgal not only murdered my parents but also left a deep scar on my chest. It lit up in pain whenever I confronted demonic evil. As I took a seat in front of Parker, I felt the first stirrings of physical discomfort. A dark supernatural force churned within this woman, and my scar was picking up on it.

Parker Wang didn’t acknowledge my presence. She’d seemed way more interested in me when I was hiding behind a one-way mirror.

“Hi there, how are you feeling, Parker?”

No response. The woman stared at a point over my shoulder, not making eye contact.

I cut straight to the chase. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but we need your help. I believe you met a friend of mine recently. I think she’s in danger.”

I held up the Witch Whip, and her eyes flickered to it, life creeping into her blank stare.

“You recognize this whip, don’t you? It belongs to my friend.”

I put as much emotion into my voice as I could muster and continued. “Her name is Jane Archer. She’s important to me.”

Parker Wang’s lips quivered, almost as if she was too terrified to speak. I noted the brown-black bruises that lined her arms and neck. They look like burn marks. What had happened to this woman? Where had she been for the last twelve days before she popped up on the number nine train again?

“Do you know where my friend is?” I asked.

Parker Wang nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks. At last, a human reaction. Somehow I’d broken through to her. But her response didn’t bode well for Archer. My stomach churned with dread, but I pressed on. I had to get answers even if I might not like them.

“The Soulless have her now.” Parker lowered her head as if that explained everything.

“Who are the Soulless? Do you have any idea where Archer is now?”

She nodded mutely.

I swallowed hard and leaned closer. Only inches separated us, and the smell of her unwashed body enveloped me. Once again, I noted the sulfurous scent that clung to her skin.

“Where is she?” I asked, my voice a glassy whisper.

The silence stretched.

“Damn it, where is Archer? I have to help her,” I said, losing my patience at last.

“No one can help your friend now.”

My eyes narrowed, pulse quickening. “Why do you say that?”

“She’s in the Bone City.”

Tears ran down her ashen features. “They fed on my soul, and they will feed on hers.”

I chewed my lips and fought back the impulse to slam my fist into the steel table. This woman knew where Archer was, yet she refused to give me any straight answers. This cryptic bullshit was testing my patience.

The anger edged into my voice, and I struggled to keep it in check. “I know you’ve been through a lot, Parker. More than most people can imagine. I’m sick to my stomach knowing you had to suffer like that. But I think my friend is in trouble because she helped you escape from this terrible place. Now it’s your turn to help her.”

I reached out for Parker’s hand, but she reared back. Her eyes shone with feral energy. And that’s when they turned solid black. It required all my self-control not to bolt for the door.

Suddenly, the strange scent made sense, and I understood why my demonic scar pulsed with growing pain. A supernatural force had infected Parker with its foul essence. I was about to press my magical ring, the Seal of Solomon, against her forehead, but her gaze cleared and turned back to normal.

Darkness raged within her, but it was at bay for the moment. I had to reach the person inside of her without disturbing whatever evil had briefly taken her over. Attacking her would be the quickest way to destroy the progress we’d made and end this conversation right here and now.

“If you have any idea how I can find my friend, you have to tell me,” I pleaded with her. “Where is Archer?”

In a voice drained of all emotion, the woman said, “She’s in in Hell.”

More tears coursed down Parker’s cheeks. They turned black as they hit the table. Her hands shook, her lips distorting into a pained grimace.

I jumped to my feet, sensing something bad was about to happen. Before I could touch her, her whole body burst into flame, and a wave of searing heat drove me back. Parker Wang jerked up and contorted as hungry flames licked her flesh, her lips frozen in a silent scream.

Despite the agony she was enduring, she neither tried to extinguish the fire nor did she let out a peep, seemingly paralyzed by the same unholy force which now greedily consumed her form.

Lightning fast, I tore off my trench coat and threw it over the burning woman. The maneuver barely slowed down the fire. These weren’t normal flames but hellfire borne from black magic.

The door flew open, and a stunned Benson joined me in the interrogation room, a fire extinguisher in hand. His features mirrored my shock and horror as the extinguisher hissed. Foam hit the writhing human torch, but the fire continued to burn and burn.

Mercifully, the poor woman didn’t suffer for long. Within seconds, the flames had consumed her, leaving nothing but ash behind.

Hell had claimed another victim—and my only link to Archer had literally gone up in flames.

I could almost hear Morgal laughing at my helpless rage.

5

A blood-red sky silhouetted the ghoulish Bone City.

Archer refused to give into the despair that threatened to consume her. She had to keep looking for a way out of this nightmare. She did not understand where she was or how she could escape from this ghastly place. Luckily, she still had her trusty Glock, two magazines of silver ammo, and Bloodslayer. Whatever monsters might call this terrible place home, she would face them.

Yeah, right. You’re screwed, girl! You’ll never get out of here alive.

She struggled to shut down those fatalistic thoughts. None of this is helping. Either give up now or fight, she told herself.

Archer gritted her teeth. She was a fighter.

Parker Wang had somehow survived in this crazy place for days without the help of any fancy magical weapons. Archer wished she hadn’t lost the Witch Whip, but it could be worse. A lot worse.

Drawing comfort from this thought, Archer scanned the approaching storm clouds. A snarling wind buffeted her hair and whipped the bruised sky into a frenzy. The purple-black clouds hemorrhaged phosphorescent lightning.

Who knew what rain would be like in this freaky place? She imagined drops of sizzling acid slashing down on her and melting the flesh off her bones. She had to locate shelter, which meant she would have to seek refuge in one of the nightmarish structures.

A thought occurred to Archer. Parker had been one of missing people. Maybe there were more survivors in this city. People who had gotten off at the wrong subway stop and ended up in the fucking Twilight Zone.

Taking sharp, quick breaths, Archer sprinted down the deserted streets, Glock in hand. There were no cars, no other sounds besides the rumbling storm, no soul in sight. This place was devoid of life, a dead city. The buildings loomed on both sides like monstrous cathedrals, shrines devoted to deities beyond her comprehension, silently watching her. How many poor souls had it taken to gather enough bones to build such giant ivory towers?

And that raised an interesting question—who had done all the killing?

Almost as if the invisible denizens of this horrific city had read her mind, a shrieking wail pierced the necropolis. It was the same ululating cry of the creature that had pursued Parker Wang.

Archer grew still and tried to determine the direction the howling sound was coming from. Every hair stood on end. She caught a fleeting disturbance in the air, the sensation of something moving behind her in the near distance. But when she looked around, there was nothing there.

She kept searching the forlorn streets for any signs of movement.

Nothing.

She glanced up at one of the tall structures, and that’s when she spotted a cluster of black shapes flitting past its windows. Could one even describe them as windows? More like holes in the nightmarish architecture.

The shadowy forms vanished as soon as she laid eyes on them. Had she imagined the moving silhouettes?

Streetlights buzzed and flickered. Archer narrowed her gaze, searching.

And suddenly, she sensed movement right behind her.

The world slowed to a crawl as she turned on her heels and came face to face with a figure from a nightmare.

A hooded, ghostly presence lurked about thirty feet away. Clothed in a tattered, black flowing robe, the thing measured about seven feet and was rail-thin, its features hidden by a monk-like hood.

As the creature tilted its head in her direction, there was only a black vacuum where the face should be. Twin luminous orbs flashed in the blackness.

Archer shuddered and took a step back.

The robe stirred, and the hooded specter rose. It seemed to fill out, becoming more substantial as it moved toward her. Mist spilled from under the swirling robe. The ground seemed to rot and turn black in the creature’s wake.

What was she up against here? Archer had never heard of anything like this wraith, let alone faced one of its kind. Would her weapons even work against it?

Another wail shattered the deathly quiet. More cloaked figures joined the first apparition and swiftly floated toward her in dark formation.

Terrified, Archer squeezed the trigger of her Glock.

Silver bullets slammed into the first wraith. The bullets slowed it down but didn’t seemed to be causing any permanent harm. Bloodslayer might fare better in a fight, but she would have to let the specters get too close for comfort. Besides, even if the stake could hurt them, they would still overwhelm her by sheer numbers alone.

Retreat was her best and only option.

As the dark horde closed in, Archer ran for her life.

More of them appeared from the alleys between the bone structures. Panic seized Archer as she grasped their plan. They were forming a ring around her, intent on trapping her and barring her escape.

Shit, shit, shit, she thought, her eyes desperately casting around for a way out of this horror.

And that’s when she spotted movement in the next building up ahead. This time around, the silhouette outlined in the structure’s doorway didn’t wear a monk’s hood. This new figure was human, female as far as she could tell from this distance, and was beckoning her. Could this woman, whoever she was, protect her from the wraiths?

Archer doubted it, but she still made a go for the building. She might be running straight into a trap, but it beat waiting for the unwavering reapers to catch up with her on the open street.

She stormed into the skyscraper, gun up, and blasted the nearest wraith as it attempted to follow. The hooded reaper reared back with a bloodcurdling howl, its robe dispersing momentarily before reconstituting itself.

A black hand extended from the billowing robe of another wraith, and she picked up her pace. What would happen if one these creatures touched her? She decided she’d rather not find out.

Tapping into all her remaining strength, she exploded into the lobby of the building. Like the exterior, the inside of the structure was lined with bones. The architects of this city had laid out the skeletons of countless people to form a myriad of ghoulish designs. Images of the Catacombs of Paris flashed through Archer’s stunned mind. She had visited the underground ossuaries years earlier when she was still in college. The labyrinth under the City of Light held the remains of over six million people. The visit had made her contemplate her mortality for the first time in her young life. As impressive as the catacombs had been, this place was on another scale.

Her eyes ticked back and forth, scanning the phantasmagorical lobby for exits and potential cover. How long did she have until the wraiths followed her into this bone crypt?

A panicked thought cut through her mind. Had she imagined the woman beckoning to her? Had it been just wishful thinking on her part? No, she knew what she’d seen. There was someone here who wanted to help her. Perhaps another survivor like Parker. All she had to do was find her—before it was too late.

“Over here!” a voice shouted.

She spun toward the woman who had appeared in a shadowy alcove. A keening cry rattled the lobby. The specters had almost caught up with her.

Archer still could not make out any details about her would-be rescuer. It didn’t matter. Whoever this woman was, she represented Archer’s best option at the moment.

Mind made up, Archer rushed after the shadowy figure.

6

Your friend is trapped in Hell.

Those had been Parker Wang’s last words.

I didn’t want to think about the many horrors the young woman must have endured. Horrors Archer now faced. I felt sick to my stomach with anxiety.

As I fought my way through traffic, I tried to make sense of what I knew so far. The number 9 train was at the heart of this mystery. As a general rule, subway trains didn’t pass between worlds or make pitstops in Hell.

I would have to consult with Cyon. As a former servant of the dimension of fear, he might know more about this mysterious Bone City. To my surprise, I found the loft empty when I got back. Where was the demon? Over the course of the last few weeks, it had been impossible to get him to do anything, least of all leave our base of operation. And now that I needed his help, he’d pulled a disappearing act. Great!
I sighed and checked my watch. It was a little past noon. Where could Cyon be? I seriously doubted he’d gone to pick up lunch for us.

I looked at the desk. The three copies of the Daemonium were gone.

And then it hit me.

Cyon must’ve headed to the warehouse where Kovan Crull and his band of fanatics had given Jim Jones a run for his money. A shiver crept up my spine. What was the demon up to and why hadn’t he brought me along? Was he planning on heading to Hell by himself?

I put a lid on my growing anger and frustration and rushed into the garage. A minute later I was back on the road and headed for the warehouse. Rain pelted the windshield. The wipers worked furiously. The recent bout of sunshine in the Cursed City had unceremoniously come to a wet and windy end.

Not for the first time, I wondered why the hell anyone would want to live in this town.

I turned on the radio, hoping some tunes might brighten my gloomy mood. After uselessly scanning the airwaves for a few minutes, I failed to find a station I liked and killed the radio. I guess I would silently stew in my funk.

A half an hour later, I whipped up to the warehouse. A thick fog shrouded everything in gray wisps. The property sat there, forlorn and abandoned, an eyesore in a neighborhood full of them. A weathered for-sale sign hung on the door, but I doubted there would ever be any takers. Homicidal cultists committing mass suicide didn’t translate into real estate dollars. From the looks of it, the owners had cut their losses and given up on unloading the property. Maybe as time passed, people would forget about the tragic cult massacre. Personally, I doubted it. Stories like that have a way of sticking in the public consciousness.

I parked the Equus Bass, turned up the collar of my trench coat and got out. A fine drizzle showered my face. To be honest, I welcomed the rain. I’d been struggling to stay awake ever since leaving the precinct.

As I stepped up to the structure, memories flooded my mind. For a moment, the past came back to life. I saw myself standing next to Skulick, Hellseeker in hand, ready to break down the warehouse’s door. Life had taken a sharp turn for Skulick and me on that fateful day. It felt like a million years ago and part of another reality.

So much had happened since then. So much had changed.

I banished all thoughts of the past and barged into the warehouse. As soon as I set foot in the place, I saw my instincts had been on the money. Wards and various occult symbols covered the walls and floor of the vast space. Cyon crouched at the center of this desolate, dusty warehouse, the three books of the Daemonium splayed out around him in a triangular pattern. He was busy leafing through one of the leather-bound tomes, his lips forming words I couldn’t make out and wouldn’t have been able to understand even if I had.

He looked like he was having a blast. Demons, I thought bitterly.

“Love what you’ve done to the place,” I said. “If the whole occult detective thing doesn’t work out for you, you should give interior design a shot.”

Judging by the withering look my statement had earned me, Cyon was in no mood for jokes.

To be honest, I regretted my flippant comment as soon as I uttered it. The history of this place commanded respect. I eyed the dusty floor and could almost see the bodies of the cult members. One didn’t have to be psychic or have a demonic scar like mine to sense the ghosts which lingered here.

Cyon’s eyebrows drew together as he glared at me. “Don’t step on any of the symbols. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to interrupt an occult ritual?”

“Next time, why don’t you put up a do-not-disturb sign?”

Cyon sighed. “What do you want, Raven?”

All kidding aside, I’m not a fool and don’t take black magic lightly. Morgal’s mark would have warned me if occult forces were already active in the warehouse. Cyon was still nailing down the formula that would open a gateway to another world. Judging by his quick-tempered response, he was making little or no progress.

All trace of humor left me as I said, “Archer is trapped on the other side.”

Cyon cocked an eyebrow. I had his full attention now. Good.

“The other side of what?” he asked warily.

“Ever hear of the Bone City?”

Cyon’s eyes widened, and he jumped to his feet, his back ramrod straight. It felt weird to be standing face to face with the demon like this after sharing one mind for so long. His possession of Skulick’s rejuvenated body added another surreal layer to the encounter.

“What has happened?” Cyon asked.

I quickly brought the demon up to speed.

“Why would a train be able to cross into another world?” Cyon mused once I’d finished my update.

“Excellent question. I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

Cyon rapidly stalked back and forth, and I could almost see the thoughts churning behind his eyes. His furious pacing was making me dizzy.

“So, the Bone City,” I said. “You’ve obviously heard of it.”

“There are infinite levels to the dimension of fear. The Bone City is one of the many realms of darkness controlled by Morgal.”

Cyon’s words filled me with dread. In a weird, irrational way I had prayed Cyon would dismiss Parker Wang’s story as a paranoid delusion. But there was a small light at the end of the tunnel. If we could figure out how and why this subway had bridged two realities, we might apply these insights to our own quest to travel between worlds. So far, Cyon had failed to knock open the doors of Hell. It sounded crazy, but maybe the subway train would succeed where the three volumes of the Daemonium had failed.

“We should investigate this mystery station,” Cyon suggested.

I nodded and buttoned up my trench coat, preparing to brave the rain once more. We had a train to catch.

7

The keening shrieks of the pursuing wraiths reverberated through the building. It made Archer think of wolves howling against the night. The chilling lamentations would have paralyzed the average person with terror, yet Archer kept moving. Survival dominated her thoughts and held the feelings of dread at bay.

For now, anyway. She wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take.

Tapping into her last reservoir of strength, she fixed her gaze on the back of the strange woman who’d beckoned her to seek refuge inside the bone tower. They shot up a series of winding stairs, the railings made from shin bones that Archer refused to touch.

The woman suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, alarmed by more shrieks from two flights up. The wraiths were approaching from below and above, determined to box them in.

The woman quickly led the way into an adjoining passageway. A blur of skulls and bones wherever Archer looked, a glaring reminder of death’s inevitability. Doorways fashioned from fleshless shoulder blades, pelvic bones and rib cages lined the corridors, opening into dark chambers.

The mystery woman darted into one of the rooms, and Archer automatically followed suit. She froze, looking around in confusion. This new room measured about fifteen feet across and appeared to be empty. No other exits led out of the room.

Where had the woman gone?

Archer almost cried out when she felt a hand close around her mouth and pull her into the shadowy corner next to the doorway.

The strange woman hissed into her ear. “Do as I tell you if you want to live.”

Archer hesitated for a beat. Putting her trust into a complete stranger was out of character, but she found herself in an alien world being chased by ghosts. She needed an ally if she wanted to make it out of here alive. And this stranger was the only one who had volunteered for the job.

“Try to clear your mind. The Soulless feed on fear and despair. But there is a way you can make yourself invisible. Think of the best moments of your life. Happy memories, the best of times. The ones that remind you that life is worth living. The ones that sustained you during the bad days.”

Archer’s heart jack-hammered as the wails grew louder. How was she supposed to be positive at a time like this?

Every fiber in her body wanted to pull away. Wanted to keep running and put distance between her and nightmare stalkers hot on her trail.

The woman’s grip tightened around her shoulder. Strangely enough, Archer couldn’t feel the heat of her rescuer’s body. The woman was cold as a block of ice. Was she a specter too? She felt solid. Real. For a terrifying beat, Archer wondered if she might have died without realizing it. Was her real body bleeding out on a dirty subway floor somewhere while dark forces targeted her soul in the next world?

No, I’m alive! I’m alive, and I will let no one tell me otherwise!

Blood roared in Archer’s ears. She couldn’t see these robed creatures from this angle, but she sensed their inexorable approach on a physical level. She smelled them in the air, a mixture of ozone and crackling electricity, felt them in the goosebumps on her flesh.

The woman dug her hand into Archer’s shoulder. Archer stopped struggling and slumped forward. She would play along—for now.

The stranger hadn’t led her to this chamber to offer her up to the spooks as a sacrifice. She wanted to save Archer. But why? She doubted this woman was helping her out of the goodness of her heart. There was a catch here. An angle she was playing.

Focus on one problem at a time, Archer told herself.

The wailing grew louder. The spooks were almost upon them now.

Archer held her breath, sensing the wraiths had arrived. Only a few feet separated them now. She tried to fill her mind with positive thoughts and failed miserably. She found it too hard to disconnect from this world of horrors.

It’s impossible, but I have to try!

Archer closed her eyes and shut out the world to the best of her abilities. Time to use an old trick that had come in handy when she needed to clear her head in the past. Archer imagined herself in a movie theater looking up at a giant screen, waiting for the show to start. And as she looked up at the blank canvas, everything else faded away. The pursuing shadows, the city of nightmares, the creepy woman who was helping her—Archer cast them all out.

Suddenly, one image from her past broke through, flickering across the screen she had created inside her mind. She saw her father holding her hand as he led her through the police precinct where he worked as a homicide detective. She’d been eight at the time and already a big fan of police TV shows. How she’d begged her dad to give her a tour! She vividly recalled trying on an oversized police cap and holding a real baton. All the officers had made her feel so special. That was the day she had decided to become a detective.

The strange woman’s grip eased, bringing her back to a far less pleasant reality.

“They’re gone. It worked.”

The woman guided her slowly to the chamber’s window. Fiery red light seeped through the opening, washing the stranger in its glow. Archer finally got a better look at her rescuer. She was filthy, her clothes ragged and her hair lank. Some might have called her attractive once upon a time, but a harsh existence had eroded most of her looks. Heavily lined skin stretched tightly over a gaunt frame, the bones outlined. Her haunted, deathly white features almost blended in with the bone landscape of this terrible city. The woman regarded her with serious, sad eyes.

She nodded at the window, and Archer crept closer. The woman pointed at the streets four stories below.

They weren’t empty anymore. A middle-aged man was running down the lonely road. Despite the distance between them, Archer recognized the terror in the man’s eyes. A moment later she saw why as shadowy shapes converged on him. The hooded ghosts spilled into the road, black robes shimmering in the otherworldly crimson sunlight. Like a school of hungry sharks, they circled the hapless man.

His eyes darted back and forth, desperately looking for a way out and finding none. A heartbeat later, the robed figures descended on the man in a flurry of flapping robes and swirling mist.

Archer couldn’t see exactly what happened next, but the sound of rending flesh and the man’s screams told their own story.

Archer couldn’t help but think of vampires. Like the bloodsuckers she’d hunted, the robed creatures were feeding on this poor victim. Archer averted her gaze as she fought back revulsion. She’d seen enough.

“Come,” the woman said, jerking her chin at the door.

The journey through this mad realm continued, and Archer had no choice but to follow.

8

The subway train rocketed below the earth as if determined to burrow its way straight into the deepest and darkest pits of Hell.

Cyon and I pushed our way through the throng of commuters crowding the number 9 train. Judging by the demon’s snarl and murderous gaze, he wasn’t having the time of his life. Couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t a fan of mass transit myself. People stepping on your feet and massaging you with their elbows wasn’t my idea of a good time. The air reeked of too many overworked and overstressed folks packed too close together.

As usual, our timing sucked. Rush hour had arrived, and the trains were full. Cyon eyed the tired commuters with thinly veiled contempt.

“Who are these people? Can’t they afford cars?”

“Not in this city.” I thought of my earlier road rage and added, “Besides, traffic aboveground is even worse.”

Cyon shook his head and gritted his teeth. “You wanted to know what Hell feels like? This is it.”

“Only one of us gets to make the lame jokes around here,” I said.

“Who said I was joking?”

I tuned out Cyon’s voice and focused on the task at hand. My demonic scar failed to pick up any paranormal impressions from the train. Maybe all the shoving and cursing was distracting me. Getting around the Cursed City was a contact sport for these commuters. The train stopped, and a mass of people jostled their way to the exit.

Archer is trapped somewhere far worse, I told myself as I fought my way through the surging knot of humanity. I needed to reach the platform and push my way onto the next car before the train started moving again. My plan was simple: check out every car and see if either Cyon or I could detect anything unusual. If black magic was active on this train, the scar on my chest should pick up on it.

Unfortunately, we had to try seven cars before we hit pay dirt.

Pain raced through me, icy fingers of agony pressing into flesh and muscle, and I gnashed my teeth. It felt like someone had doused me with burning gasoline. No doubt about it, occult forces were active in this subway, concentrated in this one car.

I swapped a look with Cyon, and he mirrored my grave expression.

“You’re picking it up too, huh?” I asked.

The demon nodded. “This is the train’s occult energy source,” he confirmed while eying me thoughtfully. “I would very much like to search this subway car. Ideally when it’s less crowded. There is nothing we can do right now.”

Part of me wanted to protest, all too aware how valuable time had become, but Cyon was right. At the moment, our options were limited.

We squeezed our way out of the subway car at the next stop and headed to the surface. The polluted city air felt delicious after the stuffy subway ride.

We needed to regroup and discuss our next move, so I led Cyon to the nearest coffee shop. The café was only about half full, with a few students pounding away on their laptops and an elderly group of friends chatting away in hushed tones at one table. Jazz drifted from the speakers, adding to the laid-back vibe of the place. I immediately felt tension ease from my shoulders as I inhaled the familiar smell of coffee. I hadn’t even realized how anxious I’d been since learning of Archer’s disappearance.

I ordered the largest, blackest coffee on the menu. Cyon, to my surprise, selected a sparkling water flavored with fruit. At four bucks for a small can, the real Skulick would have called it a real rip-off. We took seats at a table in the far corner of the shop. I wanted to make sure no one listened in on our conversation even though most people wouldn’t be able to make heads or tail of the craziness we were about to discuss.

I drummed my fingers against the table to the visible displeasure of my demonic partner. Every second we sat here was a second where Archer remained stranded in another world. A world where my greatest enemy wielded absolute power.

“I know you’re worried about Miss Archer, but we have to be patient,” Cyon said. He cracked open his beverage and took a sip.

Cyon was right. I had to stop fretting over Archer and focus on the problem at hand. Except that every time I tried, my thoughts were swamped with worry and fear for the woman I loved.

I took a long pull of coffee and willed myself to start thinking like a professional monster hunter again. Archer needed me to do my job. “Okay, why is the magic concentrated only in one car?”

Cyon’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. “It takes an enormous amount of energy to breach two worlds. To pull even a single subway car into the dimension of fear—”

“Would be a mean feat,” I said, nodding.

“Would overload most spells,” Cyon said, slightly irritated at the interruption.

“So let me get this straight. Only one car enters Hell while the rest of train remains in our reality?”

“That would be my guess.”

And it only happens between the hours of midnight and two a.m., I thought. At least that’s when the missing people were last seen boarding the train—including Archer.

“So if you find yourself in the wrong subway car at the wrong time and are foolish enough to get off at the wrong station...”

“You’ll end up stepping into a living nightmare without a return ticket,” Cyon concluded.

A frown furrowed my brows. “What could trigger enough magic to make a subway car pass between realities? And who would want a subway train to make sporadic pit stops in Hell?”

“Excellent questions, Raven. Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers yet.”

Another idea popped into my head. “Why don’t we just ride the train after midnight?”

“And see if it stops in the Bone City?”

I shrugged. It sounded like it would be worth a shot.

Cyon leaned closer. His eyes narrowed, voice becoming intense. “Let’s say it works. We transition over. How do you expect us to get back? Do we simply wait for the next train to arrive? And what if the train doesn’t always enter the same realm? What if we end up somewhere unknown? You don’t want to get lost in Hell.”

I believed him. Who in their right mind would even want to go to Hell in the first place? My concern for Archer was making me throw all caution to the wind.

“Here is my advice if you want to save Miss Archer and Skulick. Don’t get yourself killed first.”

I slammed another jolt of caffeine into my system. “Good talk, bud. Thanks for clarifying that.”

“Be patient, Raven,” Cyon said. “We will look at the train once it stops running for the night, figure out what’s making the train cross over, and use what we learn for our own purposes.”

I must not have looked convinced because the demon actually reached out and patted my hand, just once, before adding, “Archer will be fine. She’s faced horrors before.”

Not like this, I thought but kept my mouth shut. I knew Cyon was trying to make me feel better. Or at least stop me from making a rash decision.

Resigned, I palmed my cell and prepared to make a call. “Okay, let’s do this your way, Cyon. I’ll find out when the number 9 train retires for the evening.”

I put in a call to the transit authority. I almost shouted with joy when I reached a live person within ten minutes of fighting my way through one irritating phone menu after another. Once done, I announced, “We have a date, partner. The number 9 train makes its last trip around three. The train then proceeds to a downtown subway yard near Boyle Avenue and Ninth.”

“Excellent,” Cyon said. He finished his sparkling water and set it down on the table.

What can we expect to find out there?”

“I have a theory. But why even speculate at this point? We’ll know soon enough what we’re up against here.”

I looked askance at Cyon, but I knew better than to press him to share his theories. The demon wouldn’t give up any information unless he wanted to.

“Sounds like we have about eight hours to kill,” I said.

“I’m going back to the warehouse to continue my research. Why don’t you use the time to catch up on some sleep?”

I stared at Cyon. Did the demon expect me to take a nap while the woman I loved was trapped in a dimension of unearthly horrors?

Cyon shrugged. “It’s your call, Raven. If you won’t rest, you better get another double espresso. It will be a long night.”

I decided to tag along with Cyon. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, but I wanted to be around in case he discovered anything new. We returned to the grim warehouse where the Crimson Circle had committed mass suicide, and after several hours with nothing to occupy my time, I started to feel sleepy. While Cyon flipped through the copies of the Daemonium and tried to solve mystical puzzles I’d rather not dwell on, I felt my eyelids grow heavy. Cyon was a ball of energy, a formidable force of nature. I envied the demon to a degree. He was hitching a ride in a human body, but he didn’t share the needs of most people made of flesh and blood. He ate about as often as your average supermodel and could go with almost no sleep. I couldn’t remember him every taking a break, much less a power nap. Cyon’s physical shell limited him in some ways, but he was more than human. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said about yours truly. At least not anymore.

I shook myself and sat up straighter on the bench where I’d been dozing. Did I miss the strength and endurance I’d experienced while I shared my body with Cyon? Did I actually miss being possessed?

Talk about a disturbing thought. I sure as hell didn’t miss Cyon’s sarcastic voice in my head. And I certainly didn’t miss the disfigured demon hand.

Before I knew it, I conked out again. Cyon’s face was the first thing I saw when my eyes flipped open.

“It’s time, partner.”

I scanned my watch. Shit, Cyon wasn’t kidding. It was almost two a.m. I’d been out cold for six hours. I felt well rested, if a little stiff from sleeping on the hard bench, and energized and ready to take on the underworld.

We arrived at the subway train depot about forty minutes later. The place put most haunted houses to shame. Some dedicated yards are above ground, some below. Naturally, this one was underground. The city stored the number 9 on a half-finished, now-abandoned express track. Our flashlights lanced the dark tunnels, and I could make out strange graffiti written in Russian. Probably evidence of gang activity, but it wasn’t the human threat that scared me. The subterranean depot gave me the chills and made my imagination run wild. What sort of beasts could hide in these shadows?

“Are you all right, Raven?”

I flashed Cyon an empty smile. To the demon’s twisted worldview, this shadowy tomb probably looked like a tropical paradise. Once again, I wondered if I could go through with this. How would I fare once we entered a realm that would make this tunnel look like Disney World? Could mortals brave such a place without losing their minds?

I guess you’ll find out soon enough.

The beams of our flashlights looked like ghosts in the poorly illuminated tunnel. Condensation coated the walls, and strange sounds echoed through the network of tunnels. I identified the source for some of them: the wind whistling down narrow passageways, rats skittering among the tracks, other trains tearing through the city’s stone arteries, the distance distorting the roar of the iron behemoths that called this underworld home into something more bestial. Then there were noises which defied understanding and description. Weird pounding vibrations that seemed to emanate from the stone itself. Low moans that suffused this underground realm with an eerie life of its own.

I did my best to block out all these creepy noises. We had a job to do.

It didn’t take us long to locate the number 9 train. It loomed quietly on the express track like a beached, robotic whale. In the darkness, it looked strangely organic.

We walked the length of the train, our lights mapping the way. Within minutes my scar throbbed. We had reached the subway car where the black magic was most active.

“This is it,” I said unnecessarily. Cyon could feel it too.

He nodded and explored the subway with his flashlight. The car gleamed in the milky light, its surface unblemished. No one had tried to graffiti the number 9 train. Even the taggers could tell something wasn’t right with this subway car. Dark forces were active here.

Following a sudden instinct, I bent down and pointed my flashlight underneath train. As my beam of light stabbed the darkness of the undercarriage, a few rats fled. Cyon crouched down beside me. Light danced over the wheels and the cluster of machinery. I wasn’t an engineer, but everything looked kosher to my untrained eyes. But physical senses can deceive you when dealing with the supernatural. The pain in my scar intensified, which meant I was closing in on the infernal power source. Before I could talk myself out of it, I slipped into the black space below the train. Morgal’s mark would be my guide.

A cloying sense of claustrophobia gripped me. Unforgiving steel and unfathomable shadows enclosed me like a coffin. My pulse quickened, and my breath hitched in my throat.

“Stay calm,” Cyon advised. “I’m right here.”

I steadied my breathing the way Skulick had taught me all those years ago and focused on the job at hand. On Archer. I hadn’t climbed under this train in search of some sick thrill. I was here for a damn good reason.

Putting this insanity in those terms helped me regain my cool. I kept sliding my way under the train, the tracks digging into my back while I concentrated on my scar. The pain ebbed and flowed. If I moved in one direction, the agony subsided somewhat, so I shifted my body the other way.

I don’t know how long I explored the world under the subway car. Time became meaningless. When my flashlight landed on a strangely adorned box lodged below the center of the train, previously hidden by machinery, I knew I’d hit pay dirt.

“Have you found something?” Cyon asked.

Instead of answering immediately, I reached out and touched the box. The moment my fingers connected, my whole body contorted with pain, a wave of black magic rippling down my spine.

I stifled a cry.

This was it. I’d located the train’s magical power source. As I studied it in the beam of the flashlight, I realized I was familiar with this highly adorned, coffin-shaped box. Skulick had called it the Devil’s Coffin. It contained the ashes of a demon he and my father had slain before I was even born. I had last seen the accursed thing inside our vault before the Crimson Circle had raided it. And that meant, a surviving member of the super cult must’ve placed it here!

9

Archer followed the woman down a tubular shaft into the yawning darkness below. Human rib bones, bleached clean of all flesh, formed the rungs of a ladder. Archer gagged and fought back her disgust and mounting claustrophobia. A smell of putrefying meat pervaded the tight space. She had momentarily escaped the wraiths, but her nightmare was far from over.

Archer had tried to pry information from her rescuer, but each time she’d cut her off. “We aren’t safe here. Soon.”

Archer reluctantly bit her tongue. The stranger seemed to believe the hooded spooks might appear at a moment’s notice and refused to let her guard down until they reached some sort of a haven. Archer couldn’t imagine that such a place could exist in this city of the Damned She wondered again why the mysterious woman was helping her. Who was she? And where were they going? Being kept in suspense like this was driving her crazy.

Archer lost all sense of time as they continued their descent down the narrow shaft. She honestly couldn’t tell whether minutes or hours had passed before they set foot on solid ground again. Her feeling of disorientation was growing. Maybe it was the air she was breathing. It seemed tainted with ash and sulfur. Her throat felt dry, and her chest itched.

The mysterious woman grabbed her hand again, and she allowed the woman to pull her along. Archer was at her mercy—a feeling she absolutely hated. Her muscles ached from the exertion of the long descent, and she wanted to rest. She wanted a cold beer. She wanted to be home.

The bottom of the shaft opened into a narrow passageway made of black stone, and soon they emerged in a far wider tunnel dominated by a heavy stream of water. Correction: not water but a disgusting green sludge that roared down the winding tunnel system. The unidentifiable substance radiated a spectral light that painted grotesques shadow on the tunnel walls. The place reminded her of a storm drain.

Archer lagged behind, her feet dragging. She was exhausted, scared, and frustrated. The stranger noticed that she wasn’t keeping pace with her any longer.

“We need to keep moving,” the woman said. “The Soulless don’t venture down here, but there are other dangers.”

“I don’t care. I want to know who you are and why you’re helping me.”

“You don’t understand…”

“Then make me understand.” The words came out sharper than she intended, her pent-up frustration boiling over. “I can’t keep following you into the dark without even knowing where I am.”

“Don’t you already know?” The woman’s voice had become a raspy whisper.

Archer’s rescuer stepped closer. Phosphorescent green light washed over her from the slimy river. Archer’s eyes widened. The woman’s long gray coat had parted, revealing gaping wounds in her neck and chest. Archer recognized those injuries, had seen them way too many times. Bullet wounds. And judging from the entry points, they would have been lethal. Blood bubbled from the cratered skin. How could this woman be standing in front of her? Unless…

Unless she isn’t alive anymore.

The woman’s eyes lit up with a red, inhuman light, and Archer recoiled. Suddenly, she wished she hadn’t pushed for answers. Panicking, she drew her Glock.

“You can’t kill that which is already dead,” the woman said matter-of-factly.

“You’d be surprised,” Archer said. “It’s kind what I do for a living these days.”

The stranger sighed and closed her jacket. Archer was grateful not to have to keep staring at the wounds.

“You’re in Hell, and I’m one of the Damned. Does that clear things up for you?”

Archer swallowed hard and somehow found the strength to keep asking questions. At heart, she was still a detective.

“Hell is a city made of bones?”

“One of the many levels to this place, I hear. This city is the only part I know.”

“And those spooks?”

“We call them the Soulless. They feed on the Damned.”

“Christ,” Archer muttered, remembering the screams as the hooded creatures had devoured their prey. “Where did they come from?”

“They were here long before I arrived. If they catch you, they will consume your soul. It doesn’t matter if you’re alive or dead.”

Archer frowned. “I don’t understand. If you’re already dead, how can they hurt you?”

“I lost my life, but I still have my soul. My memories. The parts that make me myself. But every time they feed, they take another piece of who you are.”

The dead woman held up her arms, revealing a series of terrible marks that looked like burns. Archer remember spotting the same injuries on Parker Wang.

The dead woman took a step closer, her voice heavy with emotion.

“I don’t remember my mother anymore, nor I can I picture the face of the man I loved. I don’t remember the good times, only the bad ones. Every beating my father gave me. Every arrest, every moment I spent in jail. The agony of every bullet that went through me when the cops cut me down after I robbed a drug store.”

The woman grabbed the barrel of Archer’s Glock, which was still pointing at her, and pushed it aside.

“I’ve died a thousand times in my mind. The bad memories are all that they left me.”

Archer shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why did you save me?”

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re far from safe.”

Archer’s eyes flickered with impatience. “You know what I mean. Why get involved at all?”

The damned woman cackled. “Maybe I lied. Maybe I still have a few memories. I haven’t turned into one of those things yet, have I?”

Archer chewed this over, realizing the implication. “You’re saying those wraiths are human?”

“They were once like me. Damned souls who washed up in this godforsaken place, who lived every day in terror. The Soulless draw on our suffering, taking one good memory at a time. But there comes a day when everything changes.”

The woman leaned closer, her eyes flashing with intensity. “Once you lose those last good memories, you become like them. A servant of darkness. Part of the unending cycle of despair and pain in this place.”

Archer shuddered. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“It’s too late for me. I guess I deserve to be here, so you shouldn’t feel sorry for me.” The woman squared her shoulders. “But you’re still alive, at least for now. You can leave on the next train.”

“I ask you again. Why help me? Is this your way of seeking redemption?”

“That’s one word for it.”

The woman’s eyes gleamed, and she let out a harsh laugh. There was no warmth in that laughter.

“I got one good memory left. One last part of me I can cling to during my darkest hours.” She smiled sadly, revealed blackened, meth-rotted teeth. “I had a daughter. I think she’s still alive. Hard to keep track of time in this place. But I think I would know in my heart if she was gone. Beautiful girl, smart as a whip. I loved her in my way. Which meant I stayed away from her so I wouldn’t pull her down with me. She was eleven when I died.”

Archer wasn’t sure how to react. This woman had been a menace to society while alive, but she was trying to do the right thing now. During her time as a cop, she’d seen a lot of perps like this, and part of her was disgusted. But another part of her felt sympathy for the lost soul.

“I can see you judging me,” the woman said. “Look, I don’t know why or how, but in the last few days, live ones like you have been arriving in this place. I’m not sure what’s going on, and from the looks of it, you’re just as clueless. All I know is that they showed up on the train. And the Soulless have developed an appetite for the poor sons of bitches. I guess the living taste better than the dead.”

More laughter, but this time it seemed forced.

“See, once I caught on what was happening, I paid attention. I saw an opportunity. And soon I recognized the pattern. The schedule.”

“You know where and when the next train will arrive,” Archer said, her heart thumping against her ribs. Could the woman be telling the truth?

“That’s right. And with a little luck, I’ll make sure you’re on it.”

Archer’s eyes filled with understanding. “You’re the one who helped Parker Wang escape.”

“I did. But the Soulless got to the poor girl first. Drained her almost to the brink. I doubt she’ll be able to keep her end of the bargain. Not even sure if she made it.”

“What bargain?” Archer asked, suddenly wary.

“The same deal I’m gonna offer you. I’ll get you out of here, lady. And you’ll promise to find my little girl and tell her mommy loves her with all her heart.”

10

We were back in the warehouse where Kovan Crull’s flock had chosen death and created a rift between our world and the dimension beyond. The coffin-shaped box now rested on a small table inside the otherwise almost empty space.

After discovering the box, I’d found other occult symbols etched in the train’s undercarriage. A quick search of the car revealed more such engravings under the seats.

I eyed Cyon and said, “What do you make of it?”

“I’m not entirely sure. This is a complex ritual powered by the remains of the demon in this box.”

I nodded in agreement.

“This wasn’t the work of an amateur, that much is certain. I think our old friends at the Crimson Circle were behind this. Probably a survivor of the cult who wanted to avenge his fallen brothers and sisters. The big question, what do they gain by kidnapping people and dragging them into Hell?”

“Status, for one,” Cyon said. “Most people who end up in the dimension of fear deserve to be there. They’re the Damned. But feeding demons living humans, innocent mortals? That’s a delicacy not even Morgal could resist.”

I studied Cyon, sensing that there was more to the story. Why was the demon holding back?

“What aren’t you telling me?”

The demon paused for a fraction too long. “I think whoever did this was hoping to widen the existing breach.”

I balled my fists. A similar thought had crossed my mind, but I had hoped it wasn’t true. “So by having this train cross over every night, it was expanding the rift?”

“Precisely. I think we stopped it in time, but if it had continued unchecked…”

Cyon broke off. He didn’t have to finish the thought. This train could have made things a lot worse for the city.

After a moment, he continued, “Unlike the ritual that created the breach in the first place, this was a much slower process. It would’ve taken weeks, perhaps months to punch a real, permanent hole between our worlds.”

I shook my head. God, I hated fanatics. They were worse than monsters. How could anyone in their right mind turn against their own kind and want to see this world overrun by demons? At least the supernatural threats I faced followed basic rules. People did some crazy shit.

“Do you have any good news?” I asked.

“I’ve been working on a spell that will allow us to cross over. With the remains of this demon as a power source, I think I can pull it off.”

Hope flared up inside of me. I tempered it with a healthy dose of caution. “How long before we can do this?”

“A few hours at most.”

There was one more thing I needed to know. “And how do we get back to our world once we’re in Hell?”

“The spell on the subway train allowed the car to transition for approximately one minute. With a little luck, I can extend that time to an hour.”

One hour to find Archer and Skulick’s soul. And take out Morgal. It sounded like an impossible feat.

“This just keeps getting better,” I muttered.

“Have a little faith, Raven,” Cyon said.

I took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, what do we have to do?”

“The runes inside the subway are the map which will lead us to the Bone City.” Cyon nodded at the new runes and glyphs he had painted all over the warehouse. “I recreated these symbols, so we should end up in the same part of Hell as the missing people. It should be relatively simple to locate Miss Archer and bring her home.”

If she is still alive, I mentally added and hated myself for the fatalistic thought.

“You do remember what happened to Parker Wang? She burst into flame after escaping that place. Even if we break Archer out of Hell, will that happen to her?”

Cyon shook his head. “Wang was trapped in Hell for over ten days. Returning to our world was too much for her system after all that time. It is not dissimilar to the fate of deep-sea divers who surface too quickly.”

I stared at him. “You’re saying the bends killed Parker Wang?”

“In a manner of speaking. If we get Archer out of there in time, she might still have a chance. That’s another reason we shouldn’t overstay our welcome once there. We go in, do what we have to do, and get out before anyone is the wiser.”

I nodded even though my gut had clenched up.

“Anything else I need to know?”

“This won’t be like any place you’ve seen before, Raven.”

Tell me something I don’t know.

Cyon eyed me blankly, and I remembered the demon couldn’t hear my thoughts anymore.

“I get it. Hell is a bad place,” I said out loud.

“You follow my lead, do as I tell you, and you’ll be able to live through this.”

“Okay. How do we find Archer once we’re in Hell?”

Cyon pointed at the Witch Whip Benson had returned to me.

“With the help of some magic, it will act as a beacon. The whip will point us in her direction.”

“And how do you expect to find Archer, Skulick and Morgal in a single hour?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. I have a plan.”

That’s what worries me.

I watched in grave silence as Cyon continued his preparations, painting more occult symbols on the walls. He talked as he worked. “The idea is to transport this whole structure into Hell. This warehouse will represent the border between the two worlds. Everything within its walls will cross over into the dimension of fear.”

I tilted my gaze to the Equus Bass which I had parked inside the vast storage space.

“Are you saying I’ll be taking my wheels with me to Hell?”

“We have to get around somehow.”

I shook my head. This was by far the weirdest thing I’d ever done—and I hadn’t exactly led a normal life before now.

“You think my insurance will cover us out there?”

Cyon flashed me a plastic smile, not amused. He finished one rune and drew another, his movements fueled with tireless energy.

“Once in Hell, we’ll be able to step out of these walls and navigate the Bone City inside your vehicle. But we must get back to the warehouse within the hour if we plan to return to this world.”

“Got it. One hour. We’ll skip the sightseeing”

After a few minutes, I grew bored watching Cyon and checked all my gear in anticipation of our little field trip. Demon Slayer remained strapped across Cyon’s back. He’d taken ownership of his old sword, which was only fair. I would have to make due with Hellseeker, the Seal of Solomon, and Archer’s Witch Whip.

My attention shifted back to my jet-black muscle car. I made sure the tank was full. You didn’t want to run out of gas while joyriding around the dimension of fear. They probably didn’t have gas stations in Hell. Or maybe they did—what did I know? I was still having a hard time wrapping my mind around it all. This was really happening. We were headed to a place that had haunted humanity’s collective consciousness for millennia. A place where no one in their right mind would dare venture.

Nuts.

Reassured my ride was in good shape, I stepped back while Cyon finished his art project. I wished I could have helped him more. Unfortunately, I wasn’t Doctor Strange. So I kept my mouth shut and let Cyon do his thing. Once he finished, the demon instructed me to take a seat. He positioned himself in front of the urn containing the slain demon’s ashes.

“So what happens if you screw this up, bud?”

“Do you really want to know?”

I wisely shut my mouth and observed the demon in silence. Cyon chanted in a strange tongue. At first, nothing happened. But soon air hummed with electricity, an invisible power building. As ozone filled the air, each breath grew more challenging

I swallowed hard and gripped a nearby steel column in the warehouse. I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe subconsciously I figure the whole warehouse would lift off like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. Interdimensional travel was a first for me. Holding on to something solid felt prudent.

Vibrations passed through the structure’s walls and stone floor, confirming my instinct. The tremors built in intensity as Cyon’s guttural chanting grew louder. One by one, the three copies of the Daemonium lit up, filaments of crimson light shooting out like laser beams into the demonic urn.

The runes carved into the surface of the wooden box ignited and went super-nova. A web of red light shot out from the devil’s coffin into the occult symbols on the walls and floor. The magic was expanding, growing outward, an ever-intensifying light show. Each symbol formed a part of a greater magical network that was coming alive, humming with power.

The warehouse shimmered and stretched before my eyes. I looked at the Equus Bass and saw my beloved ride losing substance. It seemed to be melting. I held up my hands and realized with naked horror that the flesh seemed to drip off my bones.

Nothing had prepared me for this. Had the demon made a mistake? Or had Cyon tricked me again? The humming in my ears grew deafening, yet it failed to drown out Cyon’s incessant chanting. Each word he uttered cut into me with the force of sharp barbs.

I whirled back toward the three books of magic. Blood dripped from the covers, the red liquid bubbling and steaming. And then I saw the red-robed members of the Crimson Circle. Like ghosts, they hovered in the warehouse, figures frozen in time, cursed to relive their mass suicide for all eternity.

Understanding filled my mind. The life force of the dead cultists had created the breach. The circle of fanatics formed the gateway to Hell when they’d doomed their souls to remain trapped between two worlds for all time. Their leader, Kovan Crull, wasn’t among them because my bullets had taken him out. I hoped he was suffering, wherever he was. The spirits of his misguided followers were stranded in limbo. The elation they’d shown during their sacrifice was gone, replaced with despair and horror.

I didn’t know what reward they’d expected to receive in the afterlife, but surely none of them could have known their souls would form a doorway between dimensions. No one, no matter how fanatical, would volunteer for an eternity of torment. They reached out toward Cyon and me, their expressions anguished.

A sudden thought occurred to me. If these fanatics wanted to be set free, perhaps there would be a way to fix and close this breach. Could I dare hope there might be a way to save the Cursed City?

My mind went blank as pain such as I’d never experienced before tore through every part of my being. It felt like my flesh was being torn apart and remade on a molecular level. Crimson light bled from the windows and spilled into the warehouse. The light somehow grew heavy and thick, like globs of swirling paint, before blending with the melting landscape. My world had become fluid, caught in a constant state of flux, a Dali painting come to life.

I swapped a glance with Cyon. He shimmered and twisted before me like a distorted reflection in a funhouse mirror, yet his expression remained calm, focused.

I tried to draw some comfort from this but failed. My eyes ticked to the devil’s coffin, which seemed to have grown in size and now filled up the warehouse, pancaking anything which got in its way—including myself.

I felt myself being flattened and dragged over the floor. How much would I have to endure before this mad ride would end? I didn’t think I could take much more. No one in their right mind could. It was like being trapped in a never-ending acid trip.

A scream erupted in my throat, but no sound escaped.

Make it stop! I silently demanded.

And then it did. Reality snapped back into focus, objects took on human proportions again as the distortion effect eased. The world inside the warehouse stopped bleeding and returned to normal. Well, as normal as it could be with fiery red light streaming in through the windows.

Cyon touched the devil’s coffin, and the runes on its wooden surface dimmed. He seemed pleased with himself.

I felt like the dimensional jump had aged me by decades. I felt drained, bruised, and torn up from the inside out on a molecular level.

Cyon sauntered over to the window and peered outside. I don’t know how, but I stumbled to my feet and joined him. We both looked out at the nightmare city that stretched out before us. For a surreal beat, I thought I was seeing the Cursed City. Then my eyes adjusted and locked in on the details. The familiar buildings were all made from human bones.

This was the real Cursed City.

I bit my lip, tasted copper and braced myself against the wall for support.

We’d made it. We had achieved the impossible and crossed over into the dimension of fear.

Cyon regarded me with a disturbing smile. “Welcome to Hell, Raven.”

I shuddered. He sounded like someone who had come home.

11

Archer followed the dead woman into the Bone City’s sewer system. Was she crazy for trusting this lost soul? By the woman’s own account, she wasn’t exactly a saint. She’d ended up in Hell for a good reason. But what choice did Archer have? She had started hunting vampires a few months ago and only recently graduated to battling other monsters like witches and ghouls. Nothing had prepared her for a trip to Hell.

Talk about irony. While Raven and Cyon continued to work around the clock to find a way here, she’d accidentally ended up in dimension of fear. A realm from which there was no escape. Well, at least under normal circumstances. According to the woman leading the way, the living could escape this place. The mysterious subway would make another stop in the coming twenty-four hours if it stuck to its earlier schedule, and Archer could conceivably hitch a ride home the same way Parker Wang had.

It sounded too easy to be true.

The train confounded her in more ways than one. What sort of magic allowed a subway to shuttle between worlds? Who had set it in motion? And what did they hope to gain from it? She wished she could call on Raven for advice; he was the real expert when it came to all this supernatural weirdness.

She sighed, overwhelmed by it all. Christ, this was definitely above her pay grade. Her stomach rumbled. She was starving. God, what she would give for a meal.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself! Focus on the goal. The mission.

“How much further do we have to go?” Archer asked.

“It won’t be much longer,” the woman replied.

Archer realized the damned soul had never revealed her name. Had she perhaps forgotten it after the spooks fed on her memories? The possibility gave Archer the creeps. Strange burn marks lined the woman’s arms and neck. How many times had the robed demons cornered this poor woman and feasted on her most treasured moments?

Better not to think about it too much.

Her mind shifted to another question. “What happened to the other living people who ended up in this place?”

The woman paused and shook her head. “Only Parker escaped,” she said.

Archer bit back a curse. She clearly saw the missing people’s faces in her mind’s eye. None of them had deserved such a terrible fate.

Archer took a deep breath and forced her anger deep down. She needed to stay focused on the path ahead, on getting home.

“How can I find your daughter once I’m back on Earth?”

The woman paused and turned, her eyes daggering into Archer. The green glowing sewage water added a layer of intensity to the woman’s unflinching gaze.

“Her name…?”

She paused, clearly struggling to recall her daughter’s name, and Archer’s heart broke for the woman. Suddenly she didn’t care what this woman had done while alive. No one deserved such a horrible punishment. She couldn’t stop thinking about her Aunt Michelle, who’d succumbed to Alzheimer’s two years earlier. Aunt Michelle had sported a nearly identical expression, part confusion, part terror at her inability to remember the pertinent details of her life.

The woman’s eyes darted back and forth, her brows furrowed in concentration. “Her name is…Dianna McKendry, yes… I used to call her my Wonder Girl.” Her whole face lit up, thrilled by the simple act of remembering a name. “She lives in Maine with her grandmother…or at least she did while I was still alive…”

Her words trailed off, the implication clear. This woman had no clue how much time had passed on Earth since her soul had been banished to the Bone City. It could have been months, years, or even decades.

Archer’s horror deepened. “And what’s your name?”

The woman stared at her as if she’d asked her for the answer to a complex mathematical problem. She’d been right; the woman didn’t know who she was any longer. The memory of her daughter was the last part of her old life she’d refused to let go of, clinging to it with all her strength.

“It’s okay. I don’t need to know who you are,” Archer said. “If I make it out of here, I’ll find your daughter. She’ll know the message is coming from her mother.”

The woman’s voice trembled with emotion and bordered on panic. “You swear it’s the first thing you’ll do?”

“I told you, we have a deal. You help get me out of this place, and I will let your daughter know how much she matters to you. I promise.”

Archer intended on keeping her word even though she had no idea how a message from beyond the grave would go over. She’d cross that bridge once she made it back to Earth. For now, she needed to focus on more pressing problems, like getting to the train stop before her guide forgot the directions. Fortunately, it seemed that only the memories of the woman’s earthly life had been affected by the spooks’ terrible curse. The woman still knew her way around the underground labyrinth. It made sense, if Archer really thought about it. Good memories would be few and far in a place like this. She would never forget the details of this nightmare city.

Archer lost track of time as they stumbled through the tunnel system. Her spirits lifted as they at last reached a staircase that led her to the surface of this mysterious world. She was both thrilled and terrified at the same time. It meant they were closing in on their destination, but it also signaled the end of this brief respite from the robed predators that stalked the surface.

They climbed the stairs in silence and emerged in a small chamber that measured about ten feet across. Their footsteps reverberated on the mosaic of bleached human remains.

“We’re almost there,” the woman whispered.

Archer’s guard remained up, unwilling to relax, her hand pressed against the grip of her Glock. If push came to shove, she would battle the demonic bastards to the bitter end.

When they passed through the next doorway, Archer froze. They weren’t alone anymore. Shadowy shapes stirred in the encroaching darkness.

Archer reflexively brought up her gun, but her guide stopped her from squeezing the trigger. “It’s okay. They are just like us. Like me,” she corrected herself.

As Archer’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out more details. The figures were male and female, old and young, their bodies branded by whatever had killed them. There was the bald, emaciated wisp of a man who must’ve succumbed to cancer. The obese woman who might have perished of a heart attack. The tattooed biker riddled with bullets holes.

Souls doomed to suffer for all eternity.

Among the patchwork of earthly injuries, Archer spotted the burn marks. The soulless had fed on them, probably multiple times. How many of their most precious memories had they lost since they’d arrived in this place? Their probing eyes shone with incomprehension, fear, and even hope as they regarded them.

These damned souls know I’m alive. Archer realized.

“They’re hiding from the spooks just like us,” her guide explained. “Just keep moving. Don’t look at them for too long.”

Archer wondered why they needed to avoid the other cursed souls. She received the answer to this question a moment later. The bundled-up figures shambled toward them.

“You’re alive,” one woman declared, her words echoing through the energized crowd.

A man lurking about three feet away lunged at her. Within seconds, more of the hollow-faced figures surrounded her, eager to make contact. Like lepers seeking solace from a miracle healer, they reached out to her, their desperation a palpable force. Almost as if a simple touch from her could restore their flesh-and-blood existence.

In this place of eternal death and damnation, Archer figured her life force burned bright, a beacon of hope and peace. It proved irresistible to the damned.

A howl went up from the crowd, and soon other voices joined in. The figures pleaded with her, desperate for her attention. They all had sins to confess, messages to pass on, regrets to voice. They wanted to tell their stories, and Archer was their best chance at preserving a part themselves.

As their lamentations rose in a chorus of the damned, she let out a strangled sob, overwhelmed by the collective misery on display. Hot tears filled Archer’s eyes, and her resolve faltered. It was too much to process; she felt overwhelmed. Her world grew brittle. She was about to break like a dam under this powerful onslaught of human emotion. She couldn’t turn her back on them.

I have to help them. Someone has to!

She was drowning in their sorrow, choking on their pain. This tide of doomed humanity threatened to sweep her away.

The woman’s strong grip on her wrist snapped her from the paralysis. She pulled Archer away from the seething mob of lost souls. The moans grew distant as the crowd at last thinned, and the damned returned to the shadows that had spawned them. Despite their pain, the lost souls didn’t chase after them. Archer didn’t want to imagine what would have happened if she’d stopped moving.

The Damned were almost as dangerous as the Soulless. She would remember that next time.

Archer clenched her fists, struggling with the surging emotions inside of her.

Keep your cool, girl.

Easier said than done. She inhaled deeply. In and out. That’s right. Breathe. Relax.

She didn’t feel afraid of the Damned. She pitied them and prayed they would soon find some semblance of peace. Perhaps losing one’s memories was the better option in this place.

The woman eyed her knowingly. “I know what you’re thinking. Maybe it’s better to forget in a place where there is no hope.”

Archer held her gaze but didn’t know what to say in response.

“Becoming one of the Soulless offers no solace from the past. The spooks remember their old lives. They remember all the bad parts. All their sins.”

Tears streamed down her face. Archer was about to give her a hug when the damned woman stopped her. Resolve entered her gaze as she wiped away her tears. “No, I don’t deserve anyone’s compassion. I’ve done terrible, terrible things.”

Haven’t we all, Archer mentally added, but the words wouldn’t leave her lips.

Back in control of her feelings, the woman said, “Follow me. We’re almost there.”

A few minutes later, they entered a large space which looked like a train station of a post-apocalyptic city. This was not a destination anyone would ever want to visit.

Her guide pointed at a pair of cobweb-covered escalator stairs which vanished in the tomblike darkness below.

“The train will stop in—”

She broke off, eyes growing alert as she peered down the escalators.

Archer followed her gaze. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“They’re here…”

Archer’s blood turned to ice. The yawning darkness rippled, and the monklike specters emerged up the escalators with lightning speed. Before Archer could fire her gun, two of the specters enveloped the woman.

No!

Their cowled heads descended on her guide’s bare flesh. Sucking sounds filled the chamber as tattered robes enveloped the damned woman.

Rage exploded in Archer as she unloaded a full magazine into the creatures. The spooks reared back, their pain-filled howls ringing through the station.

Good. Scream in pain.

The robes swirled and dispersed and became one with the shadows of the station again. The spooks vanished. Archer hesitated for a beat and snapped a fresh magazine in her Glock.

Once certain the creatures were gone, Archer rushed up to the woman and knelt beside her. Fresh burn marks lined her neck and face. They looked like the sucker marks of a giant squid.

“Are you alright?” Archer’s voice sounded hollow.

What a ridiculous question. Of course she’s not alright. Just look at her! Who would be after an attack like that…

“Hey, I’m so sorry. Can you hear me?”

She peered up at Archer with a blank expression. “Who are you?”

Archer shivered. The soulless had fed too much. Was there anything left of the woman?

“Who are you?” she demanded again. The question hung in the air for a beat.

Why doesn’t she recognize me?

Archer answered her own question. Helping me gave her hope. I’m one of her last good memories. And those bastards took even that from her.

“I’m your friend,” Archer said. “Remember? I’m going to find Dianna and tell her…”

“Who is Dianna?”

Archer flinched. The woman had forgotten her own daughter, the very reason she was helping her.

The damned woman trailed off as her eyes rolled back in their sockets, turning first white, then pitch black.

Her mouth opened, and she unleashed an inhuman shriek.

Archer staggered back, shaken to the core.

Her guide—her only hope of returning to the world of the living—was turning into one of the Soulless.

12

I adjusted the timer on my watch to a Sixty-minute countdown.

Sixty minutes to locate Archer.

Sixty minutes to face and defeat Morgal.

And let’s not even talk about finding a way to free Skulick’s soul from this accursed place.

No pressure now.

If we failed to return to the warehouse before the one-hour mark was up, we would be doomed to spend the rest of our days in Hell. The only upside—we wouldn’t last long in the dimension of fear. At least I wouldn’t. A snowball would have a better chance in Hell than yours truly. Cyon’s odds might be slightly better. My enemy list had been growing over the years, and there would be a fair share of demons eager to even the score, with Morgal at the top of that list.

We had set ourselves a near impossible challenge, but then again, I never thought we’d make it this far. This whole undertaking would’ve felt like a creative form of suicide if it hadn’t been for Archer and Skulick. I was doing this for them. They needed me.

And thankfully Cyon appeared to have a plan.

He believed the Daemonium would succeed in Hell where Demon Slayer had failed on Earth. The former witch hunter turned demon carried both items on him, and I felt a little naked armed with only Hellseeker and the Seal of Solomon.

Or maybe I missed the demon’s strength and supernatural abilities. Fused in one body, Cyon and I had become far greater than the sum of our parts. Would we function as smoothly as two separate halves of a team?

You do not miss being possessed, Raven. Quit thinking like that, I told myself.

I peered through one of the large windows again, riveted to the nightmare skyline in the near distance. Bone towers stabbed clouds made of sizzling fireballs. The warehouse had materialized on the outer edges of the bone city in a barren, desolate landscape of jagged rocks and fuming geysers. This wasteland stretched for about a mile around the city. A lone roadway paved in human bones cut through the black desert.

Tilting my gaze up at the sky, an ocean of flame greeted me. The burning sky silhouetted the surreal skyline of the bone city a mile up ahead. Peering up at the firmament was like looking into an active volcano or the center of the sun.

I hugged myself tightly. Sweat stung my eyes, yet my teeth chattered incessantly. I was both freezing and dying of heat. Icy cold radiated from the rocky ground and pricked my skin like needles, while the lavalike maelstrom of flames burned mercilessly down on me from above.

I didn’t know what I’d expected to encounter, but the reality was far darker and grander than anything I could’ve dreamt up. How many hundreds of thousands of skeletons had been used to will this hellscape into existence?

I shifted my focus to Cyon. He stood in the middle of the warehouse, where he clutched Archer’s Witch Whip tightly while whispering words in a mystical tongue. The various glyphs and occult symbols covering the walls and floor all glowed with a spooky green-blue light, almost as if the symbols were the control panels of an occult spaceship.

“Can you see Archer?” I asked, almost dreading the answer.

Cyon looked up from the magical whip, his eyes distant, fixed on a vision beyond my senses.

“She’s here, and she’s alive. For now.” His voice grew serious. “We must hurry.”

I nodded and tapped the chronometer. The numbers were steadily ticking down. “Let’s do this!”

I tried to sound braver than I felt. I had caught enough terrifying glimpses of the Bone City to know we were in for the fight of our lives. I shook my head as I approached my wheels. This was madness. I was about to drive through Hell in a jet-black muscle car with a demon in the passenger seat. The only thing missing was for me to crank up the radio and play “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC.

Cyon stepped up to the warehouse’s loading bay and slid the steel door open. He studied me for a beat. “Do you want me to drive?”

I shot Cyon a glare. “Not a chance in Hell.”

Cyon cracked a thin smile. Tough crowd.

I slipped behind the wheel and turned on the ignition. Cyon took a seat beside me. As soon as the passenger door slammed shut, I floored the gas. The engine roared, and a heartbeat later, we were on our way, tires rippling across a road paved with human bones. They glistened in the crimson light beating down from the burning sky. The warehouse receded in my rearview mirror. I hoped it would still be there when we got back. What if Cyon’s wards weren’t strong enough to keep the demons out? What would stop them from storming the place that was our only means to return to our world?

Cyon’s voice pulled me out of my gloomy thoughts. “Not quite what you imagined, is it?”

I shrugged. “Not really. To be honest, I tried to not think about the details too much. I didn’t want to talk myself out of coming here.”

“The Bone City is only one of the many realms that make up the dimension of fear. But Morgal’s rise to prominence began here. It is only fitting we should face him in his first hellish kingdom.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“The Bone City was the first realm the Dark Lord offered Morgal after he proved himself worthy to rule beside his master.”

I considered this for a beat and asked, “What did he have to do to prove himself?”

Cyon didn’t respond immediately, almost as if he was trying to figure out how to sum up the history of Hell in a nice little soundbite. Not an easy feat, for sure.

“How much do you know about Atlantis?”

Cyon now had my full attention. I had dealt with cursed items from the mythical continent over the years, but I wouldn’t call myself an expert on the matter. Not even close.

“Not much. Why?”

“Thousands of years ago, an Atlantean mage conjured and trapped a low-level demon in a binding circle in very much the same way Marek imprisoned me. But the mage’s ritual was flawed. Morgal—for it was indeed him—broke out of his prison and seized control over the occultist’s magic to wreak a terrible vengeance on the continent.

“Whoa, time out. You’re saying Morgal sunk Atlantis?”

“Morgal destroyed the pinnacle of human civilization in a blink of an eye. Combining his power with the foolish mage’s Atlantean magic, Morgal triggered a cataclysmic event that killed thousands. The oceans drank an entire civilization, dooming hundreds of thousands of people to a watery grave. The destruction of Atlantis cemented Morgal’s status in Hell. The Dark Lord rewarded him with his own realm, the first of many to follow.”

“Well, I love what he’s done with the place,” I said sarcastically.

Cyon peered at the gleaming skyline. “It’s certainly something. Terrible as it is, one can’t help but be impressed.”

I swallowed hard, bile rising in my throat. I had always known Morgal was evil. He’d slaughtered my parents and nearly killed me when I was just kid. I had no doubt that he would destroy an entire city.

Cyon wasn’t done yet. “This city was built on the corpses of Morgal’s victims. Their bones, even their souls are trapped in this realm.”

I clenched my jaw. The foreboding towers gained new significance. If Cyon was telling the truth, this place had become an eternal prison for the hundreds of thousands of drowned Atlanteans.

“Look around, take it all in, monster hunter. This is what Morgal wants for your city too. If the breach expands and his forces find a way to invade Earth…”

The demon trailed off. Cyon didn’t need to say more.

He leaned forward and turned on the radio. Eerie voices, both male and female, drifted from the car’s hissing static. They rattled off desperate pleas in a long-forgotten language.

“Do you hear their cries? The voices of the souls who perished on the legendary continent? These are the souls Morgal used to build this infernal kingdom of darkness.”

I killed the radio. I had heard enough.

“You don’t have to remind me of the stakes. I have a good idea what we’re up against.” I grew silent for a moment. “How can we defeat him?”

Cyon pointed at the Daemonium nestled on his lap. The three books had reconstituted into one single volume which shone in the scarlet light. “Wait and see.”

“I really hope you know what you’re doing,” I muttered.

“Keep your eyes on the road! Time is running out for Miss Archer.”

I punched the gas, jerked the wheel and maneuvered our ride into the urban canyons up ahead. We had reached the city, the bone towers casting dark shadows over the ivory road. The otherworldly streets and buildings all appeared to be empty. Strangely enough, my scar wasn’t hurting. Not even a twinge. Perhaps being inside Morgal’s realm neutralized the wound’s magic.

And then I spotted the first inhabitant of this horrible desolate place. I saw a lone woman staring back at me from a nearby building. Soon thereafter, I glimpsed more men and women who lurked in the phantasmagorical structures. Their bloodless, masklike features observed our arrival in eerie silence.

“Who are they?”

“The Damned. The souls of the sinners who ended up in this realm.”

I bit my lip and wondered what these folks had done to deserve to end up in a place like this.

“Turn left, head for the next building. We’re almost there. Hurry!”

I did as I was told, doing my best to stave off my mounting panic. The urgency in the demon’s voice urged me on.

“Park the car. Now!” Cyon barked.

The tires of the Equus Bass screeched as it slid across the road and ground to a halt in front of one of the tall buildings. A second later, I was out of the door and hurtling toward the structure, Hellseeker in hand. Cyon was right behind me, Demon Slayer drawn and ready.

I tried to not think about what Archer might face inside the building. I’d never seen Cyon look this freaked out before, so I knew it was bad.

I barged through the door and froze in my tracks.

It was far worse than I could have imagined.

13

A black substance poured from the damned woman’s dead eyes. The tar-like liquid kept coming until it swallowed her whole. The thick goo erased features, transformed her clothing into a tattered, floating monk robe. Twin red eyes lit up in the void under the newly formed hood.

Archer’s guide was one of them now. One of the soulless.

For a split second, the newly birthed creature hovered in mid-air, seemingly confused. The disorientation didn’t last. Unleashing another bloodcurdling shriek, the creature lunged at her.

Archer’s instincts and training kicked in as she whipped out Blood Slayer. Sensing the danger, the specter darted aside, the silver stake slicing thin air. One floating arm of black energy lashed out at Archer and wrapped with incredible strength around her neck.

In a flash, the world was reduced to a monochromatic blur, a photo negative come to life. Memories flashed before Archer’s terrified eyes. Images of her father and mother. Her earliest days on the force. And finally…Raven. The first case they worked together. The day she realized she was becoming attracted to the paranormal investigator with the bleak sense of humor and devil-may-care attitude. The night they finally gave into their passion.

These moments played back, one after another, until they all faded to black. With horror, Archer realized what was happening. The spook was feeding on these beautiful moments of her life. It was devouring her most cherished memories. At least she got to relive them one final time before they faded.

Forever.

A roaring car engine penetrated the theatre of her mind and pulled her back to reality. A beat later, the man from her memories—What was his name again?—tore into the lobby, a green glowing pistol leveled at the robed creature poised to pounce above her head.

Relief filled Archer’s chest. Followed by horror. She recognized the man now, couldn’t believe she could have forgotten him even for a second. Her memories were there, but they had faded, become dull and distant. The moments hadn’t completely disappeared yet, but the Soulless had sucked all feeling from them. Intellectually, Archer knew Raven was her partner and lover, but when she looked at him, she felt nothing.

He had become a stranger.

And then the final thread of their tenuous connection evaporated.

The memories of their romance were gone. Archer had a vague sense of having lost something precious and vital, something irreplaceable. She sensed there had been more between them once, but the deep emotion of all those shared moments, the feeling which had once connected them, was gone. Where there had been warmth and affection, now there was only emptiness.

Nothing.

* * *

The thing hovered in midair like a cloud of black smoke, its fluttering robe oozing mist and hooded head buried into Archer’s exposed neck.

It’s feeding on her somehow. Like a goddamn vampire sucking blood from its victims.

Archer stared at me. She seemed to register my presence, but her gaze remained strangely devoid of recognition, almost as if she was in shock. She blinked a few times, awareness edging back into her gaze before it flickered out again like a candle. I didn’t know what this demonic beast was doing to Archer, but it would stop now.
I squeezed my blessed pistol’s trigger, and gunfire shredded the lobby. The hooded creature recoiled with a high-pitched, inhuman squeal and turned its focus toward me. It hung suspended in the air, the robe dancing and swirling like an expanding ink stain.

The cowl tilted toward me. Hellseeker’s bullets had hurt the creature but failed to destroy the living nightmare.

With an ear-shattering shriek, the spook hurtled toward me.

Cyon’s magical sword lashed out and sliced right through the spook’s billowing robe. The beast’s scream cranked up in intensity, became deafening as the robe shriveled up and disintegrated. Its hooded face shrank like a collapsing black hole until it blinked out of existence.

A preternatural silence fell over the lobby. I surged toward Archer, my voice trembling.

“Are you okay? Jane, talk to me…”

My hands touched her face, traced the black burn mark running down her neck where the creature had assaulted her.

To my surprise, Archer pulled back, almost as if disturbed by the closeness between us. As if we’d never touched, never kissed.

Like there had never ever been anything between us.

She staggered backwards, eyes feral, terror mixing with confusion. Dread welled up in me. What was wrong? Why did she shrink back from my touch?

For a beat we stared at each other, both of us shocked into numbed silence. Why did she look at me like that? Like a stranger?

“How did you get here?” Archer finally said, breaking the awkward silence. She picked herself up off the floor, ignoring my offered hand, and retrieved her silver stake.

“It’s a long story,” Cyon said. “We’ll bring you up to speed once we’re on the road again, Miss Archer.”

Both Archer and I turned toward the demon at the same time. I shot him a questioning glance. “Where are we headed next?”

Cyon’s voice was a harsh whisper as he answered. “Morgal’s temple. The place where I will destroy my former master.”

14

We were hurtling at seventy miles an hour through a dark land, but I wasn’t paying too much attention to my driving. My focus was on Archer.

I kept stealing glances at her lovely yet haunted face. She sat in the back, her gaze distant and remote. I remembered how she’d pulled away from my touch. Something had changed inside of her. And I sensed it was connected to the strange entity that had assaulted her.

My gaze fixed again on the strange birthmark-like burn marks lining Archer’s neck. They were identical to the brown splotches on Parker Wang’s skin. For a split second, I saw Archer burst into flame the way poor Parker Wang had back in the interrogation room. Did those scars doom her to the same fate?

I prayed not.

“What was that thing, Jane?” I asked.

Archer responded in a halting voice. She told me about her arrival in the Bone City, about the soulless creatures who hunted the Damned in this city and the damned woman who’d come to her aid. It quickly became clear only a few hours had passed for Archer in this place since she’d gone missing, while more than a day had gone by on Earth. Time moved at a different pace in the dimension of fear.

“Are you all right? You seem…distant.”

Archer stared at me emptily for a beat. In a low voice, she explained how the spooks fed on memories, specifically good memories. Her voice seemed to drop an octave as she mentioned this shocking detail. What did it mean? Had the creature stolen a memory from Archer? Or perhaps even multiple memories?

Suddenly, I had a bad feeling about this. I wanted to probe deeper, have her go into more detail, my gut telling me that something had changed fundamentally between us. How many moments had Archer lost during the creature’s attack? The lack of recognition and warmth in Archer’s face when I’d touched her filled me with growing dread and an instinctive understanding of what had happened to her. And what it might possibly mean to us.

Before I could foolishly put my foot in my mouth again, Cyon shot me a dark look. I didn’t need to share a telepathic connection with the demon to know he was telling me to back off. This wasn’t the time for personal drama. Right now, only one thing mattered—Archer was alive.

As she finished her story, my attention shifted back to the buildings lining the street. I didn’t dare imagine how many damned souls dwelled in these shadowy places. Living in constant terror while the spooks hunted and chipped away at their humanity until nothing of their old lives remained—that was truly torture. There were no rivers of fire or pitchforks in this place, but it was far worse than some Hieronymus Bosch vision of Hell.

Archer wanted to know how we had found her, and I was glad to change the subject. I told her about our investigation of the number 9 train and how we had discovered the occult symbols and the devil’s coffin which had fueled the subway’s terrible magic.

Gratitude crept into her gaze, and she teared up. I had never seen Archer show such vulnerability before, and it broke my heart. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

“It’s not over yet. The worst, unfortunately, is yet to come.” Cyon’s sobering tone made us all grow silent again.

I still didn’t know what the demon had planned, and it bothered me. I didn’t like being kept in the dark.

I turned the next corner and eased my foot off the gas pedal. Cyon didn’t have to tell me we had arrived. The gargantuan pyramid had to be the temple he’d mentioned. The ivory structure blotted out the fiery sky and formed the center of the necropolis. I stared at it for a beat too long, and the structure seemed to become my whole world, filling up my senses. This close, I couldn’t fully capture its size and dark majesty. The pyramid’s surface of intertwined human skeletons, bones densely packed together, gleamed in the burning sky’s crimson light. Taller towers, which had previously kept this temple hidden from view, surrounded the pyramid. This was the infernal heart of the city, a twisted recreation of the Atlantean temple where the mage had tried to imprison Morgal millennia ago and doomed his people.

I stopped the Equus Bass and got out of the car, hypnotized. And then I heard the voices. Low at first, the whispers building until they became a constant drone. There were thousands of them rambling away in a language I’d never heard before in my life. I couldn’t make out the words, but the pleading tone of the unearthly choir told its own tragic tale. These had to be the voices of the dead Atlanteans.

The source of the supernatural broadcast had to be the pyramid. I wished I could understand what they were saying. What did these tortured souls want from me? As I approached the looming temple, the voices grew in volume even though the words were still gibberish. I eyed Archer, but she showed no sign that she was tuned into the same creepy channel. Morgal’s mark had given me mild psychic powers. Maybe my heightened sensitivity allowed me to hear things normal humans could not.

“You can hear them, can’t you?” Cyon asked.

I nodded. “What are they saying?”

“The same thing the dead always say. Listen to my story. Release me from this pain. Sometimes death is not the end but the beginning of mankind’s suffering. It’s all quite tedious.”

“Thanks for that encouraging thought,” I said and flashed the demon a blank smile.

I drew closer to the pyramid, my guard up. The voices pounding my eardrums rose in pitch and clarity. I don’t speak your language, I wanted to say, but I doubted the dead in this place cared about such a pesky little detail. The emotions behind the words were all that mattered.

I stepped up to the pyramid’s wall, touched one of the skulls jutting out at me and...

…the world around me changed in a blur of white-hot blue light.

I still faced the temple, but the burning sky had turned grey and the empty roadway teemed with masses of terrified people. They all wore multi-colored robes and togas, and for a second I thought I’d stepped into a sword-and-sandals flick. Shouts and cries filled the air. I didn’t understand the words, but I recognized the exotic cadence at this point. These people were speaking the same language as the whispering dead. It had to be Atlantean.

The mob pushed forward, and I was swept up in a wave of panicked humanity. As the surging crowd carried me along, I caught a better view of the pyramid up ahead. Unlike the temple in the dimension of fear, this house of worship had been constructed from stone and not from human remains. Somehow, I was in the real Atlantis—although not, it seemed, for much longer. Judging by their naked terror, the disaster that had destroyed this mythical place was upon them.

The crowd relentlessly pushed me toward the giant wooden doors of the majestic temple. During this desperate hour, they saw it as a haven. As if anything could save them now. Morgal’s wrath was about to rain down on this civilization and wipe away a whole continent from the map of the world.

With horror, I realized the doors of the temple had been sealed, preventing the mob from seeking refuge inside the walls of pyramid temple. They had turned red from the blood of crushed bodies. Even though the entrance remained shut, it hadn’t diminished the mob’s need to enter the temple. These people found themselves in the thrall of mortal terror, reduced to panicked herd animals.

I glance upward and spotted shadowy movement. A figure lurked at the top of the pyramid. Gargantuan batlike wings framed the reptilian creature peering down at us. Morgal. The bastard had scored front row seats to the impending cataclysm.

A deafening roar cut through the air, and I craned my neck. In the near distance, I spotted the incoming tidal wave. Death was approaching fast, but I doubted the temple would offer any safety from the skyscraper-sized wall of water. The throng had stopped moving too, rooted in place as they watched their doom descend. Everyone looked up at the boiling ocean with a mixture of horror and awe. It was both terrible and perversely beautiful. And then the deadly wave engulfed us, silencing the mob in a crash of water.

I floated for what felt like forever, having lost all sense of up and down. My lungs screamed for oxygen, filled with searing salt water, my broken body unable to move. I knew I would float here until death welcomed me into its cold embrace. Suspended in a sea of blood and darkness, surrounded by thousands of other drowned Atlanteans. Bloated bodies, black hair swirling around empty eyes, lips frozen in a rictus of a final scream. The corpses must’ve been here for a while judging by their appearance. Fish had feasted on their flesh and bone poked from the half-eaten bodies.

More drowned, decomposing corpses surged past my floating form. How could I still be alive?

You’re not really here, I reminded myself. You’re bearing witness to past horrors.

Logically I knew this was true. I’d experienced similar echoes of the past before on other cases. But emotionally, I refused to acknowledge that it had to be an illusion. The terrible sights around me felt too to vivid and real.

An invisible force vacuumed me and the other drowned bodies from our oceanic resting place like a supernatural tractor beam. Thousands of corpses rushed past me like a massive school of fish. Red light cut into water, transforming the drowned, decomposing Atlanteans into skeletal masks, devouring whatever flesh remained on their broken forms.

Terror flooded me as understanding dawned. We were being transported into Morgal’s realm.

The bodies and souls of the dead Atlanteans were about to be used as the building materials for the archdemon’s nightmare necropolis.

I screamed…

…and looked up at Cyon and Archer. Relief filled me. I was back in the Bone City. Not in a million years would I have thought I’d ever be happy to wake up in Hell. But right this second, it was preferable to Atlantis on the day the ocean engulfed the legendary civilization.

“You okay, Raven?” Archer asked.

My breath came in ragged bursts as I answered. “I was there. I saw it happen. I saw how the sea destroyed Atlantis.”

Cyon nodded sagely. “In Morgal’s arrogance, he used both the bodies and the lost souls of a destroyed people to erect this perverted place. Helpless as they may be at the moment, they soon will become our allies.”

The demon turned and addressed the pyramid and surrounding towers. “You hear me, people of Atlantis? For millennia, your cries have gone unheard. Not anymore. Today you’ll get a chance to strike back at your jailer and tormentor. Today you’ll get your revenge.”

Those weren’t empty words. They held a promise to the cursed Atlanteans in this haunted place. Cyon shifted his attention back to Archer and me.

“We should enter the temple. It’s time to let Morgal know we’re here.”

And with these ominous words, Archer and I followed Cyon into the pyramid of bones.

15

Our steps echoed eerily as we made our way through the shadow-cloaked temple. Surrounded by the rib-like walls of bone, which slanted toward a single point hundreds of feet above, I felt like I’d been swallowed up by some giant monster.

We’re inside the belly of the beast.

The thought wasn’t comforting.

Up ahead, an altar topped by a single skull overlooked the cavernous space. A web of fiery red light bled through the cracks and openings of the bone walls, turning us all into devils.

Wordlessly, Cyon beelined toward the altar, his eyes gleaming with barely contained excitement. It figured that the demon would feel right at home in this place. I struggled to keep up with his brisk pace, but I refused to let Cyon out of my sight at this crucial point. Archer appeared to be on the same page, jogging to keep up. As Cyon stepped up to the altar, I wondered whose skull had earned this spot of honor in the temple. And then it hit me: the skull had to belong to the temple’s high priest, the very same Atlantean mage who had brought death and destruction upon his people when he conjured Morgal.

Like all of his people, the foolish mage had become a prisoner of this place. Another soul cursed to serve an eternal prison sentence in Morgal’s realm of darkness. How many dead Atlanteans were trapped here? It had to be thousands upon thousands of lost spirits. Somehow Cyon believed we could turn the Atlanteans into our allies in the coming confrontation with Morgal. Unsurprisingly, he hadn’t seen fit to share this little detail with me before we arrived. Probably because I would have told him he was crazier than a shithouse rat.

Cyon extricated the restored Daemonium from his long coat. With the other hand, he drew Demon Slayer from the scabbard strapped across his back. According to Cyon, the Daemonium contained the key to defeating Morgal, but he’d been mum on the details. I hoped he knew what he was doing. There would be no test run for whatever he had planned next. We would only get one chance to confront Morgal, and it would undoubtedly be a battle to the death.

I leaned against the altar, and reality warped around me once again. I was experiencing another psychic flashback. A heartbeat later, I found myself inside the stone-and-mortar version of the temple back in the real Atlantis, a spectral observer of past events. Creepy statues of exotic, mystical figures lined the walls. Torches flickered and carved grotesque shadows from the temple, imbuing the sculptures with a life of their own. What Gods had these ancient people prayed to in this enormous space? Who were these long-forgotten deities, who’d been erased from mankind’s collective memory when the ocean blanketed the continent?

A tanned bald man dressed in luxurious grey robes faced the altar. This had to be the mage. Flickering torches soaked his face in a scarlet light as he held up a tome of magic in his bony hands. My eyes widened. I recognized this book from which he was reciting some magical formula. It was one of the three volumes of the Daemonium. Each book in the infernal set had been written at a different period in history and in different languages. Aramaic, Latin—and, as I now learned, Atlantean.

I was still wrapping my mind around this latest insight when the air crackled with supernatural energy. A fierce wind blew through the temple, sending goosebumps up my arms. Beams of sizzling energy webbed the space above the altar and forked out at the temple walls. A tear formed in reality, and from the void, a creature of pure evil emerged.

Morgal had arrived.

The archdemon had many forms and incarnations, but this was one of his most fearsome. A reptilian, winged behemoth, all glistening muscle and jagged teeth and claws. A pair of giant, slitted eyes gleamed in the crimson darkness. The mage flinched at the sight of the demon he’d called upon, almost as if sensing he’d made a terrible mistake.

As the energy storm intensified and Morgal’s full form manifested in the temple, reality flashed out of existence and I was back in the bone temple.

I let out a gasp as I stared at Cyon with a newfound understanding. One of the three books which made up the Daemonium had originally conjured Morgal. And my new partner planned to use that original power against his former master. His plan was finally starting to make sense. That didn’t make it any less suicidal.

“Guys, we’re not alone anymore!” Archer screamed.

I whirled toward her. She was pointing at the procession of spooks who’d silently followed us inside the bone temple. They hovered in grave silence, like a spectral congregation of undead monks.

And then, all at once, the Soulless closed in.

I instinctively raised Hellseeker. I saw Archer pull out the Witch Whip and adapt a combat stance. I drew some comfort from this. Despite the horrors she’d endured in this dimension of darkness, she hadn’t lost her fighting spirit.

Only Cyon remained unfazed by our hooded friends. As the parade of the damned drew closer, he calmly flipped open the Daemonium. He gesticulated as words in a language as old as time flowed from his lips. The book radiated a bluish light that quickly grew in intensity. It was drawing strength from Cyon’s words, now charged with unspeakable power.

Magic freaks me out, I’ll be the first one to admit it. For every victory mystical power can achieve, it seems to create two new unforeseen setbacks. I hated relying on Cyon’s spellcasting ability, but what other choice did I have?

The soulless continued their approach. Big mistake.

A beat later, pages exploded from the open super-grimoire and shot into the air like shrapnel from an exploding grenade. Hundreds of glowing red pages now hung in the air like paper lanterns at a twisted holiday party.

Only a few feet separated the undead horde from us.

Hurry up, Cyon.

He lowered his arms. The storm of paper followed suit, shooting down at the parade of Soulless. Each page targeted an individual spook and ripped through the phalanx of specters, shattering them on impact. Squealing shrieks reverberated through the temple as the Soulless succumbed to the weaponized text. Paranormal energy electrified the air.

I backed away and brought up my arm to shield Archer from the violent light show unfolding before us. One by one, the spooks dissolved until the entire temple was empty once again.

Cyon raised his hand, uttered a few more words, and the pages all returned to the open grimoire. A satisfied smile played across his thin lips. He had defeated the spook army without breaking a sweat. But this was merely the opening salvo in a much bigger battle. A part of me couldn’t help but worry about Cyon’s growing magical power. I was glad he was fighting on our side, but what would happen once his former master was out of the picture? Could anyone wield this level of black magic without becoming corrupted by it?

These thoughts still raced through my mind when the temple doors flew open and a creature borne from mankind’s worst nightmares burst into the bone temple. The archdemon’s massive wings canceled out the crimson light trickling in from the open doors. The monster’s shadow filled the temple, bones crunching under his powerful, confident gait.

The boogeyman of my nightmares had arrived. Morgal was here.

This was it. I’d always known this moment would come one day. The time for the grand showdown between light and darkness, good and evil, was upon us. This would be the final confrontation between me and my parent’s murderer.

In an instant, I flashed back to that fateful day twenty years earlier. The day that changed my life and set me on my path as a monster hunter…

* * *

Ice golems had attacked our home and killed my mother. They tried to get me too, but my father had come to my aid. Hellseeker blazing in his hand, my father had fought off the creatures with his blessed pistol. Somehow, we made it to the Plymouth in the garage. The roar of the car’s engine echoed through my mind, and I remembered the biting cold as the vehicle barreled into the nocturnal landscape. Icy darkness greeted us as the vehicle’s tires tore over the fresh snow.

Houses blurred past us as my father navigated a series of winding roads. As the snow-blanketed world rushed past the Plymouth’s window, I could only think of my mother’s frozen, lifeless form. Dad might have saved me, but all help had come too late for my poor mom.

Tires screeched. A wall of fire lit up the night, blocking the road ahead.

Dad’s features darkened. A shadow eight feet tall rose from the ring of flames, a creature straight from the depths of Hell.

I didn’t know the demon’s name, not then. But the image of its terrible silhouette would be burned on my mind forever, just as his mark would soon be seared on my skin.

My father slammed the brakes, and the car screeched to a halt inches away from the flames. The demon grinned, and a long, tentacle-like tongue flickered out from between its gleaming teeth. The tongue whipped through the air toward the Plymouth’s windshield. With a crackle of mystical energy, the sigils and glyphs inscribed across the glass powered up, but the magic failed to prevent the attack.

With the precision of a laser beam, the tip of the tongue burst through the windshield in a spray of glass and dug itself into the soft flesh of my chest. Blood spurted and agony exploded through my little body as I went into shock. Instinctively, I fought the urge to close my eyes and block out the horror and pain. Somehow I knew if I passed out, I wouldn’t survive.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a knife slicing down. The blade severed the tongue, and black blood splashed my face. The sticky fluid burned my skin, the stench overpowering.

Whip-fast, the damaged tongue withdrew back into the monster’s mouth. With a roar of rage, the demon’s wings flared out, and Morgal launched himself at the Plymouth. Dad showed no fear. That’s the part that stood out the most in my mind. Not my terror or the pain, but the calm, steady gaze of my father as he told me to run and never look back.

I could only nod, hot tears streaking down my face. Dad released the seat belt and handed me the green glowing gun. Hellseeker, the blessed pistol that would become one of my greatest weapons in the battle against the forces of darkness.

“The gun will keep you safe. Use it the way I taught you. NOW RUN!”

I don’t remember taking Hellseeker or opening the door.

I don’t remember climbing out of the car and stumbling across the snowy ground.

I only recalled what happened next.

My father cranked the engine, and the Plymouth blasted toward the demon at full crank. I went against dad’s wishes and hazarded a glance back as I ran, watching the scene unfold.

Morgal rippled toward the incoming vehicle. Gunfire filled the night, dad blasting away as he charged forward in a suicide run. My father was buying me precious time to get away—and the currency for this distraction would be his life.

I stumbled to a halt. My heart hammered with terror as I watched the Plymouth slam into the demonic figure at full speed. Later, I would remember dad winking at me before the deadly impact. In the years to come, I would wonder if I had imagined that part. Was my memory playing tricks? Still the image persisted. As I grew older, I drew a weird comfort from it, a final positive memory of my father to hold on to.

Metal twisted and buckled as the Plymouth erupted into a fireball that lit up the blustery winter night. Heat singed my face, but a roaring fire surrounded Morgal. The archdemon seemed to be laughing. An instant later, it disappeared, returning to whatever hellscape had spawned it. Skulick would later explain to me that the vehicle’s wards had released enough mystical energy on impact to send Morgal back to Hell.

Suddenly there was a new sound, a roaring, unholy noise that bashed against my ears. My head slumped forward and my body sagged, all strength leaving my exhausted limbs. Whatever terrible thing was heading toward me, I no longer had the strength to run. The horrors of the last hour were catching up to me. I’d lost the two people that meant the most to me in the whole world.

Instead of a new supernatural threat, a familiar man walked over to me and gazed at the burning wreckage of the Plymouth. Like my dad, this new arrival sported a glowing gun, his long trench coat flapping in the wind. I was looking at John Skulick, the man who would spend the next two decades turning me into a paranormal investigator, just like him.

Just like my dad…

* * *

My childhood ended that day. My life would never be the same.

And it had all led up to this moment. I faced Morgal inside the bone temple, my back straight and my eyes clear. It took all my self-control to not raise Hellseeker and empty a full magazine into the hulking presence looming in the temple’s entrance. This wasn’t my first encounter with Morgal since that terrible day, but it would be my last.

One way or another.

The beast approached in staccato, jerky bursts of movement, crossing the full length of the nave in a split second almost as if he’d teleported himself across the length of the temple. Scarlet light played over the rows of horns sprouting from the monster’s head. Morgal’s lips widened into a grotesque smile, sharp teeth gleaming as he unleashed an obscene laugh that nearly split his deformed head in two.

I stared into the archdemon’s pitiless face, a gamut of emotions welling up in me. Hatred, fear, rage, and even hope. Hope that this would be the final time my path would cross with the Duke of Hell. Hope that I would finally get revenge. I hated this creature, who’d caused so much pain and misery in our world.

The last time I faced Morgal, he’d been inside Skulick’s form. That confrontation hadn’t been as terrible as this. I felt like I was drowning in the archdemon’s black aura. My feelings threatened to overwhelm me. It was as if I’d lost my parents thirty seconds ago, the trauma fresh and unfathomably painful. Morgal’s physical presence had ripped open an old wound which had never fully healed.

“So here we are. A lost boy and his pet demon ready battle the forces of Hell.” Morgal’s voice rolled out in a deep, sonorous blast of fetid air. “Do you truly think you’re up for the challenge?”

Cyon regarded his former master in icy silence, refusing to engage the fiend on a verbal level. Probably a wise move on his part.

Slitted eyes burned in Morgal’s pitiless, reptilian face. Tentacles writhed around the heavily muscled torso, painting a parade of shadows on the bone-covered floor.

I studied my friends. Archer stared in horror at the Duke of Hell, her face the color of marble. Only Cyon kept his cool. For an irrational moment, I felt like I was looking at Skulick and not the demon that had possessed him. There was something calming about having my old partner standing beside me during this showdown. Skulick would want to be here.

With an unwavering focus, Cyon held up the Daemonium and uttered a string of Atlantean words. A heartbeat later, the bone temple came alive as long dead souls stirred back to an unnatural life.

16

Cyon’s unearthly chanting rose in volume. Last time Cyon had only pitted his physical strength against Morgal—he had been unable to tap into his magic without the help of his grimoire. The rematch between archdemon and demon was unfolding quite differently. This time Cyon had the Daemonium’s infernal power at his disposal.

The temple shook violently, causing blinding bone dust to rain down. I tilted my head at the latticework of remains that made up the grisly ceiling. Scarlet light shimmered through the gaps, imbuing the skulls with a dark energy.

My eyes widened. It wasn’t just the light making the skulls seem alive.

One of the skeletons on the ceiling stirred and detached itself from the ivory canopy. Another followed. And another.

Cyon’s magic was breaking whatever spell had imprisoned the souls of the Atlanteans in this realm and turned them into the building blocks in Morgal’s hellish architecture. The dead were waking from their slumber.

And they were pissed.

Four skeletons reconstituted themselves and staggered erect. No joints held these creatures together, only black magic. The bone beasts radiated an orange light as they rippled toward Cyon, growing more coordinated with each step. Lacking muscle, they still projected strength and power, empty eye sockets alive with a burning fire, driven by a combustible mix of righteous fury and infernal magic.

Morgal didn’t seem all that impressed by the display. He whirled a blue fireball at the first group of attacking skeletons. The sizzling energy ball slammed into the bone men and pulverized them in a flash of brilliant light, reducing them to nothingness.

But more skeletons attacked, bony arms reaching out for the archdemon. They dropped from the ceiling like spiders, peeled from the walls like shadows come to life, a never-ending horde of the undead.

Morgal spun and pivoted, hurling one magical blast after another at Cyon’s army of the dead. As the volley found their skeletal targets, they detonated like bombs. The crackling bolts of hellish power swept the skeletons aside and tore them apart in explosions of bone and ash.

I inhaled the dust of their remains and gagged on a fine mist of bone fragments.

Morgal continued to cut a destructive swath through Cyon’s forces. The dead were no match for the archdemon, and the tiny spark of hope in my chest began to flicker out. Almost as if sensing my darkening mood, the Duke of Hell’s guttural laughter rang out. “I grow tired of these feeble attacks, slave! Bow before me and accept your fate.”

Archer and I watched the battle in hushed silence, two mortals bearing witness to a clash of titans. At this point, there was little we could do. Why had Cyon even brought me along for this mission? What role could I have to play in a confrontation between dark gods? Neither Archer’s Witch Whip nor my magical pistol would do much against a Duke of Hell.

The magic was taking its toll on my demonic partner. Perspiration dripped down Cyon’s strained features in thick rivulets, and his borrowed body trembled with the incredible power coursing through Skulick’s frame. He might be a demon, but he still occupied a mortal shell. We swapped glances. There was a knowing look in his eyes that I recognized. He had just realized this was a battle he couldn’t win. The resurrected skeletons were no match for the winged archdemon. But apparently this was only the first phase of Cyon’s master plan.

He rattled off another string of alien words. His chest heaved, and his vocal chords jerked as he dredged the words of dark power from his throat. Magic permeated the air, a sound like roaring flames throbbed and pounded in my head. The Daemonium glowed red. The leather-bound tome pulsed with barely contained power. The fiery red energy emanating from the book enveloped Cyon and incinerated his trench coat and shirt in a blinding flash, burning the clothes right off his frame without harming the flesh underneath.

Bare-chested now, Cyon loomed behind the altar, Demon Slayer in hand and red energy spiraling around him, making his skin glow. His eyes transformed into black slits as he brought the sword down on the skull resting on the altar. It splintered, and Cyon snatched a bone fragment from the shattered skull and drew its sharp edge across his torso. A line of blood oozed, and the swirling nimbus of light that had engulfed him changed color, scarlet turning a brilliant azure.

Cyon was drawing on the power of the dead Atlantean mage, I realized. Combining it with the magic of the Daemonium somehow…

Hope stirred inside of me again even though my doubts lingered. Could the crazy bastard pull this off?

A beat later, the pages of the magic tome burst from the grimoire again. But this time the pages didn’t turn into a hail of deadly projectiles. Instead, the liberated pages targeted the magic wielder himself. A tornado of swirling paper enveloped Cyon, wrapping around his bare torso, chest and arms, turning him into a mummy covered in magical script. Had the sorcery backfired? Judging from the panicked expression on Archer’s face, the same thought had crossed her mind.

And then the weird bluish light incinerated all the pages, reducing them to clouds of ash. The leather-bound cover exploded into motes of light and then vanished into thin air, erased by whatever spell Cyon had set in motion. The maelstrom around Cyon began to fade.

My breath hitched in my throat. As the aura evaporated around him, I realized the demon’s host body had changed. Tattoos now covered every square inch of the shirtless torso. Cyon looked like someone who had spent a year at a tattoo parlor. Shit, if Skulick ever got his body back, he wouldn’t be pleased.

As Cyon maneuvered closer toward the massive, seven-foot-tall archdemon, I made out the details of the intricate ink. Tiny script was etched across his skin like braille. In the harsh red light which bled into the temple, I could even read an occasional word in Aramaic or Latin. The inked spells lit up in red, green and blue light, their magic apparently now activated. Waves of light rippled over him and traveled up the sword in his right hand, charging the blade with incredible bursts of power.

Cyon had somehow merged with the Daemonium, turning his physical form into a living, magical weapon.

Cyon’s eyes flashed with determination. His whole body ignited with magical power as he spun toward Morgal. His sword cut through the air once, twice, hungry for his master’s blood, each time missing the Duke of Hell by mere inches. The massive monster moved like lightning, its size belying the creature’s incredible swiftness. Cyon matched his master’s speed and intensity, a force of nature himself.

His third strike with Demon Slayer penetrated Morgal’s side, sinking deep into the archdemon’s flesh.

The Duke of Hell unleashed a bellow, his giant wings flaring out. Sword lodged in his demonic hide, Morgal’s taloned paw lashed out at Cyon and raked inked skin. Blood sprayed as the blow knocked my demonic partner off his feet, and he let go of the sword.

I cursed, desperate to run into the fray and help however I could. The radiant light of Cyon’s new tattoos dimmed as he crumpled. On a logical level, I knew it was a waste of ammo, but I brought up Hellseeker and pumped round after round into the laughing fiend who had murdered my parents.

Goddamn it, this was my fight as much as it was Cyon’s.

I was about to slam the second magazine into my firearm when Morgal tilted his monstrous gaze toward me. A second face emerged in the reptilian flesh of his heavily muscled chest. A face that was all too familiar.

Skulick.

I grew stock still, all thoughts of squeezing off another round vanishing from my shocked mind. My partner’s soul, which Morgal had whisked into Hell during our last battle, was trapped inside the archdemon! Skulick writhed in pain, almost as if he had received the brunt of my magically enhanced bullets. His mouth widened into a scream that cut through the bone temple and rattled me to the core. The man who’d saved me from Morgal, who’d raised me like a father, was being tortured. And I had no idea how to save him.

“Soon your screams will join his, monster hunter,” Morgal promised me. “But first, I need to make this pitiful excuse of a demon pay for his insolence.”

I glanced at Cyon’s downed form. The tattoos shimmered with weak traces of bluish energy.

Morgal’s hand closed around the hilt sticking from his wounded side. With a spray of black blood, he withdrew the blessed demon-killing sword. The Duke of Hell now brandished Demon Slayer, a black aura enveloping the steel. And he was shifting his attention toward Cyon.

Despair washed over me, knowing full well what was going to happen next.

Cyon defensively raised his arm, the tattoos igniting once more, but it was too late. With a bestial roar, Morgal ran Demon Slayer through Cyon’s heart, killing Skulick’s body and destroying the demon inside of him.

17

My mouth opened in a silent scream.

Steel sliced through Cyon’s inked flesh like butter, the gore-smeared tip erupting from his back in a geyser of red. His limp body dangled from the sword held in Morgal’s monstrous claw like a pinned insect. The tattoos stopped glowing.

How could Cyon’s plan have gone so horribly wrong? Despite the grim odds, I had clung to the hope that Cyon might have an ace up his sleeve. I had been wrong. Morgal had murdered both my partners in one devastating attack.

It was over. We had fought hard. And lost.

Unleashing a terrifying roar, Morgal liberated the sword from Cyon’s body. The demon collapsed on the ground in a string-cut sprawl. All across the temple the remaining advancing skeletons stopped in their tracks and collapsed. The flow of magic had stopped with Cyon’s death.

I regarded the Duke of Hell, and the bastard flashed me a smug, self-satisfied smile, his mouth an obscene slit filled with fangs. Morgal had scored a major victory against his greatest enemy, and he wouldn’t let me forget about it.

I ignored Morgal and ran toward Cyon’s corpse. The eternal optimist in me hoped Cyon might still show a spark of life. Perhaps I could still save him. The lack of a heartbeat or pulse told a different story. Cyon—and with him, Skulick—was dead.

“You bastard,” I mumbled under my breath as I cradled my fallen partner’s head. Dead eyes stared emptily back at me. Archer crouched by my side, her expression ashen, a mirror reflection of my devastated state. Morgal’s giant winged shadow engulfed us. He still wielded the Demon Slayer sword, the steel slick with red-black blood, a reminder the blade was equally effective against demons and mortals.

“I know you hoped to return Skulick’s spirit to his body. But that was never a real possibility,” the archdemon taunted me. “Deep down, even someone as naïve as yourself had to know that.”

Morgal closed in. I could hear the blood dripping off the blade, inhaled the gut-wrenching sulfur stench radiating off the fiend’s hide.

“You fought bravely, Raven. Now it’s time for you to die. But first, I will slaughter this female. And there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing at all.”

My features twisted with rage as I jumped to my feet and rushed toward Morgal, uncaring of my safety, driven by raw emotion.

I planned to drive the Seal of Solomon into the archdemon’s face with all my might. I might die today, but I would make sure Morgal would never forget me. My magical ring wasn’t strong enough to cause any real, long lasting damage, but I hoped to scar him the way he had scarred me all those years ago.

I never reached the fiend. The Duke of Hell knocked the wind out of me with the broad side of the gore-streaked sword. The blow stopped me cold in my tracks. I shuddered, heaving desperately for breath. As I gasped, a shadow fell over my face. Morgal whipped one of his giant dragon wings toward me. The wing swept me off my feet and knocked me on my ass. I hit the ground next to a pile of bones. Hard.

I blinked groggily at the bones, recognizing it as one of Cyon’s reanimated skeleton’s that had succumbed to Morgal’s fireball magic. It couldn’t believe the pitiful remains had ever tried to attack the archdemon. I guess the same could be said about me at this point.

I was battered. Broken. Both physically and psychologically. My parents, Skulick, and Cyon. And, in a moment, Archer. Morgal was determined to take everyone from me.

I turned my head and was confronted with the wide-open, sightless eyes of the man who’d raised me. I shook with anguish, my guts heaving, my soul recoiling from the reality of what had happened. Despair burrowed into my heart, and in that moment, for the first time in my life, I gave up.

We had been such fools to engage Morgal on his home turf. We should have taken Archer back to the warehouse and returned to Earth to fight Morgal another day. What madness had possessed Cyon to pursue this suicidal plan? And why had I blindly followed along? Worst of all, I had led the woman I love into the hands of my greatest enemy.

I knew this was merely the beginning of my suffering. Death would not be the end for me. Not in this place. Not if Morgal had anything to say about the matter.

I registered a whistling sound, followed by a loud snap and a roar of irritation.

I immediately recognized the sound of Archer’s Witch Whip. After all, she was no damsel in distress who needed saving—she was a badass monster slayer in her own right. While I was laying on the floor feeling sorry for myself, Archer had decided to join the fight.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Morgal’s rage-filled expression which made his inhuman features even more terrifying. The flesh on his chest was smoking. Archer had got him good.

Way to go, Jane!

The whip lashed out again. This time the element of surprise was gone. Morgal’s claw shot out and caught the whip in midair. His flesh sizzled. Ignoring the pain, the Duke of Hell yanked the weapon out of Archer’s hand. She cried out, and the whip went flying. It landed about twenty feet away.

Archer staggered backward, her arm clearly hurting from having the whip torn from her with such violence.

Morgal zeroed in on her, a hulking behemoth. The archdemon planned to make good on his promise. He would tear Archer apart, and I had a feeling he would take his time, drawing out each scream, each plea for mercy. I couldn’t let that happen.

Archer valiantly whipped out her silver stake. Bloodslayer might injure the Duke of Hell, but I doubted it could destroy him. Besides, Archer would have to get close enough to drive it into his flesh—not the simplest feat when you are facing slavering teeth and flashing claws.

“Don’t despair,” a familiar voice said inside my head. “It’s not over yet, Raven.”

My blood froze, and my heart must have skipped a few beats. The voice inside of my head belonged to none other than…Cyon. But how?

I was still trying to determine if I had imagined the whole thing when Morgal roared with agony. I returned my gaze to the archdemon and saw him jerkily drop the Demon Slayer sword. The blade had ignited with a white-hot light and now gleamed like a frickin’ lightsaber.

Archer swapped a surprised and slightly hopeful look with me. Something was happening here. The question was what.

Instead of dropping to the ground, the sword remained suspended in the air. A kaleidoscope of colors raced through the shimmering blade. And then the sword changed before my eyes, twisting into a circle of pulsating, blinding light. I brought up my hand to shield my vision from the intense glare, but it didn’t help. I closed my eyes as tight as I could before the powerful radiance could sear my pupils.

I waited in darkness. Time stretched. And gradually the light grew dimmer and more bearable, allowing me to open my eyes again.

The sword was gone. The pulsating energy had reshaped the blade into a new, exotic weapon. It looked like a disk and reminded me of a Chakram. Unlike the Indian throwing disk, three curved blades studded the metallic circumference and pulsated with a fiery red energy.

The disk weapon spun faster and faster before blasting toward me. Before I could even duck, my arm instinctively shot out, and the disk landed in my raised hand. The steel disk fit into the palm of my hand as if made for me. Power hummed and throbbed through the metal. I recognized the exotic engravings and runes on its polished steel surface. I had first seen the markings on the pages of Daemonium and more recently tattooed all over Cyon’s skin.

What the hell was going on?

“Use the Hell Breaker, Raven. It’s your only chance to destroy Morgal.”

It was Cyon’s voice again, now emanating from the pulsating circle of steel in my hand.

A dark realization settled in. The ritual hadn’t just been about fusing the Daemonium into Cyon’s flesh. I recalled the spells inked on Cyon’s host body, the ease at which Morgal had overpowered my demonic partner and driven Demon Slayer into his heart. Almost as if he had wanted it to happen.

“You’re catching on, Raven. I sacrificed myself to power this ritual. To create Hell Breaker, the ultimate weapon. It can even destroy Morgal in his own realm. You have to be the one to use it!

I stared at the strange, three-bladed disk in my hand. Waves of power shot up my arm and into my whole being. With them came an understanding of Cyon’s strategy, the truth that he’d been hiding from me because he’d known I would protest.

When we failed to put an end to Morgal back on Earth, there had been only one other option. Demon Slayer could kill the archdemon while on an earthly plain. In the dimension of fear, where Morgal was at the height of his strength, a far more deadly and powerful weapon was needed. Hell Breaker was that weapon. Cyon had tapped into the latent power of the Atlantean mage, absorbed the full power of the Daemonium, and given his own life in order to create a new weapon.

A weapon that could kill Morgal.

“I’m sorry I had to sacrifice Skulick’s body. And I’m sorry for keeping you in the dark for so long. But there was no other way. You would never play along if you knew what I had planned. To transform Demon Slayer, a demonic sacrifice was required.”

I remembered the devil’s coffin and how it had powered the interdimensional subway train. Fueled by the energy of a slain demon. The creation of this weapon had called for an even greater power source. Cyon had known all along that he would never leave this place alive.

I inhaled sharply. I thought of my parents. Of Skulick, whose soul remained trapped inside the archdemon. And then of Cyon, whose quest for vengeance had led up to this moment of sacrifice. I hadn’t always appreciated the devil on my shoulder—at times, I’d wanted to send him straight to Hell myself. But during our unlikely partnership, I had grown to appreciate his courage, his dry humor, and his determination to make the hard choices.

Up ahead, Morgal shook off his surprise and wheeled toward me, rage further distorting his monstrous visage. His wings cast monstrous, jagged shadows against the walls of the bone temple.

“Use Hell Breaker. End the nightmare. Set this realm free…” Cyon’s voice began to fade. “You’re not alone. We’re here with you! All of us.”

I swallowed, realizing that this was goodbye. But there would be time to grieve for the dead later. Right now I had to fight for the living.

I wasn’t sure who Cyon had meant by “all of us.” And then I saw the procession of dead Atlanteans. A spectral army had materialized in the temple. Bloated, drowned bodies, decaying flesh and exposed bone, a shambling procession of the drowned souls trapped in this hellish dimension. And one by one, they evaporated into balls of light and flowed into Hell Breaker. I could feel the immense power building inside the disk-shaped weapon. Charging itself with their life force.

I wasn’t given to making big speeches like Cyon. Instead, I addressed the souls of the Atlanteans the only way I knew how.

“Who’s ready to kick some demon ass?” I cried. “That’s right, you’re going down, you ugly son of a bitch!”

The weapon flared, bright as all the lights of the Cursed City put together, as the Atlanteans prepared to get their revenge.

Uncertainty flickered in Morgal’s slitted gaze. Good. I wanted the archdemon to be afraid.

My arm shook with the power of thousands of souls demanding justice. Hell Breaker continued to power up, absorbing the spirits of the dead.

The fury of the dead.

Holding the disk was becoming more painful with each passing second. I still refused to let go. I had to hold out a bit longer. And once Hell Breaker was fully charged, I would unleash the pent-up energy and direct their righteous anger against Morgal like a laser beam.

I had waited my whole life for this moment. This chance at vengeance was the final gift Cyon had given me. I had never wielded such a powerful weapon before.

New voices filled my head. Hate-filled, angry whispers. Raging, seething, demanding to be unleashed. The dead Atlanteans craved a chance to strike back at their tormentor. Demanded justice. Sought the peace denied to them for so long.

Not yet…

I felt like the pulsating disk was going to yank my arm right off my shoulder. The voices became deafening, a cacophony threatening to tear my mind apart.

NOT YET!

More souls came. More and more and more…

The last few remaining spirits in the temple joined Hell Breaker. Only me, Archer, and the horned monster remained. Morgal towered over us, a nightmare made flesh.

I traded a final glance with Archer. My whole body was shaking. I knew the moment had come. I wouldn’t be able to hold on to the collective power inside the disk any longer.

“Hey,” I whispered. “I know you don’t remember what we had together, but just in case this ends badly…I love you, Jane.”

Before she could respond, my lips twisted into a savage snarl, and I flung Hell Breaker with all my strength at Morgal like an ancient Greek discus thrower.

The spinning disk leaped toward the demon like a bolt of lightning.

Headed right for his throat.

Powered by the rage of a thousand wronged souls and the sacrifice of one noble demon. It glowed with the power of the sun, a light that represented all that was good and right and just in this world.

I could picture it in my mind’s eye. Hell Breaker cutting into demonic flesh in a burst of searing energy. The glowing disk taking the demon’s head off in one fell swoop and ending his reign of darkness once and for all.

Unfortunately, none of that actually happened. Morgal sidestepped the weapon and caught it inches before the spinning blades would have torn into his reptilian skin.

Hell Breaker shrieked in his hand and spun madly like a trapped fly. With excruciating effort, he twisted the disk away from his face and pointed it at me.

Horror gripped me. It hadn’t been enough. Ten thousand souls, and still Morgal had stopped Hell Breaker.

I hated to admit, but I was fucked.

18

Morgal towered above Archer and me, a mountain of glistening muscle, fangs and claws. My eyes should be inured to hell-born horrors after all these years, but there are sights no one could ever get used to. Should ever get used to.

I knew this was only one of the archdemon’s many incarnations, but it was one of his most fearsome. Reptiles had terrified humanity since the beginning of time, haunting the collective consciousness of our species. Deep in our brainstems, we feared things with scales and teeth—and for good reason.

Hell Breaker pulsed with radiant energy in his raised claw, the shimmering disk bathing his leathery skin in a sickly glare.

“Nice try, monster hunter. You now belong to me. Body and soul. Soon you’ll wish you’d have perished all those years ago when I slaughtered your parents.”

Despite my terror, I shook with rage. I’d blown my best and only chance at defeating Morgal. I turned to Archer and tried to mask my sense of defeat, offering her a weak smile. Morgal lurched toward us. The glowing disk thrummed steadily in his claw, still desperate to tear through his demonic flesh. Muscles flexed and strained as Morgal fought back against Hell Breaker’s white magic.

The archdemon’s shadow engulfed us. What fate awaited me? Whatever Morgal had in store for me, it wouldn’t be pretty. I was public enemy number one around these parts, and I was about to experience the full wrath of Hell.

I didn’t care so much about myself. I’d had a good run, all things considered. I had helped some people, saved the world once or twice. But Archer deserved better than this. By failing to kill Morgal, I had failed the woman I loved. There would be no escape for either of us. We were screwed.

There was only one option left. Point my blessed pistol first at Archer and then at myself. End it now. But I still couldn’t bring myself to do it. Skulick had taught me to fight to the bitter end, to never give up no matter how bad the odds might be.

I steeled myself and leveled Hellseeker at Morgal’s ugly face instead. I knew my blessed bullets would merely annoy a demon of his stature, but man, would it feel amazing to unload another full magazine into this demonic bastard.

And then a sudden idea hit me. Instead of aiming at the demon’s head, I targeted the demon claw clutching the vibrating disk.

And fired.

The bullets hit their target and achieved the desired effect. They might not cause any permanent harm to a Duke of Hell, but they sure stung. Morgal let go of the disk, which whipped out of his hand. A split-second later, it tore into his flesh like a shark gripped by a feeding frenzy. The whirring circle of light blasted right through one of the archdemon’s wings, punching a ragged hole into the leathery membrane. Hell Breaker arced through the air, trailing black blood, and came around for a second attack, the weapon possessed of a mind of its own.

Ten thousand minds, actually. All under the command of Cyon.

Aiming for Morgal’s throat, the weapon dive-bombed again. The archdemon brought up his arm in a defensive motion, and the disk sliced right through muscle, bone, and tendons in an explosion of shimmering light and demonic blood.

The archdemon brayed in agony as Hell Breaker took off his taloned hand. The disk buzzed around him, a chainsaw made from pure energy. It rippled toward him again…and stopped in mid-attack.

I gasped. What had happened?

The answer was simple—Morgal had regained control of the battle. His monstrous lips mouthed eerie words. He was fighting magic with magic.

The archdemon was casting a spell.

I realized the spinning disk hadn’t completely stopped after all. It was still moving, one lugubrious inch at a time. I felt like I was watching slow-mo playback of the attack.

About three feet separated the energy weapon from Morgal’s neck, but the archdemon’s strange chanting continued unabated.

Red streaks of light danced around the frozen disk. The energy radiating off the whirling weapon was changing color. Was Morgal’s magic strong enough to shatter Hell Breaker? And would he be able to complete his spell before the disk took his head off like a guillotine? With each passing second, the red light grew brighter and brighter, threatening to incinerate our only chance of destroying the archdemon.

Shit!

I would have to get closer. Maybe a well-placed blow with the Seal of Solomon, my trusty magical ring, would break Morgal’s concentration. All I could do at this point was try to make him botch the spell.

Before I could put this latest strategy into effect, Morgal’s bestial eyes widened, and the strange words froze on his lips. His massive chest stretched and distorted, and once again, a face pressed against the skin from inside.

Skulick’s trapped soul.

With Morgal focused on the slowly approaching energy disk, his hold must’ve weakened on my partner.

Never give up. Never stop fighting. It ain’t over until it’s over.

I could hear his voice in my head as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud. Those were words Skulick had raised me on. Words he lived by himself.

A heartbeat later, Skulick’s spirit form burst from Morgal’s chest and shot toward the disk, spectral arms outstretched. His hands closed around Hell Breaker, and he drew his own soul into the weapon, adding his life force to the considerable power of the demon-killing weapon.

The red light faded as Morgal’s spell shattered for good. The light emanating from the disk turned a brilliant white again, and a split second later, Hell Breaker roared toward Morgal’s neck at full speed. Light flashed and crackled as the blades sheared off his head.

For an eternal beat, the headless archdemon stood there, the body unaware that the head was missing, and then the gargantuan form toppled over. The impact shook the foundation of the temple, and Archer and I struggled to maintain our balance.

Morgal was dead.

And with the lord of this infernal realm defeated, Morgal’s nightmare kingdom crumbled. The temple shook and swayed wildly as if the whole structure was about to come down. And that meant we need to get the hell out of here.

I turned toward Archer…

And heard a by now familiar buzz above me. Without looking up I raised my hand.

Snap! The energy disk landed in my open palm. Hell Breaker’s incredible power ran up my arm and filled my whole body. It was almost too much to bear.

I was now in possession of the most fearsome weapon Hell had ever seen.

Armed with this bad boy, I could to do some real damage.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, kid. First, make it out of here alive.”

I froze. Whose voice was now ghosting through my mind? It sure as hell sounded like Skulick. Understanding filled me. My old partner’s soul still was inside the mystical weapon.

“Run! Before it’s too late. Get the hell out of here, kid!”

Almost as if to lend weight to Skulick’s disembodied words, the alarm on my watch went off. Which meant forty-five minutes had passed since we arrived in the bone city. And we had only had fifteen minutes to make it back to the warehouse before it phased back to Earth.

Skulick wasn’t kidding. We had to get our asses in gear.

Archer and I ran as the temple rained down on us in a thunderous roar, both of us choking on bone dust. We cleared the length of the nave in one piece and escaped the crumbling temple just as the massive structure began to collapse. My heart hammered with a mad joy as we tore out of the exit and surged toward my waiting car.

Archer was on my side. We had done it. Defeated the beast. And hearing Skulick’s voice emanating from my new weapon filled me with a new sense of relief. A part of my partner had survived.

I tore open the door of my car and slipped behind the wheel as Archer joined me in the passenger seat. I punched the accelerator, and the engine revved. A second later, we were on our way. Behind us, I saw lacelike spires crack and bone towers topple, clouds of dust engulfing the roads behind me. The images made me think of 9/11, when the Twin Towers had come down. I kept pushing the engine, the speedometer inching toward ninety.

Within minutes, we’d cleared the collapsing city and drove in silence through the black desert stretching out before us.

“Where are we going?” Archer asked.

Home, I thought but refused to say it out loud lest I jinx us.

Archer didn’t ask me again.

A quick glance at my watch revealed that we were down to the wire. Only eight minutes left. Ending up stranded in Hell after all the battles we fought and sacrifices we’d made would suck.

The warehouse jumped into view. A bleak, stark desert surrounded our destination, a sky of fire silhouetting the square building that seemed surreally out of place in this forlorn wasteland.

The warehouse was still there, which I took as a good sign. We’ll make it, I told myself.

My heart sank as I spotted the ring of Soulless blocking the bone-paved road leading up to the warehouse. I was driving too fast to dodge the evil spirits, and the Equus slammed right into the hovering spooks. The wards on the windshield lit up, and spectral energy enveloped the vehicle. Metal buckled and twisted. It felt like we had slammed into the back of an eighteen-wheeler.

The steering wheel whipped through my hands, and I lost control over the vehicle. A second later, we were airborne. My car twisted in midair and hit the ground upside-down in a cacophony of rending steel and breaking glass. The impact rattled my body, chattered my teeth. My seat belt bit into my shoulder but kept me from going through the cracked windshield.

The Equus Bass spun across the dark desert floor, tumbling end over end until we finally ground to a smoking, belching halt in a cloud of black dust.

My ride was done for.

I glanced at Archer. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

A thin line of blood trickled from her hairline, but miraculously we both appeared unharmed. But that could change in seconds if the fast approaching horde of spooks had a say in the matter. Their moaning forms encircled the crash site, determined to finish us once and for all. With the car windows shattered, the wards would prove far less effective against the incoming horde.

My jaw tightened with rage. I had had enough of this shit.

I unsnapped my belt and began the painful process of freeing myself from the wreck. My whole body ached as I crawled out of the overturned car and faced down the spooks. Spectral mist swirled around them, clinging to the floating spirit creatures. Their master might have perished, but the soulless still represented a threat. The things would still feed on my good memories if I let them get too close. I had way too few of those to lose them.

“All right, you bastards, let’s see what you got!” My voice shook with rage and burgeoning madness. Losing my car on top of everything else had pushed me to the edge and beyond. Not in a million years would I let this place take one more thing from me.

With an animal roar, I attacked. I hurled Hell Breaker at the Soulless, my new weapon cutting an energetic swath through their ranks. The disk sliced through the first five spooks, who had almost reached me, dispersing them on impact.

Hell Breaker ripped through the air and returned to my hand like a boomerang. In one fluid motion, I spun toward another spook who had tried to sneak up on me from behind. Inches separated us, its bony hand outstretched. Almost as if Hell Breaker could sense I wouldn’t be able to use the disk in a close combat situation, it morphed back into a sword, the blade bursting through the ghost seconds before the creature could steal my best moments.

I pivoted, sword turning back into a disk, and flung my new weapon at another wall of ghostly attackers. As the shrieks of the Soulless filled the desert, I circled the wreck toward the passenger side. Archer had freed herself from the mass of twisted steel. I offered her my hand, pulling her back to her wobbly feet.

Hell Breaker completed its deadly flight pattern through the horde. The last spook evaporated, and the disk wheeled back toward my waiting hand. Fucking badass.

There was no time to bask in my victory. The alarm on my watch went off, a string of loud beeps filling the air. Nearby, the warehouse became transparent as it started to phase out of existence.

“Run!” I shouted at Archer. “Run for your life!”

I exploded into motion. Beside me, so did Archer.

Tapping into everything we had, we ran toward the shimmering warehouse. The structure was changing, turning into a photo negative.

Fuck, we wouldn’t make it. No, no, no.

Hell Breaker seemed to sense that we wouldn’t clear those last twenty feet in time, and once again the sentient weapon came to our rescue. Possessed of mind of its own, it shot out of my hand. Beams of light ignited from the whirring disk as it lifted into the red air. After a moment, I realized the mystical weapon was unloading the souls stored within it to slow down the speed at which the warehouse was phasing back to our world.

It was buying us precious seconds. Encouraged, Archer and I kept sprinting through this radius of magical energy.

Somehow we reached the building and stumbled into the open garage bay. I chanced a glance at the desert outside. Thousands of Atlanteans circled the structure. The once pitiful figures now projected hope and strength, their wasted forms returned to their former glory, as they must have looked in life. And standing among them was Skulick. My partner smiled proudly back at me.

“You did good, kid. As long as you remember what I taught you, I will always be with you.”

Understanding slashed through me. Skulick and the Atlanteans were staying behind in this place. The collective power of their souls had prevented the warehouse from zapping back to our world without us, but they were trapped on the other side of the veil.

Before I could do anything or even say goodbye, it was over. The ghostly figures vanished. The wards and runes Cyon had painted all across the warehouse powered up. Reality stretched and bent again. I was about to experience my second interdimensional jump. Can’t say I’d gotten used to it. Or ever wanted to.

I took Archer’s hand in mine and squeezed hard. She eyed me with surprise. But even if she didn’t remember our relationship, she appeared to appreciate the gesture. She squeezed back, and together we braced ourselves to return home.

After thirty mind-bending seconds that would have rivaled the most intense LSD trip, the familiar asphalt and grey skies of the Cursed City appeared outside the open garage bay.

We had defeated Morgal and returned to Earth.

But at what cost?

19

Two weeks had passed since their narrow escape from Hell. Two weeks in which Archer had spent every waking moment looking for Dianna McKendry. She’d made a promise to the woman who’d helped her back in the bone city, and she intended to keep it.

Archer took a deep breath and entered the Starbucks near the University of Maine, where Dianna was a student. She’d spoken with Dianna’s roommate an hour ago, and the young Indian girl with the purple dyed hair and nose ring had suggested Archer should look for her at Starbucks. Mid-terms were coming up, and the twenty-one-year-old pre-med student had set up shop at her favorite coffee shop, where she was mainlining caffeine.

The rich, calming smell of coffee greeted Archer as she set foot in the bustling shop. Sleep-deprived students were cramming for tests wherever she looked. She found Dianna sitting in the back. The bespectacled college student was ensconced at a large table, surrounded by thick books on biology and chemistry and stacks of notes. Judging by the dark rings under the young woman’s eyes, she’d been burning the midnight oil.

Dianna wasn’t the eleven-year-old girl her mother had known any longer. She’d blossomed into an attractive young woman who was working hard to make something out of herself despite having lost both her parents at a young age.

During her search for Dianna, Archer had inevitably learned more about her mother. Her name was Holly McKendry, and she’d led a drug-fueled, crime-ridden life. By the time she’d checked out, Dianna’s father had already long been out of the picture. Rob McKendry had died of an overdose, leaving Holly to raise Dianna on her own. She’d done the best she could, trying to be a mother while stripping and selling drugs. She’d also been working her way through a never-ending parade of bad loser boyfriends. The last one pressured her into the drug store robbery which got her killed. Acquaintances told Archer Holly had been looking for a father for young Dianna, a good guy, a provider. No such luck. Dianna could have followed her parents down that same tragic path, but her aunt had helped her navigate the stormy, treacherous waters of her teens. Now, her future was looking bright.

“Hi there, are you Dianna McKendry?” Archer asked. The question was perfunctory, meant to be an icebreaker. Archer had pored over many pictures of the young woman sitting across from her and would have recognized her anywhere.

Dianna nodded slowly, obviously keeping up her guard while trying to place Archer. Diana looked so much like the doomed woman who had saved Archer’s life back in Hell that it pained her. Archer had lost her dad when she was a teenager herself and knew the pain of losing a parent at such a young age.

“That’s me,” she said at last. “Do I know you?”

Archer shook her head. “No, you don’t. But I knew your mother.”

The young woman’s gaze bored into her. Archer had the young woman’s full attention.

“Who are you?”

“A…friend of your mother’s.”

“She had no friends,” Dianna said. Her tone had turned cold.

Archer steeled herself for the hard part and continued. “I have something to tell you. Something your mother told me. She’s sorry. She tried to do the best she could, and I know she came up short. But she loved you. She really did.”

Dianna’s features became masklike. “Why tell me this now, why today?”

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.”

This was the best explanation Archer could provide the young woman. She couldn’t tell her the truth. Better for her to think Archer was an ex-stripper friend of her mom’s who’d gotten her shit together and was eager to make amends with the past.

“You will always be her Wonder Girl,” Archer said with a sad smile.

The name worked magic, and Dianna’s guard crumbled. Tears welled up in the young woman’s eyes, and Archer choked up with emotion, too. Talking to Dianna proved harder than she expected. But being here, relaying Holly’s message was also liberating. She was unburdening herself of a great weight and responsibility.

“Wherever your mother is, you’re in her heart and thoughts. She is so proud of you.”

The first part might be a white lie after what had happened in the bone city, but Archer knew the second part was true. Tears carved tracks on Dianna’s quivering cheeks. Archer didn’t know how long she stood there, eyes locked with Dianna in shared silence.

Archer leaned over and hugged her, fighting back her own tears. She wanted to cry for the young woman who’d grown up without a mom and dad, cry for the damned woman who’d lost the memories of her only daughter, and cry for all the treasured memories she’d lost in the dimension of fear.

It could be worse, Archer told herself. At least I didn’t lose everything.

Her words failed to convince her. Those moments the Soulless had taken—her feelings for Raven, the private hours they’d shared—could never be replaced. She felt a void in her being, an emptiness in her heart she couldn’t fill. Her attempts at trying to reconnect with the monster hunter had been awkward and weird. She knew Raven was suffering. He’d lost the woman he loved, the man who’d raised him, and the demon who’d been like a partner to him all at the same time. Morgal was gone and the murder of Raven’s parents had been avenged, but it was a bittersweet victory.

As Archer stepped out of the coffee shop and faced the bitter cold, the world felt like a sadder, darker place. It would rain soon, and she sought refuge in a nearby movie theater. She didn’t care what was playing, anything to distract her raging mind for a couple of hours.

As the movie previews flickered across the screen, Archer relaxed a little. She didn’t know what the future had in store for her, but she sensed Raven would remain a part of her life. He might not be her lover any more, but he could be a friend. And with the passing of time, perhaps those old feelings could be perhaps rekindled. Until that day, they would continue to battle the same enemy. The creatures of darkness weren’t taking a vacation while she and Raven grieved for the past—the war went on. There would be new paranormal cases to solve, new monsters to slay. In an uncertain, ever-changing universe, she clung to one grim truth: she would fight the shadows as long as she could draw a breath.

And to her surprise, this realization filled Archer with a sense of calm.

20

The last two weeks hadn’t been exactly a walk in the park.

I might have survived my trip to Hell, but in a way I felt like I’d never really escaped.

I felt adrift and lost, moving through life without purpose and direction. Simply put, I was a fucking mess. Empty bottles of Jack Daniels and stacks of pizza boxes littered the loft, which was rapidly turning into a man cave. The place felt empty without the people I loved and depended on in my life.

As I squinted against the early morning light seeping into my headquarters, my breath reeking of booze, I knew I needed to get out. Maybe for good. A fresh start. Anything to put some distance between me and the past.

Mind made up, I showered, got dressed, and left the loft for the first time since returning to Earth. A light, chilly rain pricked my face. I felt numb inside, and it weirdly made sense that the elements should numb my body too. I had no choice but to walk in the rain. There were no cabs in my rundown neighborhood, and in some faraway dimension of darkness, the wreck of my muscle car was rotting away. I didn’t even care.

I walked and walked.

Druggies and bums—my neighbors—watched me with interest. I guess I looked like I could be one of them after my two-week bender, but they knew I wasn’t like them. I was the weird guy with the cool car who lived down the street. The one who was always packing. I wanted one of them to say something stupid. I was itching for a fight. I needed to feel something. Even if it was pain.

I had destroyed the archdemon who’d slain my parents, and I felt nothing. No sense of triumph or even closure. All I could think of was what I’d lost. Skulick. Archer. Even Cyon, manipulative bastard he was.

I aimlessly wandered the empty downtown streets. Ugly, boxlike structures cast harsh shadows in the watery light. Hey, at least the buildings hadn’t been constructed from human remains.

As I walked, I lost all track of time. I couldn’t have told you if one hour passed or five. It didn’t matter. There was no place I had to be, nothing I had to do. Things had been surprisingly quiet in the Cursed City since my return. A part of me wondered if Cyon might have sealed the breach between our world and the dimension of fear during our return trip. Now wouldn’t that be great? But in one form or another, evil always returned. If the rift was sealed here, some other ambitious fools would crack open the veil between worlds in another city.

The fight never ended, and victories were few and far between.

I didn’t want to dwell on the cost of our victory against Morgal, but my mind kept returning to Skulick. I tried to draw comfort from having set my partner’s soul free. He wasn’t a prisoner in Hell any longer. Freed from Morgal’s influence, his spirit could finally move on.

But none of that changed the grim reality—Skulick was still gone, this time for good. I was on my own.

Time to grow up, kid.

I was about to head back to the loft when I recognized the warehouse up ahead. Unconsciously, I’d returned to the same rotting building which had shuttled us the between Earth and Hell, nearly six miles from my home base. Why had my feet led me back to this damn place? I was trying to forget, not be reminded of everything I’d lost. Yet here I was. Back at the site where the breach had first occurred. My scar throbbed something fierce. Occult energy coursed through the structure.

My cell chirped. The ringtone had an eerie quality in these desolate streets. I checked the incoming call, hoping it might be Archer. It turned out to be Detective Benson.

I paused. Should I even answer this call? Did the detective have some new case for me, and if so, would I be ready to tackle a new paranormal rime scene in my current mood? I doubted it, but I also refused to let one of my last remaining friends down.

“Hello, Detective, what’s going on?”

“I have some big news,” Benson said.

“I’m listening.”

“We arrested a surviving member of the Crimson Circle.”

“Damn,” I said. “I had no idea you were still looking into it.”

“I’ve been pursuing the case after what happened at the church. Being…possessed…by that demon, experiencing your world for the first time…”

Benson broke off, overcome by emotion. I knew how he felt.

“I’m sorry, Raven. I know you live with this shit, but this is pretty new to me.”

I didn’t know what to say. I should probably reassure him somehow, but I couldn’t find the words.

Almost as if he could sense my dark mood through the phone, he continued, “We found information you’ll be interested in.”

“What sort of information?”

“Lists, names of buyers of various occult items. And a world map with certain cities highlighted.”

Benson didn’t have to explain. We both knew about Morgal’s lieutenants, who’d taken over some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world. Even with their boss out of the picture, these lower-level demons would be determined to cause mayhem and misery all over the globe. Now more so than ever. They would want to avenge their fallen master and fill the power gap he’d left behind.

Before I could respond to Benson, something strange happened. Even stranger than my usual brand of weirdness. It was just a whisper, the barest hint of a voice, but I heard it.

Raven…

“Do you think you could come down to the precinct now?”

Benson’s voice faded in the background as my attention turned inward, hoping to pick up the voice in my head again.

I waited.

And waited.

The voice remained silent. Had I imagined the whole thing?

“Hey, man, are you there?” Uncertainty had crept into the detective’s voice.

RAVEN!

There it was again. I clenched my jaw. No point in denying it. The voice in my head was real and all too familiar.

“I’m sorry, Benson, something came up. I will get back to you as soon as I can.”

Before Benson could retort, I ended the call. I definitely wanted to study those maps. But I wanted to find out who was invading my mind even more.

My gut told me the voice had come from the warehouse. Suddenly, my presence here didn’t feel like an accident any longer. Something or someone had guided me back to this place.

I drew Hellseeker and entered the warehouse. Runes and wards bled down the walls. Cyon’s work—dormant now, but still imbued with latent power according to my aching scar.

I combed the main floor. The place appeared deserted, but in my line of work appearances can be deceiving.

My scar pulsed, and I let the gnawing pain guide me. It led me to a steel staircase up to the next floor. The pulsing in my chest kept building in intensity as I closed in on the roof access door. Whatever was setting off my Spidey Sense, it was on the roof.

“Whoever the hell you are, show yourself,” I said as I approached the exit.

I didn’t receive an answer. Someone was having way too much fun playing games. Too bad I’d lost my sense of humor in the dimension of fear.
I snarled as I kicked open the door and stepped onto the roof. Blustering wind tussled my hair and buffeted my coat. A landscape of ugly, empty warehouses stretched out below me. The majestic skyline of the Cursed City overlooked the scene, and for a surreal moment I thought I was looking at the bone city.

I swallowed hard as reality returned to normal. There was no one here.

I was about to head back into the warehouse to continue my search when I caught a glint of strange light coming from the far edge of the roof. Curiosity piqued, I followed the mysterious radiance. My eyes widened as I recognized the source of the light.

Hell Breaker.

I frowned. How was this possible? I remembered the weapon leaving my hand, lifting to the air and releasing Skulick and the dead Atlantean as the warehouse phased out of Hell.

But here it was.

I recalled the disk’s ability to return like a boomerang. Had it whistled back to the warehouse and landed on the roof seconds before we returned to our world? It was the only explanation which made any sense. I held my breath as my hand closed around the steel disk. The three curved blades shimmered in the milky sunlight.

The moment my fingers closed around Hell Breaker, I heard the voice in my head again.

“Did you miss me, partner?”

“Cyon?” I asked.

“In the…well, not the flesh. But I’m still here. And we still have work to do.”

I held the sentient demon-killing weapon in my hand, oblivious of the rain, which was becoming heavier. And to my surprise, I was smiling.

The light pulsing off the disk grew brighter, steel morphing into a sword adorned with spells and runes that had previously graced the pages of the Daemonium.

Demon Slayer or Hell Breaker. No matter what you wanted to call the weapon, it felt good in my hand. Better and more badass than ever.

I held up the sword as if I was posing for a movie poster. Facing the Cursed City’s skyline, I might have resembled a knight gearing up for combat. Which wasn’t too far from the truth. The war against the forces of darkness would continue. And for the first time since my return to Earth, I felt ready to return to the front lines.

THE END

Raven and Cyon will return.

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Afterword

Wow, here we are! After nine books of chronicling Raven’s adventures, we have finally reached the climax of the Cyon/Morgal cycle. And what an exciting ride it’s been! Telling these tales, my first attempt at producing self-contained novels which also tell a bigger, serialized story, has been a blast, and I hope you all equally enjoyed the ride.

Is the Shadow Detective saga over? Far from it. I have some new Raven stories cooking, but these will take the action in a brand new direction. New projects are in the works too—Night Slayer, Panther Man, The Paranormalists to name a few.

As the saying goes, stay tuned.

Please accept my gratitude for reading the Shadow Detective series and keeping me motivated with your facebook comments, emails and reviews. You guys make this whole venture worthwhile.

All the best,

Bill Massa

Venice Beach, April 2018

About the Author

William Massa is a produced screenwriter and bestselling Amazon author. His film credits include Return to House on Haunted Hill and he has sold pitches and scripts to Warner, USA TV, Silver Pictures, Dark Castle, Maverick and Sony.

William has lived in New York, Florida, Europe and now resides in Venice Beach surrounded by skaters and surfers. He writes science fiction and dark fantasy/urban fantasy horror with an action-adventure flavor.

Writing can be a solitary pursuit but rewriting can be a group effort. I strive to make each book better than the last and feedback is incredibly helpful. If you have notes, thoughts or comments about this book or want to contact me, feel free to contact me at:

williammassabooks@gmail.com

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Also by WILLIAM MASSA

THE SHADOW DETECTIVE SERIES

Cursed City

Soul Catcher

Blood Rain

Demon Dawn

Skull Master

Ghoul Night

Witch Wars

THE OCCULT ASSASSIN SERIES

Damnation Code

Apocalypse Soldier

Spirit Breaker

Soul Jacker

THE GARGOYLE KNIGHT SERIES

Gargoyle Knight

Gargoyle Quest

THE SILICON WORLD SERIES

Silicon Dawn

Silicon Man

STAND ALONES

Fear the Light

Match: A Supernatural Thriller

Crossing the Darkness