Give the Devil His Due (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Three) (13 page)

“We’re arguing over semantics,” Tim replied. “Sanheim seems like the devil to me.”

Kieran grunted in disgust.

“That’s exactly what he wants you to think,” he replied. “That’s why he dresses up in those fancy suits and talks about ‘deals’ and ‘darkness.’ ‘The devil went down to Georgia and he was looking for a soul to steal.’ Is that the riff he played for you, Kate?”

“He told me the truth,” she said. “You are what you hate. I’ve become the very thing I tried to destroy. He knew what I would become.”

Kieran cast a worried look at Tim.

“He lied, Kate,” Kieran said. “And Sanheim isn’t the devil.”

“Why does it matter what we call him anyway?” Tim asked.

“It matters because words have power, and names have more than most,” Kieran replied. “It influences what we believe and that definitely matters. If we say the Land of the Dead is hell, and Sanheim is the devil, then we’ve already lost. How can we free a soul from a land where only the most evil and corrupted go in the first place? How can we defeat a monster that is evil incarnate? This is why Sanheim acts the way he does, why he no doubt tries to make the Land of the Dead seem like our conception of hell. Because it teaches people to accept their fate. They believe they are there because they deserve to be, and the creature that rules them is nothing less than an evil god.”

“But Sanheim is a god. A Celtic one, at least,” Tim said.

“Who knows what he really was, once upon a time?” Kieran said. “The more I think about my interactions with Sanheim, the less like a god he seems. Why would a god be threatened by Sawyer or Kate? If he really ‘rules forever,’ as Lilith said, why would he worry about anything at all? There’s more to him than I can explain. But one thing I’m sure of — he is not the devil and he’s not unbeatable.”

Tim looked at Kate while Kieran spoke, hopeful that she would absorb what he said. He wasn’t sure he believed it all himself, but if she didn’t fight back against the idea that she was some kind of monster, he knew they were doomed. But Kate was staring vacantly into space again, trapped in whatever mental prison she had built for herself.

“Okay,” Tim said, trying to move forward. “But you still haven’t said how we can beat him, especially if he knows we’re coming. Or how we can succeed with only half a Prince of Sanheim.”

Kieran nodded at him, excited again.

“Because we’re going to take things to a whole other level,” Kieran said. “Crowley had a measly fifty
moidin
when he attacked. He clearly thought that was a lot. But Kate proved last year that she’s unique among the Princes. Her powers don’t rely on mortal followers. She can call the dead to fight for her. Of course, in the Land of the Dead, they’ll just be people, not ghosts, but it doesn’t matter at that stage. Before she crosses over, she can raise one helluva army.”

“Can she raise that many?”

Both Kieran and Tim looked at Kate, waiting for her to respond. Though she was sitting in a chair without moving, her mind seemed far away.

“I don’t know,” Kieran said, turning his attention solely to Tim. “But I believe she can. Last year she needed to give the spirits at Ball’s Bluff a reason to fight. The soldiers came to her because she was defending Leesburg, defending their sense of home. I felt the tug when she called them and it was incredibly powerful.”

“What are they going to fight for this time? Surely not to save Quinn.”

“What all creatures crave most,” Kieran said. “Remember that many of these spirits have been trapped here for hundreds of years. They can’t move on and they’re stuck reliving their worst nightmares. It took Purcellville burning to motivate them to break out of that vicious cycle last year. But Kate can offer them something more enticing than the thought of home. She can offer them a way out. If Kate really is ‘the last,’ she can give them what they want most — she can set them free.”

Chapter 11

Quinn stared at the open black door in front of them, wondering if they should go through it.

The problem was a distinct lack of alternative options. Behind them was the staircase and a doorway out to Halloweenland... as well as a mob of angry scarecrows. In front of them was likely to be something worse, but it was a chance they would have to take.

Just as he’d done during his fight with the clowns, Quinn thought the best strategy was to move forward and wait for his opponent — whoever it was — to make a mistake.

At least now he had a knife. He reached down and cut some flannel off a dead clown’s shirt, wrapping it around the naked blade before sticking it cautiously in his belt.

He picked up another knife lying on the floor and held it out to Janus, who backed away and refused to take it.

“No way, mate,” Janus said. “We’d be lucky if I didn’t decapitate all three of us with that.”

“Suit yourself,” he replied and dropped it back on the floor. “You two ready?”

They both nodded. Quinn turned and marched through the doorway.

Quinn was unprepared for what awaited him. The room was almost completely black, other than some pinpricks of light on the ceiling. They seemed to be turning slowly around him. Quinn also heard a loud hum that made it hard to hear anything else. He turned to tell Janus and Elyssa to wait, but it was too late. They practically pushed him through and the door shut behind them.

“What is this?” Elyssa asked.

Before Quinn could answer, a voice piped up through the loudspeaker again.

“Consider a man with delusions of grandeur,” the voice said in an uncanny imitation of Rod Serling. “Once a humble reporter in Leesburg, he has made a pact with dark forces to give himself and his lover unspeakable power. But he is about to learn that power is not everything it’s cracked up to be, especially in the vortex.”

The points of light began moving faster and the hum became louder. Quinn reached out to the sides and gripped a cold railing. He realized he must be on some kind of catwalk because the lights also moved below him. As they sped up, the effect was disorienting.

“Is everything in here a rip-off?” Janus asked. “First the Disney Haunted Mansion, now the Twilight Zone. It’s one giant copyright lawsuit waiting to happen.”

“Not sure they can sue you in the afterlife, Janus.”

The room was spinning faster now, or at least it seemed to be. Quinn had no point of reference anymore. The lights were moving so quickly around him that it felt like he was traveling through a long tunnel. He was dizzy and could barely keep moving forward.

“I’ve seen this kind of thing before,” Janus said, practically shouting to make himself heard over the hum. “I covered a fall festival in Reston once when they were still banned in Loudoun. In the middle of their Forest of Fear walk, there was a big room like this. It’s just a cheap, optical illusion. We just need to keep walking.”

Quinn nodded, but he found it difficult to walk. His stomach was churning, despite the fact that he was barely moving.

“Close your eyes,” Elyssa yelled. “It’s better that way.”

He complied and was surprised how different he felt. The intense nausea that had begun to plague him subsided, and the dizzy sensation faded away. He felt, rather than saw, Elyssa walk past him. He started to follow, using the metal railing as a guide.

He wasn’t sure how big the room was — or even if there was an exit on the other side — but he couldn’t open his eyes to check. In the dark, he wasn’t sure if he would see anything anyway, and what he could view would just make him sick again. He started to pick up his pace when the loudspeaker turned on again.

“Consider a know-it-all photographer, who documents daily life in rural Virginia, always convinced he is better than those around him. But he is about to find out exactly what he’s worth in... the vortex.”

“Has it occurred to you that whoever is talking seems to have it out for us in a personal way?” Quinn shouted to Janus.

His friend didn’t have time to respond. The room suddenly seemed to shift. The walkway beneath them began to tilt. At first it was just a slight incline, but it gradually became steeper. Quinn opened his eyes and instantly regretted it. The lights were whirling around him at an incredible speed, and immediately provoked the same nauseated feeling he had earlier. He shut his eyes quickly after confirming what his feet were trying to tell him: the catwalk was now slanted at a high angle. It was like walking uphill. He clung to the railing and kept his eyes shut tight.

“We’ve got to move faster,” he called, but he wasn’t sure anyone could hear him. The humming noise was now all that Quinn could hear.

He felt Janus grab on to his shirt from behind him. The two of them tried to run up the steep incline, every step becoming harder than the last. Quinn risked opening his eyes again and was stunned to see a doorway a short ways in front of him. Elyssa was already standing in it, looking back at them. The light streaming in from the open door helped to dissipate the effect of the spinning tunnel, but Quinn still couldn’t keep his eyes open for very long.

It was only ten feet away, but the catwalk was now at a dangerously high incline. They were using the railing as if they were rock climbing rather than walking uphill.

“We’re not going to make it,” Janus said.

Quinn reached behind him and grabbed Janus’ arm.

“I’m going to give you a push,” he said.

“What about you?” Janus replied.

Quinn didn’t respond. Instead, he helped Janus climb past him. The spinning sensation was becoming more intense again. Quinn looked up to see Elyssa apparently struggling to hold the door open for them. From what he could tell, the battle wasn’t going well. He wasn’t sure how much time they had.

Holding the railing with one hand and pushing on Janus’ back with the other, Quinn helped them keep going. When Janus was just a few feet from the door, he yelled, “Ready?”

He wasn’t sure if Janus heard him. Quinn could barely hear himself. He shoved Janus with all of the strength and leverage he could muster. He watched as Janus seemed to climb the railing as if it were a rope ladder, and then grab Elyssa’s outstretched arm. Janus was pulled into the safety of the doorway. The two of them successfully beat back whatever was trying to close the door and stood looking back at Quinn.

Quinn felt a shudder in the floor beneath him and grabbed onto the railing with both hands. The walkway broke off and fell into the spinning room with a large crash. For a moment, the lights appeared to move slower and the hum receded, as if the catwalk was being ground up in giant gears. But it picked up again shortly afterward, leaving Quinn clinging to the steel railing in a dizzying maelstrom of dancing lights. He tried climbing it like a rope in gym class.

He heard Janus shouting, but could barely hear him. It sounded like he said “look down,” so Quinn did.

He immediately wished he hadn’t. Below him was the painted face of a pumpkin, carved into a leering grin. The mouth was open wide, and Quinn could see rows of sharp, metal spikes. If he fell, he would be impaled on them.

The paint appeared to glow in the dark, so the face and spikes were the only things Quinn could see. In the disorienting spinning room, the face appeared larger than life, like an all consuming demon that would soon feed on his bones.

Quinn dragged his attention back to the railing in front of him. He climbed up slowly, hoisting himself up by his hands until he reached a rung for his feet. Then he slowly repeated the process.

Don’t look down
, a voice in his head said, and Quinn was unsurprised to hear it was Kate.
Just focus on the task at hand.

He kept crawling up, not trying to rush. The room started shaking and now he could hear music playing. He was vaguely aware it was “Welcome to the Jungle,” by Guns N’ Roses. Instead of frightening him, however, he used it as a motivational tool, singing along as he inched up the bar. He dared to look up and realized he was almost there. He could see Elyssa and Janus framed in the doorway’s light. Janus reached out for him and Quinn stretched to grasp his hand.

Just before he could fully grab Janus’ hand, however, the railing shook and he slipped. Quinn fell upside down, his body now facing the grinning pumpkin below him, the spikes in its mouth flashing at him. At first, he thought he was falling toward it, before realizing his legs were caught in the railing above him. He felt the knife slip out of his belt and plummet to the floor, lost amid the spikes.

From somewhere he heard Axl Rose screaming, “You’re in the jungle, baby. You’re gonna diiiiiiiieeee.”

Quinn fought down the stab of panic and slowly pulled himself up again, careful to keep hold with his legs. He succeeded in getting upright and realized he was still close to the exit. He was near exhausted, but not finished yet.

He started his slow climb up once more with renewed determination. One of the figures in the doorway reached out to him and Quinn grasped the open hand.

As he was pulled in, he noticed that the hand belonged to Elyssa. For just a moment, he wondered if she would let him fall to the spikes below. But as soon as that thought crossed his mind, Janus joined her and he was suddenly thrown safe through the doorway.

Quinn landed with a thud and looked back. The physics of the place were insane. He stood in the doorway looking down on the vortex as if it were just another hallway with a painted pumpkin face at the end. It appeared perfectly horizontal. But he knew if he stepped back inside, the room would turn topsy-turvy again, and the pumpkin face would be at the end of a long, vertical shaft. Even now, the pumpkin face seemed to be smiling at him, mocking him.