The Demonata #10: Hell's Heroes (24 page)

“You’re pathetic,” I sneer, seeing my old foe in his true colors, astonished that I lived so long in fear of him, considering him the worst of any imaginable enemy.

“I was,” Lord Loss says calmly. “No longer. I am the last demon master, the final sentinel of sorrow. All of this universe’s demonic familiars must bow to my power now. I’ll also cast a dark shadow across the hearts and minds of the creatures in your universe, weaving my web of misery across more worlds than any master ever came close to before. I’ll be the source of every nightmare, the face behind each malicious mask of myth. I’ll sow fear everywhere my eye alights, and reap the rich rewards for all eternity.”

“What makes you think we’ll let you?” I challenge him.

“Bec promised,” he smiles.

I cock an eyebrow at the girl.

“We need him,” she says quietly. “Every developed world had its boogey men, evil spirits, devils. The universe requires a force of evil for the wicked to gravitate towards, a malevolent being that the dark-hearted can worship. If they can’t turn to Lord Loss, we’ll have to play that hideous role. I don’t want to be a monster to the twisted and the vicious of our own worlds. Do you?” she asks me. “Or you?” she throws the question at Kernel.

Kernel and I look at each other uneasily.

“Why him?” I grumble. “We can bring back one of the others that we killed, or use a familiar. It doesn’t have to be Lord Loss. I want to destroy him. After all he did to us…”

“They do say, ‘Better the devil you know,’” Lord Loss murmurs slyly.

“I gave him my word that we’d let him rule the white zones,” Bec says. “Plus, he vowed never to overstep the mark, to leave the Old Creatures alone, to cross only when authorized and always return to his own realm when his work is done. He won’t establish toeholds in the human universe, or allow his familiars to settle there either.”

“But the familiars won’t be able to cross universes this time,” Kernel frowns. “We’ll stop them.”

“We can’t,” Bec says. “History demands their presence. If we’re to let time unravel as it did before, every demon crossing will have to be recreated. I’ll work in tandem with Lord Loss, letting him know when and where his familiars should cross. When we reach the present—the time when we ended the universe—we’ll set him free to operate by himself as long as he respects the rules, and at that point we can put a stop to the crossings of lesser demons. Our people can be free of the monsters after that, but not before.”

“How can we trust him?” I growl.

“I gave my word,” Lord Loss says stiffly. “I have always honored a promise.”

I shake my head. “We’re better off without him. We can control and direct the familiars by ourselves. Lord Loss would be a threat. We’d have to watch him like a hawk.”

“No,” the demon master says. “That’s merely an excuse, Grubitsch. You wish to kill me to exact revenge. You cannot justify my execution any other way.”

“Then I won’t,” I shrug. “I’ll kill you and take your place. I’d rather that than let you carry on. You’re the reason I’m here, the cause of everything bad that ever happened to me. If it wasn’t for you, my parents would be alive, Dervish and Bill-E, all the others. I won’t spare you, not after the hell you’ve put me through. I’d rather burn.”

I raise a hand to wipe out the demon master. I’d meant to torment him before I finished him off, but now I’ll settle for a quick kill.

“Your words hold the key to my reprieve,” Lord Loss says calmly as I point a finger at him. His self-satisfied smirk infuriates me, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to strike. “If not for my interference, you wouldn’t have joined with Kernel and Bec. The Kah-Gash could never have been utilized as it was. All has been shattered to be rebuilt, but if not for
my
actions, it would have simply been destroyed.

“I put you through hell, yes, but it was a hell you
needed
to experience. The pain, suffering, death… all were necessary. I served the purpose of the universe, just as you did. If not for my dark presence, you would never have found the path you were required to travel.

“People need devils and dark gods, if only to give them a foe to rally against, an obstacle to overcome. Your people understood that there can be no light without darkness, no good without evil, no triumph without setbacks. You can’t kill me because I’m part of all that you are, all you’ve done and plan to do. You don’t have to like me. You can even loathe me. But you must accept me.”

I tremble with frustration. Part of me wants to whip him down, wipe that smirk from his face, kill him no matter what. But everything he says rings true. I owe it all to him, the good as well as the bad. As despicable as he is, he set this in motion. It wasn’t intentional, and he acted selfishly at every turn, but if Beranabus was right and some godly force in our universe chose heroes and molded them, maybe Lord Loss was part of the
über
plan, as vital a player as Bec, Kernel, or me.

“I’ll be watching you,” I snarl. “If you take just one wrong step…”

“Why should I?” he smiles. “I never yearned to conquer your world, Grubitsch, merely to revel in the torment of its many desperate souls. Now I will become the pit of darkness at the center of the entire universe, a web into which all the weak, helpess, and vindictive must fall. What more could I wish for?”

“I hope you choke on it,” I sneer, then let my body unravel and return to my ethereal state. The last thing I see through my human eyes is Lord Loss rubbing his eight stumpy hands together, leering eagerly, awaiting the dawn of time and the birth of the first of the billions whose misery he’ll wallow in like the ugly, heartless, flaccid, but essential leech that he is.

Lord Loss sows all the sorrows of the world

Lord Loss seeds the grief-starched trees

In the center of the web, lowly Lord Loss bows his head

Mangled hands, naked eyes

Fanged snakes his soul line

Curled inside like textured sin

Bloody, curdled sheets for skin

In the center of the web, vile Lord Loss torments the dead

Over strands of red, Lord Loss crawls

Dispensing pain, despising all

Shuns friends, nurtures foes

Ravages hope, breeds woe

Drinks moons, devours suns

Twirls his thumbs till the reaper comes

In the center of the web, lush Lord Loss is all that’s left

W
E
pick a black square at random and set about putting together the building blocks of life. The three of us work as one, without having to discuss what we’re doing. Bec provides the memories, and thus the blueprints of what we need to start life again. Kernel manipulates the hidden strings of the universe to bring into being anything Bec desires. And I supply the power, channeling the energy of the Kah-Gash through them.

It’s a long, complicated process, yet at the same time swift and simple. This is what the Kah-Gash does. It’s like a person breathing, walking, talking, snapping his or her fingers. As humans we performed countless natural functions every second of the day. This is the same, only on a cosmic level.

The Old Creatures are aware of what we’re up to, and we can sense their seal of approval, even though we never communicate. They’re happy to drift along in their own zones. All they ever wanted was to be left alone, safe from the threat of the Demonata, to roam as they pleased. We can guarantee that now, so they have no further interest in us.

I wish we had it so easy. There are hard times ahead. Having to focus for billions of years… put worlds, ecosystems, and civilizations back the way they were… ensure every seed finds the egg it was meant to… guide every animal from a single-celled organism upwards, on every planet, in every galaxy… determine the deaths of all creatures, down to the fraction of a second of the date when they were meant to die…

It’s no walk in the park!

One problem we don’t have to worry about is the harvesting of souls. As strong as we are, there’s a higher force than the Kah-Gash. We can sense it, but we can’t define it, something greater than power, knowledge, life, or death. We could give it a name, but that’s not our job or our right. Let the beings of the universe name and worship the force in whatever ways they wish. We’re not here to provide answers, just to give others the opportunity to marvel at the secrets of the heavens and perhaps one day unravel the mysteries for themselves.

I’m not looking forward to letting bad things happen. I’m sure I’ll be tempted to intervene a million times a day, spare innocents, undermine tyrants, build a better, safer, cleaner universe. But it’s a temptation I must ignore. If we start to interfere, we’ll rob individuals of the right of self-determination. Nothing good can come of celestial dominance, no matter how noble our intentions. We’re architects of this universe, nothing more, and we must never let ourselves forget that.

Having said that, we’ll have to direct traffic up to a certain point, to the moment when we tore the universes asunder. We could start fresh if we wanted and let things develop randomly, but there’s no telling what would happen then. Life might never evolve at all. We think it’s better to start the ball rolling, guide the creatures of this universe along the path they followed the first time around, then withdraw and leave them to themselves.

Well… maybe we’ll stop a
bit
earlier. We don’t have to let time stretch to the very last second. There’s no harm tying up some loose ends a day or two before the universe ended. We have to implement change at that stage anyway, fiddle with the order of events to ensure this new universe isn’t annihilated. It wouldn’t make any real difference if we rounded things off a week or two earlier… maybe even a few months or years…

“That’s dangerous thinking,” Bec notes, her voice coming from every part of the universe and yet from nowhere in particular. “We agreed we wouldn’t interfere.”

“But we have to at the end,” I argue. “If we let events play out as before, the re-creations of ourselves will tear the universe to shreds. We have to make changes. There can be no wandering pieces of the Kah-Gash. Death must remain a force and never be unleashed as the Shadow. No war between the demons and humanity. We have to juggle events, remove a few individuals from the mix, strip some of power, give others more to do. It’ll be like a game of chess. We can let the game unfold as it did before, but if we want to avoid checkmate, we’ll have to readjust the pieces a few moves shy of the finish.”

“That makes sense,” Kernel agrees.

“So where do we draw the line?” Bec asks. “Grubbs was the last to be born. Do we set the universe free just before that? Or do we go back to before
I
entered the world and release our grip then?”

“That would be the simplest thing,” Kernel says, but there’s an uncertain edge to his voice.

“The trouble with stopping there,” I mutter, “is that the people we knew might never be born. My parents, Gret, Dervish…”

“Shark and Sharmila,” Kernel says.

“Bill-E and Kirilli,” Bec sighs.

“We could keep them all,” I croak. “Even save them. My parents don’t have to be slaughtered. We can give Dervish a stronger heart. Bill-E and Loch needn’t die in the cave in Carcery Vale.”