The Devil Dances (30 page)

“Fucker! I told you not to mess with my woman!” I roared as I drew my knife back and plunged it back into him, two-handed-style. I stabbed him in the eyes, in the face. He screamed and the vale echoed with his pain and anger. I realized I was screaming back at him, cursing him, calling him every ungodly thing under the sun, like that kid in
The Christmas Story
who totally loses his shit and starts pummeling the schoolyard bully into the dirt. And that’s what he was to me: just a bully. Nothing more. Well, his time for bullying was up. He roared and bucked like a mechanical bull, clawing my back raw with his nails and shredding my coat and shirt, but I didn’t care. I didn’t relent. I didn’t give up.

Finally, at long last, I was angry. I was pissed.

No, I was crazy-mad, the kind of mad I only got when I’d been pushed too far, when something had pushed my special rage buttons. Go after those little girls? Go after Elsie Knapp? Go after Vivian? Go after me, fucker? You get this. You get my rage. You get my outrage, which is a hundred times
worse
than my rage!

I hadn’t felt his kind of fury since the night I had waited for my foster father to come home and had swung that stickball bat into his shin bone, the sickening and yet oddly delicious sound of his femur cracking, splintering apart like a dry log, being destroyed under my outrage and power.

I stabbed and stabbed until Cernunnos’ arm flailed up, connected with the side of my head, and knocked me right into the altar stone. My body slammed down hard, but I was too high on adrenals to suffer the impact, though I knew I would later on. Before that could happen, I scrambled up and threw myself at the monster rearing up before me, the enraged god full of blood and fury. He was much faster than I’d anticipated as he tried to defend himself, like he actually feared me, but I was smaller than he, and faster still. There was no getting away from me now.

As he threw his arms up to protect his face, he left his body wide open to me. I brought the athame up and down in a screeching arc, embedding it in his belly. He tossed his head and his hands reached down and knocked me away. He raked them over the hilt of the athame even as purplish ichor poured out of his ruined face, poured down over his abs and into his dirty brown fur. His flailing hand knocked the knife loose.
“You little cockstain!”
he roared.

“Fuck you, bitch!” I roared even as I grabbed up a handful of loose rocks from the altar and flung them at him. They pinged and popped off his face and antlers. I didn’t wait for a better opening. I jumped at him, wrapping my arms around his neck. He began thrashing from side to side. I actually managed to stay aboard for about eight seconds, like a rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronco, before he threw me down and kicked at me. I rolled out of the way of his massive hoof, but his clawed hand came around and clocked me under the chin.

I fell against the altar like a ragman. This time, when his kick came, it landed solidly in my abs.

The flare of dizzying pain made me gag and double over. I spit blood from the ruptured something inside of me. I tried to claw my way to my feet, but my legs gave out like bits of kindling with no power to hold me and I collapsed to my hands and knees instead.

Someone was grabbing up the bloody athame lying in the grass. In the new, watery grey light of oncoming dawn, I saw a pair of long, black slacks cuffed in mud. I tried to warn Isaac back, to tell him
no, don’t do it
, but he was as determined as I was. As angry as I was. When he turned to face me, I saw the set of his face, the bloodlust in his eyes. He was doing this for Grandma Knapp, I knew, for Caleb, for all the women of the colony who had suffered because of the beast looming before us. He picked up the knife and lunged, screaming in a fearless frenzy of rage, at Cernunnos.

The sun was just peaking up over the Lehigh mountaintops, so as Isaac threw himself at the god, he was caught in a kind of lighted, unearthly halo, his legs scissoring apart, his work-hardened, powerful forearms raised high with the sacred knife held aloft in his two hands. I saw his eyes shrink to fierce pinpricks. I saw his muscles writhe under his clothes. I watched him, and in that moment, I realized he was beautiful. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he could do it, he could inflict some sort of damage on Cernunnos before the god could finish him off.

But Cernunnos dropped his head, and as Isaac fell upon him, he also fell upon Cernunnos’ enormous, sprawling set of black antlers, as hard and unforgiving as onyx. The antlers caught Isaac’s fall, speared him through the face, shoulders and belly. In that micro-second just before true dawn, Isaac became one with them. His hand trembled and his fingers opened, the angel-eating athame falling harmlessly to the bloodstained grass. Then Cernunnos, snorting and grunting with his injuries, face ravaged from the knife, belly bleeding all over the ground, raised his head, lifting his victory skyward, and bellowed in defiance to the rising sun.

“
You bastard,”
I hissed.

Ignoring me, Cernunnos tossed his head, throwing Isaac’s mangled body a hundred yards away so it fell, crumpled, to the edge of the forest like some half-crushed insect. He turned to face me once more and his eyes were small and mean and powerful.

He blew snot and blood in a web through his massive nostrils. “You challenge
me
?” He stomped forward and laid into me again, landing his first kick with the force of a hydraulic hammer into my ribs. I felt the snap and splinter all the way down to my soul. If I could have gotten my breath, I would have screamed myself hoarse with pain. As it was, all I could muster was a pathetic squeak and some more blood-splattered phlegm from my mouth and nose.

“
You?
You who were cast down to the Underworld? You, Fallen One, who became a vagrant angel and an enemy of the One who made you?”

Again, he kicked at me. My ribs, my balls, my body—all of it rocking and rolling with the seemingly endless impacts. I balled myself up, my best defense against his machine-like blows, but they kept coming and coming, turning my insides to blood soup. Finally, the hoof came down atop me, this time in the middle of my back. Again, I experienced that crackle of bone, but this time, it wasn’t followed by a jolt of pain. Suddenly I could feel nothing below the waist.

I sort of sighed as I collapsed to the ground on my side and lay there, barely able to breathe through the red haze of agony that surrounded me. My chest felt like it was full of broken shards of glass, and my breathing was little more than an almost-airless gasp. My body felt loose and disjointed, broken. Darkness danced around the corners of my vision, and for the first time in my life, I truly wished I was dead. No… I wished that I had never been born.

“
You
challenge a god?
This
is what you get, little Lucifer!” Cernunnos bellowed. He laughed as his shadow fell over me, as he pissed on me, a brown freshet of the most foul-smelling animal urine I had ever had the misfortune of smelling. Then he gave me one more sound kick that I didn’t feel at all. It tossed me effortlessly over in the grass, my whole body a leaden, throbbing mass of bone, blood, and relentless agony.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could do was lay there in the mud and weeds and suffer while Cernunnos shambled over to Vivian, who was just now starting to come around. She sat up on the altar, blood pouring over her face. She threw up her hands as the god approached her, and I could see her making a last ditch effort to summon her familiar, her power,
something
that would protect her, but even she—the Devil’s daughter—was no match for an Old One. An idiot god who lived on the edges of space and time, driven by a hunger no one on earth could understand.

I wanted to move, but I couldn’t, not even for Vivian. I was no weakling, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I could tell that Cernunnos had destroyed me, that my injuries were killing me slowly.

“No!” Vivian screamed. “Nick! Noooooo…!”

But Cernunnos grabbed her up like a rag doll and tossed her weightlessly over his shoulder. Then he disappeared into the woods like before, like lightning, like he was never there at all.

I groaned and the fingers on my left hand scratched at the bloodied grass, all the motion I could muster. I spied the first light of morning cresting over the nearest ridge and pouring over the destroyed remnants of my body. I gave it my best, I gave it my all, but my body just lay there, broken and bleeding. Morning was here, a bright, fresh start to a new day. But I was already finished.

“Nick.”

Humph.

“Nick,” came the voice, “wake up. Time to wake up.”

No. Don’t wanna.

“Nick. Open your eyes.”

No. I want to go back to sleep. Go away.

“You’re dying, Nick. Open your goddamn eyes, son.”

The pesky little voice needled me, made me groan and shake my head like a flea in my ear I couldn’t rid myself of.

“Nicholas Nevaeh Englebrecht, this is your father speaking, open your fucking eyes.
Now
.”

I slowly blinked open my eyes. I was still lying on the ground by the altar, but now I could see a tall pair of legs in front of me clad in cream-colored, linen trousers and a pair of buffed brown oxford shoes. I could see as high as the knees; no higher. I couldn’t lift my head anymore than that. But my dad obliged me by squatting down in front of me. I could see he wore a fine black dress shirt and a suit jacket that matched the trousers perfectly. Gucci-made, of course. He smoked one of his long, thin cigarettes, and the sight of it made me hungry.

“Look at me, Nick,” he said in a voice so deep and commanding that the ground faintly vibrated with it. I looked. His face was beautiful and loveless and remote, as always. “Nick, you’re dying.”

Yes. Probably.

I grunted a response. It was all I could muster at the moment.

“That was very brave what you did, taking Cernunnos on that way, and you’ve paid the ultimate price, but now it’s time.”

Time? Time for what?

“What do you think, Nick?”

No, please. Not that. I shook my head. “Can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You must.”

My body felt like broken stone, and there was absolutely no feeling below my waist. My mouth felt like it was full of bloody marbles. My skin felt two sizes too small for my body. Still, I grunted out my defiance. “No, Dad. Please.” I’d beg if I had to.

“Nick, I’m your father, and I’m telling you it’s time. You must be reborn. The Ophanim is coming.”

His words drove a new spike of fear though me, and I thought about my vulnerable position, lying here on the ground while the angel crept up on me, but I just couldn’t find the strength to do anything about it. The idea of losing my body and soul was bad, but what my dad was proposing seemed infinitely more horrible… a more terrible prison. “Told you. Not ready.”

“You are,” my dad said, sounding angry now. “You’ve been ready a long, long time, son. You’ve already begun the Ascension. There’s no stopping it now, no matter how many times your enemies cut your wings from you. I told you, long ago, that you were created especially for this purpose. You’re my heir. You’re my son. You’re the star of the morning, the bringer of light…”

I heard the dull, shushing noise of tall grass crunching underfoot not very far off. Maybe a thousand yards. Maybe less. The
shush-shush-shush
of slow, zombie footsteps growing ever nearer. I grunted and made a valiant effort to apply leverage to the ground under my nose, but my body didn’t budge an inch.

“Nick, it’s time. There’s no escaping this.”

Shush-shush. Shush-shush.

I shook my head. “Can’t. Don’t know how.”

“Use the power inside you. Use the light, little Lucifer.”

Shush-shush. Shush-shush. Shush-shush-shush…

I sought the light within myself. I saw only darkness, only pain. A whine gathered in my throat.

Shush-shush-shush-shush-shush-shush…

“Lucifer… you’ve risen and fallen a thousand times. Michael drove you down into the pit, but you rose again, great dragon,” my father’s voice thundered over me. “Gabriel sent you into the mountains, but you returned stronger than ever.”

I didn’t feel strong. I felt… shattered. Defeated.

“You think you have lost? What is light without dark? What are they without you? You are a part of them all. You can never be defeated. You will rise yet again. Rise now!”

“
I can’t!”
I screamed, inside my mind and out.

The Devil stood up, stood over me. He looked down at me, his face darkened with outrage and concern, his form shining and godlike and so terrible it made my entire broken body shirk at the sight. “My son,” he said in a new voice, a softer voice, “do you want me to tell you a story like fathers do? Shall I tell you the truth about your mother? I loved her the moment I laid my eyes upon her. I knew she was the one, that she was mine and mine alone. She was a strong woman, the strongest I’d ever met. Almost her entire family had died out, except for her. But she didn’t give up. She never gave up on anything.” He paused as he considered his next words. “She loved me more than anything… except, possibly, for you. So when she ran away from me, hid from me, it ripped my world apart, Nick. I had never known such rage in all my life. That’s how I knew how much I loved her. And that’s why I came for her. That’s why I took her to be with me in Hell.”