“I tried not to,” he said. “I know what they meant to you and Eliot. It was never my intention for you to suffer.”
Wait. . He knew who they were? That Eliot had a thing for Jezebel?
His voice was different, too. It no longer rumbled with thunder. It was kind of. . ordinary.
Mephistopheles removed his horned helmet.
Fiona felt as if she’d been struck again-this time right between her eyes-because she found herself unable to understand what she saw. Standing before her, looking sad and tired, but just as she’d seen him last a few weeks ago with his tousled brown hair and perpetual smile. . was Mitch Stephenson.
Robert! Wake up!”
“Five more minutes,” Robert muttered. He’d gotten twisted in the bedsheets; they’d wrapped around him like a python. He’d deal with that when he got up for work.
“Robert!
Robert remembered. Hell. The kind with lava and armies of damned souls.
His eyes snapped open, and he was wide awake.
Marcus stood over him. He held a saber in one hand, and flintlock pistol in the other-slashing one of Mephistopheles’ sewn-together soldiers-blasting another guy in the face.
Shouts and screams and explosions rang out around him.
“Rise and shine,” Marcus yelled.
Robert blinked and straightened the facts out in his buzzing brain. Not in bed. Not in sixth grade, as he was dreaming. He was in Hell fighting a war. . which he’d thought they were winning when the tables suddenly turned. Got it.
He tried to stand, but a giant fork pinned him to the frozen ground. The haft was the size of a telephone pole. It was cast iron and must have weighed a ton.
And Mephistopheles had tossed that thing like it was a cardboard tube.
Robert wriggled; that hurt, and the pitchfork didn’t budge. The outer and middle tines had torn into his sides, a tight fit-right up to the rib cage.
Only then did Robert see how close a fit it’d been. A smidge to the right or left and those pitchfork tines would have skewered his liver, heart, and spine.
Had it been a one-in-a-million lucky shot? Or had the Infernal missed on purpose?
Luck, he decided.
He grimaced at his wounds. They were two deep slices on his sides, but no arteries or organs had been punctured. He brought his blooded fingers to his nose.
The stuff smelled of brimstone and spice. It reeked of Mr. Mime’s Soma.
He looked back at the cuts. They’d sealed. The skin had scarred over. . and those scars already fading.
What had Henry done to him? And how did Robert get
His gaze lit on the broken sword on ground. Saliceran. The Sword of Sealiah’s champion.
He tried to grab it-just out of his reach.
He stretched. . ripped open his wounds. . and touched it.
The blade flared with light and dripped fire.
He set the sword on the cast iron and the pitchfork turned to ash as if it were paper under a blowtorch.
“A hand here?” Marcus said as he tried to pull his saber from the chest of a patchwork soldier. The soldier, however, held on to blade with both hands.
Marcus’s AD/DC T-shirt was ripped down to his love handles, and he had cuts on his arm, but he laughed as he twisted the saber free, and kicked the soldier down.
He was enjoying this, but he wasn’t watching: three more guys and a pair of gorillas charged him from behind.
Robert jumped to his feet.
He slashed in a wide circle. The flames of Saliceran were so hot, the patchwork soldiers burst into flames without being touched. Shadow creatures winked out of existence with hissing screams.
“Looks like you got it all under control,” Robert told his former mentor.
Around them, knights fought from horseback and on foot against soldiers and black elephants, velociraptors, giant crabs, and armored centipedes.
“No sweat,” Marcus muttered.
Robert figured he was going to die here. It was one of those things that just came to you with complete certainty-like knowing who was calling on the phone or betting the bank on that inside straight. That was okay. . as long as his death meant getting Fiona and Eliot getting out of here in one piece.
Saliceran burned brighter than ever, magnesium-white hot in his gasp, but it didn’t singe a hair on his body.
He turned to Marcus. “Where is she?”
Marcus understood exactly who he meant. He nodded across the field.
Past a hundred soldiers and a dozen of Sealiah’s knights fighting to stay on their horses, there was a ring of those shadow gorillas-and past them stood Mephistopheles in a clearing. He had his back to Robert. He wasn’t so tall as Robert remembered, but still three time the size of a professional wrestler.
And through the fighting and bodies and bloodshed, Robert caught a glimpse of Fiona on the ground, struggling to get to her knees. . as Mephistopheles strode toward her.
He couldn’t believe she’d been stupid enough to fight that thing without his help. She always thought she was better than him-than everyone.
Robert would show her, though; he’d save her. . and what?
Nothing. He wouldn’t say a word. He had nothing to prove to Fiona.
He just wanted her safe.
Marcus grabbed Robert’s shoulder. “You can’t,” he said, guessing his intention. “That’s an Infernal Lord on his own land. Fiona
Robert shrugged off Marcus’s hand.
He was about to tell him what he could do with his warning when he heard Eliot’s music. . close. . swelling through the air and up to the sun.
Robert looked-blinked as he saw the sun in eclipse, blinked again as solar flares lanced from the edge of the dark disk, and the star swelled along with Eliot’s song, growing larger and orange, then became a red giant star, flooding the battlefield with its blood-colored light.
Eliot did that.
Robert stared dumbstruck, trying to figure what kind of power that took.
Across the battlefield Mephistopheles’ soldiers panicked and the shadows cringed.
And Robert knew he had his chance.
He charged, slashing and burning through the soldiers and blasting any shadow that stood between him and Fiona. A spear grazed his back, but he ignored it, ran forward-and broke into the clearing.
Twenty paces away, Mephistopheles stood over Fiona, his back to Robert.
The Infernal reached for Fiona.
She was on her knees, one had outstretched before her to ward him off. She wasn’t fighting. She looked frail and beaten.
One quick grab, and Mephistopheles would snap Fiona’s neck.
Robert couldn’t cross the distance between them in time. He hefted Saliceran and hoped it was his day for one-in-a-million shots.
With both hands, he raised the jagged, broken blade over his head.
As hard as he could, he threw it.
