Hellforged

here in the void I couldn’t catch hold of it.

“No matter. Thy destiny cannot be denied. And it is nearly at its fulfillment. Tonight, the Morfran shall feed. We demons shall regain our strength. And what must come to pass, shall come to pass.”

“I’ll stop it.”

“Thou?” Again the Hellion laughed, the chortles and chuckles percolating all around. “What canst thou do, fast asleep? One final time we needed thee as a bridge, so thou hast loosed the Morfran upon the dancing dead. Thou, shapeshifter.” Another laugh, but more distant. “Soon, we’ll not call thee that, either. Soon thou wilt bear the Brenin’s sons and serve him here in Hell.”

Difethwr’s eye-flames flared, then dimmed. As they grew fainter, so did the Hellion. It shrank and receded and finally disappeared, like a pebble dropped into a deep well.

The book had made me fall asleep—without Mab’s tea. I struggled to wake up, but my body wouldn’t respond. Sleep held me in a suffocating cocoon that wrapped around me like warm, wet cotton and wouldn’t let go. Wake up, damn it! I had to wake up. My mind pushed and strained at the darkness that held me captive, searching for a flaw, for any kind of crack or opening. There was nothing. I was sealed in a blank, undifferentiated prison of sleep.

There was no way to fight this. It was worse than any nightmare or teeth-gnashing demon. I knew I was asleep, but I couldn’t wake up. Mab would know what to do. I tried to call her, straining to conjure her in her library wing chair, but her colors refused to rise up. Darkness wouldn’t release them.

The Destroyer’s words replayed in my mind. One final time we needed thee as a bridge, and thou hast loosed the Morfran upon the dancing dead …

This was Pryce’s plan, to keep me out of the way. I would be stuck here, sleeping and useless, while Pryce strengthened his demon horde and the Morfran massacred hundreds of zombies at Tina’s concert.

Tina. The thought hit me like a lightning strike. Tina was the last zombie I’d spoken to before the book pulled me into sleep. She’d be the Morfran’s first victim when the sun went down. Maybe it was happening now; maybe it had already happened. Where I was, trapped in the embrace of Utter Darkness, time didn’t exist.

A vision emerged from the black-velvet void: Tina’s terrified face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth gaping in a scream, as the Morfran gouged her body. She’d be eaten. Pryce said the zombies were just food for the Morfran.

I struggled harder to wake up, trying to wrestle sleep into submission. But there was nothing to wrestle, and nothing to wrestle with—I had no sense of my body or my limbs. The vision of Tina faded to echoes of taunting, demonic laughter. Then all subsided to nothingness.

Maybe nothing was the key.

The never-ending nothingness that absorbed me was an illusion. It had to be. I wasn’t some disembodied consciousness drifting in the void. I knew that. And I also knew the way to shatter an illusion is to focus on what’s real.

My mind searched for some shred of reality I could build on. It was hard. I’d think of something I knew was real—the smell of coffee, Mab’s onetwothree pats, Kane’s silver hair—and try to catch hold of it. But before I could, it was subsumed by the void, like a raindrop falling into the ocean.

I kept trying. What was the last thing I remembered before I plunged into darkness? I groped for a memory. Kitchen, I’d been in the kitchen. I must still be there. What did my kitchen look like? From where I floated, it seemed impossibly far away and difficult to remember, but piece by piece I brought it into my mind. The table— there was a table, right? Yes. I strove to remember what it looked like. Black … there was black, like the blackness here. A blurry image of a table began to form, with a black top … and chrome legs. More black—the counters were black granite. The picture gained a little more focus, and I added the cherry cupboards, the stove, the stainless- steel fridge. I could see myself now, slumped across the table, a pot of cold herbal tea beside me. Juliet’s FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES mug. There—that’s where I really was. In my kitchen, not dissolved into utter darkness.

Black mist blew across the images, smudging their edges and threatening to swallow them. But I kept focusing, hanging on to that picture of my kitchen—the table, the counters, the fridge, the mug—and eventually the mist wafted away. The vision grew sharper, more substantial. I could feel the cool, smooth tabletop now, feel the hardness of the chair I sat on. My head rested on my right arm, which tingled from the weight. Mab’s tea floated scents of herbs through the room. I pushed myself into the vision, making myself experience what was real, letting go of what wasn’t.

I opened my eyes, awake. I lay half-sprawled on the table, slumped over the open book. I’d drooled on the page in my sleep. I wiped my chin and tried to sit up. A wave of dizziness and nausea made me take it easy, but I got upright and surveyed the kitchen. Everything was as I’d pictured it. Solid. Real.

Using a napkin to blot the saliva from the book, I saw the picture had changed. Difethwr, receded to the background, loomed gray and featureless. Like a shadow. It stood behind a woman—one who looked way too much like me, with short, reddish-blonde hair. She wore a long, medieval-style gown, and on her shoulder perched a monstrous, black crow. She was hugely pregnant.

I shoved the book across the table. It crashed into the pepper mill, which tottered, spun, and fell to the floor. To hell with The Book of Utter Darkness. To hell with its prophecies, taunts, and tricks. The book was like that dark void—empty and fake, an illusion. Mab was right; we make our own destiny. And I was taking charge of mine.

I’d been asleep for hours. The kitchen clock read four twenty; the sun would set at five. I needed to hurry. I changed my sweats for jeans and a sweater. From my weapons cabinet, I chose two bronze-bladed throwing knives and then, reverently, lifted down the Sword of Saint Michael. I anointed its blade with sacramental wine, invoking the aid of the archangel Michael, scourge of demons, to guide his sword. The ritual finished, I buckled on the sword belt. As I slid the weapon home in its scabbard, I remembered with satisfaction how Pryce had cringed from this sword over the dream phone. Tonight, he’d get up close and personal with the real thing.

I called Kane. This time, he picked up on the first ring. “I’ve been trying to call you for hours,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“I was going to say the same thing to you.”

“I got routed through Minneapolis. Then I couldn’t get a direct flight to Boston. Anyway, I’m back now.”

“Did you convince the mayor to stop the concert?”

“No such luck. It’s on.”

Damn. “Okay, meet me at Tina’s dressing room. Before sunset, if you can make it. She’s in danger, Kane.”

“I’m on my way.”

So was I. My jacket was draped across the living room sofa. I put it on, then tucked the HOME SWEET HOME slate into an inner pocket. Hellforged lay so still against my leg that I had to check to make sure it was there. On an impulse, I took the dagger from its sheath. Except for a slight vibration, it handled like a regular knife, no twitching or jumping. I spun it around a couple of times, like Mab had done on the first day. Smooth and easy. “Come on,” I said, “let’s go stone some crows.”

36

GRANARY BURYING GROUND IS ONE OF THE OLDEST CEMETERIES in Boston. It holds more than two thousand graves, including those of some famous Bostonians: Paul Revere, three signers of the Declaration of Independence, and various Massachusetts politicians. It seemed like a strange place for a concert, until you remembered who the concert was for—the undead, partying hard enough to wake the dead.

The concert wasn’t in the actual cemetery; the site had way too much historical value to risk being stomped to bits by a bunch of zombies getting their groove on. Instead, the city had closed off parts of Tremont and Bromfield streets, forming a T-shape. The stage was erected in front of the iron-spiked cemetery fence, allowing a good view down Bromfield Street, all the way back to the barriers. Roadies set things up, adjusting lights and checking the towering amplifiers that looked powerful enough to knock over a building or two when Monster Paul blasted some guitar chords through them.