Lilith smiled, and it was a cruel expression stippled in moonlight and shadows.
“I told you that she would be trouble. Better to leave her now. Or kill her.”
The thought had crossed Warren’s mind. Violent solutions to problems tended to be normal for him these days. Before the Hellgate had opened and the demons had arrived, that had never been the case. He’d run from every fight he’d ever faced. As a result, he’d been taken advantage of by nearly everyone he’d trusted.
“There’s something out here,” Warren said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I feel it.” Warren lifted his metal hand. “In here.”
Naomi started to say something, then she glanced at the hand and closed her mouth. He’d already proven that he was much more adept at the arcane forces the demons wielded. Now that he had a new hand, his power had taken on new turns that he hadn’t had access to before.
“All right,” she said finally. She pulled her long coat more firmly around her. “But I hope we find it soon.”
Another of the zombies dropped into one of the unseen bog holes barely covered by ice. The sharp crack sounded just before the zombie plunged into the black water. This one didn’t come back.
Only a little farther on, gray smoke plumed against the dark, star-filled sky. The feeling that pulled Warren lay in that direction as well.
Lilith walked beside him again. “You’ll want to hurry,” she stated calmly. “You’re being followed.”
Hellgate: London
Exodus
Goetia
Covenant
Diablo
The Black Road
Pocket Star Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Flagship Studios, Inc. Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Flagship Studios, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8011-9
ISBN-10: 1-4165-8011-5
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
For Dr. Gary Wade, who keeps my
world clear and in focus
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Bill Roper and the Flagship team for bringing a great game into the world and letting me play in it. And to Marco Palmieri, the editor who made it all work.
HELLGATE LONDON® COVENANT
PROLOGUE
OUTSIDE OF CHIPPING ONGAR
EPPING FOREST
ESSEX, ENGLAND
JANUARY 8, 2025
This is madness, Emily. You’ve got to come away from here before it’s too late. The demons aren’t your friends. They’ll never be your friends.” Rob Houghton pleaded with his sister, but he knew she wasn’t listening to him. She was listening to that inner voice she claimed to be attuned to these days.
The Burn, the strange power that came from the Hellgate that had opened by St. Paul’s, hadn’t made it this far outside London yet. But everyone knew it was coming. Demons occasionally prowled the forests and screamed through the skies of the outlying areas.
As the Burn crept outward, it terraformed the land, rendering it into a hellish landscape that only the demons thrived on. No one in the scientific think tank that Rob had worked in until the demons arrived on All Hallow’s Eve had been satisfied with what they believed the Burn to be.
Some believed the Burn was changing the land into a proper environment for the demons, but that was refuted when it was pointed out that the malevolent creatures handled themselves quite well under regular planetary conditions. Others believed that the demons weren’t causing the change at all; rather, it was their presence in the world that left a cancerous boil on the earth.
Rob’s own beliefs held that the Burn was simply another weapon in the arsenal the demons had. By unleashing the Burn, the demons destroyed potable water and vegetation, all things livestock and wildlife needed to survive. He was convinced that it was supposed to eliminate the natural food chains the world supported.
To the south, he could see London. He thought he could almost see the Hellgate, the interdimensional portal that allowed the demons free egress into the world. He could definitely see the ever-circling dark clouds filled with ominous green lighting that hung low over the metropolitan area.
Chipping Ongar was a small town outside Greater London. Rob’s mother had grown up there before she’d gone off to university to meet their father. As children, Rob and Emily had visited their grandparents there often. They’d maintained a small farm outside the city. When the horror swept over London, Rob had found his sister in all the confusion at the university and gotten her out of the city.
They’d lived on their grandparents’ farm since the invasion. Their grandparents were long dead. Their parents had never made it out of London.
For a time, Rob had believed that they could wait it out. That had been over four years ago, and there was no relief in sight.
Even worse, Emily had fallen prey to the twisted mystics that had risen up to embrace the demons and their arcane powers.
“Emily,” Rob called again.
She turned toward him and he could scarce bear her gaze. When he’d taken her from university, she’d been twenty, not truly innocent anymore—because college served to wear some innocence away—but not worldly, either.
She was petite and slender, possessing a boyish shape made popular by modeling agencies, Hollywood, and adverts. Her natural red hair was cropped even with her jaw, parted in the middle, and she’d had ash-gray eyes.
Rob was bundled up in the winter’s cold. A thick parka with hood, thick gloves, and insulated coveralls barely kept him warm as the wind cut into him. Gusts carried new-fallen, powdery snow up in what looked like sugar confection whirlwinds. The white powder
