The door at the end of the car opened abruptly before him, then the door into the next, and he stepped through into the crimson hell glare of demon territory and the company of Hell. Dozens of the creatures filled the car from end to end, packed in tight, facing him with anticipatory smiles, with teeth and claws and long, barbed arms with too many joints. Foul, horrid things with inhuman needs and appetites made clear in their misshapen flesh, all the better to inflict suffering upon the living. They laughed in JC’s face and stamped their cloven hooves upon the steel floor.
JC laughed right back in their awful faces, and the demons actually paused a moment, taken aback. They weren’t used to being so openly defied and mocked, in the face of certain torment and slow death. The sight of them was usually enough to drive mortals out of their minds. JC struck a studiedly casual pose and addressed the waiting host of Hell with contemptuous disdain.
“I don’t know if you really are demons called up out of Hell or only living extensions of my unseen enemy; and I don’t give a damn. It doesn’t matter what you are. You stand between me and my Kim; and I am here to rescue her. Get in my way, and I swear I will strike you down like the hammer of God.”
The cold, certain implacability in his voice held the demons motionless. And in that long, extended moment, JC took out a heavy brass knuckle-duster and slipped it onto his left hand. He reached down with his other hand and drew from a concealed ankle sheath a long, rune-etched silver dagger. He showed both weapons to the demons and laughed as they seethed uncertainly. JC took a glass phial from his inside coat pocket, pulled out the rubber stopper with his teeth, and spat it away. And then he poured some of the holy water over his silver blade and some over the knuckle-duster. He drank the rest, tossed the empty phial aside, and smiled a really nasty death’s-head smile at the demons assembled before him.
“All right, you ugly pieces of shit. Let’s do it.”
He strode forward, weapons at the ready. Not to punish the demons, or to take vengeance for all the missing commuters, or even to strike them down for what they were. He was doing what was needed to reach and rescue Kim because that mattered more to him than life itself.
To fight with demons, your intent must be pure. And even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll win.
The demon host rose up before him, and he hit them hard, lashing out with his silver blade and punching in misshapen faces with his brass knuckles. The silver blade sliced cleanly through demon flesh, opening them up like garbage bags. They fell screaming and howling to the floor, their steaming insides spilling out even as they tried to stuff them back in. The brass knuckles shattered bones and stove in fanged mouths, and the touch of the blessed metal was enough to burn demon flesh. JC worked his way forward, one step at a time, striking down the demons with a cold, implacable fury and trampling them underfoot. They fell before him, shocked and dismayed, unable to believe any mere mortal could do this to them.
JC fought his way into the midst of them, never dodging or ducking, always pressing forward, right into the teeth of anything they could do to him. He struck the demons down and stamped on their heads and sides, forcing his way through the whole pack of them. All the way down the car, to the next door, then through the door and into the next car, where a whole new host waited for him. JC fought on, opening up a path through the demon horde using sheer brute courage and tenacity, and a simple dogged refusal to be stopped or turned aside while Kim still needed him.
They hurt him horribly, but he kept going. Jagged claws sliced and tore through his flesh and grated on the bones beneath. Heavy blows knocked him this way and that, but he wouldn’t fall. Sharp-toothed jaws buried themselves in his flesh, and even found his face more than once. Blood-stained and terribly injured, he kept going, ignoring the pains that threatened to drain his strength and resolve, ignoring the blood that poured from him and dripped down to steam on the hot floor. JC threw himself at the leering demon faces before him, giving blow for blow and hurt for hurt, and never once allowed himself to be stopped, or slowed. Claws came at him from every side, teeth buried themselves in arms and legs and had to be jerked or shaken free. Overlong arms tried to wrap themselves around him and drag him down. But still, he went on. Sometimes he cried out, and sometimes he sobbed, and sometimes he roared and cursed and spat at the snarling faces before him; but none of it meant anything. He had a thing to do, and he was going to do it.
Despite everything he did, and everything that was done to him, he thought only of Kim. And what the demons might be doing to her. Being dead was no defence against the torments of Hell. He went on, and not all the demons on the hell train could deny him.
Until finally JC fought his way through to the last car but one; and there, at last, they stopped him. Because in the end, he was only a man, with a man’s limits. The demons blocked the way to the next car through sheer strength of numbers, their horrid shapes packing the car from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. They surrounded JC, coming at him from every direction at once. And so, finally, he was forced to a halt and stood swaying in the middle of the car: a ragged, tattered, and bloody mess of a man. His wonderful cream suit was ruined, soaked and stained with his blood and that of the demons. He had been cut and gouged and torn open, and a long trail of blood lay behind him. He had to keep spitting out blood because it kept filling his mouth. He could feel broken and splintered ribs grinding against each other with every breath, tearing into his lungs; and he was tired, so terribly tired. Every movement hurt him, and lifting his savaged arms was an effort that would have made him cry out if he’d had any voice left. But he’d worn it out screaming, several cars back.
The demons blocked his way, but still he lurched forward and struck out at them with stubborn fury. Because they stood between him and Kim. He was close by then; he could feel her presence. He was damned if he’d be stopped. Not after he’d come so far. He called out Kim’s name, a single breathy rasp of sound; but the demons howled and shouted him down, mocking him by yelling out her name in their sick and rotten voices.
JC swung his silver blade, and missed, and a demon surged forward. Its vicious jaws snapped together and bit off three of JC’s fingers. He hardly noticed the pain; it was one more, among so many others. He looked down stupidly as the silver blade fell from his mutilated hand, and blood jetted from the stumps of his missing fingers. And while he hesitated, thrown off-balance for a moment, a clawed hand came sweeping round and sliced clean through both his eyes.
Blood filled his view, then darkness, and a sudden agony roared inside his head. He howled in rage and loss, and lashed out blindly with his knuckle-duster and his maimed hand. It didn’t feel like he hit anything. He could feel viscous tears running down his face, blood and vitreous fluids from his ruined eyes. He could hear mocking demon laughter all around him. Claws cut at him from every side at once, darting in and out again, taunting and mocking him. A set of heavy jaws fastened on to his right hip, worrying right through to the bone, and he couldn’t shake them off. He staggered and almost fell, blind and alone, flailing helplessly around himself, shouting incoherent defiance; his only regret was that in dying he had failed Kim.
I’m sorry, Kim,
he said, or thought he said.
I’m so sorry.
And then, incredibly, he could see again. A great Light blazed up within him, filling him from top to bottom, and burst from his eyes. The demons screamed in rage and horror to see it, and fell back, unable to face the terrible Light that blazed from JC’s miraculously restored eyes. And still the Light blazed through JC, growing stronger and more terrible, building and building until it seemed impossible one small mortal frame could hold it all. The Light healed and restored JC, repairing all his wounds in a moment and filling him with incredible new energy. JC stood tall and strong in the middle of the car, surrounded by weeping, terrified demons, crouching and shrinking away from him; and he laughed in their terrified faces.
He hadn’t called for the Light, or expected it; but he had heard of such things. That sometimes, on very rare occasions, there was a Light that would come as a gift from Outside, from some great Force in the afterworlds . . . but it was rare, so very rare. Certainly he had never thought of himself as worthy. But the Light was there, and it was his to use, and he was strong and whole again. He looked about him, and thought he’d never seen so clearly before. He raised his hands, and they were both whole again. He dropped the pitted and scorched knuckle-duster. He didn’t need it any more. He strode forward, towards the end car, and Kim.
Some of the demons tried to fight him, only to quickly learn they couldn’t. They couldn’t face the Light that shone from his restored eyes or match the new strength that filled his arms. He beat them down, shattering their bones and tearing their foul bodies apart with his bare hands. His touch was enough to blister and burn demon flesh; and even their strongest blows couldn’t hurt him any more. The Light blazed ever more fiercely within him until all he had to do was touch the demons, and they burned up in a moment, leaving nothing behind but ashes.
Most of the remaining demons disappeared. They ran away, falling back into Hell rather than face what he had become. By the time JC reached the end of the car, the light from his eyes was enough to make the last few demons fade away into nothing, like the final remnants of a bad dream.
JC looked at the closed door before him, and it melted and ran away in streams of molten metal. The door beyond, into the next car, exploded inwards under the pressure of his gaze. And so he came at last to the end car, and there, waiting for him, was Kim Sterling. No more demons, no hell light. Only Kim; crucified against the end door. Glowing ectoplasmic nails hammered through her ghostly hands and ankles. Her head hung down, her long red hair covering her face. She didn’t move. But when JC said her name, her head came up and she saw him, and she smiled. Their eyes met, and the Light in JC’s eyes blazed so very brightly.
The glowing nails disappeared under JC’s gaze, and Kim’s ghostly flesh repaired itself at once. She flew down the car towards him, her long white dress billowing in some unfelt breeze, and JC walked in glory down the car to meet her. They came together in the middle, and the whole of the car was full of their love, a force so powerful it seemed to beat on the air like great wings.
JC reached out to her, and she put out her hands to take his; and his fingers passed right through hers. Because he was alive, and she was dead, he was flesh and blood and she was just a ghost; and because there were some things even the Light could not change.
They stood together, as close as they could get, looking into each other’s eyes. The Light didn’t bother Kim at all.
“We can never touch,” said JC. “But we have each other.”
“You say the sweetest things,” said Kim. “You sentimental old softy. I knew you’d come for me. I knew they could never stop you.”
“Well,” said JC, “I’m glad one of us was sure.”
They laughed quietly together. The train roared into a station and skidded to a halt. The doors opened, and JC and Kim stepped out onto what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary platform. No demons, no webbing, no illusions . . . and no-one tried to haul Kim away again. JC had broken that hold. When they looked behind them, they found the train had gone. Not departed; disappeared.
The Light within JC suddenly died down and was gone. He wasn’t surprised. Such gifts were never granted for long. JC didn’t think he’d miss it. He preferred being human, with its small but real comforts and rewards. He smiled at Kim, and she smiled back.
EIGHT
BLOODBATH
There are some advantages to being a ghost. Kim discovered that by concentrating in a certain way, she could change the colour of her dress; and after that, there was no stopping her. Her long white dress went through a dozen different colours and styles, and then as many completely different outfits, as Kim imagined herself wearing all the expensive and stylish clothes she’d never been able to afford. She finally settled on a marvellous off-the-shoulder emerald-green creation she’d once seen in a shop window that went well with her eyes and contrasted nicely with her mane of red hair. JC had to insist she stop there, as he was getting dizzy. They were still laughing quietly together when Happy and Melody burst through the entrance beside them.
JC grinned widely to see them both safe and well but was somewhat taken aback when Happy and Melody stopped abruptly in their tracks and stared at him with something very like shock. His first thought was that they were surprised at Kim’s presence; but no, they only had eyes for him. Melody in particular was looking at him as though he’d just risen from the grave.
“JC, what happened to you?” she said, open horror in her face and in her voice. “Your clothes are . . . All that blood . . . Who did this to you?”
“Hell with the suit,” said Happy. “JC, what happened to your eyes?”
JC glanced at Kim, then back at his colleagues. “What’s the matter with my eyes?”
“They’re glowing,” said Happy. “And not with any kind of light I’ve ever seen. It’s so intense, it’s like looking into a spotlight. Or possibly the headlights of an on-coming car. Those are spooky eyes, JC.”
“Are you dead?” Melody said abruptly. “Is that why you’re hanging out with a ghost?”
“Of course he’s not dead!” said Happy. “I’d know if he were dead. This . . . is altogether more disturbing.”
“But look at how much blood he’s lost!” said Melody. “Look at the state of his marvellous ice-cream suit! It looks like a pack of wild dogs tried to bite it off him.”
“I have wrestled with demons and defied a god,” said JC. “That kind of thing does take it out of you.”