Hellfire (29 page)

His pause was long. Mumbles grew louder and louder. Even Ozzie felt her skin crawl with anticipation. When she realized that she was waiting for a gateway to be opened into the Pit, she shuddered.

The hum of machinery sounded in the building behind her. The stone floor under Ozzie’s feet begin to vibrate. She stumbled, falling a step forward and leaning on Sheriff Blake’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice.

The tin roof of the building retracted one plate at a time, making thunderous clangs as they went. Enormous gears must have been at work gradually drawing in every part of the huge roof. Red-gold light shone up from beneath it, and the earthy smell of a coal fire wafted up amid the smoke.

As the roof retreated its final parts, a wave of heat struck Ozzie. Her nose burned, and her eyes watered. She clamped her hands over her face.

“Behold!” Burr shouted. “The dawning of a new age where both machine and devil serve under the will of mankind!” He turned away from the speaking trumpet. “Release the catalyst!”

New gears rang in a higher pitch. A long crane extended section by section, growing smaller as it came to the center of the sprawling open fire. It stopped there with a clunk, and then it spewed amber crystals in every direction like a fountain.

“No!” Nate cried. He took a step forward, but Husk and the hunchbacks held him in place.

Ozzie swallowed against the hot, smoky air. She wanted to do something, but there was nothing that could be done.

Lightning flashed from inside the fire. The glow was harsh and came faster and faster until all at once it was gone. Then the smoke and flames waved and danced, as if she saw it through a bubble. While Ozzie watched, the flourish became worse until it seemed like even the building turned into loops and angles. The crane that spat out the catalyst twisted back on itself like a blade of dead grass.

Then came howls and screeches and mocking laughter. Amid them were whispers of horrible sins and foul desires.

“Imagine what you could do with your family’s wealth. Steal it.”

“Your mother will never be happy. End her pain. Kill her.”

“Take your father to bed. He’ll finally love you there.”

Ozzie pulled her hands away from her nose and clamped them over her ears. The chain on her shackles pressed tight against her face, but she didn’t care. The pain was worth avoiding the onslaught of unholy noise.

Then the first hellion appeared. It was a staring eyeball that hung from two huge webbed, dragonfly’s wings. Curls of hair stuck out from the back. The thing floated in the air for a moment, and then sailed into the night sky.

Ozzie cried.

The hunchbacks next to them gave off a series of hooting calls and disrobed. Their foul bodies came to view. Parvis’s warped torso let out a deep laugh from his upside-down mouth. Biggs unfurled his bat-wings. The impossibly thin hunchback revealed a scaled serpentine body, leading to legs and arms and fingers all sickeningly snakelike, curving with no joints. The fat hunchback was a rotund pig with the tail of a scorpion.

“No, no, no,” Ozzie said to herself. She wanted to disbelieve. She didn’t want it to be real.

“Bring them to me!” Burr cried.

Ticks, Davies, and the other marshals pushed between the hunchbacks to grab Ozzie. Ticks sneered, while Davies had his face scrunched up in an unreadable emotion.

“Out of the way, freaks,” Ticks said with a grunt as he threw an arm at Biggs. The giant hunchback shrank away.

The marshals dragged her into the middle of the balcony. The others were forced to follow. Husk limped along until he collapsed. Blake fell to his knees beside him. Only Ozzie and Nate stood before Aaron Burr atop his steel throne.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Burr asked softly. He waved a hand, and his soldiers brought back his speaking trumpet.

The pumps of his vocal machine wheezed. “There are some who oppose this new order, and I have brought them here to you as examples. I offered them the same chance you have, to live in a world where man stands a little higher than the fallen angels. They rejected it, and so they shall be the first to fall under my mighty army! Let them be a lesson to you!”

More grinding machinery sounded, though now it was little more than a rumble underneath the ringing noise from the fire. Beneath them, Ozzie saw the light begin to shine onto the faces of the militia, who had all turned to gawk at the twisting spectacle. Doors were opening, and soon the fire spilled out wicked monsters. They came out in a great heap, writhing and clawing and biting one another as they poured onto the grass. It withered beneath them.

The crowd screamed and ran. People on the edges dashed headlong into the dark streets. Even the brave men of the militia broke to give way to the gang of hellions. The people in the middle were trapped and huddled together. A collective cry of anguish was added to the cacophony.

“The multitudes seem too distracted by my army to hear my message,” Burr muttered, just loud enough to be heard. He shook his withered head. “Never mind, it shall be done, and we’ll enliven it in the papers. Push them over, men!”

Soldiers moved forward. Ozzie faltered backward several steps toward the short rail along the balcony. Nate stepped in front of her. She set a hand on his shoulder. She couldn’t help but see the writhing mass of monsters beneath.

“Nowhere to run but the fire,” one of the soldiers said with a chuckle. The soldiers stooped to pick up Husk and Blake.

“Into the fire,” Nate repeated. He patted his body and then turned to Ozzie. “Water’s not the only way to put out a fire.”

She stared at him.

“I need your help,” he told her.

She blinked. “How?”

“I need to get to the fire.”

Ozzie stared again. He tucked his hand into his shirt, where there was a splotch of a bloodstain from the broken jar. The catalyst was still there, all over his body. It would explode and wink out the flames just as the kerosene had done.

“No,” Ozzie said.

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” Nate told her.

She pursed her lips. Without any further thought that might talk her out of it, Ozzie jumped into a run. She bolted directly toward Aaron Burr, her shackled hands outstretched toward his throat.

The ancient man gave a raspy cry of shock.

As her little body dodged between the soldiers, they dropped Blake and Husk and went after her. Ozzie felt a few tugs at her coveralls, and then whole hands grabbed hold of her. She was still an arm’s length from the governor.

They pulled her back. She struggled.

“Impudent mort!” Burr said, spitting. “Your disobedience is in vain!”

“I know,” Ozzie replied. “I just needed to distract you.”

Burr blinked his dim eyes and then looked down. His eyelids flew open, revealing sickly yellow rings beneath. “Where is the fireman?”

The soldiers scattered, leaving only two holding Ozzie, one on either arm. The others raced behind Burr, where Nate had run past while they were all looking at her. He had climbed the short back wall of the balcony and now stood just above the fire’s edge. His body looked dark against the wicked light of the coiling flames. He turned back.

“Take care of them,” Nate called to her.

Ozzie smiled. She didn’t know why.

“Stop him, you fools!” Burr shouted. His hand flopped, grasping at the levers to turn his pedestal around. “He’s plotting something!”

The soldiers charged. As they came close, however, they began to drop back, shielding their faces against the heat. One made it within a yard of Nate, and then his shirtfront burst into flames. Another scream was added to the cacophony.

Burr growled. “Marshals! Seize him!”

Ticks and Davies looked at the fire and then back at the governor. They didn’t move.

“Deserters! Weaklings!” Burr cried. “I’ll do it myself!”

He jammed his bony hand onto the brass levers. A squeal broke out from beneath his pedestal, and it rolled forward faster and faster. Two soldiers still blinded by the flames were knocked out of the way. Burr reached toward Nate. The fire turned the steel red.

Just beyond Burr’s grasp, Nate stepped off into the flames. He didn’t seem to fall. He hung there amid the glow.

Burr’s steel machine drove him over the short gray-stone wall. It flipped, and he began to scream. The fire swallowed him up, he and his machine warping until the two came apart. Burr’s body did fall at first, but then it, too, floated in the fire. His life-supporting throne burned away into ash. The scream never stopped.

Burr flailed. His thin hands reached for Nate, but they couldn’t grasp him. Nate only looked on. The shadow of an enormous hand reached up for Burr’s writhing body and grasped him. It pulled him down into the depths.

Ozzie’s eyes stung from staring into the fire, and she turned away. Tears rolled out between her eyelids. Suddenly there were piercing screams, the genuine fearful call of people. The soldiers holding her let go, and she opened her eyes again.

The writhing mass of hellions beneath her had broken apart. Instead of acting as Burr’s infernal army, now they were independently lashing out at the crowd. Some of the green-jacketed men of the militia attempted to fight back. Most fled.

One of the bullwagons started up, spitting out a rush of smoke as pistons began to grind. It charged into the fray, its huge metal bulk crushing several hellions in its path. Militiamen slipped into its wake, stabbing the fallen monsters with their bayonets. A huge hellion with the head of a goat and clawed hands the size of its own body grabbed under the wagon and lifted, flipping it up and over onto its back. The monsters that had fallen still fought despite being stabbed over and over.

Ozzie turned back to the balcony. The hunchbacks were creeping toward the marshals. They wore the menacing smiles of creatures who have borne a thousand injuries.

“Stay back!” Ticks ordered. “You must obey my commands!”

Biggs growled in return. His voice spilled out like flies on a corpse. “Our contract was with Burr, and he is ours now. Soon you will be, too.”

Parvis made a squealing giggle.

Ticks whipped up the revolvers they had stolen earlier. They were reloaded now, and the marshal in the black suit unloaded every chamber into the monsters. Other marshals joined in, firing a barrage that flooded the balcony with lead and smoke. The blasts caused several of them to fall backward, but then they returned to their slow, menacing advance.

Davies turned and fled. The others broke rank, too, but it only seemed to make the hunchbacks more eager. They pounced.

Biggs took Ticks up by an arm and the opposite leg. The marshal swung helplessly in the air, kicking Biggs with everything he had.

Parvis grabbed the free arm as he dangled in the air. He pulled, and Ticks’s body convulsed. He stopped kicking.

“I’ll get you both for this,” Ticks said. “I’m going to—” His hateful words became a pained scream, and then his body tore in two.

Davies fell next, screaming until the pig-faced demon bit a fist-sized chunk of flesh from his throat. The other marshals were ripped part by tooth and claw and stinger.

“Your bayonets, men!” the captain of Burr’s guard shouted in a voice that cracked with fear.

Only a few soldiers reacted. They fumbled to assemble their weapons and establish a line. The others fell back or dropped their weapons to run.

“No,” Ozzie heard Husk say in a groan. “It’s no good.”

She rushed to the newspaperman’s side. Blake was there, too, staring open-mouthed into the fire.

Ozzie knelt down to pull on Husk’s shoulders. “Maybe if you help, I can pick you up. I’ll take Blake by the hand, and we’ll get out of here.”

Husk shook his head weakly. “There’s no good running. Evil follows wherever you go. You have to stop it, Miss Ozzie. Stop them.”

Ozzie looked back over her shoulder. The soldiers held their bayonets like a wall of sharp steel. The monsters kept coming, allowing themselves to be stabbed in order to take a swipe at their mortal bodies. One by one, the soldiers were dying.

“Psalms,” Husk said. “You can stun them with Psalms.”

Ozzie sputtered. “I don’t know any Psalms!”

Husk closed his eyes and sighed.

She breathed faster and faster. Her head spun. Monsters were everywhere, and they were all bearing down on her. It was the end of the world.

Sing, a voice told her.

“I don’t know what to sing!” she cried.

A melody slipped into her mind, a distant memory of Tabitha at work in the kitchen before her father sent her away. She hummed and sang a song that always made Ozzie feel strangely good, even when she was too young to understand the words.

Ozzie took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound...”

A chorus of hisses and groans came from the monsters.

“...that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Ozzie opened her eyes. The creatures were cringing and falling backward. Several had hands and claws pressed against their ears.

The soldiers turned toward her and gaped with hopeful expressions.