Tribulation (7 page)

Hellhound

“
This is the evil in
everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes
all. The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is
madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join
the dead.”
Ecclesiastes 9:3

Y
eth moved at breakneck speed. Sam, no slouch in the
speed department himself, had trouble keeping up. The Hellhound
didn’t seem to concern himself with petty matters like his master
being able to follow him. In fact, it seemed like Sam was being
completely ignored.

They raced
through underground tunnels so steep that sometimes Sam found
himself sliding. Ahead of him, he could hear Yeth’s claws clicking
on the rocky surface. Most of the tunnels were quite narrow, the
Hellhound’s bulk almost filling it completely. Side chambers
contained pools of molten lava but Yeth never ventured into any of
them. In fact, the Hellhound did not falter at all, seeming
completely sure of his path.

All at once,
the tunnel began to level off. They were no longer in the volcanic
mountain. This, Sam reflected, seemed to be a better way to travel
than across the plain where he was continuously exposed. Once
again, Sam had no idea how long they were traveling for but all at
once, Yeth came to an abrupt halt. Sam almost slammed into his
rear.

Sam sensed
other evil presences in front of his Hellhound, and sure enough, a
demon Prince and a horned demon were blocking the way. Sam’s glamor
was still in place, so the Prince had no idea he was behind the
demon dog.

The Prince was
addressing Yeth. “Make way. I have important business to conduct.
Move aside.”

Curiously, the
humanoid demon did not try to win the Hellhound’s service. Perhaps
they knew when one of the great dogs already had a master. Or
perhaps they just assumed that any Hellhound away from the lava
pools in the volcano was already spoken for. Sam didn’t know or
care, but he was interested to know how some of these things
worked. He had a lot to learn about Hell. Knowledge, after all, was
power.

Sam could sense
the indecision in Yeth’s mind. This was a Prince, a superior that
lesser demons obeyed. However, Yeth’s master was also a Prince and
his needs came first. Sam knew that Yeth was wrestling with
conflicting desires. Finally, one won over. Decision made, the
Hellhound did not move.

“Move! I
command it!” yelled the demon Prince, his voice rising in a
combination of anger and consternation. A disobedient Hellhound was
obviously not a creature to be taken lightly. In fact, it appeared
to be a subject of some concern.

Sam risked a
peek around the flank of his Hellhound. Just in front of Yeth, the
tunnel opened up into a much larger chamber, the space filled with
the Prince and the other huge Horned demon. On the far side of the
chamber were two other exits.

Sam saw the
Prince’s eyes widen suddenly when he registered his presence.
Clearly his glamor didn’t work at such close proximity. Sam saw
recognition there. Someone or something had already raised the
alarm, spreading the word and Sam’s description.

The Prince
stepped aside, allowing the Horned Demon more space in the chamber.
“Seize him!” he screamed, pointing in Sam’s direction.

Sam was about
to move and intercept the massive demon’s charge but Yeth moved
quicker than Sam thought possible for such a great creature. It
flashed in front of the Horned demon, which brought its mighty
stone mallet down just in time, smashing directly onto the flank of
the Hellhound. It may as well have hit a wall made of solid iron.
The mallet bounced off; Yeth simply ignored the attack and went for
the throat under the goat-like head. The huge jaws locked around
the neck of the other demon, puncturing straight through the thick,
corded muscle around the throat. The momentum carried both
creatures to the ground where the Hellhound managed to pin its foe
to the ground, intent on crushing the life out of it. The ground
shook under the bone-crushing impact.

Yeth’s body
ignited into flame and the Horned Demon bellowed in pain. It may
have been a demon, accustomed to the burning pits of Hell but
Hellhound flame was an altogether different heat. Sam could
withstand it but it seemed not many other demons could.

Sam stood
frozen to the spot, in awe of the conflict playing out in front of
him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see his fellow prince
doing the same. A battle between a Hellhound and a Horned demon
couldn’t be something that happened every day and both were
mesmerized. Sam would’ve moved into action if that had been
required, but Yeth seemed to be on top of things and this Prince
seemed no threat as yet.

The Horned
demon wasn’t out of it yet. It had bulk and strength on its side.
It probably weighed twice as much as Yeth. Not only that, but it
had four arms. Ignoring the flames, it managed to get two of its
hands up, locking them around Yeth’s jaws. It started to lever them
open even as its other two hands encircled the Hellhound’s
throat.

Sam didn’t have
any doubts that Yeth would win. Not many demons could defeat a
Hellhound – especially a Greater one. Yeth was a juvenile, and
would fight for longer, but Sam just didn’t have time for this.

The other
Prince still hadn’t moved. Sam darted over to the two massive
struggling demons and drew his sword. Taking careful aim, he
plunged his sword straight through the eye of the Horned demon. It
had time to emit a single roar before it disappeared in a cloud of
ash. Sam looked over at the Prince. Their eyes locked for a moment
and then the Prince just disappeared. One second he was right in
front of Sam, the next he was gone.

Sam cast his
eyes around the chamber, desperately trying to figure out where the
creature had gone. He couldn’t sense him with his mind either. Two
options presented themselves. Either the prince was invisible,
still in the chamber and able to shroud his mind and presence so
effectively that even Sam couldn’t sense him, or – he was gone.
That implied some form of teleport ability. It seemed there was a
great deal he didn’t know about other demons.

If the demon
was still around, there was nothing he could do about it. He
shrugged, and then became aware that the Hellhound was on his feet,
staring directly at him. If Sam didn’t know better, the look might
have been interpreted as reproachful. Sam attempted a smile.

“Sorry,” he
said aloud. “We were running out of time. It’s not that I doubted
your abilities or anything.”

Yeth growled
low in his throat. He darted one more accusing look in Sam’s
direction and then set off again, taking the left hand exit without
hesitation. Sam hastened after him at a fast jog. Yeth certainly
didn’t like to drag his heels.

If the alarm
had been raised, it certainly wasn’t apparent as they sped through
the tunnels. They started to angle downwards again – not at an
extreme angle like before – but they were certainly descending.
Yeth had extinguished the flames from his body and there were no
sconces filled with magical fire along these corridors, so the two
of them ran on in darkness. Yeth, it seemed, was just as
comfortable in the dark as Sam was and was apparently intelligent
enough to douse his fire, knowing that a flaming Hellhound moving
along these darkened tunnels would announce their presence in a
loud and dramatic fashion.

Some side
chambers were filled with the sounds of human suffering and Sam
deliberately avoided looking in those directions. Many chambers
were almost swamped in lava. Sam had to pick his way through them,
leaping from one rocky island to the next. In some of these lava
filled chambers, Sam saw other curious demons. They seemed to be
comprised entirely of living lava, size and form that of a normal
man. They ignored Sam and he did likewise for fear of drawing too
much attention to himself. Yeth simply waded through the lava like
a normal dog through a shallow pond. He seemed completely immune to
the heat, but that came as no surprise to Sam.

These large
open chambers began to get bigger and bigger until the largest
could have easily contained the biggest cathedrals in the world.
Yeth led Sam straight through one of these. In huge lava pond
directly in the middle of the room stood an imposing figure.

As they got
closer, Sam blinked in awe. It was a massive demon that he’d seen
pictures of before. It had no name as far as Sam knew, only that it
met the stereotypical description of demons depicted though
history: a giant humanoid, maybe twenty feet high, with flaming red
skin, large curving black horns and black wings that would’ve put
an average sailing ship to shame. And, luckily for himself and
Yeth, it did not seem aware of them at all. In fact, it appeared to
be frozen.

They ran
directly past it, underneath its very nose and still it didn’t
move. Yeth sensed the question and consternation in Sam’s mind and
it did the equivalent of a mental reassuring pat. Not to worry.
Will not move, was the general gist of what Yeth was saying.

An archway at
the very end of the chamber loomed ahead of them. Yeth led him
directly into and then abruptly stopped with a sigh of
satisfaction. It seemed that Yeth had brought him where he wanted
to be.

As soon as he
entered the chamber, Sam’s mind and ears were bombarded with sound.
Screams. The sound of human torment.

This chamber,
whilst relatively large, was still dwarfed by the bigger chamber
inhabited by the great frozen demon. Like that chamber, it had a
circular pond of lava in the direct center. The difference though,
was that this pond was not inhabited by a great demon. A heaped
pile of bones sat in the middle of the lava, somehow impervious to
the intense heat. Disturbingly, the jaws in the skulls were open,
and Sam could have sworn that the screaming was coming from their
long dead mouths.

What really
drew his eyes was what rested on top of the pile of skeletons. It
was a rack made entirely of bone. Strapped to the rack with what
could only be human sinews, was a figure Sam barely recognized. Her
eyes were closed and her face was twisted in some unimaginable
pain, her mouth open and slack, drooling saliva which never hit the
mound of bones, instead sizzling into gas from the intense heat.
Her clothes hung in smoldering tatters about her, sliced like her
face and body which were covered in bloody welts and deep cuts,
mostly still weeping blood.

“Grace,”
whispered Sam.

He wasn’t sure
if she was still alive and that thought brought a surge of emotions
- mostly anger and remorse. He prayed that she was but how could
any human possibly still live in such conditions? Another thought
then intruded. This was Hell after all – death did not end human
suffering here. He prayed once again that she hadn’t already died.
If she died in Hell, she would remain here for eternity.

He moved past
Yeth on shaky legs until he reached the end of the lava pond. So
intent had he been on Grace, it was only then that he noticed the
demon. It had been partially concealed by the mound of bones,
difficult to detect because of simple camouflage ability. In the
form of a giant skeleton, it blended in completely with the other
bones around it. As it moved from crouching to standing, Sam
suddenly comprehended its scale. It was at least ten feet tall. Its
skull was massive, at least three times that of a normal human and
out of proportion with the rest of its body. The long, bony fingers
of one skeletal hand clutched a whip formed from a material that
glinted in the warm lava glow. Even from several feet away, Sam
could see what appeared to be dry blood on the weapon.

Rage filled
him; rage such as he’d rarely felt before. It was uncontrollable.
One second his eyes were black, the next filled with crimson anger.
He leapt, drawing his Katana as he flew through the air, channeling
every ounce of his power into one blow just as the skeleton demon
stepped forward, barring Grace from his sight.

The timing
couldn’t have been better. His sword - forged from the densest,
purest iron that had fallen from the sky, then blessed and quenched
in holy water - was a weapon unlike any seen in Hell before. It was
more than a match for this demon. His blade struck the precise
point between the skull and the second vertebrate, separating them
as neatly as any surgical saw. The demon’s head flew into the lava
and sank immediately; the body, still holding its cursed whip,
stayed upright for one moment before toppling sideways, clattering
down in a jumble of bones, supplementing the pile that it had once
guarded.

Sam moved
immediately to the rack where Grace was being restrained. Cutting
with savage energy, he severed the bonds that held her and she
slumped into his arms, unconscious … or dead.

With no
conscious thought and with strength he didn’t know he possessed,
Sam leapt back to the solid rock where Yeth waited patiently. The
leap, from a standing start and carrying an extra body, had been
eight foot. Rage, it seemed, had lent him more strength than he
knew he possessed.

He could feel
the rage subsiding now, his eyes returning to their normal color.
He laid Grace gently at the feet of Yeth and felt for a pulse. Yes,
there was one; he could feel it – just, fluttering like the wings
of a tiny nervous bird. Relief washed over him. She was alive – but
that was here in Hell. The question was, had she already died? The
only way to find out would be to get her out of here, back to the
relative safety of Earth.

Go now, said
the voice of Yeth. To Sam’s mind, it sounded nervous. Scared even.
He hadn’t heard Yeth sound like that before.

My mother,
responded Sam. And others too. I have to search for others.