John Connolly - The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

“So what’s the plan?” asked Samuel as he clambered out of the cage.

“It’s Mr. Nurd’s,” said Jolly. “And it’s genius.”

He opened the sack and revealed what lay within.

“You can’t be serious,” said Samuel.

But they were.

Duke Abigor raised a hand, and a horn rang out. From behind him came the sound of a thousand arrows being nocked, and a thousand bowstrings being drawn tight.

“On my command!” cried Abigor, then let his hand fall. Instantly the arrows were released, darkening the sky as they hurtled toward the enemy lines.

“Oh, crumbs,” said Constable Peel, peering through the slit in the cloth that covered Dan’s ice-cream van. “That’s a lot of arrows.”

But just as the arrows reached the top of their arc and began to fall, they burst into flames, and a cheer rose up from the ranks of Mrs. Abernathy’s army. The lady in question was visible upon her mount, her arms raised and smoke and flames pouring from her fingers.

“I’m glad she’s on our side,” said Constable Peel.

“Only until she finds out that we are not on her side,” said Sergeant Rowan. “Then she’ll take a very different view.”

Another flight of arrows was unleashed against them, but this time in greater number, and some of them broke through Mrs. Abernathy’s fiery defenses and embedded themselves in the flesh of demons. The demons didn’t seem terribly perturbed about their injuries, though, and for the most part just stared at the arrows in mild annoyance.

“Well, they don’t seem to be doing much harm,” said Constable Peel just as a nearby entity, a hunched being of black fur and bad teeth, tugged at the arrow in its chest and promptly exploded in a shower of flesh and white light.

“On the other hand…”

Abigor ordered his first wave of cavalry to attack, and the skinless horses carried their riders toward Mrs. Abernathy’s army. The cavalry wielded heavy lances with vicious, multibladed tips, and although half of them fell beneath the onslaught of spears, arrows, and complaining rocks that ripped through their ranks, the remainder hit the first line with incredible force, tearing a hole in the shield wall and impaling the soldiers behind before casting the long lances aside and swinging maces and swords to brutal effect.

A second wave of cavalry attacked, followed by the demonic rank and file, led by Duke Abigor and his personal guard. Meanwhile two legions had commenced a flanking movement, hoping to encircle Mrs. Abernathy’s army entirely. In response, Mrs. Abernathy’s forces unleashed torrents of flame and clouds of arrows while Mrs. Abernathy herself waded into her opponents, the tentacles on her back whipping and writhing, pulling riders from their horses and ripping them apart like bugs. The Gorgons at last revealed their hideous visages, turning to stone those who did not look away in time, while those who did hide their faces found themselves vulnerable to attack. The Cyclopean giants swung their clubs, tossing aside ten soldiers at a time. Dragons on both sides set hair and skin and flesh burning while sirens attacked from above like birds of prey, their outstretched claws impaling themselves in flesh and armor, inflicting awful wounds that turned instantly black as the poison in their talons infected the tissue. The fighting drew closer and closer to where the motorized rock and the disguised ice-cream van stood, hemmed in by the thronging mass of demons anxious to join in the fight.

“Guard the cage!” screamed Mrs. Abernathy, for the discipline of Abigor’s legions was beginning to tell, and she felt the battle turning against her. A second line of demons surrounded the wagon, their blades unsheathed, forming a wall of sharp metal and sharper teeth through which none could penetrate. Only a few noticed that the original guards were more than a little unsteady on their feet, and seemed to be having trouble focusing, but then more arrows began to descend and avoiding impalement took precedence over all else.

There was blood, and screaming, all lit by bolts of lightning from above as Hell tore itself apart.

IT WAS DOZY, NOW back in the relative safety of the ice-cream van, who noticed it first, just as he finished helping Jolly and Angry back inside after the successful completion of their rescue mission.

“Did you hear that?” he said.

“All I can hear is the noise of battle,” said Constable Peel.

“No, it was something else. Like an echo, but before a sound has been made to cause it.”

Slowly, bells began to toll deep in the heart of the mountain, growing louder and louder. The sound of them was so insistent and so resonant that all who heard them covered their ears in pain. The vibrations caused the ground to tremble. Cracks appeared on the plain. In the Hollow Hills, caves collapsed, and from the icy mountains to the north, great avalanches flowed down and smothered the faces of those unfortunates who broke the surface of Cocytus. The Sea of Unpleasantness was riven by earthquakes beneath its surface, and tsunamis of black water rose up and broke upon the barren shores. On the battlefield, weapons fell from hands, and horses threw their riders. Ears bled, and teeth were loosened in their gums. Demons cowered, wailing in agony. Over and over the bells sounded, shaking stones from the Mountain of Despair, until the very notion of Hell itself was reduced to a single essence: the awful pealing of the bells, heard only at the times of greatest crisis in that place, that had been silent for so long.

Suddenly, they stopped, and Infernals of all shapes and forms turned their heads in the direction of the Mountain of Despair. Flames flickered deep in its heart as a shape appeared in the doorway. It was the Watcher, now many times taller and broader than before, its red skin glowing as though the creature had recently been forged in the fires within, a being of metal or stone that would slowly cool to gray and black.

“How did it get in?” hissed Brompton to Edgefast as the shadow of the Watcher advanced before them.

“It must have sneaked by,” said Edgefast, trying not to catch Brompton’s eye.

“It’s forty feet tall! What did it do, wear a hat and dark glasses? Some guard you are.”

But all questions about the Watcher, and any amazement that the guards, and the two armies, and Mrs. Abernathy and Duke Abigor might have felt at its altered appearance, faded away as it became clear that another presence was emerging from the mountain, a figure that dwarfed the Watcher just as the Watcher towered above most of the demons arrayed on the field. A fierce stench of sulfur swept across the plain and the light from within the mountain was lost, the flames hidden by the mass of the approaching creature. All was utter stillness and silence among the assembled armies. Even the dwarfs were quiet, seemingly frozen into muteness and immobility by what they were seeing. In Nurd’s Aston Martin, Boswell buried his muzzle in Samuel’s armpit and closed his eyes in terror, just as his nose twitched at the stink of what was coming, forming a picture of it in his dog brain that he was unable to erase.

So enormous was the Great Malevolence that he had to crouch in order to pass beneath the lintel of the mountain’s door. When he stood erect at last there was a grandeur to the sight, and a sense of awe infected all who witnessed it, for here was not merely the most ancient and ferocious of evils, but the element of Evil itself given form. From this being flowed all that was wrong, all that was foul, all that blighted hope in world upon world, universe upon universe. His crown was formed from spurs of bone that grew from his own skull, jagged and yellow. His great frame was still sheathed in the armor that he had donned in expectation of his crusade upon Earth, etched with the names of every man and woman born and yet to be born, for he hated them all and wanted to remember his fury at each one, the great litany of names constantly being added to as more humans entered the world. And some of those names burned, for there were those who had damned themselves by their actions, and so were destined to join him.