Darren Shan - Hell's Heroes

I want to say something to mark the occasion and pay homage to the memory of my dead uncle. But everything I think of seems trite and clichйd. I was never the best with words. They’ve failed me often in the past, and they fail me again now. In the end I just pat the back of the chair where Dervish used to sit.

I visit the hall of portraits and run my gaze over the faces of the dead, all our family members who have perished over the centuries, most as a result of lycanthropy. I’d like to add photos of Dervish and Bill-E to the rows of frames, but I don’t have any on me. I could fetch a couple from the study, but I don’t want to go back there.

I settle for writing their names in the dusty glass of a couple of the larger pictures, along with their dates of birth and death. Pausing, I smile and add a line under Dervish’s name. “Died fighting the good fight.” A longer pause, then, with no smile, I write under Bill-E’s name, “Killed by his half brother.”

Let future visitors make of those epitaphs what they will.

My old bedroom. I lie on the bed and sigh happily. Wouldn’t it be great if I woke up now and everything had been a bad dream? I could have a good chuckle with Dervish and Bill-E, tell them how they’d been killed off, play up the grisly circumstances of their deaths, stick some hair around my face to make me look like a werewolf.

But it’s not a dream and I can’t pretend that it is. Too much about me is different, not least the fact that my legs stick way out over the end of the bed, far past the point where my feet used to stop.

I look through my old clothes and CDs, remembering a time when such things were important. I go to the toilet and think about Reni Gossel, Loch’s sister, as I’m washing my hands. We would have become an item if the world hadn’t spun off its rails. Maybe I should look her up, kiss her farewell, tell her something corny, like I’ll always hold her dear to my heart.

Then I catch sight of my twisted face in the mirror, the fangs, the bloodshot eyes, the tufts of coarse hair, the way one ear sticks out about two inches higher than the other. Some boyfriend I’d make in this state! Best to give Reni a wide berth. I’d terrify her if she saw me like this, and I didn’t come back to freak out my ex-girlfriend.

Why did you come? the Kah-Gash asks. The voice of the ancient weapon usually speaks to me only when the situation is dire. But its curiosity has been aroused.

“To say goodbye,” I tell it. “I want to see the old place one last time. Kirilli was right—houses are like people. I want to let the mansion know how much it meant to me.”

Very peculiar, the Kah-Gash says drily. I thought you had put such quaint human ways behind you forever.

“I thought so too,” I mutter, then wink at myself in the mirror. “But I’m glad that I haven’t.”

I head for the ground floor. The others are drinking in the kitchen, Kernel and Kirilli from glasses, Curly and Moe from bowls. I tell them I’ll be a few more minutes, then steel myself and open the door to the cellar.

Dervish’s wine collection—his pride and joy—is a mess. Lots of the racks have been knocked over, and hundreds of bottles lie smashed on the ground, their contents spilled. I was never bothered about wine, but I feel sad viewing the destruction, knowing how rare some of the bottles were and how much they meant to my uncle.

Stepping carefully through the wreckage, I open the secret panel that nestles behind a fake wine rack. I trudge down a long tunnel to the house’s second, secret cellar. This was where Dervish cast his more dangerous spells and communed with Lord Loss.

There’s magic in this room. I never asked Dervish where it came from. Maybe it has something to do with the lodestone buried in the cave not far from here.

I use my power to light the candles dotting the walls. The room flickers into view, and my eyes are drawn to the remains of a steel cage. We kept Bill-E in it when he was turning. I was a prisoner there too for a while. Hard to believe such puny bars could ever have held the likes of me. But I wasn’t a monster in those days.

I wander around the cellar, looking at the books, the scraps of burned paper, the chess pieces left over from when we challenged Lord Loss. I never liked this room, but it doesn’t scare me as it once did. Nothing really scares me now. Except the thought of Bec collaborating with the demons, or me destroying the universe. Heh!

A book among the debris catches my attention. There’s a picture of Lord Loss on the cover. I pick it up and study the demon master. My lips curl. Of all the monsters, this is the one I hate most. I’d give anything to look in his eyes and laugh as I throttled the life out of him. I’d maybe even accept defeat in the war if I could settle the score with this lowly one first.

As I’m thinking about Lord Loss, the picture moves. His eyes come into focus and he leers. “Grubitsch…” he whispers. “Come to me… Grubitsch…”

“In my own good time,” I growl.

The face presses out of the page like a 3-D image. “Give yourself… to me. Let me end… it all now. No more pain. No more sorrow. No more—”

“—of your bull,” I snort, then roar at the book. Lord Loss’s face wrinkles, then flattens. Seconds later it’s just a picture, and his voice is gone. I toss the book aside. “That’s enough nostalgic crap,” I huff, and head back to the house, all my goodbyes completed, ready for business.

We walk to the cave, leaving the pilot and the helicopter at the house. I know this forest so well, even having been away so long, that I could go through it with my eyes closed and never stumble. I savor the familiar sights and smells, taking it all in. I sense things kicking into high gear. This could be my last quiet night for a long time, maybe ever.

When we reach the place where the cave is, there’s no sign of an entrance.

“What’s happening?” Kernel asks, sniffing the air uneasily.

“The hole’s been filled,” I tell him.

“Then we’ve nothing to worry about,” he says. “They can’t do anything with the lodestone unless they can access the cave from this side.”

“I’m not taking any chances.” I grab Kernel’s hand and squeeze hard. As he yelps, I use the power of the Kah-Gash to unite with him. Our potential skyrockets, and I draw energy from everything around us, and from the reservoir of magic beneath our feet.

With my free hand, I point at the spot where the hole used to be and bark a command. Rocks and dirt—along with lots of insects and a few startled rabbits—fly into the air in a funnel and arc over our heads.

Kernel trembles when I release him. “How did you do that?” he croaks. “You took power from me without my permission.”

“I’m the trigger,” I remind him. “The guy who fires the Kah-Gash into life. I don’t need permission.”

“So you can steal from me whenever you like,” Kernel snarls, relations between us deteriorating as swiftly as they’d started to improve.

“Don’t have a heart attack,” I mutter, then scramble down the hole into the gloom of the subterranean world.

Kirilli helps Kernel as we climb down a steep wall. Moe and Curly flank them, growling softly, wary of this underground den. I’d be happy to descend in the dark, but Kirilli creates a ball of light. “There,” he beams. “That’s much better.”

As he says that, his prosthetic foot slips and he drops. A yell escapes his lips, and his eyes widen with alarm. But before he can plummet to his death, Moe grabs his left arm. The werewolf braces himself and clings to the wall as Kirilli jolts about. Once the startled magician has regained his wits—along with his grip—Moe lets go.