Endless Knight (Darkling Mage 9)

“You gaze upon Mammon with such fear, tiny human worms. Yet there is no cause for trepidation. Mammon is only here for a brief discussion. Yes. A conference, if you will.”

“There’s only one thing to discuss,” I said. “Look at the sky. Those crimson stars represent the end of all things.”

“Yes,” the demon prince said. “Mammon knows.”

I gawked at Mammon, aghast. “Then why won’t you do anything to help stop it? Without a world to corrupt, you demons don’t get what you want. Your riches will be destroyed. There will be nothing left. You yourself will cease to exist.”

“Well and good,” Mammon said. “Then Mammon shall retreat to do what Mammon does best. To covet treasures, to keep them safe. If the universe is to end, then let it crumble in a panoply of emeralds and diamonds and gold.”

“You won’t help us?” I didn’t know when I’d started screaming. “Even with everything you care for threatened? Your stupid collections and libraries, your pointless menagerie.”

Mammon’s eyes flashed bright green. “The privilege of the wealthy, thing of shadows, is to watch from ivory towers while the world burns to ashes. This has been true for centuries, and so it will remain true as the very cosmos itself withers into dust. No. Mammon will not lift a finger. You rest your belief upon humankind so readily. Pray that your confidence has been well placed.”

“Then you’re working with them,” I said, my voice trembling. “With the Old Ones, with Agatha Black. And with Loki, all this time, all these well laid plans.”

Mammon’s grin shone with the glint of precious gold, and it shook one finger at me. “That is incorrect. These are all merely events that have fed into each other, sequences in the pattern of the universe that could have been, that could not have been, had you stopped them from occurring. Mammon had no interest in stirring the pot, as it were. To what end, to what purpose?”

Mason stood too close to Mammon as he voiced his rage, but the demon prince hardly flinched at the proximity, simply looking on in amusement.

“So you’re saying that you’re content to stand aside as the world ends,” Mason shouted. “That’s it? You’re not even going to try and stop it?”

Mammon shrugged. “Ragnarok, Armageddon, the Eschaton – each is just the apocalypse by a different name. You were correct in one thing, at least. A world without mankind would be droll. No souls to collect, no lives to corrupt and to torment. No. This is simply the way of all things. Nothing lasts forever, and time has run out. It is not in the nature of the universe to continue in perpetuity. The market has crashed.”

A horrible keening began to scream from out of the sky. It was fear that both restrained me and convinced me to lift my head, to look at the clouds, and when I saw them, my heart faltered. The thirteen crimson stars were falling to earth. I looked again to Mammon’s face, seeing the red light reflecting in their eyes, and somewhere inside me I thought to beg the demon prince to help.

But the answer, as it was with any of the entities – angels, demons, the monsters of the apocalypse, even the gods themselves – would be a loud and resounding “No.” I looked up again as the thirteen terrible stars descended to earth, and my body thrummed with horror and despair.

“Fare well, humans,” Mammon said, its body sinking into the pool of molten gold at its feet. “The end has begun.”

Chapter 26

I turned to Asher, my proverbial knuckles already rapping desperately at the Dark Room’s door. “Tell the others to get ready. Call them, text them. Anything!”

“Sterling’s already on it,” Asher said, pointing to where the vampire was yelling loudly into his phone. “But how is that going to make a difference? If we can’t break out of here, then they can’t break in.”

“We’ll improvise,” I said, really meaning that I hoped one of the others would find a way for us. Romira could manipulate fire, and in fact had used her very gift to control flames sent from the sun itself. Maybe she could deal with hellfire, too. Or one of the others who knew the ins and outs of sorcery would know a way. Carver, or – or Herald. My heart pinched at just the thought of him, but I curled my fist and clenched my teeth. Priorities, Dust, I told myself. Priorities, like the thirteen crimson stars streaking straight for Valero.

Wait. No. The thirteen stars were actually heading directly for us. By the size and shape of the missiles, even one of them would be enough to blow the hilltop we were standing on into a pile of dirt clods and dead meat. What would thirteen do?

“Fuck,” I shouted. “Everybody, gather near. I’ll do what I can to protect us.”

Gil and Sterling rushed to my side, their faces red in the light of Agatha Black’s approach. Asher shouted once, then flicked his hand upwards, a flurry of huge ivory spikes following the direction of his gesture, erupting from the ground to form a wall of bones. Mason called on a kite shield from the Vestments, almost big enough to cover his body, but nowhere near enough to defend us. At least he was trying.

And I kept banging on the Dark Room’s door, pleading for it to open just a crack. I’d used the shadows to create domes and shields before, ones that weren’t nearly as sturdy as Bastion’s, but desperate times, you know? Yet still the Dark wouldn’t answer. Agatha’s proximity must have had something to do with it. I swore under my breath. What good was it being tainted by the curse of the Eldest if I couldn’t even use their power against them?

“Brace for impact,” Gil growled. Sterling said nothing, only silently positioning himself in front of me. My heart twinged again. His loyalty made me feel all the worse for not talking to him about the Apotheosis more openly. I owed him that much.

“It’s been an honor fighting with you boys,” Mason said, smiling bravely despite the quaver in his voice.

“You guys are my brothers,” Asher shouted, straining as he summoned more and more of the bone spikes from out of the earth. “If we die tonight, promise me we’ll haunt the world together.”

“We’re not dying,” Sterling snarled. “None of us are dying.”

The stars were so close that the world itself had turned crimson. I shut my eyes, the light of blood piercing my skin, and waited for death. I cursed the Dark Room, cursed it for letting my friends die.

But nothing. The shrieking of the thirteen stars had stopped. I opened my eyes again, only to find that they had stopped directly above us, arranged into a circle. Slowly, their light faded, revealing thirteen precise copies of the lioness. Thirteen times Agatha Black grinned at us, the lines of her face filled with malice. The witches spoke in sequence, taunting, their voices echoes of each other, reverberating with dark triumph.

“It isn’t your time yet, little sheep. We aren’t going to make it that easy.”