Pain. That’s what it feels like when you’re transported through a Hellmouth, from one realm to another. Like your lip being stretched back over the crown of your head.

  Judas led me through the open rift toward Crescent City and the tangible world. Frost scraped my flesh, excruciating like nothing else. Then, the roaring of wind, the whipping of snowy ice, the bellowing of Hell’s worst creatures ceased. We were back in the swamplands, in the real world, back from Hell, and all the damage I’d taken within went away and I was a numb Hand of God once more.

  I’d never been more grateful for it. Though now wasn’t the time to count my blessings.

  I desperately tried to get my bearings. Where the small, green fire had been, now stood a faint portal of sorts. In it, light was inverted, and ice spewed out. The muck surrounding it was totally frozen, all the creepy trees covered in snow.

  Laveau stood before the rift with her hands outstretched, chanting in that same language I couldn’t understand. Damballah clung to her neck, maybe a little tighter than was safe. Judas’s knights encircled her. Most fired their crossbows at the monsters pouring out. Chapelwaite stood close as could be, defending her with his sword in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  It was surreal. All of it. Unearthly, otherworldly, supernaturally surreal. I’ve seen a lot of things as a Black Badge, and nothing compared. Nothing came close.

  I spun. Timperina neighed and kicked a Hellhound with her back hooves. It slammed against a tree trunk and slid down to remain unmoving at its base.

  Bram and Harker had their hands full with a flying beast, both men screaming in terror. It had dozens of eyes, multiple sharp-toothed mouths, and barbed wings that slashed at them. Harker had found his shotgun and fired upward without aiming. Sure, the thing worked, but it was clear he’d not so much as pulled a trigger in his whole pitiful life.

  I reached into my satchel, digging for rounds and found it empty. The flying beast continued scratching and gnawing at them.

  “The witch holds the rift at bay,” Judas said. He still had Rosa over his shoulder.

  “Put her down,” I demanded, needing to yell over all the chaos.

  “There’s no time,” Judas said.

  “I need to see if she’s breathing!” I shoved his chest until he obliged, relinquishing her to my outstretched arms. I cradled her there, wiping the rime from her cheeks. People as pale as she looked didn’t live long, but raspy breaths snuck through her hoar-frosted lips. She was close enough to death to count the stitches that held it all together.

  “Timp!” I whistled.

  She reared up, swatting her hooves at another beast to get it off-balance, then trampled over it on her way to me.

  I raised Rosa and carefully placed her over Timperina’s hind.

  “If I say run, run.”

  She snorted.

  A shriek drew my attention back to the rift. Another of those multi-eyed monstrosities lifted one of Judas’s knights with its talons and dropped him from high enough to break his neck on a rock right beside me. Without hesitating, I grabbed the knight’s already loaded crossbow, whipped around, and sent a bolt right through the neck of the one harassing Bram and Harker.

  Smoke poured out and it landed at Bram’s feet. However, the threat wasn’t over. Something grotesque crept across the foggy swamp beyond them.

  “Harker, down!” I shouted.

  He listened, just as a grunch bounded for the back of his head. I was reloading a weapon I’d never used, hoping to shoot the grunch dead when Bram roared and snatched it by the tail. In a feat of strength I didn’t think him capable of, he smashed it down to the ground. Its head cracked hard against the tree stump the two had been watching guard from.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  “That’s for my leg,” he said.

  The grunch twitched, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  More things behind them fled toward Crescent City. Another went into the wilderness. Who knew how many other invading Hellbeasts did the same.

  “Bram, Harker, it’s time you went home!” I shouted. I couldn’t bring Irish back after getting her killed, but I could save them. A final courtesy to a couple of men I’d called companions for a short time.

  Bram wiped the black ichor from his face, eyes gaping. “Yes, I-I believe you are correct, Mr. Crowley.”

  “Oh, now, it’s time?” Harker squeaked, tossing his shotgun my way. “I’ve always hated guns.”

  The fools.

  Judas was facing away from them, though now that he was out of Hell, his refined nature had returned. They wouldn’t know what he was just by looking at him—probably hadn’t even noticed him amidst the calamity. Wouldn’t know they stood only twenty or so feet from the father of all vampires, the descendant of Cain, and the one who betrayed their Christ. After everything that happened in that Hellmouth and Chekoketh’s words, I believed it now too.

  That he really was the Judas Iscariot.

  Bram had gotten a look at plenty of other supernatural things, though. Enough to write a hundred novels and fill a dozen of Harker’s art books. Well done for him.

  “Don’t look back!” I yelled.

  For once, as they started running, they listened. Didn’t steal a single backward glance.

  I returned to Rosa, peeling back an eyelid with my thumb. If there was a light behind her eyes, I couldn’t see it. Not even a single damn floating mote of it. I wasn’t sure if it was hypothermia or something else the demon did to her. Couldn’t know. Only thing I could be sure about was that she was alive, because if she wasn’t, I’d be Divining her horrid final moments.

  “Laveau, she needs you!” I called.

  Judas’s hand fell on my shoulder. “She can’t help.”

  “Like hell she can’t.” I stormed around Timp toward the Voodoo Queen, my only hope.

  The knights continued defending her and she kept chanting. Now that I was settled, I noticed her hands. They were deathly black. Energy coruscated out from them, darkness and light swirling, as if she were absorbing the Hellmouth itself.

  “This was unwise,” Judas said, stepping up beside me, hands folded behind his back. How could he be so relaxed?

  “Yeah, no shit!” I barked.

  “We can’t hold them for long!” Chapelwaite yelled, slashing an imp in two.

  Horse hooves drew my attention, thinking Timperina had gotten spooked. When I turned to calm her, I saw it. A black-armored rider with glowing blue eyes atop a horse that was nothing but bones. His lance, a thing that appeared to be made of black, smoking ice, pierced through the head of one of Judas’s knights.

  With no transition at all, Judas stood next to me one second, then in a puff of smoke, he had the rider off his horse and tore him apart with his bare hands.

  Laveau shrieked and fell to her knees, everything in her keeping her hands raised toward the Hellmouth. Her arms shook like she was holding back the weight of an entire world. I reckon she was.

  “You cannot halt me, witch!” Chekoketh’s voice echoed, though it was distant compared to earlier. “The end has begun.”

  “I knew she was… different,” Laveau groaned. “I should have stopped myself.” With a primordial scream, she pushed her hands forward. The edges of the rift vacillated. Frost turned to mist. Then she sank back a bit more, huffing for breath.

  “I will devour you!” Chekoketh roared.

  “I only wanted to help a lost soul…” Laveau lamented.

  A giant hand with sharp claws burst through the rift and clutched Laveau by the waist. Chapelwaite rushed in and slashed at it, but the skeletal horse, now riderless, bowled him over.

  From the Hellmouth, a Nephilim I recognized stepped through. A goat-man as big as one I’d fought outside Revelation, with curled horns the size of wagon wheels.

  It lifted Laveau by the chest, squeezing so hard, I could hear her ribs cracking all the way from where I stood watching, unable to do a goddamn thing about it.

  “Laveau!” I shouted. I tried to run to her, but Judas barred me with his arm.

  “Leave her,” he said.

  The goat-beast opened its mouth to devour her, when suddenly, her body vanished. Damballah plopped down onto the goat-man’s arm, slithered upward onto its face and bit its single eye. The Nephilim howled, flinging the snake across the swamp.

  One last illusion from the Voodoo Queen. Laveau remained on the ground, arms outstretched and crackling with energy.

  “Do not abandon her, James,” she said. “No matter what.” She looked back at me and smiled warmly.

  My mother was a callous woman who’d practically abandoned me with Father Osgood in Granger’s Outlook. Made believe it was for my own good. I knew better. Barely knew her before she kicked the bucket, and that was fine with me. However, I couldn’t help wondering what would’ve become of me if I’d had a mother like Marie Laveau. Probably wouldn’t be anywhere near here.

  She turned back to the Hellmouth. “Be gone, demon!”

  Screaming from the bottom of her lungs, she slowly crept forward, hands still up, bracing against the storm of energy. The rift continued to waver, then shrank. Monsters fled out, desperate to escape. The knights slaughtered many of them.

  Laveau’s powerful vociferation echoed across the swamplands as the Hellmouth shut all around her in a wave of black distortion. The goat-man was caught in it and got sliced clean in half, his guts pouring out like pig slop.

  In a flash, it was closed.

  Frost radiated out from the epicenter of where the Hellmouth had been—a tiny region of winter in the hot, mucky swamps. It would melt soon enough without Hell fueling it, though it only served to make the silence more eerie as snowflakes flitted about.

  Laveau was gone. But her voice continued to echo.

  In my mind, it always would.