Ghost of a Chance

SEVEN TO WAR WITH DEMONS

If you go to war with demons, you must be pure in your intent.

Drawn remorselessly on, like a fish on a line, like bait on a hook, Kim Sterling was dragged struggling backwards through the corridors and tunnels; and JC ran after her. He pursued her up and down stairs and around sharp corners, sometimes drawing close but never, ever, allowed to catch up. Now and then her ghostly form would be pulled suddenly through a solid wall, and JC had to hunt frantically back and forth before he could pick up her trail again. He could always hear her, even when he couldn’t see her, calling out to him in fear and anger or richly cursing her unseen abductor, and that kept him going . . . She hadn’t given up, and neither would he. He pounded headlong down corridors and passageways, breathing harshly, legs and ribs aching, his arms pistoning at his sides. And somehow Kim was never hauled away so fast that JC couldn’t keep up—as long as he pushed himself to his limit. The chase was a challenge, a taunt, goading him on, almost allowing him to catch up, then snatching Kim away again.

JC ran on, back and forth through the maze of corridors, on and off platforms, up and down the stationary elevators, knowing that the chase was meant to break his spirit, to force him to give up and abandon his new-found love. But he wouldn’t do that. He had already decided, quite calmly and rationally, that he would drop in his tracks first.

JC was so caught up in the chase that it took him a while to realise that his surroundings were going through subtle, deceptive changes.

Passageways seemed to stretch away before him, their ends growing more and more distant as the walls grew infinitely longer, elongating unnaturally like the passages we run through in nightmares, with no hope of getting anywhere. He ran and ran, and Kim receded endlessly before him. But the floor beneath his feet was still reassuringly hard and solid, so JC lowered his head like a charging bull and ran on. The walls on either side of him seemed to slump and bulge inwards, as though they were melting, then snap back into form again, all their details smudged and meaningless, but it took JC a while to realise that he didn’t recognise anything and had no idea as to where he was.

He wished Happy were with him, to tell him whether what he was seeing was real or another illusion broadcast by the unknown enemy. JC scowled and pushed the thought away. He’d had to leave Happy behind, and Melody. Focused as he was on the chase, JC still had it in him to feel bad about leaving them to fight alone. He had faith in them. They were both trained, experienced agents. They’d manage. But that wasn’t why he’d left them so readily. He’d abandoned his team-mates because he couldn’t abandon Kim to her fate. He hoped they’d understand. He ran on, breathing really hard, a fire in his chest and an almost unbearable pain shooting through his sides.

Endless corridors, endless walls spattered with images out of Hell, howls and screams and hopeless sobbing all around him. Illusion. Had to be. JC kept his head down and concentrated on pursuing the only thing that mattered. His trained will was a match for any illusion. Unless . . . whatever was down in the darkness with him was actually so powerful it could distort Space and Time itself . . . in which case, he was in real trouble.

He rounded a corner and staggered to a halt as he saw Kim hanging in the air at the end of the new corridor. He fought for breath, half-bent over as sweat dripped from his face, glad of the chance for a break but already looking about him for any trace of a new threat. And that was when the walls on either side began to close in, moving remorselessly forward from both sides at once. The suddenly very real and solid walls ground loudly against the hard floor. JC straightened up immediately and looked behind him; but he was too far down the corridor to escape. He couldn’t hope to reach either end before the walls slammed together. They were closing in on him steadily, taking their time. They looked heavy and solid enough to crush him to a bloody pulp. And they would do it slowly, inch by inch, while Kim watched. JC risked a glance at her. She was looking at him beseechingly, imploring him to get out of there. Her lips moved, but no sound came to him as she silently begged him to save himself.

JC shot her a reassuring smile. He breathed deeply, dragging air far into his lungs, gathering his strength and calming his mind. Sweat was still running down his face and stinging his eyes, and he took a moment to pull out a handkerchief and mop his face clean. Kim stared at him wildly, hardly believing he would waste time while the walls were closing in to crush him. JC put his handkerchief away with a flourish and looked left and right to check how close the walls were. The harsh grinding sound of their progress across the floor was very loud, and very near. At the speed they were moving, his death would be a slow and horrible thing, with the cracking and breaking of bones first, then the slow crushing of inner organs, as he literally died by inches. He’d probably be alive right till the end, so Kim could suffer as much as he did.

JC was really looking forward to meeting his unseen enemy and teaching it the error of its ways.

He stretched out both arms, hands splayed, as though he intended to stop the incoming walls with sheer brute strength. But JC had been trained better than that. The Institute prepared its agents to be strong in all kinds of ways. JC calmed his mind with familiar and well-rehearsed routines, drew on his inner resources, and quite simply refused to accept what was happening. The walls couldn’t be moving because the unseen enemy wasn’t strong enough to rewrite physical reality. It couldn’t be. JC defied the evidence of his senses and denied the movement of the walls through sheer strength of will. He closed his eyes and stood there with arms outstretched . . . and nothing came forward to touch his waiting hands. He slowly opened his eyes, and the corridor walls were back where they belonged as though they had never moved. Because, of course, they hadn’t. JC slowly lowered his arms. He smiled at Kim, still hanging unsupported at the end of the corridor, and she smiled back.

Inside, JC was laughing his head off. He’d bet his shirt the enemy had been bluffing, and he’d won. It wasn’t that powerful, after all. And that . . . was good to know.

He walked forward, and Kim hung there before him, dangled before him like a toy, or a lure. JC kept his approach slow and careful, not allowing himself to run to her, and his heart leapt a little when Kim didn’t move. He made himself stop a careful distance away, somehow knowing that if he tried to free her from whatever held her, she would immediately be snatched away again. So he stood before her and smiled at her, and she smiled back, and they talked in quiet, calm, rational voices.

“You have to give this up,” said Kim. “You can’t keep chasing me. It’s killing you. I don’t want that.”

“I have to run,” said JC. “I have to try. I can’t give up on you. Not so soon after finding you.”

She smiled again, but there was sadness in her eyes. “I’m afraid we found each other a little too late, my sweet. I’m dead, aren’t I? Only a ghost now, a memory of the person I once was.”

“Yes,” said JC.

“Then go back,” said Kim, kindly but firmly. “There’s no sense in both of us being dead. So far, I haven’t seen anything to recommend it. You have your whole life ahead of you. All the years that were stolen from me. So go back, find someone else, someone with a future, and love her. Forget me, and be happy.”

“I could no more forget you than I could forget me,” said JC. “It wouldn’t be living, and it wouldn’t be love if it wasn’t you.”

“Now that is crap, and you know it,” said Kim. “You hardly know me. And no-one ever really dies of a broken heart. You will forget me, and you will move on, because that’s what people do.”

“It’s not what I do,” said JC. “Don’t give up, Kim. Because I won’t. I will follow you wherever this force takes you. I will find you wherever he hides you, and I will break you free and take you up out of this place and into the light again. Because that is what I do.”

“And then what?” said Kim. “I’ll still be a ghost. What kind of life could we have together?”

JC grinned at her. “I’ll think of something. Don’t push me; I’m still working this out as I go along. Never give up hope, Kim.”

“Never,” she said.

Kim started to drift backwards again. JC went after her at his own pace, refusing to be hurried. Kim’s speed remained the same, and JC smiled inwardly. It seemed he’d achieved some measure of control over the situation.

And then she and he rounded the corner into the next passageway, and JC stopped abruptly. Kim kept going, floating slowly but steadily backwards down the corridor, her feet dangling a good few inches above the thousands of razor blades covering the floor. Jammed in sideways, their glistening sharp edges pointing upwards. Thousands of them, covering the floor from one end of the corridor to the other, blue steel gleaming brightly in the fierce electric light. Kim kept going until she reached the far end, then stopped. JC’s heart sank as he realised there was no way past the razor blades and no way round them.

His shoes wouldn’t protect him for long. The blades would slice through the soles in half a dozen steps, then there would be nothing between his feet and the razor-sharp blades. And once he fell . . . it would be a bad way to die, crawling across the razor blades, bleeding out slowly.

He looked at Kim, held motionless at the end of the corridor, and she seemed miles away. Once again the chase had been stopped, so she could watch him suffer and die because of her. This unseen enemy really did love his mind games. It was saying to Kim, How much is this man prepared to do, how far is he prepared to go, how much will he risk to come after you? And JC had to wonder: Why does the enemy care? Why doesn’t it just kill me?

JC knelt before the first row of razor blades, hardened his mind against all illusion, and stretched out a single finger. The nearest steel blade sliced into his fingertip so gently he didn’t even feel it until he saw the blood welling up. Then he felt the pain and snatched his hand back to suck thoughtfully at the wounded finger. So, real blood and real pain. If this was an illusion, it was such a powerful one his body believed in it. JC frowned, concentrating, remembering how the Institute had taught him to walk barefoot across live coals. He’d protested about that very loudly at the time, demanding to know when such a thing would ever come in handy. But the Institute had insisted, and he’d learned. It was all about faith, and balance. JC smiled briefly, took a slow, calming breath, and stepped lightly up onto the first row of razor blades. He stood there, for a moment, centring himself, then walked slowly and deliberately forward across the sea of razor blades.

He took his time about it, letting each foot come down calmly and naturally, never once looking down but always straight ahead, at Kim. She was smiling widely, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing. He walked on, and it felt like walking on solid ground. He took no damage, and he felt no pain. Knowing all the time that if he flinched, or lost concentration, even for a moment, he would stumble and fall, all his weight crashing down onto the tightly packed steel blades.

And he would not rise again from a fall like that.

Thunder exploded in the narrow corridor, close and huge and deafeningly loud. The sheer sound of it vibrated in his bones and shuddered through his flesh. Lightning stabbed down out of nowhere, melting patches of razor blades into puddles of molten steel. The lightning was close enough to JC that he could feel the tingling on his skin, but it never hit him. The storm roared all around him, but he walked steadily right through the raging heart of it. The air was blisteringly hot, then bitingly cold, and Kim convulsed in the air before him, crying out as though tormented. But JC would not allow himself to be disturbed. Inside his head he was calm and serene, untouched by the untrustworthy world, his concentration fierce and unyielding. The enemy was playing games with him, and that thought made JC calmly, coldly, implacably determined to press on, rescue Kim, and take his revenges.

He came at last to the end of the corridor and stepped down from the last of the razor blades. Kim was yanked suddenly backwards, hauled out of sight around the corner into the next corridor. JC went after her. There were no more razor blades before him, and he didn’t look back. The air was still and quiet and normal. But when JC rounded the corner, the corridor ahead was packed full of spider-webs.

“Aren’t you repeating yourself?” JC said loudly, but there was no reply.

Kim hung in the air at the far end of the passage, and between her and JC, huge masses of dirty grey spider-webs filled up all the space. They hung down from the ceiling and clung to both walls: thick sticky strands, trembling slightly, and thick grey veils that pulsed slowly. And before JC, hanging in mid air, strung up in thick and nasty cocoons, were Happy and Melody. Or at least, what was left of them.

JC’s breath caught in his throat, and his heart hammered painfully in his chest, but he wouldn’t let any of it show in his face. He wouldn’t give his unseen enemy even that small satisfaction. JC moved slowly forward. Happy and Melody were both dead. They had to be dead. They were . . . shrunken, desiccated, what was left of their faces little more than skin and bone. As though all the living juices had been sucked out of them. Deep dark holes had been burrowed into their guts, great areas of flesh eaten away. As JC watched, a single dark spider pulled itself out of Happy’s empty left eye socket and scurried quickly across Happy’s unmoving features. JC stood before what was left of his good friends and colleagues, and could hardly breathe at all.

You shouldn’t have left us behind. You shouldn’t have left us alone. We didn’t stand a chance, without you. If you had stayed, we’d still be alive. This is all your fault.

“Shut up! You aren’t dead!” JC said loudly. “You can’t be dead. I would have known. I would have felt it.”

He lurched forward, tearing the grey veils apart with his bare hands. They clung to his fingers and stuck to his face, but he brushed them roughly away and kept going. He plunged through the webbing, refusing to be slowed by it, but when he came to the two cocoons holding what was left of his friends, they remained stubbornly firm and solid, and he had to push and force his way between them. The webbing seized him from all sides, resisting his progress and tearing only slowly and reluctantly. JC pressed on, refusing to be stopped, but in that moment when he was caught between the two cocoons, shouldering them aside to get past, Happy and Melody opened their eyes and looked at him. Three dead eyes, bereft of feeling or Humanity, but full of awful, hard-won knowledge. JC paused despite himself, and Happy and Melody spoke to him in the soft whispering voices of the dead.

“I hate being dead,” said Melody. “I can’t stand it. Everyone cries here.”

“They should have told us what it was like,” said Happy. “They should have warned us. They should have told us about the Houses of Pain.”

“You’ll be with us soon,” said Melody. “You won’t like it.”

“They keep a special place here, for people like you,” said Happy. “For those who betray their friends.”

“You’re not Happy and you’re not Melody and you’re not real!” yelled JC. He tore at the webbing with desperate hands, forcing a way through, leaving the figures and their cocoons behind. They stopped talking, but JC could still hear them crying. He fought his way through the webs to the end of the corridor, then it all went suddenly quiet. JC didn’t look back to see if the webbing and the cocoons had disappeared.

Kim moved on, and JC went after her.

Maybe it ran out of corridors, or maybe it ran out of tricks, but eventually JC followed Kim through a particularly low-arched entranceway and found himself on an unfamiliar platform. He stopped to get his breath and looked around, wondering why he felt so strongly and obscurely disturbed. He didn’t recognise anything. Not only had he never been on this platform, he wasn’t sure anyone had. Everything looked different, felt different . . . subtly alien, as though he’d stepped out of the world he knew and into some new and very dangerous place. It was a Tube station platform, but more like Oxford Circus seen through a distorting mirror. The overhead lights flickered, plunging this part of the platform and that into patches of impenetrable gloom. The station’s name wasn’t Oxford Circus. Instead, daubed on the far wall in old dried blood, was a single phrase.

There was no destination map, and the posters on the wall beside him made no sense at all. The landscapes and views were alien and unsettling and utterly inhuman. Houses made out of porcelain, horribly fragile and sickeningly gaudy. Hanging gardens tumbled down the sides of ruined office buildings, with long grey fronds twitching hungrily. Seas and skies of unknown colours, and the shadows of things passing by. The scenes seemed to shift and stir, sluggishly, as though the posters were dreaming.

Kim floated in mid air at the very end of the platform, rising and falling slowly, her feet dangling helplessly above the platform, her great mane of red hair streaming away from her as though she were underwater. Her eyes were fixed only on JC, and she was still trying to smile for him. He started slowly, cautiously, down the platform, and she stayed where she was, waiting for him. He stopped before her, still careful to maintain a respectful distance, and again they talked. In quiet, low, confidential voices.

“I’m remembering more,” said Kim. “About how I died. I was murdered, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” said JC. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why would anyone want to kill me?” said Kim, plaintively. “I’m not anyone important, or special. Or at least I wasn’t. Damn. I can see I’m going to have to work on my tenses.”

“Everyone’s important,” said JC. “First thing they teach you, in this job.”

“You’re sweet,” said Kim. “JC . . . If all else fails, promise me you’ll find whoever it was that killed me. And make him pay. I never thought of myself as the kind of person who believes in vengeance, never thought of myself as vindictive . . . but I suppose death changes you.”

“I will find him,” said JC. “And I will make him pay for what he did to you. Whatever it takes.”

“I wish I’d met you before. There was never anyone special while I was alive. Never anyone who mattered. I was young, I was enjoying myself, and I thought I had all the time in the world . . . Was there ever anyone, for you?”

“No,” said JC. “No-one special. I guess I was waiting for you.”

“I think you’ve left it a bit late,” said Kim.

They laughed quietly together.

“I love you, Kim,” said JC. “A bit sudden, I know, but . . .”

“I know,” said Kim. “We have to say what we need to say, and say it now, because who knows how much time we’ll have together. I love you, JC. However this all works out. If nothing else . . . I’ll have one good memory to take into the dark with me. Do you know where we go, when we . . . go?”

“Not for sure,” said JC.

“Terrific,” said Kim.

“It’s all a mess, isn’t it?” said JC. “We shouldn’t be doing this. Our feelings make us vulnerable. The enemy will hurt you to get at me.”

“How can he hurt me?” said Kim. “I’m dead. The worst thing that can ever happen to me has already happened. Who is this enemy, anyway? What does he want with you, and me? What’s going on here, JC?”

“Damned if I know,” said JC. “But I’m beginning to think it may be more of a What than a Who. Can you see, or feel, anything? The dead can see many things that are hidden from the living.”

“At some point you’re going to have to tell me how you know things like that,” said Kim. “Hmmm . . . I seem to see, or sense, a whole new direction I never knew was there, before. There’s something there . . . but I’m afraid to look too closely. It would be like taking a final, irrevocable step, admitting I was no longer alive and limited to the things that only living people can do. I don’t feel dead. I don’t! I still feel human things, living things; and I’m afraid to give up on them because that would mean giving up on you, JC, and how I feel about you.”

“Then don’t do it,” JC said immediately. “Look away. Dealing with things like this is my business. I’ll find out Who or What is behind all this and make them pay. That’s what I do.”

“I love it when you sound all cocky and confident,” said Kim. “It gives me hope. Tell me . . . what does JC stand for?”

“Josiah Charles,” said JC, after a moment.

“Ah.” Kim considered this, for a moment, then smiled broadly. “JC is fine.”

“I thought so,” said JC.

“Why is life so unfair? Why did I have to die to find true love?”

“Life’s like that,” said JC. “And death, too, sometimes.”

From out of the darkness, at the end of the platform, there came the sudden thunder of an approaching train. It beat on the air like the roar of some great, hungry, beast. JC moved forward automatically, to put his body between Kim and the approaching train, to protect her. Kim giggled, despite herself.

“JC, sweetie, I’m a ghost, remember? I don’t need protecting.”

“Being dead doesn’t necessarily mean you’re beyond all harm,” said JC.

“What?” said Kim. “I’m not safe even now I’m dead? How unfair is that? And exactly when were you planning to tell me that?”

“I just did. Can we concentrate on the on-coming threat, please?”

“We will have words about this later,” said Kim.

“Oh joy,” said JC.

The growing roar of sound became too loud for further conversation, then the train slammed into the station. The compressed air blasted ahead of the engine stank so badly that JC actually recoiled from it. The train roared past him, dripping blood, as though it had been doused in gallons of the stuff, and behind it came cars covered in graffiti, daubed in fresh blood. Some of it was still running down the steel sides. As the cars slowed to a halt in the station, JC recognised some of the graffitied words, and he winced despite himself.

“What?” Kim said immediately. “What is it, JC? Do you know that weird writing?”

“Yes,” JC said reluctantly. “It’s Enochian. An artificial language created in Elizabethan times, so men could talk with angels and demons and spirits of the air.”

“Enochian? I never heard of it.”

“Not many have, and it’s better that way. It’s not a language for everyday conversation. The name comes from Enoch, the first city of men, according to the Old Testament.”

“Never mind the history lesson, sweetie. Can you read it?”

“No. I really should have studied more. Though I doubt very much it’s saying anything we’d want to know.”

Steam curled up around the long line of cars, thick and rancid, smelling of brimstone and bitter honey, blood and shit and sour milk. Kim pulled a face.

“What is that awful stench?”

“Trust me,” said JC. “You really don’t want to know. Wait a minute . . . you can smell that?”

“I can see and hear,” said Kim, defensively. “Why shouldn’t my other senses work as well?”

“I’m going to have to get back to you on that one,” said JC.

The doors slammed open, one after another, all down the long row of cars, sounding like firecrackers in Hell. Suddenly every car was illuminated from within by a fierce blood-red glow; and in that hellish light, demons glared out the windows and through the open doors, all their glowing eyes locked onto the living man and the dead woman. And then the demons laughed, a harsh, awful sound that hurt the ears of the living and the dead. They laughed and howled and stamped their misshapen feet, seething together in their packed cars like maggots in an open wound.

JC’s blood ran cold at the sight of them. His heart lurched in his chest, and he could barely get his breath. These were no traditional, medieval demons, with scarlet skin and barbed tails, claws and fangs and batwings. No simple distortions of Humanity, like those old familiar monsters carved into stone on churches and cathedrals all over Europe. These were the real thing, low-level demons made flesh and bone so they could operate in the material plane. The dregs of the damned, the gutter sweepings of Hell.

They wore forms calculated to horrify, intended to disgust. Shapes that held only a little Humanity, the better for Humanity to be mocked and insulted. Sin made plain in flesh and bone, stamped with the imprint of all the evil they had ever done. Monsters, in the flesh and in the soul, they all bore the mark of the Beast upon them. There were claws and fangs, cloven hooves and membranous batwings, distorted forms and exaggerated sexual characteristics, barbed tentacles and needle teeth crammed into round lamprey mouths . . . but that was incidental. All you had to do was look into their eyes to know all you needed to know. That they were evil, and they gloried in it. Some stamped impatiently on the floor, some scuttled along the windows, some hung down from the ceilings. And some crawled back and forth over and across the others like oversized insects.

Hell had come to town, looking to play.

They laughed and howled and leered at JC and Kim, held back only by some unheard command, some unseen authority. JC glared right back at them.

“Am I supposed to be impressed by this?” he said loudly. “Am I supposed to be intimidated by this halfarsed fun-house ghost train? I’ve fucked scarier-looking things than you!”

“Really?” said Kim.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good insult,” said JC.

“I see,” said Kim. “Something else for us to discuss later.”

“Look, I really am rather busy at the moment . . .”

And then Kim cried out, as the unseen force took hold of her again and hauled her backwards all the way down the length of the platform. JC ran after her, goaded by the awful laughter of the demons, but he couldn’t catch up. He was helpless to do anything but watch as Kim was thrown through the open doors of the front car, right into the midst of the waiting demons. They fell upon her, and she disappeared in a moment, swarmed over by vile and vicious things.

JC ran to the front car, and the doors slammed together in his face at the very last moment. He hammered on them with his fists, then hit them with his shoulder, but the doors wouldn’t budge. He pounded on the windows, but his fists made no impression. He pressed his face against one window and screamed Kim’s name, but if she made any sound, it was lost in the triumphant howling of the demons.

The train pulled slowly out of the station, not hurrying, taking its time, and JC ran alongside it, half out of his mind. He shouted threats and pleas and promises as he beat at the moving windows with his bare hands and tried to force open the closed doors as one by one they passed him by. The train sped up, leaving him behind. JC’s fear and rage turned cold, and a fierce, implacable purpose took over. He waited for the last car, then threw himself onto the end of the train, hanging on to the end door with both hands. The train speeded up and roared away, plunging into the darkness of the tunnel; and JC went with it.

The only light was the hellish crimson glow spilling out of the car windows and end door. The train rattled and swerved, as though trying to throw JC off, but he held on grimly with one hand while searching through his jacket pockets with the other. He finally pulled out a withered monkey’s paw that had been crudely made into a Hand of Glory, in defiance of all international laws and conventions. Just one of the many things JC wasn’t supposed to know about, let alone possess. Not actually black magic, as such, but close enough that you could damn your soul using it in the wrong way. JC was a great believer in all the modern technology the Institute provided; but sometimes you had to go Old School on your enemies, and to hell with the consequences.

The slender wrinkled fingers on the monkey’s paw had been made into crude candles, complete with wicks, and when JC forced out the exact Word of Power, they all burst into flames at once, activating the Hand. A properly operated Hand of Glory can undo any lock, open any door, and reveal any secret. The end door of the hell train was no match for it and sprang open so suddenly it nearly threw JC off. He hung on to the door precariously with one hand, the rails shooting by beneath his dangling feet. The turbulence of the racing train buffeted him viciously back and forth, but his grip held, even as his fingers screamed at him; because he knew that letting go of the door would mean letting go of Kim. And he would die before he did that.

He waved the Hand of Glory sharply to put out the flames and stuffed it back into his jacket pocket. Only then did he use both hands to grab the open door and haul himself forward into the car. The door slammed shut behind him, and JC took a moment to crouch on the rocking steel floor and get his breath back. His head was spinning, he was shaking all over, and his heart felt like it was trying to leap out of his chest. It was at times like this that JC really wished he went to the gym more often. Or at all.

He forced himself back onto his feet, and looked around. The car was empty, its light surprisingly normal. And then a bitterly cold wind blew up out of nowhere and slapped him bluntly in the face. The cold soaked into him, biting at his bare hands and face, stealing away all sensation even as it numbed his brain and slowed his thoughts. This was the cold of the space between worlds, untouched by the warmth of suns, cold enough to blast the soul. One of the many faces of Hell; a taste of what was to come. A slow certain knowledge came to JC then—that if he insisted on going on, if he persisted in his attempt to rescue Kim . . . he would die. And his soul would be trapped on the hell train forever, or at least until such time as the Institute sent a team to exorcise it and him. JC knew that, as surely and certainly as he knew anything, and didn’t give a damn. It might be true, or it might not; you couldn’t trust anything on a hell train. But even if someone he trusted had told him he was doomed, and damned, he would have gone on anyway. Because Kim needed him. So he thrust his face into the bitter cold wind, stamped his frozen feet, and forced himself down the length of the car, one hard step at a time. Forcing himself on, against everything the train could throw at him.

Because in the end that’s what love is. To go on, despite everything, driven by hope and faith alone.

The door at the end of the car opened abruptly before him, then the door into the next, and he stepped through into the crimson hell glare of demon territory and the company of Hell. Dozens of the creatures filled the car from end to end, packed in tight, facing him with anticipatory smiles, with teeth and claws and long, barbed arms with too many joints. Foul, horrid things with inhuman needs and appetites made clear in their misshapen flesh, all the better to inflict suffering upon the living. They laughed in JC’s face and stamped their cloven hooves upon the steel floor.

JC laughed right back in their awful faces, and the demons actually paused a moment, taken aback. They weren’t used to being so openly defied and mocked, in the face of certain torment and slow death. The sight of them was usually enough to drive mortals out of their minds. JC struck a studiedly casual pose and addressed the waiting host of Hell with contemptuous disdain.

“I don’t know if you really are demons called up out of Hell or only living extensions of my unseen enemy; and I don’t give a damn. It doesn’t matter what you are. You stand between me and my Kim; and I am here to rescue her. Get in my way, and I swear I will strike you down like the hammer of God.”

The cold, certain implacability in his voice held the demons motionless. And in that long, extended moment, JC took out a heavy brass knuckle-duster and slipped it onto his left hand. He reached down with his other hand and drew from a concealed ankle sheath a long, rune-etched silver dagger. He showed both weapons to the demons and laughed as they seethed uncertainly. JC took a glass phial from his inside coat pocket, pulled out the rubber stopper with his teeth, and spat it away. And then he poured some of the holy water over his silver blade and some over the knuckle-duster. He drank the rest, tossed the empty phial aside, and smiled a really nasty death’s-head smile at the demons assembled before him.

“All right, you ugly pieces of shit. Let’s do it.”

He strode forward, weapons at the ready. Not to punish the demons, or to take vengeance for all the missing commuters, or even to strike them down for what they were. He was doing what was needed to reach and rescue Kim because that mattered more to him than life itself.

To fight with demons, your intent must be pure. And even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll win.

The demon host rose up before him, and he hit them hard, lashing out with his silver blade and punching in misshapen faces with his brass knuckles. The silver blade sliced cleanly through demon flesh, opening them up like garbage bags. They fell screaming and howling to the floor, their steaming insides spilling out even as they tried to stuff them back in. The brass knuckles shattered bones and stove in fanged mouths, and the touch of the blessed metal was enough to burn demon flesh. JC worked his way forward, one step at a time, striking down the demons with a cold, implacable fury and trampling them underfoot. They fell before him, shocked and dismayed, unable to believe any mere mortal could do this to them.

JC fought his way into the midst of them, never dodging or ducking, always pressing forward, right into the teeth of anything they could do to him. He struck the demons down and stamped on their heads and sides, forcing his way through the whole pack of them. All the way down the car, to the next door, then through the door and into the next car, where a whole new host waited for him. JC fought on, opening up a path through the demon horde using sheer brute courage and tenacity, and a simple dogged refusal to be stopped or turned aside while Kim still needed him.

They hurt him horribly, but he kept going. Jagged claws sliced and tore through his flesh and grated on the bones beneath. Heavy blows knocked him this way and that, but he wouldn’t fall. Sharp-toothed jaws buried themselves in his flesh, and even found his face more than once. Blood-stained and terribly injured, he kept going, ignoring the pains that threatened to drain his strength and resolve, ignoring the blood that poured from him and dripped down to steam on the hot floor. JC threw himself at the leering demon faces before him, giving blow for blow and hurt for hurt, and never once allowed himself to be stopped, or slowed. Claws came at him from every side, teeth buried themselves in arms and legs and had to be jerked or shaken free. Overlong arms tried to wrap themselves around him and drag him down. But still, he went on. Sometimes he cried out, and sometimes he sobbed, and sometimes he roared and cursed and spat at the snarling faces before him; but none of it meant anything. He had a thing to do, and he was going to do it.

Despite everything he did, and everything that was done to him, he thought only of Kim. And what the demons might be doing to her. Being dead was no defence against the torments of Hell. He went on, and not all the demons on the hell train could deny him.

Until finally JC fought his way through to the last car but one; and there, at last, they stopped him. Because in the end, he was only a man, with a man’s limits. The demons blocked the way to the next car through sheer strength of numbers, their horrid shapes packing the car from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. They surrounded JC, coming at him from every direction at once. And so, finally, he was forced to a halt and stood swaying in the middle of the car: a ragged, tattered, and bloody mess of a man. His wonderful cream suit was ruined, soaked and stained with his blood and that of the demons. He had been cut and gouged and torn open, and a long trail of blood lay behind him. He had to keep spitting out blood because it kept filling his mouth. He could feel broken and splintered ribs grinding against each other with every breath, tearing into his lungs; and he was tired, so terribly tired. Every movement hurt him, and lifting his savaged arms was an effort that would have made him cry out if he’d had any voice left. But he’d worn it out screaming, several cars back.

The demons blocked his way, but still he lurched forward and struck out at them with stubborn fury. Because they stood between him and Kim. He was close by then; he could feel her presence. He was damned if he’d be stopped. Not after he’d come so far. He called out Kim’s name, a single breathy rasp of sound; but the demons howled and shouted him down, mocking him by yelling out her name in their sick and rotten voices.

JC swung his silver blade, and missed, and a demon surged forward. Its vicious jaws snapped together and bit off three of JC’s fingers. He hardly noticed the pain; it was one more, among so many others. He looked down stupidly as the silver blade fell from his mutilated hand, and blood jetted from the stumps of his missing fingers. And while he hesitated, thrown off-balance for a moment, a clawed hand came sweeping round and sliced clean through both his eyes.

Blood filled his view, then darkness, and a sudden agony roared inside his head. He howled in rage and loss, and lashed out blindly with his knuckle-duster and his maimed hand. It didn’t feel like he hit anything. He could feel viscous tears running down his face, blood and vitreous fluids from his ruined eyes. He could hear mocking demon laughter all around him. Claws cut at him from every side at once, darting in and out again, taunting and mocking him. A set of heavy jaws fastened on to his right hip, worrying right through to the bone, and he couldn’t shake them off. He staggered and almost fell, blind and alone, flailing helplessly around himself, shouting incoherent defiance; his only regret was that in dying he had failed Kim.

I’m sorry, Kim, he said, or thought he said. I’m so sorry.

And then, incredibly, he could see again. A great Light blazed up within him, filling him from top to bottom, and burst from his eyes. The demons screamed in rage and horror to see it, and fell back, unable to face the terrible Light that blazed from JC’s miraculously restored eyes. And still the Light blazed through JC, growing stronger and more terrible, building and building until it seemed impossible one small mortal frame could hold it all. The Light healed and restored JC, repairing all his wounds in a moment and filling him with incredible new energy. JC stood tall and strong in the middle of the car, surrounded by weeping, terrified demons, crouching and shrinking away from him; and he laughed in their terrified faces.

He hadn’t called for the Light, or expected it; but he had heard of such things. That sometimes, on very rare occasions, there was a Light that would come as a gift from Outside, from some great Force in the afterworlds . . . but it was rare, so very rare. Certainly he had never thought of himself as worthy. But the Light was there, and it was his to use, and he was strong and whole again. He looked about him, and thought he’d never seen so clearly before. He raised his hands, and they were both whole again. He dropped the pitted and scorched knuckle-duster. He didn’t need it any more. He strode forward, towards the end car, and Kim.

Some of the demons tried to fight him, only to quickly learn they couldn’t. They couldn’t face the Light that shone from his restored eyes or match the new strength that filled his arms. He beat them down, shattering their bones and tearing their foul bodies apart with his bare hands. His touch was enough to blister and burn demon flesh; and even their strongest blows couldn’t hurt him any more. The Light blazed ever more fiercely within him until all he had to do was touch the demons, and they burned up in a moment, leaving nothing behind but ashes.

Most of the remaining demons disappeared. They ran away, falling back into Hell rather than face what he had become. By the time JC reached the end of the car, the light from his eyes was enough to make the last few demons fade away into nothing, like the final remnants of a bad dream.

JC looked at the closed door before him, and it melted and ran away in streams of molten metal. The door beyond, into the next car, exploded inwards under the pressure of his gaze. And so he came at last to the end car, and there, waiting for him, was Kim Sterling. No more demons, no hell light. Only Kim; crucified against the end door. Glowing ectoplasmic nails hammered through her ghostly hands and ankles. Her head hung down, her long red hair covering her face. She didn’t move. But when JC said her name, her head came up and she saw him, and she smiled. Their eyes met, and the Light in JC’s eyes blazed so very brightly.

The glowing nails disappeared under JC’s gaze, and Kim’s ghostly flesh repaired itself at once. She flew down the car towards him, her long white dress billowing in some unfelt breeze, and JC walked in glory down the car to meet her. They came together in the middle, and the whole of the car was full of their love, a force so powerful it seemed to beat on the air like great wings.

JC reached out to her, and she put out her hands to take his; and his fingers passed right through hers. Because he was alive, and she was dead, he was flesh and blood and she was just a ghost; and because there were some things even the Light could not change.

They stood together, as close as they could get, looking into each other’s eyes. The Light didn’t bother Kim at all.

“We can never touch,” said JC. “But we have each other.”

“You say the sweetest things,” said Kim. “You sentimental old softy. I knew you’d come for me. I knew they could never stop you.”

“Well,” said JC, “I’m glad one of us was sure.”

They laughed quietly together. The train roared into a station and skidded to a halt. The doors opened, and JC and Kim stepped out onto what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary platform. No demons, no webbing, no illusions . . . and no-one tried to haul Kim away again. JC had broken that hold. When they looked behind them, they found the train had gone. Not departed; disappeared.

The Light within JC suddenly died down and was gone. He wasn’t surprised. Such gifts were never granted for long. JC didn’t think he’d miss it. He preferred being human, with its small but real comforts and rewards. He smiled at Kim, and she smiled back.