The Night Everything Fell Apart (The Nephilim Book 1)(75)
The steam began to wail. The air exploded with the rotten scent of sulfur. Merlin lurched to his feet only to be knocked down again by the ground’s next shuddering tremor. The water was heating rapidly. He crawled on hands and knees onto the stone.
A small figure emerged from the deep. Merlin regarded it in horror. Its body, lumpy and potato-like, was so darkly red as to be almost black. Its head was mostly round, with a pointed chin and ears, blunt horns, and blazing red eyes. Thin, awkward limbs unfolded, aided in balance by a curved rat tail. When the thing at last gained its feet, a pair of bat wings snapped up from its back.
It rose into the air. As it did so, another like it popped out of the fissure. Then another and another until there were too many to count.
“Hellfiends,” Merlin whispered. Fiends were minor demons created by the sinful passions of the souls of the damned. Their brains were tiny; their malice was great. The creatures, spawned in Hell, were rare on the Earth’s surface. In all his long life, Merlin had not encountered more than a handful of them. Never had he imagined so many in one place.
They skittered over the ground and launched their misshapen bodies into the air. Soon a mass of them had gathered under the ceiling of the cave, wings beating against the rock. Their shrieks pierced Merlin’s ears. The stench, brimstone and filth, closed his throat.
In the middle of it all, Nimue stood laughing. She turned to face him, swinging his staff around with her, scattering sprays of dark sparks like so much mud.
He stared. Her face, flushed with triumph, glowed. Her aura and power were blinding. He’d thought her a human witch of meager talent. He now realized she was more. Much, much more.
“What...what are you?” he whispered.
Her lips curled. “You remain blind, even now? Old fool. I am a Nephil. A daughter of Azazel.” Her head dropped back, her arms flung wide. She laughed. “And now I am queen of all the Earth, a demon horde at my command.”
She spun about, arms outstretched, his staff gripped in her left hand. A hellfiend alighted on her forearm, a second on her shoulder. By all the ancestors in Oblivion, what had he done? What horror had his blind lust wrought? The woman he’d thought was an innocent was, in truth, a Nephil adept. And worse, a spawn of Azazel, heiress to the alchemical magic of the most depraved of the fallen Watcher angels.
The hellfiends flew to Nimue like flies to rotten meat. They buzzed about her head, clung to her robe. Amid the hissing steam and beating wings, Merlin soon lost sight of her entirely. More and more fiends emerged from the depth to swarm with their terrible brethren. And from within the undulating mass, Nimue’s triumphant laughter rang out.
With a shout, she launched the fiends toward the cave’s ceiling, driven by a stream of hellfire. The horde obeyed her command, splattering their misshapen bodies against the rock, battering the barrier with their wings. As Merlin stumbled to his feet, fine fissures appeared in the stone overhead. Shards rained down on his head. This cave would not hold, he thought. Each fiend was small, but together, their power was formidable. Driven by Nimue’s magic, it was only a matter of time before they broke through to flood the human world.
There seemed no end to the invasion. With every beat of Merlin’s heart, scores of fiends emerged from the depth, joining the others in their grotesque dance about Nimue and the staff.
She had bested him. He, Merlin, the most powerful Nephil ever to walk the Earth. Proud Merlin, dedicated to the godly ideals of his human grandfather, who had been a priest of the Almighty. Merlin had thought himself capable of teaching and protecting his human brethren, of shepherding them safely past threats of war and destruction. He’d given his life to this cause. Was this to be his legacy? That humanity’s self-appointed shepherd would become the instrument of its doom?
Not while he had breath in his body. Merlin leaped into the fray. Slapping at demons right and left, he made slow progress through the horde. Nimue, in her frenzy, did not notice his approach until he was almost upon her. She spun about, trying to move the staff out of his reach. Too late. His hands were already upon the wood.
“No.” She yanked at the staff. Pewter hellfire shot from the orb down the length of the wood. Merlin’s hands burned, but he did not let go.
Their eyes locked. Their magic tangled and choked, Nimue’s hot fury battling Merlin’s cold anger. If he had not been able to take back the staff, he was not sure what might have happened. Perhaps Nimue would have prevailed.
But the staff, with its touchstone orb, had been fashioned by Merlin’s own hand. To Merlin, it owed its first allegiance. He sent his magic streaming through it, bright white against Nimue’s dirty gray. The surge struck like lightning, racing up the twisted wood and into the crystal where it spun with dizzying speed.
“Desist. You cannot prevail.”
“You fool,” she said. “My power is ten times yours. A hundred times.”
One look in her eyes told him she believed it. He, however, did not. A wave of sorrow passed over him as he gazed at her. “Good-bye, my love,” he said.
He closed his eyes and gave his fury full rein. A sound like a thunderclap echoed in his ears. The world behind his eyelids went white. When he opened his eyes it was to see Nimue’s body ablaze. She opened her mouth to scream. No sound emerged. He caught one final glimpse of her beautiful face, her eyes filled with shock, before the fire consumed her.
As her grip on the staff dissolved, he staggered backward. His beautiful lover was nothing more than ash. His own hand had sent her to Oblivion. The magic she’d wrought however, had not died with her. Hell’s fissure still gaped. The fiends still rose. How many now? Thousands, Merlin thought, with more arriving every second.