Happily Ever Awkward (The H.E.A. Files, #1)(55)

Demog ran his hand down a pillar that stood alongside the weight. Fifty notches grooved its length, and a scarlet-painted skull marked the final notch at the pillar’s base. The weight hung high in the air, still beside the first notch.

“Can you feel it?” Demog purred. “Building the tension, notch by careful notch, balancing the stresses until we finally reach the crimson climax… and snap every bone in your body at once. Exquisite, is it not?”

This was definitely a Class Three Confrontation.

“Unhand her, knave!”

All heads whipped toward the door. Paul stood beneath the arch, silhouetted against the stair’s torchlight, having delivered his line with absolute confidence. His father would have been proud.

Demog squinted at him. “You? I’m impressed. I thought two buckles would be enough to kill you.”

“I said, let her go!” Paul repeated, advancing into the torture chamber with his Singing Sword leading the way.

Upon seeing Paul still alive and there to save her, Laura’s fierce eyes brimmed with tears.

“I guess I need to kill you harder this time,” Demog said, reaching for his chest. “Perhaps three buckles—”

“Fight me yourself, you coward!” Paul said.

The Terror made no move other than to curl the corners of his mouth into an amused half-smile as Paul charged and swung a savage blow. At the last possible moment, Demog caught the blade between his palms with an effortless clap of his hands.

“Very well,” he said. “If that’s how you wish to die, I can accommodate you. But why don’t we make it interesting? Let’s give you some incentive. If you want to rescue her…”

He kicked the lever forward as far as it would go. The weight began clacking down, notch after relentless notch, grinding the machine into overdrive. The straps creaked and groaned and finally wrenched a cry from Laura’s throat.

“…you’d better hurry!”

Demog hurled Paul across the room with a flick of his wrists.

Paul rolled to his feet and raced for the lever, desperate to stop the machine, but Demog intercepted him with a ferocious sweep of his sword. Blades clashing, the Terror steered Paul farther and farther away.

Demog attacked like a swirling tornado of swords — a swordnado, if you will — and his technique had killed countless enemies down through the years. Curiously enough, it did not seem to be killing Paul, not very much at all.

Something had awakened in Paul’s blood, something more than just the years of battle training with his father. Those skills had long been lost inside him, buried under his doubts and fears, but now that they had shaken free of their restraints, they were shaking something else free as well.

Paul’s heritage.

Generations of barbarian blood coursed through his veins. It fueled him now, driving him to fight with a frenzy he had never known. He countered Demog, blow for blow, attacking with the fury of a screaming horde of barbarians. No, even more than that, he attacked with the fury of a screaming horde of barbarians riding on a tornado — a hordenado, if you will.

Thus, the swordnado and the hordenado careened around the torture chamber, sparks erupting between their endlessly crossing blades, each flickering SPANG illuminating their path through the shadows along the edge of the room.

Laura, meanwhile, fought against the power of the machine with every single ounce of her strength. She flexed her muscles and held her body rigid, trying to resist the relentless pull of the straps, but the weight never stopped its descent. It clacked lower and lower, nearing the crimson skull at the bottom of the pillar, and the straps squeezed tighter and tighter. If she relaxed even for a moment, she knew her body would come apart.

She couldn’t hold out any longer. She just couldn’t.

She wanted to scream, to make her voice heard one last time, but even that was denied her because the straps had crushed the breath from her lungs.

Still the weight descended.

She watched her breaking point near. She could hear it. She could feel it. She could see it.

And then she saw Jeremy the Zombie sidle around the back of the machine. He reached for the lever that could end her nightmare, stretching out his arm with achingly slow Zombie precision.

In spite of the pain, Laura felt a smile squirming behind the web of straps.

Then Jeremy’s arm fell off.

“Oh, bother,” said the Zombie.

Demog whirled beside him, having momentarily abandoned his duel with Paul to slice Jeremy’s arm off at the shoulder.

“Jeremy, what has gotten into you?!” Demog demanded, sounding almost exasperated.

Jeremy raised his rotting head in defiance. “I can stand by and grunt no more,” he said. “I may be nothing but a reanimated corpse, but I still know what’s right.”

“You are a disgrace!” Demog spat.

“Thank you, sir,” Jeremy replied. Then he added, “Watch your head, please.”

Instinctively, Demog ducked as a whirl of steel flashed by, a whirl of steel that sang an aria so soaring it would send tingles down a strong man’s spine.

While the Terror had been distracted with the business of dismembering a rebellious Zombie, Paul had seen an opportunity. He knew it would be impossible to reach the lever, but the torture machine itself was unprotected. So, Paul had hurled the Singing Sword straight into the heart of the mechanism.