The Book of Doom - By Barry Hutchison Page 0,79

to do with as they see fit.”

Zac saw several hundred dark eyes turn to him and gleam. “Keep climbing, Angelo,” he urged as the demon stretched an arm up to the next floor.

One of the larger and braver demons on the fourth circle hurled himself towards Zac, claws bared, teeth gnashing. But his leap was woefully misjudged. Zac watched the creature begin frantically flapping his arms as he fell past, then heard the distant whumpf as his face was introduced to the carpet.

The fourth circle was heaving with demons, all undeterred by the fate of their fallen colleague. They gathered near the edge, ready to hurl themselves on to Angelo’s shoulders as he drew level with them.

“On three, lads!” one of them shouted. “One... two...”

Angelo opened his mouth and an inferno rolled across the corridor. The demons retreated, throwing up their arms to shield their eyes. They lowered them in time to see a foot passing by the corridor as Angelo stretched up to a higher floor.

His claws scraped against the edge of the third circle. He gritted his razor-sharp teeth and stretched further, until his fingertips found purchase on the edge of the floor.

Zac felt the muscles on the Angelo-demon’s back contract, even as he felt the first stirrings of panic fluttering in his own stomach. He looked at Angelo’s horns. They were several centimetres shorter than they had been just a few seconds ago. His neck and shoulders now seemed significantly less broad too, and his hard scales felt considerably softer.

“You’re shrinking! Why are you shrinking?” Zac groaned. “Not now. Don’t change back now!”

“S-sorry,” Angelo groaned. He was looking more and more like his old self with each moment that passed – an enormous version, granted, but his old self all the same.

His skin was going from red to a flushed pink. His horns had all but retreated into his skull. When he reached for the next floor, his arm fell a metre short. He was barely twice the size of Zac now, and he was shrinking fast.

Demons swarmed along the floors above and below them, fighting each other to be the one who stopped the escape.

Zac searched desperately for a way out, for a way past the squawking, chittering hordes, but there was no time to plan, no time for anything as Angelo returned to normal size. Clinging to each other, they fell. Down through the circles of Hell. Down past the braying demons. Down towards the broken floor and the shadowy embrace of the tenth circle beyond.

A sound, like a ripple of applause, filled the air around them. Hands caught Zac firmly beneath the arms and their descent began to slow. He tightened his grip round Angelo and looked up. A pair of feathery white wings filled his field of view.

An angel, he thought, until he saw the bloody wound on one of the wings and instead thought: a Valkyrie.

“Stop squirming,” Herya hissed, her face contorted in pain as she beat both wings as hard as she could.

“I wasn’t squirming.”

“Well, stop talking then!” she spat.

“Is that Herya?” Angelo asked.

“Yeah.”

“Hooray! Hello, Herya! You came back for us!”

The Valkyrie hissed again. “Regretting it already.”

Zac felt his toes brush against the carpet. He caught a glimpse of Haures’s fiery eyes blazing in the darkness of the tenth circle, and then they were rising again, climbing, soaring up towards the upper floors of Hell.

As they passed the third floor, a chubby demon with a Mohican haircut took aim with something that looked worryingly like a bazooka. A door flew open behind him and another demon in red pyjamas emerged. The new arrival raised a particularly heavy hardback copy of Jekyll & Hyde above his head, then brought it smashing down on the back of the other demon’s Mohican.

The demon stumbled forward and crashed through the frosted-glass barrier. His eyes went wide. “Ooh, bugger,” he mumbled, and then he and the bazooka went down as Herya and her cargo went up.

“Go on, son!” cheered Murmur, punching the air in triumph.

“Thanks, Dad!” Angelo shouted back. He waved enthusiastically as they passed the third circle and carried on all the way up to the first.

A squadron of uniformed demons were ready and waiting for them. “Halt!” commanded the leader. “In the name of the Dark Lord, Satan, I command you to—”

He stopped talking as Herya’s forehead met his nose. The rest of his platoon stood gaping in surprise. Many of them had dreamed of the day their commanding officer would be cut down