Hellraisers by Alexander Gordon Smith Page A

even acknowledge his presence. They both looked at Marlow.
    â€œNone,” the girl said in answer to some unheard question. “No other survivors.”
    The man glanced at her.
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œWhat about him?” she replied, her voice the coldest thing Marlow had ever heard.
    â€œSaved your life.”
    â€œNo, he didn’t. The contract did. Remember the rules, Herc. Nobody knows.”
    Marlow could no longer hold his eyes open and he fell into darkness. He could almost hear his lungs screaming, the loudest thing in the world. Squirming on the floor. It was a coward’s way out.
    â€œHellraisers don’t grow on trees,” he heard the man say. “We need more Engineers. He can fight.”
    â€œLook at him. He can’t even breathe.”
    â€œPan.”
    Marlow made out the scuffing of feet, the sound of somebody walking away.
    â€œPan!”
    And that was it. One last squeaking, pathetic, airless breath. Marlow wished his last thought could have been of his mom, of his brother, of the things he loved. Instead, the very last bubble of oxygen he would ever breathe was expended wishing he could tell a girl whose life he had just saved to go screw herself.

 
    ICE QUEEN
    â€œPan!”
    She turned away, partly so she could scan for an exit, partly so Herc wouldn’t see her face. It was taking every ounce of strength she had to stay upright, her body a broken engine on the verge of stalling. Everything hurt. Everything. Especially her chest. Although hurt was the wrong word. It wasn’t pain so much as a grinding, awful sense that this time she’d gone too far. Her heart pulsed weak and wet and the vertebrae in her spine scraped together. There was a trapped nerve in there, and it felt like somebody jabbing her repeatedly with a scalpel. She wasn’t taking in enough air because one of her lungs hadn’t fully reinflated. Her contract had worked, but only barely. A few more seconds, maybe, and they’d have had her.
    The underground parking lot was hell on earth, literally. The scattered remains of the demons lay beside the corpse of the driver, identical only in the absence of life. The truth was he didn’t know how lucky he was, to be dead, to be cold. There were far worse places the living could go when their hearts stopped beating and their bodies started cooling. She’d almost found out exactly how bad those places were.
    No time for that. No time for what-ifs. There would be a SWAT team down here soon, and she didn’t want to be around when they started firing bullets or questions at her. She couldn’t take the exit ramp, the whole world would be watching by now. But there was an access door in the far wall. Half a door, anyway, with a demon-shaped hole in one side where something had pulled loose. It hung off its hinges, swinging in the currents of heat that circled the parking lot, beckoning her like a finger.
    â€œâ€¦ zztt … oing?”
    The earpiece was history and she plucked it out, chucking it. She walked toward the door, going as fast as the wreck of her body would let her. The molten heat of the adrenaline was cooling into solid metal in her limbs, weighing her down, the reality of the situation bleeding back in. Had she died back there? She rubbed the scar on her chest, the mottled skin completely numb. The thought frightened her. It terrified her. Because for an instant, when the demon’s blade cut through her heart, she’d felt the world dissolve, felt something take hold of her soul, wrench her down through the fabric of reality into whatever waited for her below. Only an instant, then the contract had kicked in. But it had been close.
    It always was when you traded for the big one. When you traded for invulnerability.
    She stepped over the dead driver, her foot almost slipping in a puddle of blood. She didn’t even know his name, even though he’d been working with them for weeks,