Nobody replied. Charlie turned away, staring out into the Engine. Herc just watched, shaking his head.
“You always run,” said Charlie.
But this time he was running for the right reason.
He was running in the right direction.
Another bolt of lightning tore across the ceiling, thunder echoing around the Engine. For some reason Marlow found himself thinking of his brother, in Afghanistan, throwing himself onto a roadside bomb. He’d given his life for a war, and Marlow was doing the same thing.
Was it worth it? Was it worth dying for?
He would have said yes.
Pan was worth dying for. She was worth going to hell for.
“I’ll find her,” Marlow said.
He closed his eyes, tuned out a distant, demonic scream, tuned out the stench of sulfur and the roar of something pulling itself from the stone, tuned out Charlie’s sobs, Herc’s final pleas. He tuned it all out, and saw only her—Pan leaning in to kiss him, Pan lying next to him in a hotel bed, Pan throwing herself into battle, and Pan the first time he’d seen her, held above the ground by a demon.
Do your worst, she had said, not the slightest trace of fear in her voice. Incredibly, the thought of it—of her—made him smile. It gave him strength.
“Do your worst,” he echoed, speaking to the demons, to Ostheim, to hell itself.
And with that, he threw himself at the demon.
It charged and he felt its heat, for an instant, the sudden blast of choking sulfur against his skin. A roar of delight as it opened its bear-trap jaws to claim him, then—
It was like being loaded into a slingshot, a reverse bungee jump.
Something wrenched him out of the world, out of his body, a cold, hard grip on his soul. He screamed, it was the only thing he could think to do.
He burned down, through the ground and the dirt and the mud and the stone, subway fast, everything a blur. Then he plunged into a tunnel of fire, the whole world roaring as he was pulled through it. There were faces in the flames, demons that ran alongside him like a pack of wolves, howling their fury into the inferno. His fear was mindless, and absolute. There was nothing else left of him but terror.
He fell, and he fell, spinning now, so fast that he could feel the very essence of himself being pulled apart by centrifugal force, unwinding. The tunnel burned brighter, as if he was a bullet fired into the sun, but there was no pain, just the endless rush and roar of the fall.
There was something down there. He couldn’t see it so much as sense it—something big, something bad. It vacuumed him in like he was a mote of dust, the universe shuddering with the force of it. And he could see it now, too, just a glimpse of something vast and dark, there and gone, there and gone, there and gone as he spun in relentless circles. It grew, impossibly big, impossibly fast, a black hole in reality. It opened beneath him and he punched into it, into that awful, soul-ending darkness.
And then there was nothing.
Nothing.
No light. No sound. No feeling.
Marlow wasn’t sure if he was standing up or lying down or just floating. He couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open or closed. The quiet was utterly unbroken. He could not hear his own pulse, or the rattle of his breath. It was almost peaceful.
If this was hell, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as everyone said. Where were the demons? Where was the fire?
He tried to move but couldn’t, a bright, hot flare of panic burning through him. He wasn’t even sure if he had a body to move. What if this was hell? Just the void, just nothing. What if he was buried alive here, left to rot for a million million years? The thought of it, of being alone here, drove what was left of his mind right to the brink of madness. What if—
“Marlow?”
The word was a whisper, right into his ear. He tried to turn his head, reached out for it with arms he didn’t have. He wanted to laugh, wanted to cry, wanted to speak, but he could do nothing but listen, willing the voice to speak again. An eternity seemed to pass before it did.
“Marlow?”
Not a whisper this time but a voice, Pan’s voice.
And she sounded pissed.
“Marlow,” she said again. “You idiot.”
Pan? he tried to say.
“Marlow, just open your eyes,” said Pan. “You’re not going to believe this.”
Open your eyes. The easiest thing in the world, the hardest thing in the world. Just open your eyes, Marlow, he told himself.
And he did.
BY ALEXANDER GORDON SMITH
ESCAPE FROM FURNACE
Lockdown
Solitary
Death Sentence
Fugitives
Execution
The Night Children
An Escape from Furnace Story
The Fury
THE DEVIL’S ENGINE
Hellraisers
Hellfighters
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Gordon Smith is the author of the Escape from Furnace series, including Lockdown and Solitary. Born in 1979 in Norwich, England, he always wanted to be a writer. After experimenting in the service and retail trades for a few years, Smith decided to go to University. He studied English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, and it was here that he first explored his love of publishing. Along with poet Luke Wright, he founded Egg Box Publishing, a groundbreaking magazine and press that promotes talented new authors. He also started writing literally hundreds of articles, short stories and books ranging from Scooby Doo comic strips to world atlases, Midsomer Murders to X-Files. The endless research for these projects led to countless book ideas germinating in his head. His first book, The Inventors, written with his nine-year-old brother Jamie, was published in the U.K. in 2007. He lives in England. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Part I: Instigation
Keep Going
Dead Man Walking
Understatement of the Century
One for Sorrow
Abomination
Why Is There a House Growing Out of This Train?
Hang On
Nightfall
Prague
What’s New?
He Would Have Said Yes
Part II: Retaliation
Bienvenue
Herc’s Big Girl
Nope
Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned
City of Death
It’s Over
The Liminal
Home Sweet Home
The Truth
Reunited
War
Let’s Get the Hell Out of Here
Part III: Annihilation
Contracts
Breathless
Mirror, Mirror
Last Stand
Meridiana
Knock Knock
In the Blood
To Hell
Open Your Eyes
Also by Alexander Gordon Smith
About the Author
Copyright
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010
Text copyright © 2016 Alexander Gordon Smith
All rights reserved
First hardcover edition, 2016
eBook edition, November 2016
fiercereads.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Smith, Alexander Gordon, 1979– author.
Title: The Devil’s Engine: Hellfighters / Alexander Gordon Smith.
Other titles: Hellfighters
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2016. | Series: The Devil’s Engine; 2 | Summary: “Fifteen-year-old Marlow understands that their former leader must be stopped from using the two Devil’s Engines in his control to open the gates of hell—something he cannot do until he discovers the location of a mythical third machine. Marlow and Pan must take up this deadly duel with an all-powerful enemy that seems utterly impossible to win”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016006938 (print) | LCCN 2016032243 (ebook) | ISBN 9780374301729 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780374301736 (ebook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | Demonology—Fiction. | Monsters—Fiction. | Horror stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.S6423 Df 2016 (print) | LCC PZ7.S6423 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016006938
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eISBN 9780374301736