Gibbons Crane howls in diabolical fury. White-hot sparks rain over his body. His human form, a gift of Asmodeus’s court, is tatters. His devil flesh — now naked for all to see. Not that any regular human wretches are nearby. The angel-mage, Beatrice, guided them away to safety before she and her companions trapped him here. The train stationary. Angelic magic locking him in, pummeling him with curses. His prey more distant with each passing minute. He can still see her. Beatrice Lushael — arrayed in glorious light. Rapier held before her like a dare. Her delicious wisp fluttering — delicate as butterfly wings. How could he not rush her? Claim her wisp for his own? A crown jewel among all his enslaved prizes.

It was a trap! So obvious! So irresistible! He, the great hunter, render of mages’ souls, Asmodeus’s own hand on Earth, played for a mere pawn! Now held in a cunning bottle.

Gibbons takes a breath. The air around him is super-heated by his wrath. By the destruction raining down on his devil’s form. Chairs burn. Plastic and metal melts. Windows crack. His eyes flick up and down the cursed caboose. The solar train itself is an insult. An impossible fantasy. Yet here it exists. No Blood of Earth sacrifice to Asmodeus fuels it. His Nightmare cannot possess it. Not enough delicious harm for his demon steed to latch onto. To take control. They chose this sacred ground to counter him, to mount their own attacks. It worked. He tips his hat, still whole on his head between his devil’s horns, to the mages who concocted this trap. Worthy prey. He should’ve sensed this was holy ground. The quarry, Beatrice, Mori, Ivan the Wolf, were all too distracting. The prizes too great. Their abilities — surprising.

“It’s been a little while,” he drawls to himself, reflecting on the last time prey put up such a fight. “More than a Century.” His Curse Rides are mostly straight-forward affairs. His diabolical might reaping souls like so many sheaves of wheat in a thresher. “Now I’m checked.” He says the word with amusement and rage combined. He does not lightly suffer delay. Defeat is unacceptable. Yet he must admit his setback. This holy train will never serve his Nightmare. The fate of its passengers — a distraction. There’s no victory to be had here. His true prey — long-gone.

But there may be a way to escape. To return to his hunt. Gibbons tilts his devil’s eyes toward melting plastic dribbling down onto the floor like so much slime. He reaches a clawed hand down, scoops some up, holds it up. The plastic gobbet ignites. Petroleum inside it burning off in red-blue flames. Blood of Earth. A delicious bit of corruption in this otherwise evil-free train. He conjures his wisps, flipping his lash until ten enslaved souls leap to his command. Each rising in a rictus of pain. He bleeds the wisps into the oozing plastic. They animate it, causing it to rear up in a promontory of burning plastic slime. Shifting his focus to the praesidia bottle confining him, he drives the wisps forward, lifts his right-hand six-shooter, then fires his third black bullet into the trap. Its black orb bows out, splashing over praesidia causing it to flicker in momentary darkness.

“Now!” He shouts, lifting his left hand to claw the air, lashing wisps to rush forward. Wrapped in Blood of Earth plastic, they rise. Confronting disrupted praesidia, they flow through its barrier. The plastic then splots onto the train’s wall. It touches the spirit of his Nightmare demon-steed. The Nightmare howls in victory, latches onto the familiar substance. Takes molten plastic for its new form. The wisps pop out, then flow back to his worb. His Nightmare, now given form, rips a hole in praesidia. Sending out pseudopods, it tears off a train window, then flings it into a nearby field. Gibbons springs. A whirl of sparks and flames surrounds him as he emerges. He lands on his feet — one hand holding his hat, the other holstering his pistol. He is free!

The Nightmare plops down from the train’s window. It flows over the ground, rising up in a swell of slime beside him. A nearby police officer sees them, then flees. Tabbing his radio, he sends a frantic call for help. Gibbons smirks at his terror. A delicious thrill — refreshing to his diabolical spirit. Free from the continuous barrage of macto curses, his mock-human flesh drinks up the fear and begins to reform. It slowly re-covers his devil flesh. His clothes also reweave and repair.

A cluster of police officers rushes around the train. Lifting weapons, they shout for Gibbons to raise his hands. Gibbons laughs, gives a tip of his hat to the officers, then bounds off toward the burning trees. Each leap covers twenty feet. A few stray bullets snap around him. If any hit, he doesn’t care. His Nightmare flows along beside him. Too small to ride, he allows it to keep its plastic form. Screams of fear from passengers, eyes glued to windows as the Nightmare’s burning blob flows beside his half-devil, half-human form, buoy him. Their terror — too delicious a banquet to pass up.

He angles away from the holy train. Its presence recedes to his right. He leaves its field of influence, running a bit more crooked, feeling a little stronger in his wickedness. Then, he’s plunging through the burning wood. Hot fires surround his body. Choking smoke enters his lungs. It almost feels like home. Almost. About ten more bounds and he’s through the flames. He emerges onto a back-road. Cutting past the fires, he finds one of his thralls. A Berserker who laughs maniacally as he hurls another Molotov Cocktail into the inferno. Seeing Gibbons, he grins, then gives a Nazi salute. “Mein fuhrer,” he says with relish.

Gibbons grins back, tips his cowboy hat. “Hey, buddy,” he says, “I need your mount.” He points to the motorcycle parked by the dirt path. It doesn’t matter if his words are English. His connection to the Beserkers is strong enough for telepathic communication. His thrall hears the words in his native tongue.

“Ja!” he says with a slavish smile of devotion. Walking over to the bike, he kicks the stand, then presents it to Gibbons. “Es ware mir eine Ehre,” the biker replies, waving his hand with a flourish. His eyes spark with delight as Gibbons mounts the bike.

“Hey, thanks,” Gibbons replies. “Now go on,” he says to his Nightmare. The horror sluffs off its burning plastic form, then inhabits the rumbling motorcycle with a purr of demonic delight. The bike grows as the Nightmare’s possession takes hold. New tail pipes form. Black smoke belches. Ghostly flames flicker along its flanks. It lurches, gives an eager growl — headlight blinking like a monstrous eye.

“Heil dir im Siegerkranz!” the Berserker shouts as Gibbons drives off in a shower of dirt and smoke — flames belching from massive tail pipes. He lifts his black cowboy hat, waves a salute, then guns it down the path and toward the Brons. A stiff wind meets him. Scent of storm in the air among the forest fire smoke. The sky grumbles its malcontent. Evening shadows lengthen as a dark bank of cloud runs in overhead. A wall of titanic columns pushing up and up, spreading wide at the top. Their bases appear to grip the horizon with trailing talons. Gibbons grins. It’s his kind of weather — pumped up by the hot breath of foul fuels as they rise from millions upon millions of infernal engines ranging the Earth. Each a supplicant to Asmodeus’s dark power. They feed a great miasma of Hell’s heat riding Earth’s winds. This storm gobbled the heat greedily — growing from a gentle shower into the great monster above him. Gibbons lets go of the handle bars, allows his Nightmare to drive, and embraces the storm’s hellish winds. What a wonderful servant of destruction! No devil-stifling solar train. But a hellish storm gorging on fiendish fires. This is something he can work with.

Thunder rumbles from across the North Sea. His quarry moves amongst its towering waves. Destination uncertain. He senses them like a hunger in motion. No sight. Just a tension pulling away from him. Drawing him taut. He lowers his hands to the grips, angles his bike onto a main road, guns it up the ramp and onto Route 11. Turning north, he buzzes an angry motorist, smiling maniacally into the flipped bird, then ignites the throttle. Raucous acceleration blasts him up to 120 miles per hour. At this rate, he’s just six minutes away from his destination. The Oil Vessel Trold and its helicopter pad in Esjberg’s port. The Vulcanlundre corporation tends to its massive North Sea oil platform — Trekke Pa — with this vessel. Gibbons remembers it well. A gigantic, squat platform with its drill piercing sea bottom, pumps sucking up devilish fuels. Its tender ships mooring at Esjberg on the shrinking Dutch coastline. In his mind’s eye, he can see it along with the location of every oil facility dotting Europe’s lands and beyond. He knows them far better than most Catholic priests know their churches. Well he should. They’re shrines to Asmodeus’s presence here.

His quarry’s flight across the North Sea pointed almost directly at Vulcanlundre’s Trekke Pa oil platform. Its ship, the Trold, kept a helicopter on its landing pad. Just the kind of machine his Nightmare could easily inhabit. Once Gibbons took the ‘copter, he could then take the platform. No. This hunt was far from finished. In fact, he was about to kick things up a notch.

Gibbons cuts onto the off-ramp. Barreling through a red light, he jumps a barricade, then slams down onto Esjberg’s streets. Sidewalks are disappointingly empty. He rides in along a walkway, hoping to run over a stray pedestrian. Everyone’s inside. Huddling against the storm’s raging approach. Rain begins to fall. To Gibbons it tastes good. Just like wet cigarette butts. Turning down a side-street, he emerges into an industrial center. At the road’s end is a chain-link fence. Its padlocked shut. He ignores the barrier. His Nightmare blasts through the fence like a footrace winner crossing the tape. Metal shrieks. A twisted wreckage is left behind. Gibbons turns, tires squealing, fire blasting from tail pipes, water flying, across the parking lot. Shipping containers, cranes, and trucks blur by. In front of him the blue-hulled Trold bobs in the waves. Its red deck rocking. Fat, white helicopter squatting on a green pad like an overfed seagull. Beside the ship is a large pile of gravel. Gibbons races toward the gravel, shoots flames out the back of his Nightmare motorcycle, then explodes into the air. Trailing black smoke, he flies fifty feet, then lands with a squeal of tires on the helicopter pad. Rain pounds down. Smoke swirls up from his Nightmare. Back in the ship terminal, onlookers shout in surprise, then fear, as the smoke rises up into the shape of a skull, its eyes seeming to momentarily spark with ball lightning.

Gibbons senses, more than hears, their cries. Grins. For a moment indulging in this new feast of troubles. Then, cracking his knuckles, arching his back, he turns to the helicopter. With a snap from his whip, he channels diabolical energy out of his worb. The wisps trapped there scream in delicious pain as the worb’s cruel structure grinds them down. The Nightmare melts out of his motorcycle. The cycle shrinks down — looking odd and derelict sitting on the pad. A ghost shape rises up from it, taking on a horse-like form outlined in orange-red fire. In a flash, it jumps the ten feet to the helicopter. Gorging on petroleum fuel, it bulges through the craft, granting diabolical aspects. The rotor transforms into a shape like a bat wing. Hooked talons sprout to grasp the landing wheels. Long fangs grow from the vehicle’s nose. Its tail rotor takes the shape of a horn. Cockpit glass ignites into two flaming eyes. Its sliding door opens like a mouth — rimmed with serrated teeth.

The cries of those in the terminal fall into shocked silence.

Gibbons whipsaws himself through the open door, slams it shut behind him, then sits down in the cockpit. Grasping the throttle, placing his feet on the pedals, tweaking the collective, he naturally connects to his mount. No flight expertise necessary. The Nightmare-possessed vehicle is simply his to command. He engages the throttle. Batlike rotor blades turn, cutting through rain and storm. The Nightmare wails through the helicopter engine as its combustion engine revs up. It blasts out a ring of fire that neatly cuts the safety lines.

“Won’t need those,” Gibbons grunts as he pulls back. His new beast springs up in a whirl of smoke, flinging fire into the rain. Behind, the platform is left rent — ruined by the Nightmare’s talons. They rise to meet the storm. It seems to stoop to swallow them. The Nightmare shudders in delight as rings of cloud form around them. The diabolical storm enfolds the Nightmare — speeds its passage by generating a tunnel of air. Within this cavity, the Nightmare grows to still greater monstrosity. Taking on aspects of storm. Its spirit bulges beyond the helicopter. It drinks up the flying rain, clothes itself in howling gusts. A shape like a great black dragon grows out of it and into the sky. The helicopter becomes its head. Giant wings of turbulence thrust out. A trailing tail dips to the ranging ocean surface to become a waterspout. A Home Guard helicopter, sent to intercept the hi-jacked bird from Trold, Esjberg is buffeted by one great sweep of the Nightmare’s ghost-storm wings. Control lost, the Defense helicopter careens into the monster’s swinging tail. There it spins in three loops before being ejected — slamming into a towering wave face that swallows it whole.

The Nightmare rages through the furious storm. Joining with it, the Hell-beast becomes its most intense feature. A demon from a ruined world steadily entangling the Earth, the Nightmare roars over miles upon miles of towering waves. It slams the sea surface with wings of howling winds. It thrashes its waterspout tail. Observers on ships and planes marvel in terror. A teen posts a clip of the Nightmare dragon-cloud with lightning eyes onto Instagram. The huge frontal storm striking most of Europe with hurricane force, causing hundreds of billions in damage, gains a new name that explodes onto social media — Storm Kaiju.

At last Gibbons and his Nightmare emerge above the Trekke Pa oil platform. His monster stoops above. The platform tosses through towering seas below. The Nightmare seems to take the platform in its jaws. The helicopter head drops down on a neck of storm. It a swirl of fire and a howl of winds, it lands. The mouth-door swings open. Sirens blare as the watch triggers a security alarm. Gibbons grins, opens his arms to the oil workers watching him through a nearby window. Then, he activates his whip. The worb grinds its wisps. Their shrieks of pain spur his Nightmare. It leaps from the helicopter in a gout of rain and fire, rises in an arc in the storm’s mouth of darkness above the oil platform, then it plunges down into the massive structure with a spectral cry. One of the oil workers, hearing its banshee’s howl, is reminded of the Nazgul’s cries from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Then, the great platform groans as it begins to take on a monstrous aspect beyond any of the oil workers’ worst imaginings…

(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)

(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)

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