by L W Rogers
I walk over to the sink in the right corner of the office, turning the cold tap on and running my wrists and hands under it. I close my eyes as I will myself to calm down. If you haven’t guessed, I have active powers as a witch. They are deeply connected to my emotions, which is never good, especially for a female. Invoking fire is my dominant power and it’s the one that gets me in more trouble than I’d care to admit.
Once calm and collected I decide to delve into this mysterious security breach and see if there was anything missing. I decide to visit the antiquities library we have a couple levels down and review things from there. I tell Julie to forward any calls relating to the breach to my mobile. Anything else can wait. She nods in acknowledgement. I take to the stairs, not having the patience to wait for elevators.
The antiquities library is busier than usual. I head to the secure cabinet which stores the paper inventory of what we have in the library alongside separate folders for ones that have been sold and pending to come in. I insist on paper copies and electronic copies for situations just like the one presenting itself today. If we have been hacked, there’s no certainty that they couldn’t have been altered. I start with the relics we physically have with us. Everything is listed alphabetically and the location of each item is clearly documented. All I have to do is go through them.
“We’ve already gone through the inventory lists, Miss Winters,” I hear an unfamiliar male voice tell me. I turn to find who it is and find a young man in a grey suit and glasses standing a few feet from me. He holds his hand out for me to shake, which in turn makes me fold my arms, annoyed.
“I’m sorry Miss Winters, I didn’t mean any offence. I didn’t want you wasting your time on something we had already thoroughly checked.”
“I’m sure you have thoroughly checked, but for my own peace of mind I want to go through them myself. Have the electronic files been checked?” I ask. He nods.
“We haven’t found anything missing.”
“Hmmm.” I turn and walk away, continuing with my checks. As I near the end I reach the same conclusion. Nothing is missing. I peruse the pending folder; Nothing. I start sifting through the sold folder; again nothing. I take the folders back to my office to check against the electronic files. It is mundane and boring and yes, I know they checked them all, but I need to see it for myself.
I keep flicking between folder and computer comparing the two, then automatically pressing enter for each item. I continue until I accidentally press enter before checking the file. I back up, look at the item on the screen and what was in the folder, and do a double take. There is an item missing from the electronic file that is still in the paper file. Odd. I look at the item in question on the electronic file compared to the paper file. It is held within the sold files, which is very strange. It wasn’t of particular interest, just your bog standard athame, of no known origin. It wasn’t heavily magical from the assessments. It was sold almost fifteen years ago, so before my time. I take a picture of it with my phone and make a mental note to ask my mother about it.
I call Trevor in and ask him to return the files to the antiquities library, emphasising that it needs to be securely locked as soon as he’s there. Opening my laptop once again, I enter the details I have on the athame into Google. I scroll through pages of athames with similar descriptions but come up empty. If it's important surely there would be some evidence somewhere? I decide to contact the buyer to discuss it further with her. The voicemail clicks in so I leave a message. The buyer is only a couple hours away. I could go in person in the hope of catching her at home, but do I really want to waste the rest of my day doing, what could be, a waste of my time? No.
I continue the day as best I can. I take leave early and decide to pay my mother a visit. I will discuss the athame further when I see her.
Chapter 2
Blaine
I’m in hell; literally and figuratively.
I haven’t heard from Lailah in days and all attempts to contact her have gone unanswered. I guess that shows how much you can trust an angel these days. I need to know if she’s found another contact for me. But no, that winged temptress has decided to go AWOL on me, just when I need her the most.
The unrest that has been brewing here has now escalated into chaos. I need to get word out to somebody (anybody) at ground level. Things are now so bad that the warring factions are straining the seams of the underworld and at any point the carnage could spill out onto Earth. I want it contained. The human race doesn’t deserve to suffer for a power struggle that has been going on for millennia.
This may be my main problem, but it’s not the only one. I could die of boredom right now. Business has been slow. The upper levels of Hell have been quiet lately because most of the desk types have been pulled into the base level to act as strategists of sorts for the current unrest. Not that I envy them the job. Things are getting decidedly messy down there. Frankly I’m glad I didn’t get chosen for it.
My name’s Blaine, and I’m a daemon. I’d like to say that is all there is to me...except, it’s not. Not by a long shot. You see, I’m serially unlucky and a bit of a rebel. Now you’d think that being a rebel in Hell isn’t that unusual (which it wouldn’t be, I suppose, if we were talking as compared to Heaven or, maybe, even Earth) but my problem is I have a secret life. I don’t want to be involved in all the shenanigans that are going on down here, neither do I want hell-fire to corrupt the planet. What I want is for things to stay as they are. A world where (rightly or wrongly) daemons interact with shady humans, trade happens and all is fine. In an attempt to maintain balance, I provide information to the humans so that they can stay ahead of any disturbances that may affect the status quo in the earthly realm. Which brings me to why I am currently sitting at my desk, head in hands.
Misfortune is my ‘friend’. The last contact that I had on terra firma was found dead in a dumpster. I won’t go into the gory details, but I’m pretty sure that it was someone from this realm that killed him. Secretly, I think it may have been one of our torturers because it had their signature marks all over it. It was a bloody mess.
There’s a bang as the door to my office flies open. This is immediately followed by a grunt as it bounces off the wall and, of course, rebounds back onto whoever is invading my space. I look up to find Darius looking winded and confused, the door now hanging from its frame. I smirk, inwardly marvelling at how stupid he is. He’s a gifted torturer and built like a Titan, but I suppose you can’t have everything. It had to be brawn or brains, although he could have fit both in that body... especially with the size of THAT head. Still, how very un-daemon-like he is. It’s very unusual for one of our kind to lack intellect altogether.
“Ah, Darius, thanks for knocking. Take a seat. How can I help?”
Wedging himself into the armchair, Darius scowls at me but remains silent. I’ve given him an opening; it’s up to him to take it. Whilst he tries to form a sentence, I imagine to life a hundred tiny, fiery tumbleweeds whirling round my desk, which is all good fun until one gets stuck against my in tray. The edge of the paperwork begins to smoulder then flame. I throw a glass of water on it, and grin at the satisfying sizzle and the acrid stench of burnt papers.
Darius coughs and the remainder of my flaming toys disappear as I turn my attention back to him.
“Spit it out, man!” I can’t keep the irritation from my voice. He’s being even weirder than usual. I’m concerned that they know something about my duplicity. My worst fears come to fruition when Darius finally speaks.
“We have a mole.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think. I know.”
“What evidence do you have?” I’m beginning to feel a little panicked. Is that why he’s here? They’ve found out and now I’m going to be punished? Although, I’m pretty sure if that was the case I wouldn’t still be sitting at my desk right now.
Gesturing for Darius to continue, I steeple my hands and rest my chin on my thumbs. He ha
s an air of expectancy about him, like he’s waiting for an answer to a question that he may or may not have asked. Damned if I know what he said, so I opt for a fifty-fifty chance that I’m right that it was supposed to have a yes or no answer. I opt for the former with a barely concealed question mark tagged on the end.
Darius stands and heads towards the door. When I don’t follow he turns towards me and gestures for me to accompany him. This can’t be good.
As we make our way through the winding corridors I fret some more. I always knew Darius was a crap conversationalist, but I really need him to be a bit more forthcoming right now. I need to prepare for whatever it is I have just unwittingly gotten myself into. Damn my wandering mind.
“So, about the mole situation...”
“Yeah. They found him.”
“I wasn’t aware they were looking.”
Darius grunts. He seems to do a lot of that these days.
“They’ve been searching for a while. You know how it is. You torture people, they talk. Turns out this specimen decided to barter for a lighter punishment. Told us there was information being passed upstairs then told us who it was.”
“It’s unlike you guys to go easy on someone in return for information.”
Darius pulls his mouth into a shape that loosely resembles a grin. It’s a disturbing sight. More like a cross between a snarl and a grimace really.
“We don’t. That’s why Sadie was called in. She’s working him over as we speak. Besides: HUMAN. It was someone from the other world who we trusted. Anyhow, you know as well as I do that beating daemons is no fun. We enjoy it too much.”
“Well, if you want to get a job done properly you may as well get the best in.”
My response may be casual, but I’m shuddering inwardly at the thought. Sadie is the hardest bitch in this place. She is the most brutal daemon you can find, and that’s as a mum (of course, I say mum, although she was an assigned guardian, who still insists I call her ‘mother’ to this day). I don’t think there is a word in existence that covers exactly how sadistic she is. But that’s what makes her so good at what she does.
Darius grunts and shrugs as if it’s nothing, which to him it is because, after all, he does this every day. I have to say that I’m relieved that it’s not me on the receiving end of the punishment, but I feel a small amount of guilt creeping in as we continue on our journey to the torture chambers.
As the ground begins to slope, I reach out and drag my fingers along the slimy walls, collecting grime beneath my claws as I go. I flick it at the floor every so often to clear the excess dirt, only to resume scoring lines into the surface. I rarely travel down this far as I have no reason to be here. Inhaling deeply, I prepare myself for what is to come.
The temperature begins to shift as we travel deeper into the depths of hell. The screams that previously supplied white noise, now play out a terrifying opera with guttural groans providing a weird percussion. The path, that was once slate grey, is an oil slick of black that will stain red. Here rock walls reflect the floors, and the blood of the abused decorates the passage with creepy living wallpaper. It seeps through the ceiling cracks at such a rate that it overspills the gutters either side of us and splatters underfoot with every step we take.
Darius is slightly further ahead of me now and he’s skipping with what I can only assume to be unbridled glee. I’m all for job satisfaction, but he’s a little too happy for my liking. It’s making me wonder exactly what Sadie is dishing out in that room. Whatever it is, he seems to be in a rush to get there, almost as if he doesn’t want to miss out on any more than he has already. I’ve never seen anyone skip that fast before in all my thousands of years. I snigger. He’s not the most graceful of creatures, but then you wouldn’t expect that behemoth to be. His head is thudding on the ceiling and each slap of his huge feet is showering me in crimson, which is just great, because that stuff stains. It makes me glad we have a cleaning service down here.
I crash into something hard and unmoving. Shaking myself, I look up to see Darius has stopped and it is his sweat pooled lower back that my flattened cheek now rests in. I spit stray body hair as he frowns down at me. I think I must have lost myself there for a while because we’re in front of a huge door. The corridor is strangely silent until the hulk before me raises the rusty latch. It screams in protest, only to be echoed by a terrifying shriek from the room that lies behind it. Appropriate really if you think of where we are.
I am not prepared for what meets my eyes upon entering the room. Not even a little bit. As Darius shifts sideways he uncovers a scene of such horror, I think I may go blind. Well, I wish I was. Sadie is on her knees before her victim doing something that no daemon offspring should ever see their mother doing and wearing something so inappropriate it makes me want to gouge my own eyes out. It’s certainly worse than any kind of torture she could inflict on me. Honestly, I think I may have been a little bit sick in my mouth.
As the shrieking turns to wailing, the door slams closed behind us. Sadie’s head whips round. Her face is smeared red, from the apples of her cheeks to well past her chin where blood from her mouth runs freely in a steady stream. She beams and raises her g-stringed arse from her kneeling position and hastens her way towards me. Placing her blood-stained hands to either side of my face she plants a way-too-long kiss on me, rouging me up like a macabre clown.
“Son.”
“Mother.”
A gurgled moan comes from over her shoulder. She glances back, uttering a hissed ‘Shush!’ before turning her attention back to me. She’s all gleaming black eyes and scarlet-bibbed. You can feel the excitement thrumming from her.
There is a baleful sob uttered and my attention is drawn back to the pathetic specimen hanging from the ceiling. His next cry is pained and prolonged. It agitates Darius to the point that he breaks his statue-like stance for a moment. He crosses the room, punches the guy unconscious, and returns to his original position without breaking a sweat. This provokes an unladylike snort from Sadie who literally flies across the room and delivers a crushing blow to Darius’s nose.
“What the fuck was that for?”
There’s no confusion here. He brought that on himself. Sadie’s going to have to wait until the comatose man regains consciousness before she can torture him again, because where’s the fun in trying to maim someone who can’t feel it?
I bark a laugh when ‘mother dearest’ hovers in the air whilst forcefully jabbing him in the chest with her pointer finger which she uses to punctuate her words.
“That, dumbass, was because I wasn’t finished. How would you feel if I did that to you? All I wanted was a little mother/son bonding time and you’ve bloody ruined it. How is Blaine supposed to participate whilst the subject is out for the count? Seriously -”
“Stop fucking jabbing me, woman! He was near done as it stood. He was pissing me off with his whining and I couldn’t hear myself think -”
Sadie throws back her head, her raven hair swaying from side to side as mocking laughter wracks her tiny body. Darius looks confused.
“You? Think?”
The sarcasm drips from her mouth as freely as the blood trickles from her chin.
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“Does your answer in the form of a question not confirm it as fact?” she fires back.
I silently stand back and muse at the events unfolding before me. So she wants me here for family time? Well, lucky me. I’m kind of glad that Darius went with his gut on this one. I didn’t almost fail the torture course for nothing. Believe me when I say that, whilst I have skills with a bullwhip and flay adequately, I am lacking in most other areas. Who’d have thought it of a strapping guy like me? Well, surprisingly, it wasn’t for lack of concentration, far from it. Instead I found that whilst in theory I could do it, in performance terms I was lacking. It wasn’t a teeny tiny obstacle that I could hurdle easily either. This was a huge barrier, which remains to this day as an enormous pachyderm looming in the
corner of any banquet hall that my kin and I frequent. You’d think that anyone could pick up a knife and etch flesh into pretty patterns, wouldn’t you? But no, apparently not me. Every time I get near to skin with a sharp instrument, I start to feel nauseated. Seriously, even the sight or smell of blood is enough to set me off.
Speaking of which, I think one of those moments has just forced itself upon me. As my eyes flick across the room, they come to rest upon something settled in the pool forming at the feet of the tortured soul. I follow the blood trail up then back down again, my gaze drawn yo-yo like between the gaping wound and the dismembered body part that lies flaccid on the floor. As I piece together the human jigsaw puzzle, a disturbing realisation descends upon me. It can’t be, surely? Please tell me it isn’t.
Damn, it is!
I feel the first prickling of nausea as my head becomes light; the second as my throat and nose begin to burn. My vision narrows to a pin prick as I slump against the rock wall. Any sense of those around me fades as I feel the burn in my stomach begin to work its way up through my shaking body. Something seems wrong. This is not the standard reaction that I have to blood and gore such as what lies before me right now. This is different. A deafening shriek echoes inside my head as everything begins to turn black. Then there is silence, followed by a solitary, whispered word -
‘Inferno.’
Chapter 3
Cadence
As I pull up outside my mother’s house the all too familiar surroundings evoke memories of my childhood and the stress of the day washes away from me. It’s the one place I feel safe and relaxed. I head towards the front porch and before I even have one foot on the step, the porch door is flung open and my mother greets me with open arms.