by S. M. Reine
Zohak slammed his fists on the counter. “Where is it?” He had been on Earth for months, but his accent was miserable. Everything was still pronounced in the back of his throat, like he was about to spill out a tirade of Hell’s native tongue.
Rick folded the corner of his page, closed the book, and stuck it under the cash register. “All right, all right.” He shuttered the windows to block out the night. “This way.” Zohak lumbered down the stairs to the basement. His weight made the whole building creak. “No company this time?”
The demon-king glared over his shoulder. “I trust no one.”
“That wasn’t the story last time I saw you.”
“My fiends hadn’t been slaughtered last time.” Bitterness dripped from his growls.
Rick knew a subject he shouldn’t touch when he heard one. It didn’t matter if Zohak had his legion anyway. Only if he had money.
They opened the top crate. A silvery-blue glow splashed over their faces, highlighting the furrows on Zohak’s face. The demon-king’s eyes raked over the inventory.
“Is this all you have?”
“It’s all you ordered. Three stacks of lethe.”
Zohak towered over the nightmare, clenching his hands and baring his teeth. “I ordered five!”
Rick wasn’t impressed, but he was prepared. He whipped the ledger out of his back pocket and held it up. “Three stacks.”
The demon king deflated a little. Actually, he deflated a lot. He quivered, and his broad shoulders sagged. For an instant, an oily sheen obscured his red irises.
He moved to put the lid back on the crate, but Rick stopped him. “Payment?”
The king blinked, and the oily veil vanished from his eyes. “This one is on…” Zohak searched for the word. “Credit.”
Rick flapped the ledger. “No. It’s not.”
“I must sell this before I can afford to buy it.”
“What about the last batch you flipped?”
Zohak seemed to struggle with the words, but not because of the language barrier. “I… lost it.”
And with that, the overhead light bulb flickered.
A strange energy rolled through the basement, and Rick closed his eyes to focus on it. Weight pressed between the space where his shoulder blades should have been. It tasted like ancient papyrus, like the clouds in the sky, and he tried to swipe it from his tongue.
“Wait here,” he said, leaving Zohak with the inventory to head upstairs.
The intensity of the energy grew as he ascended. The air buzzed as though a low electrical current were vibrating through it.
Rick lifted the blinds. One by one, the streetlights dimmed and turned off, marching in a line from the end of the block toward his shop.
His security system beeped, drawing his attention to the monitor. The camera mounted outside his shop flickered, snowed, and cut out. Then the “Open” sign in the window turned off, followed immediately by the lights inside.
A power outage? The clouds were heavy with the promise of snow, but a single flake had yet to fall, and the air was completely still.
Tendrils of dread began creeping over him. “What in the seven hells?”
He willed his corporeal form away, focused on the window, and reappeared beside the warped glass with a thought. He peered into the night.
There was someone moving on the street. A woman.
Rick locked the door and stepped back. “Zohak! Incoming!”
The demon-king already stood at the top of the stairs, and his eyes blazed with red fire. Rick didn’t recognize the woman approaching on the street, but apparently he did.
It only took a moment for her to reach the entrance. Her hair was in a thick braid over one shoulder. There were straps at her shoulders, as though she wore a backpack. A college student?
The back door creaked, slammed, and Zohak was gone.
Rick phased to the counter. Grabbed his crowbar.
The woman rattled the door—locked. She raised her booted foot and slammed it into the glass. Shards rained onto the linoleum.
Rick shook his crowbar. “I’ll call the police!”
The woman reached behind her, and he realized belatedly that she wasn’t wearing a backpack at all. She had a spine scabbard with two swords. The one she drew had a short blade, barely longer than her forearm, and occult symbols etched into the metal.
Rick had heard of that blade, and the woman who wielded it. They called her the Godslayer.
No wonder Zohak had run.
She used it to beat away the remaining glass and ducked through.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Rick said, with somewhat less steam than before. She wouldn’t be impressed by the police. Rumor had it that they had tried to arrest her once, but she killed half the force, bewitched the others, and escaped without a mark on her permanent record.
The Godslayer straightened and shook glass out of her hair. So she wasn’t ten feet tall after all. Her eyes weren’t filled with angelfire, either. She looked… human.
“Where’s Zohak?”
He sent out a tendril of energy to sniff at her mind, but there was no hint of normal, brittle human emotions. It was like trying to penetrate a brick wall with a toothpick.
Rick wavered. Surviving in Hell for millennia had left him without a hint of pride. And Zohak hadn’t paid for his goods anyway.
He dropped the crowbar. “Out the back door. Just leave me be!” Then he threw himself behind the counter and covered his head.
That should have been it. The Godslayer didn’t want puny Rick—merely a nightmare, a petty hellborn immigrant of no great consequence—but she rounded the counter and seized him by the arm regardless. Her gloved fingers dug into the place a human would have had a bicep.
“You’re coming with me.”
She strode to the back door, kicked it open, and Rick realized what she was about to do an instant before he crossed the threshold. “No!” he cried, struggling in her grip. “I can’t—stop!”
His feet hit pavement, and he could barely breathe. Electrical lines ran through the air over his head. Dear Lord, what were those animals thinking ? And there was a car parked in the alley, so who knew when it might start to roll—
The Godslayer, of course, was unimpressed by this human madness. And she wasn’t slowed by dragging a nightmare, either. She lifted his featherweight body from the ground and strode after Zohak.
She dropped Rick at the mouth of the alley. He tried to scramble back toward his shop, but she kicked him to the ground. Her boot sank into his spongy gut and left an imprint of the sole.
His back hit the car’s tire. It didn’t hurt, but he gave a strangled yell. “Please, please , I can’t be outside!”
“Where does Zohak den? Point me.”
Rick lifted a quavering finger, silently praying that she would leave him to return to his shop if he told her where Zohak lived.
But she seized an ankle and pulled him along with her.
She forced him to give directions all the way to the empty tattoo parlor Zohak inhabited. She even took him across the street —black pavement, orange lines, traffic lights, cars! He almost passed out.
They reached the back of the parlor shortly after the demon-king. Zohak scrambled over the chain link fence, and the Godslayer finally dropped Rick to follow.
She scaled it in two short motions, vaulted the top, and landed on top of Zohak. He grunted as they both fell to the pavement.
Rick searched wildly for another exit from the alley. Anything to get him home without crossing another street. But he was trapped, so he pressed against the wall, drew his knees to his ears, and prayed to long-dead gods for help.
He watched as the Godslayer and Zohak exchanged blows on the other side of the fence. Her strikes were fast and brutal. She went for the soft spots on his face, and when he exclaimed with pain, she ripped the crown from his head and flung it into the wall.
Fury blackened his visage. He threw her into the back door of the tattoo parlor and g
rabbed his crown.
For an instant, Rick could see nothing around the back of the demon-king, and then he heard a wet crunch , a feminine cry, and a guttural laugh.
Blood splattered on the asphalt inches from Rick. Mortal blood.
So she was human.
“Stupid,” Zohak said, hand clenched around her throat. “You should have known by now not to face me alone.”
Her voice was strained when she replied. “I’m not alone.”
The streetlights flickered. Turned off.
A massive shape hurtled out of the night sky and slammed into the pavement.
The shockwave rushed through the alley, expanding the air inside the dumpsters and making their lids bang open against the walls. Grates rattled. The smell of rotting produce filled the air.
Rick gagged, but not from the smell. He gagged on the energy. His throat closed as that crushing pressure weighed on him, his vision darkened at the edges, and he realized that at least some of the rumors about the Godslayer were true.
She had an angel bodyguard.
He was tall, willowy, and ageless, with coppery hair to his shoulders. Luminous blue eyes turned on Zohak as the angel straightened. Downy feathers drifted to the asphalt.
“Took you long enough,” the angel said with a delicate snort. He addressed the Godslayer. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”
“Don’t worry about it, Nukha’il.”
He inclined his head. “How can I help you?”
“Hold Zohak down.”
The demon-king’s eyes went wild. He darted for the fence, but the angel grabbed the back of his shirt and threw him into the Godslayer’s waiting arms.
She pinned him against the wall with a hand to his throat and her sword digging into his stomach. Nukha’il didn’t have to do anything. His presence was threat enough.
“How many times did I tell you to leave my city?” the woman asked.
“Bistak ,” Zohak replied.
She shoved him to the ground and used her weight to pin him. Her bicep bled where he had injured her. Barely a scratch. “Tell me where your fiends are, and I’ll have Nukha’il escort you out of the city—out of the country .”
“They are dead. You killed them.”
She punched him with the hilt of her sword, and his head slammed against the pavement. One of his horns chipped. “Where are your fiends?”
“Dead!”
“He’s telling the truth,” Nukha’il said. “He believes you killed them.”
Her sword wavered. “How did they die?” she asked Zohak, and her voice wasn’t quite as angry as it had been earlier.
“Deep beneath the city. There’s something down there.” He whimpered. “Something… black .”
“Tell me.”
“It came from the earth, from the rocks. A shadow with inertia.” His voice changed, deepened, as though he were speaking through an echoing cavern. “It came upon us. One by one, it devoured them, and then…” His face twisted. “And then it took me.”
Rick had heard the rumors. Creeping shadows, a hungry darkness, a change in the Warrens. Everyone said it was the Godslayer. They said she had unimaginable power.
But she exchanged glances with the angel, and her expression was genuinely confused. She didn’t know anything. That information would be worth money—if Rick could get home without dying.
She shook his jacket. “You’re lying, Zohak. You have to be. Where are your fiends?”
Zohak responded with a groaning cry. The inky shadow devoured his eyes again. His body shuddered, and his hands reached up to close around the Godslayer’s wrists.
The demon-king jerked her hands down and plunged the blade into his heart with a sickening crack .
“Whoa!”
She struggled to free herself, but it was too late. A black fog spilled from his chest, creeping up her blade.
With a shout, she dropped the sword and leaped to her feet.
The ichor spread over the sword and fountained over Zohak as he twisted on the ground. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth yawned in a silent cry. He sat up, hands gripping his chest, and tried to get to his feet as the shadow devoured the last of his flesh. A croak tore from his throat.
Rick’s heart beat a panicked tattoo. Forget the humans. Forget their technology. Forget their goddamn cars .
The nightmare leaped to his feet and ran.
2
“Holy mother of demons, what the hell is that thing? Is that a body bag?”
“Clear off the desk, Neuma,” Elise grunted, staggering up the stairs to the manager’s office in Craven’s Casino.
She held Zohak by the shoulders, and Nukha’il had his feet. Even wrapped tightly in trash bags and twine, he was strong enough that they were both sweating with the effort it took to hold him.
Neuma shoved the paperwork to the floor, placed the laptop on the filing cabinet, and watched anxiously as Elise lowered the body to the desk. She wasn’t in her stripper costume that night, and might have passed for a normal girl if not for the glowing skin and black eyes.
Zohak arched and roared. He nearly threw himself to the floor. Only Nukha’il’s hands pressing into the demon-king’s shoulders kept the bag pinned down.
“Ropes,” Elise said, “get the ropes!”
Neuma vanished.
Elise ran to the closet behind the desk. The charmed lock didn’t open the first time she tried to open it. It didn’t respond to the second or third attempts, either.
Finally, she gave it a swift kick and yelled, “Goddamn it, it’s me! Open up, you moron!”
Somewhat begrudgingly, the lock clicked, and she opened the closet.
The walls were filled with rows of hooks and dangling tools—mostly torture devices left by the last manager of Craven’s. Her belongings had begun migrating to the closet ever since she had taken over: a few knives with the mark of St. Benedict stamped on the blade, some free weights for when she got bored, and several looping golden chains with dangling medallions.
She took the chains and shut the door, which locked itself again with an offended click .
Neuma returned carrying an armful of heavy silver chains. “Will this work? These are the thickest ones I’ve got. I only had time to run to the play room.”
“That’s fine,” Elise said.
The angel restrained Zohak as the women tied him to the desk, wrapping the chains all the way around the heavy oaken furniture. There were metal rings welded to the floor too—probably for the same reason that David Nicholas had kept torture implements in his office closet. Elise clamped the chains to the rings.
Nukha’il stepped back, and the demon struggled in vain. He was secure.
“Did the ichor touch you?” she asked the angel.
“No, I’m fine.”
Neuma bent to pick up the boot knife. The inky shadows had moved to consume the entire blade, joining with the metal and turning it obsidian.
“Don’t touch that!” Elise barked, and the half-succubus froze. “Don’t touch anything black right now. Even if you think it’s just shadow.” Neuma glanced around the office, and Elise knew what she had to be thinking. The previous manager’s aesthetic tastes ran toward the dark. Aside from the tacky casino carpeting, which was patterned with red geometric shapes, everything was black. The walls, the furniture—even the tinted windows overlooking the floor of the gaming room. “Now stand back. Both of you.” She eyeballed Nukha’il, who made her palms itch. “Especially you.”
He politely backed into a corner, and she closed her hand around the charms.
It had been months since she had attempted an exorcism. In fact, she hadn’t done one since she sent David Nicholas back to Hell. And something had definitely changed. It was as though her center wasn’t quite so… centered.
She had to try.
“Crux sacra sit mihi lux,” she began, voice quavering. She cleared her throat. “Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana—”
Zohak heaved and jerked. He was sp
itting with laughter.
The bastard had spent weeks trying to take over Elise’s city, and he kept mocking her after she killed him.
Heat swelled within Elise’s ribcage.
There was her strength.
She slammed her fist into his chest, and the charms blazed. “Crux sacra sit mihi lux. Non draco sit mihi dux .” Elise envisioned reaching her power into the hole in his chest, beneath the bag and beyond his shattered breastbone. “Vade retro, Satana. Nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas —”
A shadow passed her closed eyelids, as though something huge had blocked out all of the light in the room.
Elise’s eyes flew open.
And she saw nothing.
There was no floor beneath her feet, no chains around her hands, no air in her lungs. She was blinded, disoriented. Elise tried to gasp and didn’t find any oxygen.
The shadow gripped her throat.
She clawed at it, but there was no breaking from the grip of immense nothingness .
And a voice rose from the darkness. It was silky, feminine, and furious.
Exorcise me? You must be kidding.
Pain exploded in the back of her head. Elise shouted—which meant there was air, blessed air—and her forehead was pressed to the ugly red carpet.
Her vision cleared. She had been thrown clear across the manager’s office and was crumpled on the floor by the door.
She couldn’t see Zohak’s body on the desk because Nukha’il had thrown his wings wide, filling the entire span of the office.
Neuma was screaming. Once she could breathe, Elise snapped, “Shut up!”
The bartender clapped her mouth closed, smothering her cries with both hands as Elise struggled to her feet. The chains burned with heat, and she flung them to the carpet. The instant they touched the ground, a fire sparked.
Elise stomped the flames out before they could spread, and Neuma ripped the extinguisher off the wall. A white cloud of flame retardant chemicals blasted over the chains.