by R. W. Holmes
“Oh come on...” one of the officers called out to the goat. “Take off the costume, bud. You're scarin' the rest of your classmates.”
The goat demon roared back at the officers in its terrible wail, a screeching concoction of a goat's frenzied bleating and a man's battle cry.
“Not gonna lie, that was genuinely pretty creepy” the officer called out next. “But-,”
It was at that moment the officers' radios went off, and a new voice called out a very ominous message over it.
“McCarthy? Nixon? Marx? You guys need to be careful. I just got a report saying the police are on their way to check out a suspicious death over in the dormitories.”
The trio of campus police officers exchanged alarmed looks, and then immediately raised their tasers at the goat demon as they took on a far more aggressive, slightly spread out stance.
“GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!” they yelled in unison.
The goat demon released its bleating warcry for a second time, and then charged the officers.
Tasers were fired, and the whirring of two hundred and forty thousand volts ran down the wires of their tasers and into the goat demon, but did little else. Looking more like a minotaur than anything else, the goat gored the first of the campus police and launched him through the air, five feet back, into the ceiling, and then down again to collapse unconscious on the ground.
The second of the officers turned and ran, whilst the third drew his stun baton and got in a single, solid hit against the goat before it turned and slugged him with everything it had. The officer hit the ground in agony, his screaming a bloodcurdling gargle comprised of blood, spit, and fragments of bone from his shattered jaw.
Then, a sudden, hard whack came to the back of the goat's head, and for a moment even the great beast was left to reel under the force of the blow. When it recovered and turned to face its attacker, it found itself face to face with the would be hero who'd stood up to it.
“Yeah, that's right” Kennedy said as he brandished his metal baseball bat. “Let's see you, uh...”
Kennedy trailed off, his gaze falling to the campus officer that nearly had his jaw slugged off. The officer had gone eerily still, but his eyes remained open, and the pool of blood forming around his mouth was nearly a yard across now.
“Is that guy dead!?” Kennedy exclaimed in horror.
The whooshing of the goat's haymaker punch soared by Kennedy as he ducked the first, much quicker than expected retaliatory swing. A second followed, and Kennedy's bat took the brunt of it while Kennedy himself went skidding back a few feet.
“Jesus...” Kennedy murmured in awe.
“Yes, finally” the goat said excitedly. “A worthy opponent.”
A cloven-hoofed kick caught Kennedy's bat a second time, but this time the strike was meant to push more than clobber, and the force of the blow threw Kennedy back several feet and knocked him prone to the ground.
The goat's horrible bleating roar filled the air as it charged, head down to gore, until a scarf-wrapped figure swooped in and dragged Kennedy off at the last second.
Convinced his oblivion had come, Kennedy screamed a terrified, “OH MY GYAH-, who the fuck are you!?”
“Don't worry about it” replied Gael. “Just, uh, get the hell out of here.”
“What, don't tell him that!” Zinerva snapped from her perch on Gael's shoulder. “He can fight a goat head on. That's amazing! He should help.”
“Hell no, I'm getting the fuck out of here” Kennedy said as he got up and turned tail. “Thanks though bro, I owe you one!”
Gael groaned as Kennedy ran, and silently accepted the several slaps Zinerva delivered to his cranium. “I deserve this” he admitted.
“We can't talk about it now!” snapped Zinerva. “He's coming!”
Indeed, the goat had regained its senses after accidentally goring the floor, and was now trudging towards Gael and Zinerva with renewed, malevolent purpose.
“Okay, what was the spell again?” asked Gael. “The one that, I don't know, makes you better?”
“Ignis Limbo” replied Zinerva.
“Limbo?” queried Gael.
“Yeah, limbo” said Zinerva. “The place beyond the mountains in hell. We demons live in the ring of fire, but outside is-,”
“Ignis Limbo!” bellowed Gael.
Zinerva leaped forward haphazardly as the goat demon charged, but she was not ill versed in fighting the beasts. She caught hold and clambered atop the goat's head as they collided, and her hands gripped its horns as her the soles of her feet dug into the creature's eyes.
“WHY ISN'T IT WORKING!?” Gael yelled to her.
“I don't know!” Zinerva called back awkwardly. “Maybe it wasn't a spell?”
Gael gasped. “It wasn't a spell!?” he blared at her.
“It might have just been what War called i-,” Zinerva started, until the sudden clutching of an over-sized demon hand around the back of her neck saw her lifted bodily into the air and held up before the goat. “You might want to start getting ready to summon me again” she said instead.
The dormitories shook as Zinerva was pounded into a nearby wall so violently that her body burst into blood, and then fire, as she was instantaneously forced back to hell on impact.
Gael, meanwhile, had only one thought on his mind.
'There's no way this thing isn't faster than me.'
The goat took a confident step towards Gael, its right fist still alight with the fire from where Zinerva's remains were burning away, and reared back to strike him.
“You killed Angelica” Gael said to it.
“Who?”
“The girl who summoned you” replied Gael. “You crushed her throat.”
“Yes. I answer to no one.”
Gael steeled himself and, with every ounce willpower he had, bit straight through the skin on his hand in a single, violent chomp. Then, he closed his eyes.
“Coward” said the goat, convinced that Gael had closed his eyes to accept defeat.
The smell of copper, the luster of lead, the softness of a feather, and the tune of the song; Gael imagined all of the things he'd used to reach out to Zinerva for the first time and focused.
'Zinerva! Recognize my offering to you! See myself as it is, and you who are equal, meet me at the crossroads!'
The goat swung, his burning fist rocketing through the air like a missile, but caught nothing. Gael had gone, off into the point of eternity between hell and Enterprise Island where he and Zinerva first met, and he'd done it without anything but his own blood present for the ritual.
“That was fast!” Zinerva said as she floated over to Gael.
“And I did it without most of the stuff” replied Gael. “It's a good thing too, because that goat was on the verge of killing me. I think we should avoid going back for a few seconds.”
“Yeah!” said Zinerva. “Except I can't...”
Gael grimaced as he too felt his body acting on its own, flailing through the air to grasp at and take hold of Zinerva.
“What does 'Ignis Limbo' even mean?” he cried out in frustration. “How am I supposed to make the spell work if I don't know?”
“It means 'Fire of Limbo', or something” replied Zinerva. “Don't you know any Latin?”
“Of course not!” snapped Gael, his hand now getting dangerously close to Zinerva's. “The language had been dead for Millennia! Only scholars speak it!”
“Okay” Zinerva said with a shrug. “Now you know. What's the spell?”
Gael cried out in frustration for a second time, this time with less concern for forming any understandable words.
“Blood!” exclaimed Zinerva, her outburst snapping Gael out of his rage filled moment of weakness. “Summoning me, your blood. Talking with War, my blood. There's always blood. That helps, right?”
Gael never got time to fully digest this information, for his hand and Zinerva's had finally reached each other, but the information stuck when he was thrown bodily back into his own wo
rld and set skidding across the hallway floor.
Zinerva joined Gael in his slide this time, hellbent on keeping herself at his side in the event that the goat was close, but found the monster to only just be noticing their return a good fifty feet away down the hall.
“YOU KILLED HER!” Gael bellowed accusingly at the goat, before raising his still-bloody hand into the air and clenching it into a fist.
The goat leaped at Gael and Zinerva, its legs propelling it towards them in a great bound that covered nearly the entire distance between the two.
“Fire of the First Circle! Fire of Limbo! Consume my enemies, those wicked ones who threaten and claim the lives of my friends!” Gael cried out desperately.
The blood coating Gael's hand erupted into red flames, and Zinerva felt her small, imp hands begin to glow warm. Her veins lit up red beneath the pale skin of her palms, and with their coming, a deep, forgotten instinct began to stir within her.
Zinerva threw her hand back reflexively, palm up, and an orb of blood red flame sprang into existence atop it.
The goat stopped, its eyes glued to the otherworldly fire, and his own instincts, instincts of fear and recognizing ones better among other demons, urged him to back away. Despite this, the goat stepped forward, refusing to embrace any degree of cowardice in the face of something as worthlessly nonthreatening as an imp, and reared his own fist back.
“Don't do it” Zinerva said giddily. “I'm quicker than you.”
The goat snorted derisively at her and scowled. “We shall see.”
The goat moved first, lashing out with all the speed of a trained boxer, but not even halfway into his throw did he find Zinerva's fire bolt loosed and on its way directly towards his chest. The fire bolt struck with a satisfyingly powerful Pop! that shook the goat to his core, dislocated his left arm, and forced him stumbling back.
“I AM Zinerva OF BELIAL!” Zinerva bellowed in a wildly unscripted showing of her status as the new alpha. “And War is going to be very upset when he finds out what you did to the second human who could summon demons.”
Zinerva threw another fire bolt at the goat, this one catching his hip and nearly knocking him off balance. A third and fourth followed, one of which struck the goat dead in his chest and knocked him back, while the other hit his dislocated left arm and blasted it clean off.
“Kill him” seethed Gael. “For Angelica.”
Zinerva grinned and nodded, this time cupping both of her palms together as she manifested a fifth, much larger fire bolt.
“W-Wait” the goat managed feebly. “I surren-,”
Zinerva hurled the fire bolt forward with everything she had, and it rocketed straight over to the far wall of the hallway and struck it with a resounding, thunderous explosion. The fire bolt hadn't missed, of course. It merely kept going after it hit the goat in his stomach, and burned a hole straight through him.
The goat's entire body erupted in fire as he slumped to the floor, and the peeping eyes of fearful college students watching from afar in the doorways to their dorms soon became heads, and then bodies, as they ventured out into the hall and watched the goat demon burn away.
Gael, meanwhile, scooped Zinerva back up onto his shoulder and broke out into a sprint. He surged past the slowly opening doors in an attempt to beat the tide of commotion back to his own hall, and arrived just in time to disappear within his dormitory room before anyone in his hall had left to join the investigation.
“Oh my God! I can't believe we pulled that off!” Gael said as he ripped off the scarf covering his face off. “Are you alright, Zinerva?”
“Yep” Zinerva said as she hopped off of Gael's shoulder and onto his bed. “Hands are still kind of warm, but I think I've got it under control...”
“Yo, that shit was crazy.”
Gael and Zinerva's gaze snapped to the table on the opposite side of the room, and the two were horrified to see Kennedy sitting at it with his baseball still in tow.
“Kennedy” Gael said shrilly. “What are you doing here?”
“Well you saved me” replied Kennedy. “And my dorm was over there,so I figured I'd come here inste-”
“You knew it was me!?” Gael hissed in disbelief.
“Uh, yeah bro” Kennedy said with a smirk. “Your voice is kind of distinct.”
“No it's not!” snapped Gael.
“It's really not” agreed Zinerva.
“Hey, and what's that thing?” Kennedy said with a gesture to Zinerva. “I find it kind of hard to believe that you've got a midget nudist cousin with albinism visiting right now.” He then paused, a fearful look coming over him, before asking, “Is that Gabby?”
“What? No!” Gael snapped as he furiously thought about how to handle the situation. “Alright, fuck it, Kennedy, I'm about to explain everything to you.”
“You are?” Zinerva said in surprise.
“I have to!” Gael exclaimed helplessly. “How do you think he's going to react if he doesn't know the whole story when he finds out that Angelica is dead!?”
“Angelica is dead!?” Kennedy shrieked in alarm.
“Yes!” snapped Gael. “Now shut up, so I can tell you what happened.”
“Okay” Kennedy said as he picked up his baseball bat. “But did you kill her?”
“No” said Gael. “I mean, am I responsible? Yeah, but she did it to herself because she didn't understand what she was doing.”
“Does it have to do with that thing out in the hall?” asked Kennedy. “Did that kill her?”
Gael exhaled sharply and dropped his face into his hands.
“Yes” he said, his voice muffled. “Just... Here, Zinerva, go ahead and kill yourself real quick so I can show him.”
“Wait, what?” Kennedy queried confusedly, until the sight of Zinerva reaching up and slitting her throat with her own nails told him everything he needed to know. “OH MY GOD! DUDE, WHAT THE FUCK!?”
“Quiet!” Gael hissed back at Kennedy. “Watch.”
Kennedy raised his bat defensively, but found his gaze pulled away from Gael when Zinerva's now limp body erupted into red flame and burned off to nothing but a pile of ash.
“That, Kennedy, was a demon” said Gael. “Which I accidentally figured out how to summon earlier today.”
“Bullshit!”
“And now I'm going to prove it to you by summoning her back from hell again” Gael continued unabated. “She's not dead, okay? I swear, she's just in hell, which is where the other thing came from. I'll explain in a moment, just...”
And then Gael vanished.
Kennedy, who was growing increasingly bewildered and terrified of the unfolding situation, was ashamed to admit that seizing the moment and running wasn't what he did. Instead, his paralyzingly intense fear held him in place, and so Gael and Zinerva returned to find him still sitting at the table a few seconds later.
“Ta-da~!” Zinerva exclaimed giddily. “See? I'm like evil Jesus!”
Gael tossed Zinerva back over to his bed and shook his head. “Don't ever say that again” he commanded her. “In fact, don't say anything about Jesus unless it's about how great he was.”
“Jesus was a fantastic carpenter” replied Zinerva, a mischievous grin beginning to overtake her. “And he had a fantastic carpenter body.”
“What did I just see!?” snapped Kennedy. “This is crazy, man! How does any of that have to do with Angelica?”
“Well, when I first did it, I had to tell someone” replied Gael
He paused as the nervous need to wipe his hands came over him, and after a moment of consternation he realized that things had just become so unbearable because he was about to bare the full truth of his guilt over Angelica's death to someone else.
“It was the most amazing thing in the universe before it all went to Hell you know, and she was in my class” Gael continued sadly. “So she came back here, and I showed her Zinerva, and then she went home to her room tonight and she tried to summon her own demon.”
“And then
you hit it with that big metal club” said Zinerva. “You know, after it killed her.”
Kennedy began to lower his bat. His eyes were still moving rapidly with the crazy inclinations of a man who'd seen too much too quickly, but after being saved by Gael and seeing the truth in the story, he knew at the very least that he wasn't in any danger.
“And that one?” asked Kennedy, his bat pointed at Zinerva instead. “Is she dangerous?”
“They actually have to do whatever the person who summons them says” replied Gael. “And I've told her not to kill anyone. I don't think Angelica got the chance to order hers around, though...”
“Also I don't want to kill now that I know you all die for good” Zinerva added defensively. “Well... yet.”
“Fuck, that's terrifying” said Kennedy. “I guess I should say thanks then? You did just save me from a fricken demon. That's what it was, right? A demon? As in, the devil and stuff?”
“Lucifer's dead” said Zinerva.
“Oh, yeah, that's a thing by the way” said Gael. “But yeah, we're dealing with an actual Christian Hell full of very Satanic demons, but I guess no one has been summoning them for a while and they've been trapped for thousands of years. It's a long story, but almost all of the important ones have wasted away already.”
“But why would Angelica try to summon one of those things?” Kennedy exclaimed in disbelief. “You've already got one right here!”
“I don't know, Angelica was weird!” replied Gael. “I think she had it in her head that they weren't that evil.”
Kennedy sighed and slumped back in his chair.
“Dude, this is the most messed up shit ever” he said bluntly. “What's going to happen?”
“The police are going to come by and ask questions” said Gael. “I had to ask the computer if there was a dead body in her room to find out what had happened, so you can only imagine the red flags that sent up.”
“Yeah, not good” admitted Kennedy.
“What? Why are you worrying about that now?” asked Zinerva. “You're fine. You have... whoever he is.”