by Sam Cheever
With a roar, it took three great hopping steps, springing fifteen feet off the ground with each touch of its powerful feet and legs, and landed on top of the Viper. As the thing scrambled around above our heads, I thanked the Big Guy that I’d spent the extra money to get the indestructible metal frame as well as the essential rust proofing and eased the Viper straight up into the air. I kept it flat so I wouldn’t lose my cargo before I was ready.
Emo chuckled. “You know he’s gonna tear Hades out of your paint job when you try to slide him off.”
I just smiled.
When I couldn’t see the ground anymore, I pushed the stall button and, as the Viper performed the expected drop, I hit restart and drove the stick forward. The gargoyle, which had been left behind when the Viper dropped, grappled for the machine’s sleek surface as it shot away from him, but came away with nothing but two paws full of air. We listened to its screams at it rushed to meet the broken spine that was waiting for it on the hard ground below.
I turned to my partner and said, “What was that you were saying about a back door?”
I dropped the Viper into hover about a quarter of a mile from the cave and we stepped out. We approached the cave opening at an angle, from the back, just in case there were any more surprises waiting for us.
The vegetation around the cave was dense almost to the point that it was impassable. Here and there I could see evidence that something had passed through but it was obvious pains had been taken to keep the vegetation in place.
We moved through the tangled growth as silently as possible, our progress slowed by the need to keep our approach inconspicuous in case someone had come to investigate the gargoyles’ deaths. As we reached the place where the vegetation broke to provide a narrow clearing before the cave’s entrance, I motioned for Emo to stay in place while I left the safety of the overgrown weeds and moved into the open area.
Removing my belt of crosses, I wrapped it around both hands, leaving about a foot of chain between my hands to use as garrote if necessary. I kept my back pressed against the rough-hewn stone that formed the face of the cave and slid sideways to the edge of the opening. Once inside, I stopped and listened carefully for a moment before going any farther. An indecipherable sound thrummed at the very edges of my hearing, vibrating through my bones. It seemed to be coming from the depths of the cave and didn’t appear to be moving any closer.
Squinting into the darkness, I sensed Emo coming into the cave behind me. I glanced at him and raised my eyebrows in a silent question, but Emo just shrugged. I motioned for him to follow me into the cave.
Moving into the cool dimness of the cave, I concentrated on using my sensing power to discover the auras of any creatures that might be lurking along the darkened walls or tucked into the heavily shadowed niches. I didn’t sense anything, which surprised and concerned me a bit. I had trouble believing that Nerul would be so careless. The alternative was that he was aware of our presence and was allowing us to sneak up on him. Not a pleasant thought either.
The farther we went into the cave, the louder the humming became, until I finally recognized it as a ritual chant. A light flickered off the walls of the passageway ahead of us, calling us like a beacon toward the thrumming chant. Where the light touched the wall, it gave off an unnatural, reddish glow that gave the illumination a demonic feel.
As we neared the flickering light, my pulse seemed to pick up until it beat against the inside of my skin in rhythm with the haunting tones of the chants. I felt myself growing increasingly stressed until I found it difficult to move forward.
When we came to a Y in the passageway, I stopped.
To my left was the flickering light and chanting. To my right, darkness and silence. I looked back and forth for a minute and then, feeling indecision weighing on me like a giant iron ball, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the hard, uneven surface of the wall. The wall was sticky to the touch and coated with something that had a foul smell, but I was unwilling to give up the support.
Emo stopped behind me but didn’t speak. He reached out and wrapped a hand gently around my upper arm. I covered his hand with one of my own and took several deep breaths, forcing myself to calm down and wondering what was giving me such a feeling of impending doom.
Take the passageway to the right. My eyes flew open and I looked at Emo. He looked back at me with a question in his eyes.
I realized with a start that Dialle was back in my head and decided to try an experiment. What the Hades are you doing in my head again? I thought right back at him.
For long seconds he didn’t respond and I thought I’d failed to reach him with my silent question. Then, incredibly he answered me. I live to get into your head...among other things.
I shivered. Har, har. Go away. You’re distracting me.
Take the right passageway, it comes out behind and above the conclave. Nerul knows you’re coming, but he’s expecting you to come from the passage to the left. He has guards stationed there.
I thought about that for a minute and then nodded, causing Emo to give me a strange look. Okay. But go away, this is giving me the creeps.
When he didn’t respond I figured he’d gone. If he ever really went away. At this point I was beginning to believe he’d just moved into my head and put his underwear in my mental drawers. Nahhh, that couldn’t be, I was pretty sure he didn’t wear underwear.
I moved into the passageway to the right and Emo followed silently. I suddenly realized how great it was to have a partner who trusted me enough not to question everything I did and I made myself a mental note to tell him how much he meant to me if we managed to live through the night.
The passageway, while basically unlighted, seemed to glow with a faint green luminescence that didn’t have a visible source. In contrast to the rest of the cave, the walls of the strangely lit passageway were surprisingly smooth and had the appearance of being manmade. The rhythmic sound of chanting faded as we followed the endlessly curving passageway. The passage ended abruptly and Emo and I found ourselves standing in a small cul-de-sac of space with nowhere to go except back where we’d come from. “Shit.” Way to go, devil in my head. You really aced this one.
Trust, Astra. Use that which the dark Goddesses have seen fit to bless you.
“Bite me.”
Emo, who had been walking around the stone cul-de-sac feeling the walls, swung his head around at my murmured exclamation and cocked his head. “What did I do?”
I ignored him.
Closing my eyes, I reached inside my head for the spark I knew would ignite the power. After a frustrating moment of nothingness, I felt the power catch hold and start to build. Throwing my head back to open my senses up completely, I let the power flow completely through me, not asking it to focus or channel as I’d done before. The result was amazing. I couldn’t even imagine what Emo was thinking watching it happen.
My whole body began to tremble as the power rolled off me in waves. Dimly aware that Emo had backed away with a bark of surprise, I managed to keep my eyes closed and my attention locked onto the power that was pulsing out to fill the small alcove. As it probed outward, gouging thick, electric fingers into the cracks and crevices of the small space, I became aware of an emptiness behind one of the walls. Taking a deep breath, I withdrew the power to refocus it in that direction.
With a rumble, a pinpoint of light appeared at the very center of the wall and grew, moving outward until a small archway was outlined in the wall. I motioned for Emo to precede me through the opening and then quickly followed. I barely made it through before the thing closed again, leaving us in almost total darkness.
Emo said nothing, but through the velvet black of the enclosed space I could feel his startled gaze on me as surely as if we’d been sitting together in a sunlit room. “I’ll explain later.” I whispered to him. “Right now we need to keep moving.” Having said this, I began to wonder where exactly we were moving to. Since I didn’t have a frunkin’ clue.
; Once our eyes had become accustomed to the new area, we realized we were standing in some kind of meeting or office space, with several chairs scattered around the walls and a large desk or table that was situated in the center of the room. The floor beneath our feet was soft, like carpet, only strangely not exactly like carpet. It felt silky and expensive. A pulsing glow pulled my eyes toward the ceiling where some kind of dropped ceiling made of stained glass hovered over the room. The thousands of pieces of colored glass were forged together to present a terrifying representation of the devil, sitting upon his flaming throne in the heart of his hellish kingdom. Around him, a variety of demons and lesser devils feasted on the unfortunate inhabitants of Hades.
Emo tugged at my sleeve and I tore my gaze from the nightmare in the sky. He pointed through the darkness to the far side of the room, where a gentle green light pulsed, illuminating the entrance to another passageway. I nodded and he took the lead into the passage.
We emerged after only a couple of moments, into a huge cavern whose walls dripped, literally, with fresh red blood. The room was almost unbearably hot, a fact which I attributed to the thousands of candles that burned and dripped from the walls and which were placed in a giant pentagram on the dirt floor of the cavern. The heat could also have come from the hundreds of bodies that were packed into the space.
Emo and I stood on a ledge that was about fifteen feet long and ten feet deep. The ledge jutted out over the cavern and, unlike the rest of the space, was cast in deep shadow which was only peripherally touched by the flickering candlelight from below. Standing on the edge of the ledge, immersed in shadow, I could only imagine that we were totally invisible to the chanting crowd below us. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I was wrong.
Watching the scene below, it was all I could do to keep my knees from buckling. I glanced at my friend and partner and the look on his face made me want to get him out of there. Instead I reached out and gave his arm a comforting squeeze.
Emo’s face had turned a slightly greenish hue and his skin was damp with sweat. As he watched the primitive and strangely erotic scene below us, his tongue came out and he was literally panting, something which I had only witnessed once or twice before and which I found incredibly disconcerting. Unfortunately, though Emo was only about half devil, when he witnessed scenes such as the one he was viewing in that nightmarish cavern, his devil came out in a big way and he really had to fight to control himself.
Unable to help him, I left him to his struggles and tried to deal with my own. Being some part devil myself, I was dimly aware of a primitive mental compulsion tugging at me as the deep throated chanting pounded into my brain and the smell of blood and death floated up to our secluded ledge. However, I was much more angel than devil and my struggle didn’t concern me overly much.
Below us, on a wide, flat-topped table that appeared to be carved out of rock, a woman and a man lay, side by side, naked and covered in slick, red blood. The man was fully aroused and, as we watched, he moved to cover her writhing body with his own. The chanting increased in its intensity as he slid his body against hers and, as he plunged into her, she screamed, a sound as primal and disturbing as I had ever heard, filled with pain as well as pleasure.
Their mating was violent and quick. As they cried out in climax, the hundreds of masked, cloaked figures around them surged closer to the rock altar and poured blood from squat, silver pitchers onto their writhing, panting bodies. Then the cloaked figures converged on the still writhing couple, pulled the man off the woman and lifted him high in the air over the altar by holding him under his arms and legs. The chant grew in intensity as they held him aloft over the woman and then softened again as they set him down to stand beside the table.
The man was tall and ugly. His body was well muscled and looked extremely strong, but his face was the face of evil, with pocks and a huge, hawkish nose below deep-set eyes that were the color of mud. Underneath the quickly drying blood, I could see that his body was covered with the pentagram tattoo that told me he was a practicing Satanist.
Pulling my gaze from the man, I now saw that the woman was strapped to the rock altar. As I watched, several of the cloaked figures crowded around and took turns with her, lowering themselves onto her glossy blood-covered flesh and driving her into spasms of agonized pleasure with their attentions.
Although the woman’s reaction to this devilish gang rape seemed more pleasure than pain, something about the woman made me want to intervene. She was incredibly, inhumanly beautiful, with ankle length black hair that flowed off the side of the altar and pooled on the gory surface of the cavern’s floor. Her black, catlike eyes and high cheekbones gave emphasis to a heart shaped face that could have been drawn from a dream by the world’s greatest artist to represent one of God’s favorite angels. The eyes that were raised to me as the man again covered her were almost purple they were so black and held mine pleadingly.
For a long minute I was so mesmerized by her that I didn’t realize she was looking directly at me, as if she’d seen me standing there. Then, with a start I realized who she was. Shit.
Emo turned to me, his face even paler than before and coated with sweat. “Yes. It is Dialle’s queen.”
Though I wanted to turn away in disgust, I found that I couldn’t pull my eyes away from hers. Dimly I wondered if she was using some kind of power on me.
Emo seemed to be thinking the same thing because he wrapped a hand around my arm and gave me a little shake. I shook my head and pointed, drawing his eyes toward the scene below.
The man convulsed on top of the woman for the final time. As he screamed out his pleasure, one of the cloaked and masked figures pulled something from beneath its cloak and, grabbing the man’s hair, dragged it efficiently across his neck. The man’s flesh parted with a squishing sound and his body jerked as it emptied hot, frothy blood onto the woman below him. The woman’s riveting eyes finally left mine as they closed and her slender body arched to meet the hot offering, apparently reveling in it.
The cloaked figure with the now bloody knife turned around and, reaching up to remove its white, featureless mask, revealed to me a coldly handsome face set behind the most chillingly evil pair of eyes I’d ever seen.
Nerul held the dripping knife aloft and smiled at me. “Halfling Astra, though she would never admit it, Queen Kaline is most grateful for your appearance. Without your interference, this ceremony would have gone on until the dawn. The Queen isn’t accustomed to being used by common Satanists and lesser devils. Her pleasure in the experience is like arsenic to her delicate soul.”
I stared at him, unable to come up with one of my usual smartass retorts. After a seemingly endless passage of time, during which I realized my thoughts were not alone in my head, I said, “Nerul. You put on a pretty disgusting show. Obviously you were expecting me.”
The devil chuckled. His robe opened to expose a broad, golden chest covered with soft curling black hair. Nerul’s pecs expanded as he tucked strong, square hands into the open sides of the robe and pulled it back to rest on his narrow hips. He was entirely naked beneath the blood soaked robe and he appeared to be very happy to see me. His straight, black hair was pulled severely back from his face and looked very short from the front, though it may have been pulled back from his head in a ponytail—it was hard for me to tell from my vantage point. The midnight velvet of his eyes, which were deep set and tapered up like cat eyes beneath thick black brows, sparkled in the candlelight and left a trail of fire on my body wherever they focused. Although I knew it was magic and was entirely in my head, the effect was wildly erotic and I had to put a lot of thought into not drooling. My reaction to the evil package before me really pissed me off and the thought that I was still suffering some residual reaction to the ceremony I’d just witnessed didn’t make me feel any better.
“Look, Nerul, as you probably already know, I’ve been sent here to give you a message. If you staged this performance for me you’ve wasted a lot of time and,”
I looked meaningfully around the cavern, “it appears a shitload of blood. I have no interest at all in your sick ceremonies.”
Nerul laughed, the sound bringing the short hairs up on the back of my neck. “You flatter yourself overly, little halfling, you have merely come upon our nightly rituals, your presence is purely an added spice to our proceedings.”
“I’m not the flavor of the week, your highness, I’m here as a messenger, nothing more.”
He inclined his dark head, moving toward me across the earthen floor. With distaste, I watched his black, satin slippers squish through a river of blood and track across the earth to a spot just below where Emo and I stood. As he turned his face up to me I nearly gasped at its chiseled perfection. His brow was unlined and wide, his nose long and narrow, with just the slightest arch that gave his face a patrician look. His mouth looked soft and slightly wet, the lips full and perfectly shaped. His strong, square jaw was enhanced by just the touch of a beard, which served mainly to enhance his square, masculine features, rather than cover them.
His velvet black eyes were outlined as if for effect, by the longest, thickest black eyelashes I’d ever seen. My feet began to shuffle of their own volition and my knees squeezed together protectively. When he opened those lush lips and spoke to me in a husky, suggestive voice I found myself getting short of breath. “So give me your message, pretty Astra.”
“I...” I gulped audibly, damn my fickle soul, “I am to tell you that Dialle and Rayanne will trade your son for their queen and that he will be returned in exactly the same condition as she is returned to them.”
Nerul’s perfect face split in a sad smile. “They have less to bargain with. My son is dead, their queen is alive. Are they asking me to kill their queen also?”
I have to admit his logic did render me momentarily speechless. I shook my head stupidly.
I was amazed to find that Emo, who had quickly drifted back into the shadows when Nerul had first turned his eyes on us, now stood beside me again. I was even more amazed when he opened his mouth and spoke. “Your Highness, Prince Nille is alive and well, with his soul intact.”