by Sam Cheever
I couldn’t help grimacing. I knew firsthand what demon skin felt like and I was always repulsed at the idea of touching it.
After a moment Emo turned back to me, studiously ignoring Dialle. “He’s under orders to keep Prince Dialle out.”
Dialle scowled. “How do you know this?”
Emo motioned to the black and white mountain before us. “This is a demon from the city of Dis in the lower circle of Hell. His kind have been stopping entry into the city for millennia.” Emo turned to Dialle and grinned. “And now he’s stopping you.”
I frowned. Having read Dante in college I was familiar with the city of Dis. “You mean the city is real?”
Emo looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “You’re joking right?”
I guess that was that. Mentally shaking off the whole subject of circles of Hell I turned to Dialle. “I guess you’ll have to wait here.”
Dialle scowled. “That is not acceptable. If they want to send a message to my father it will have to be through me.”
I looked at Emo. He shrugged and tried to look neutral but amusement sparkled in his midnight eyes. “If the king himself refuses to come speak to Alcott, the demons will only speak to a completely neutral party…or parties.” He grinned at Dialle.
I thought Dialle was going to explode so I took quick action. Let it go, Dialle. Let me go talk to these piles of excrement from Hades and get it over with. We’re just wasting time here.
His scowl deepened and his gold-ringed gaze was locked on my partner with obvious evil intent. After a moment Emo jumped a bit and his eyes narrowed but the smug smile returned to his face. I figured they must be communicating in the centuries-old fashion of the royals. One part mental conversation and two parts metaphysical dick twisting.
Shaking my head I pushed past Dialle and grabbed Emo’s arm. “Let’s go child. You can wring each other’s nether regions on your own time.”
Dialle’s mouth opened as if to argue when Emo and I brushed past the demon mountain and proceeded toward the lower level but I threw up a hand to cut him off. I need backup down there, Dialle.
I was sure Dialle would understand, as I did from horror-filled personal experience, that the place where the king of the demons held court was extremely dangerous and eminently unpredictable. I’d ventured down there once all by my little self and had been lucky to get out of there with my soul intact. As it was it had taken me some little time to regain my composure and get the stench of evil out of my nose. Suffice it to say I was not looking forward to descending those stone stairs.
A stark sense of déjà vu met me as I started down the rough-hewn steps through impenetrable inky blackness. As before when I’d been forced to descend these stairs, I closed my eyes and threw out my sensing power to find my way to the bottom. Unfortunately my senses slid over several things I wasn’t looking forward to encountering in that subterranean conclave.
I reached out a hand to touch Emo at the same time I nudged his mental drawers. Gargoyles. Several.
He was standing so close behind me I could feel him nodding. I hate gargoyles.
Immense understatement.
A gargoyle had almost taken Emo from me not all that long ago. The event had forced me to reach more deeply into my growing power core to heal him. An unintended consequence of which had been to strengthen the bond between Dialle and me. It had also changed the relationship between Emo and me for all time. And it had scared the shit out of both of us.
We moved off the bottom step cautiously, our senses on high alert and finally opened our eyes. The room was dimly lit and smelled of age and evil things. My heart was doing a rumba under my ribs, apparently voicing its opinion on the situation my mouth and brain had gotten it into. Emo was wearing his discomfort like an additional layer to his aura.
However, the would-be demon king lounged in the center of the cavernous space at complete ease. Sprawled really, in a large, gaudy-looking throne-chair that only a pretender to royalty would think was royal-like. He seemed completely unconcerned by our presence.
Either he wasn’t nearly as cautious of us as we were of him or he was pretty sure his disgusting, slathering minions—in the form of both demons and gargoyles—which were spread around the room, could take care of us before we put any holes or burn marks in his not-so-fair skin.
“Mx. Phelps. At last we meet. I’ve heard many things about you.”
Which of course begged the question, what things had he heard? I moved forward on reluctant legs with a carefully crafted badass look on my face. My attempt at bravado may or may not have had any effect on Alcott. Like his deceased brother his monochromatic features were naturally and unavoidably expressionless. His skin color of choice, however, was the shadow version of Abrine’s. He was solid black to his dead brother’s unchanging white.
The yin and yang of nightmares.
“My partner and I are here as representatives of King Dialle the First.”
The demon king sat up a bit straighter at that pronouncement and his featureless, black face tilted as if in question. I remembered the same gesture from his brother. When one didn’t have visible facial expressions apparently one had to use body language to show surprise.
I waited, knowing what would come next.
“You dare come to me as King Dialle’s representative.” His face may not have shown any emotion but his voice sure did. “I asked for a neutral party to carry my message. How did you get past the Guard of Dis?”
Knowing I couldn’t really get away with lying, I decided to see how some Tweener attitude might work. I merely shrugged my shoulders and tried to look bored. “I really don’t know, Alcott. Perhaps you should take it up with him—it. For now, we have business to discuss. I assure you I will carry your message to King Dialle the First just as you present it to me.”
I stopped talking and waited. My motto is, in this type of negotiation, he who talks first loses. I held my breath and watched. I had just stomped on the exposed baby toe of arguably the second most powerful being in the dark world. Not a smart thing to do if you are really only a lowly Tweener. Delusions of grandeur aside.
I knew I was running the risk of seriously pissing off the boogeyman. But I’d had no choice. The only thing demons respect and understand is strength, which in their world is thoroughly mixed up with pure obnoxiousness. Any attempts at discussion or the application of fairness to an issue are construed as weakness.
Alcott’s featureless countenance faced me for a long moment and I held my breath. I hoped my badass expression was still firmly in place. My mental drawers shifted and Emo was in but there was just heavy breathing. Apparently he was just in for support and had nothing to say. I couldn’t resist, Demon got your tongue, partner?
Very funny Astra. We are a razor-sharp demon hair away from becoming gargoyle kibble. I’d appreciate it if you’d pay attention to your work.
I thought a rigid salute at him and said, Yessir!
Alcott chose that second, when I wasn’t exactly paying attention of course, to signal the attack. Emo’s heavy breathing in my mind turned into a mumbled narrative as the first wave of gargoyles and their demon handlers turned toward us. Even as he reached for the set of long knives he kept strapped to his thighs Emo’s mind was on chastising me rather than the work ahead.
You just had to slap at the bad guy and piss him off didn’t you, boss? You can’t just do what you came in here to do and leave can you? Oh no, you want to fight the stinking nasty gargoyles because, in your feeble little mind you think it’s fun don’t you?
I was too busy taking a battle stance and readying my weapons to respond but trust me, he would get a formerly pointed earful when we were back at the office. Assuming of course that we ever made it back to the office.
“The one on the left is mine,” I told him in a low murmur, even as I turned to look at the demon on the right and his eight-foot-long, drooling charge on the straining end of a steel chain. The gargoyle on the right, seeing me looking at him, f
igured he was my target, leaving him open to an unexpected attack from Emo. It was one of our favorite tactics when dealing with creatures of lesser intelligence.
Emo blew out a nervous breath and turned toward the one on the left. “Have I told you I hate gargoyles, Astra?”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “I think you might have.”
Then all hell broke loose and we found it difficult to talk for a while.
Keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the gargoyle and its handler on the right, I reached for my power core, opening the metaphysical door I used to shut it off when I didn’t want it leaching out all over the place and embarrassing me.
Using the skills I’d perfected over recent days, I quickly stoked the tiny flame into a raging blaze and then jerked it forward and threw up a protective shield just as the gargoyle on the right launched itself toward me. The ’goyle hit my shield with a splat, spraying spit in a wide arc and sliding slowly down into a saliva-drenched pile at my feet, claws outstretched.
Emo reached out and hacked the ’goyle’s head off and then jumped back as blood spurted from the neck stump. Gargoyle blood burns like acid on angel skin and, like me, Emo was part angel.
The demon ’goyle keeper dropped the now empty chain and looked up at Emo. I, shot him with a jolt of power through the heart. He went down right on top of his smelly charge, twitching all four limbs at once in a manic death dance that might have been funny if Emo and I didn’t have at least six other stinky foes to defeat in that underground room.
“To Hades with you fool, for God hath tired of you!” I murmured.
Two down, lots to go.
Emo turned his warrior face to the gargoyle on the left just as it lunged. He wasn’t quick enough with his shield and the thing was on him before I could kill it. A sense of unhappy déjà vu hit me between the eyes as Emo went down under the terrible onslaught. I heard flesh tearing and Emo grunted in pain.
In a panic I turned to help him but was brutally stopped by the less than gentle application of a thick steel chain around my throat. The second ’goyle’s keeper had reached me.
I managed to get one hand under the chain and was able to hold it off my throat enough to breath but the demon was strong and outweighed me by about three hundred pounds. The thing about demons though, is that they generally aren’t very smart. And they aren’t agile at all. They’re basically just nasty brutes. And while I certainly had been known to be nasty, I had brains and looks to go with my attitude. I was betting I could outwit it.
I threw my weight backward into the demon’s rock-like chest. Expecting me to try to pull away from the chain, the demon had braced himself on his heels and I caught him off guard. While, under normal circumstances my weight would have made no more impact than an insect, the momentum of my attack, along with his weight distribution, caused him to take several steps back in an attempt to regain his balance.
Two things happened at once. The hapless demon relinquished his tight hold on the chain around my neck and he stumbled butt first into another gargoyle.
I jerked loose from the chain just as the affronted gargoyle opened wide and sank three-inch-long saliva-coated teeth into the frantic demon’s left butt cheek and ripped, pulling the round, leathery body part right off, with a wet thwucking sound. The gargoyle whipped the fat chunk of demon derrière from side to side, throwing dark green blood around the room and looking mighty happy with his unexpected snack.
The mono-cheeked demon ran screaming around the room—that’s what they do when they get upset, brain shuts down, feet kick in—until one of the other demons reached out an arm like a battering ram and knocked him cold. He went down with a whimper, trailing snot from his head and blood from his mangled posterior.
I suddenly remembered Emo and whipped my head around to see how he was doing with his ’goyle. I was very relieved to see that he had managed to fight the thing off and was just putting the finishing touches on its unexpected trip to the afterlife as I glanced around.
I turned back to discover that the rest of the gargoyles and their hapless handlers were heading our way.
Sigh.
I took a deep breath and reached into my boots for my knives. Emo came up beside me panting like a virgin in a room full of gigolos. We squared off in anticipation of a full on attack but nothing happened. We stood there blinking when all things mean and leathery stopped in their tracks and stared, gape mouthed, at a spot somewhere beyond my right shoulder.
I turned to see what they were staring at and came eye to eye with a very pissed off but decidedly yummy royal devil. He moved up to stand at my shoulder and put his arm around my waist possessively.
I itched to shrug the arm off but knew that we needed a united front against the bogymen in that room.
I had it under control.
I could see that. But I wanted to play too. It was no fun up there all by myself.
I rolled my eyes. How did you get past the mountain?
It was his turn to roll his eyes. Please, Astra. Give me some credit.
Point taken. He was after all a royal. And the mountain had been only a demon, if an ageless and infamous one.
Dialle turned to Alcott, who had found reason to straighten considerably in his makeshift throne. “You have much to answer for demon. King Dialle will not like the report I give him. You had better tell me that you will stop this treasonous behavior at once or I fear the king’s wrath will visit these premises.”
Alcott’s featureless countenance faced Dialle for a beat of ten and then lowered only the tiniest fraction of an inch. “I apologize for your treatment here, Prince Dialle. It was inexcusable and I will make amends for it to the court.”
Dialle’s dark eyes glowered at the demon leader but I felt his body relax just the tiniest fraction.
“However…”
And the tension lurched upward again.
“My demands remain in place. My people have served the Royal Court for millennia without question and with the utmost loyalty and we have earned our place at the council table. I will take that place now…either by decree of the king or through a less peaceful method. It is the king’s choice.”
Dialle’s arm around my waist tightened to the point of pain and then suddenly relaxed. I looked at him and he smiled. “You dare to bargain for sovereignty on the backs of the human cattle? Humans are of no consequence to the Court. King Dialle cares nothing for their fate.”
Alcott smiled, the unremitting black of his face splitting to show two rows of small, white teeth. His body language was smug to the point of insult. He laughed in fact, causing Dialle’s arm to become an iron band around my waist again.
I tried to step away from the encircling arm but Dialle held on.
Alcott lowered himself back into the throne chair with an air of disdain and a flip of one hand toward Dialle. I thought I was going to see steam emerge from Dialle at any moment.
“The Royal Court cares nothing for the humans, I agree. My goal is not to cause your hearts pain. It is to cause the Court much embarrassment and trouble with the humans. Your unspoken truce with them is young and tender. It will be easily strained and torn by the discovery of thirty or so mutilated bodies. The obvious work of satanic ritual.”
Dialle stepped threateningly toward Alcott and the demon sat up just a bit straighter in the chair, obviously not as dismissive of Dialle as he tried to appear. “You declare open war on the Court? Have you gone mad?”
Alcott shrugged. “I seek only what we have earned. You will choose how we gain it. I would peacefully take my throne if it were up to me.”
Dialle was suddenly standing mere inches from Alcott, his hands clutching the arms of the throne chair and his face close enough to the demon’s to bite. All traces of the white split disappeared from Alcott’s face and his body went rigid. He tried to lean further back into the chair.
I sensed movement in the gargoyle and demon ranks but Dialle threw up a hand and they stopped in their tracks, blinking at him in
confusion.
Dialle’s voice filled the room effortlessly when he spoke. It seemed to come from every corner and moved as if alive through the underground space. I wasn’t sure what it was doing to the bad guys but it was giving me a serious case of the heebies and I was on his side.
“I accept your offer of war, Alcott and give you this pledge back. Your people will rue the day you went against the Royal Court of King Dialle the First. Your children will suffer for it, their children will suffer for it and their children will beg to be released from this life as a result of your tampering this day. You have my word on that, as the next in line for the throne of the Royal Court.”
With that Dialle stood up straight, glared one last time at Alcott and returned to Emo and me. He said nothing to us as we ascended the stairs and headed back through the main room of the nightclub at street level.
I glanced at what was left of the Dis demon and grimaced, making a mental note to myself never to piss Dialle off.
As we left Demonica behind and stood on the sidewalk I turned to Dialle and smiled. “That went well.”
He scowled back at me. “It appears we are at war.”
I snorted indelicately. “Except the casualties will all be on the human side won’t they?”
His scowl deepened and he threw up a hand as if to dismiss that little fact as inconsequential. “We will have to save the humans since they are too stupid to save themselves.”
Just like that. No big deal. We will save the humans.
Bring me a red cape and some pretty blue tights. Here we come to save the day. I rolled my eyes again and turned to Emo, “I want you to put all your resources into finding those hostages. Reach out to all your demon buddies, use every favor you have coming on this one. If even one of those hostages gets killed it will be on our backs. You got that?”
He frowned at me but nodded and I continued, “How did you get here? Did you bring the Viper?”
Emo opened his mouth to respond but I never heard his answer. Dialle’s hand found my arm and we were suddenly locked together in motionless space. My blood pressure skyrocketed at this cavalier commandeering of my body and, although my body was as helpless as a stump, my fertile brain was in overdrive and when we landed wherever he was taking me he was gonna get verbally and possibly physically speared by a seriously pissed-off Tweener.