by Bruce Talmas
“Can’t help you with that one. It was nice seeing you again though,” he said.
I ignored him. “I want to know everything you know about Belial ascending.”
Air passed through his lips, but no noise escaped. He looked at me like he would any other white boy walking into an unsafe neighborhood. I gave him a three-count before I continued with the questioning.
“What do the emanations say?” I asked him.
Again, he just looked at me. It was like I was asking for the secret handshake into a fraternity.
"Come on, give me something Marchosias," I said.
Marcus Valentine’s real name was Marchosias. He was one of the Fallen, but overall he was a pretty good guy. He’d been doing earthly penance for a couple hundred years now. This shelter was the equivalent of angelic missionary work. Under different circumstances, we could have been friends, and once were. That ship had sailed a long time ago though.
“They’re not saying anything.”
I found that hard to believe. Angels were a gossipy lot. They were like old ladies at bingo night, always talking about emanations and when the end of the world was going to be so that they could finally escape this earthly prison. Emanations were their only communication with the heavenly host; they cherished them, even if they resented any Angel still in Heaven.
“You guys talk about every little emanation ad infinitum. You’re telling me that no one’s speculating on why Belial’s here?”
“No, I’m saying that no one can confirm that he’s here in the first place. Everything we know came from before the Summoning took place. All that anyone can confirm is that for weeks, the emanations suggested it was very likely Belial was coming. After that, nothing.”
“Nothing?” I repeated.
“Nothing,” he repeated.
Huh. Not what I was hoping to hear, but intriguing nonetheless.
“How?” I asked
“How what?”
“How can the emanations not confirm whether Belial is or is not here?” I had to repeat that in my head to make sure it made sense. Thankfully, Marchosias didn’t make me say it again.
“It’s not that they can’t confirm it. The emanations have stopped,” he replied. “No, not stopped, exactly. More like they’ve been blocked.”
This coincided with what I’d already found out from the others, but it was still puzzling. Emanations were uniquely angelic. Humans and demons had no power over them and no ability to perceive them. For Angels, and their fallen brethren, though, it was their major source of information.
“Are you talking some kind of Obscuring?”
Marchosias shrugged. “I guess, but no Obscuring that I know of could block emanations.”
“Unless?” I asked, sensing there was more.
“Unless it’s cast by an Angel.” He let those words hang in the air. We both knew the implications of that statement, and they weren’t good.
Why would an Angel block emanations that could give insight into Belial’s reason for ascending? Unless that Angel was working with Belial. Nothing good could come of that.
“Could it be one of the Fallen? Maybe one of the Watchers?” This had Azazel written all over it. He had told me he was planning a way off this rock.
Marchosias shook his big meaty head. “Nope.”
“Nope?” I asked. I realized I was repeating everything he told me, but that was all I had. I wasn’t at the top of my game, cognitively speaking.
“No Fallen could do something like this. We’re like neutered dogs,” he said. One thing I always admired about Marchosias was he eschewed all the macho demonic bullshit. Still, I had a hard time picturing God himself calling Marchosias a neutered dog to his face. He continued, “We can still bite, but for the most part we just look big and scary and that gets us by. If I spent years working on ways to block emanations, I might be able to block one or two of them for a day or so. This…this is completely different. This is global, and it’s been going on for over a week.”
“Which means…?” I prompted. I just wanted to hear him say it out loud, in case I’d missed another possibility. I was still preoccupied with the hole in my chest. The bullet was still lodged somewhere in there, and it wasn’t going to be pleasant trying to dig it out.
“Only an Angel could do this,” he said.
An Angel, with a capital ‘A’. Not a Fallen, but an actual citizen of Heaven. I’d told Azazel less than forty-eight hours earlier that I’d never killed an angel before, and I’d been talking about the Fallen. Killing a true-blooded Angel was unthinkable. They have all the power of the Fallen and then some, plus they were under Heavenly protection. Killing one of them would be a mean trick indeed. Hell, for all I knew, it was impossible. Pair one of them with Belial, and my odds of surviving this mess just nosedived to the microscopic level.
Marchosias stood up. “If we’re through here, I have work to do.”
I thought about giving a snappy retort, but it seemed unwarranted. Gunshot wound aside, he’d done his best to help me.
“Thanks, Marchosias.”
“Yeah, whatever. Get the fuck out of here.”
I got up and headed toward the door.
“And go out the back door,” he said, pointing a finger towards the exterior door in the corner of his office. “You’re scaring the hell out of everyone.”
Chapter 11
I left Marchosias and realized there was nowhere else for me to go except to Pittsburgh. All roads lead home, as they say. Unfortunately, my home was more than likely being overrun by murderous demons intent on sending me to Hell once and for all.
What I really wanted was to go to a beach somewhere and sip margaritas. I watched people boarding a plane to Miami, and they all seemed quite happy. I was getting on a plane to Cleveland. My fellow travelers were significantly less excited about their destination. I’d never had a margarita before, and frankly the thought of me lying on a beach somewhere was laughable, but it sure as hell beat the alternative.
Flying directly into Pittsburgh, while it might be fun, would have been suicide. Belial, if he was actually on this rock, would have the airport staked out, and probably had enough demonic firepower on hand to burn the whole city to the ground. They might even have other nearby airports staked out too, including Cleveland. I wasn’t about to fly across the country just to get in a car and drive another twelve hours though, so I booked the flight to Cleveland and hoped for the best.
I looked at the other people waiting to board and felt decidedly pessimistic about this trip. They were a downtrodden lot. I understood: I’d been to Cleveland before. There wasn’t much to look forward to.
On the positive side, if we ended up burning a whole city to the ground, Cleveland was as good a choice as any.
********
I did my best to change my appearance before we began our final descent. The closer we got to the city, the more certain I became that someone would be waiting for me. I didn’t have a change of clothes or a Mission Impossible-style lifelike mask, so instead I put my hair in a ponytail and wore a pair of sunglasses. The end result was decidedly mixed. The getup changed my appearance slightly, but it also made me look like a Hollywood producer. A straight-to-video producer: the type who makes soft core porn or Steven Seagal movies.
I got to my seat as the plane began its descent. Once again I was sitting next to a fat woman. This one was slightly less obese but far more irritating than the one I’d sat next to on the trip to Los Angeles. She kept talking on her cell phone despite the flight crew’s message to turn off all electronic devices. I looked over at her and she glared at me as though I was the offending presence. I wanted to say something, but it was pointless. People like her would never understand how much they were hated by normal, decent folk like myself. Good luck getting a part in the next Seagal flick, lady.
I had a window seat, so I simply looked out the window and went through possible scenarios I’d be facing once we touched down in Cleveland.
Scenario One: ther
e’d be no one there, and I could simply get off the plane and rent a car like any other businessman arriving in the city. Odds of that being the case were unlikely. Scenario Two, there would be a small contingent of Belial’s forces there waiting for me. If that were the case, I trusted my ability to slip any Wards they may have set up. There could be violence, but nothing that should get out of hand. That was probably the most likely of the scenarios to take place. And then there was Scenario Three, which I only saw happening if Marchosias turned me in and they knew I’d be arriving from Las Vegas. They still wouldn’t know which airport I was coming to, but Belial could spread his forces across multiple cities because they only had to watch arriving flights from a single city instead of a hundred cities. In that case, I would be facing the combined forces of Hell. It would be all out war, and Cleveland would burn. I doubted Belial would make such a bold move, but I couldn’t put it past him. I also didn’t think Marchosias would sell me out like that, but that too was far from certain.
As we descended, I worked a Discovery to locate any Wards. Breaking the Wards would give away my presence, so I made the Discovery as faint as possible. Just enough to brush against them, but not enough to set them off. I found three. Three was a good number. It meant the airport wasn’t overrun with Belial’s troops, or they would have eschewed the Wards and just waited for me to land. And using three of them meant they didn’t know where I’d be coming from. It was looking like Scenario Two was the one I’d be facing. If I played my cards right, I could get through without any violence at all.
I followed the herd off the plane. My mind was alert, but I kept a casual posture. I spotted three scouts as I made my way through the terminal. They might as well have worn signs that said, We are of demonic origin, please keep your distance. Each one had claimed a spot to view the foot traffic that passed by, and none of them were within ten feet of the nearest person. Regular people could sense demonism without knowing it, and subconsciously they withdrew from it. It subsequently looked like there was an invisible force field around each of the scouts. I knew that force field well, because I usually traveled in one also. But I was blending in, so I kept my "Keep Your Distance" vibe to a minimum. I was only half demon anyway. It was the reason I could walk through the airport without setting off any wards, but Belial didn’t know that. I took some satisfaction in having one miniscule advantage after the tidal wave of disadvantages that had been piling up on me in the last 48 hours.
Beyond those three scouts, I didn’t notice anything else out of place. I was a little offended that Belial didn’t think more of me than to send three nitwits to deal with it. Hopefully, that meant he had his forces stretched even thinner than I had hoped. More likely, he was simply underestimating me. Belial was a warrior and a genius when it came to killing things. First and foremost, though, he was a racist: In his view, anyone that had spent thirty-two years in this world had to be stupid and soft. I could only hope that he didn’t learn his lesson very quickly and would continue to think of me as easy prey. If that were the case, maybe my chance-of-survival gauge would tick up a few more notches.
Things started going less smoothly when I got lost trying to find the car rental counter. I figured the two most likely places for a fourth guard to be stationed were the rental counter and the taxi service in front of the airport, so I didn’t want to linger too long in the area. Unfortunately, the Cleveland Hopkins Airport was seemingly designed by a mentally deficient monkey who smoked copious amounts of pot, because there was not a single sign for the car rental service to be seen.
I was about to ask directions from someone that looked like they belonged there when I caught sight of a beautiful young woman in a chauffeur’s outfit with a sign that read ‘M. Lynch’. She was sitting on a bench rubbing her feet, but she still held the sign high enough to be seen by all. Intrigued, I walked up to her.
“Who are you waiting for?” I asked.
She looked at the sign in her hand, then back to me, as if that was answer enough.
“What’s the ‘M’ stand for?” I prodded.
“I’m waiting for a guy named Martin Lynch. He’s probably not even showing up.” She sounded tired and disgusted. “And no, I don’t want a date, nor am I paid to give you that kind of ride.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Just tell me who sent you to pick up Mr. Lynch.”
She looked up at me with renewed interest. “Cassandra. She said he might appreciate the ride.”
I smiled. Cassandra was an old friend. She was a Seductress demon who I’d been intimate with on a number of occasions, so her message was a bit of a double entendre.
“I guess I’m the Lynch you’re looking for, then,” I told her.
The woman appraised me for a second before accepting that I was who I said I was. She smiled at me, stood up, and shook my hand. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, “In that case, I was paid to give you that kind of ride. Cassandra said you might need the stress relief.”
The thought was an appealing one. The woman was stunning. But it’d been a long couple days and I was just happy I wouldn’t have to drive myself to Pittsburgh.
“That’s okay,” I said. “A traditional ride is more than enough for now.”
She looked disappointed. I doubted she was, but if she knew Cassandra, she was a professional. She knew how to push a man’s buttons. “Suit yourself. But if you change your mind, there’s lots of room in the limo, and it’s a long drive. My name’s Amber, by the way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “You can call me Jacob, by the way. I haven’t gone by Martin in a long time.”
She smiled, any lingering doubts about my validity vanishing. “Cassandra said you’d say that.”
I had to hand it to Cass, she knew me better than most. She’d be thrilled that she had found me when no one else could. She always enjoyed showing off how smart she was. But I still had to be careful. She was a demon after all. She was also the reason that Marchosias had shot me in the chest.
I didn’t let down my guard even after we pulled away from the airport in the limousine. Cassandra had used my human name to get my attention, which was smart. However, that meant others could do it as well. I didn’t see Belial having that much foresight, but I also hadn't seen him in decades. Who knew what tricks he'd learned in the meantime. It wasn’t until Amber lowered the privacy window and handed me the phone that I started to relax.
“Hey baby, how’s the ride?” Cassandra’s voice, sexy as ever, purred from the phone.
“Not bad. I didn’t take her up on her other offer, though.”
“That’s a shame. She’s one of my best.”
“I believe it. She didn’t seem that into me though.”
Cassandra laughed. “Give her a break. She’d been standing there holding that sign for three days on the off chance that you might show up and that you might realize the sign was for you. She was probably hit on by every drunk businessman getting off a plane in Cleveland for the last three days. I think a little irritability is understandable."
“I’m not complaining. I just wish you’d have been here to pick me up in person.”
“Yeah, like I’m going to waste three days of my precious time waiting to save your ass. I have a business to run.” Business to her was a brothel, although she found the word distasteful. She’d always said the word was too low-class to describe her business. She only serviced high-end clients. Sometimes, if they crossed her, she also dealt with their secrets too. But that was only when it was required. Otherwise, she was completely aboveboard. As aboveboard as a mistress could be, at any rate.
“Are you coming straight here?” she asked.
“No. There’re a few things I have to take care of first.”
“Is one of them banging your driver?” she said it in that playful whisper that drove every man who ever met her crazy. I wasn’t immune, either.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, that’s right, you don’t do human women. You stil
l have that hang-up?”
“So far.”
“Too bad. Amber’s really good. I’ve done her myself a few times."
“Cassandra,” I said in my best chastising voice, although the mental image of that was already creeping into my brain.
“Okay, okay. More than a few.”
I shook my head. “Bye, Cass. Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. You can thank me properly when you get here.”
She hung up on me and I handed the phone back to Amber.
“Thanks for waiting for me at the airport. I’m sure that wasn’t fun.”
She took the phone over her shoulder without looking back. “No big deal. It was nice to get off my back for a few days.”
********
We got into Pittsburgh just before midnight. It was nice having someone drive; it allowed me to prepare for the task at hand. Lots of people were going to die, and if things went as planned I wouldn’t be one of them. I got all the “Hail Mary’s” and “Our Fathers” out of the way now. The next time I went to Hell, I’d make sure I earned it.
BOOK TWO
Homecoming
Chapter 12
Pittsburgh has always been a city in name only. The actual city proper is just fifty-six square miles, its area smaller than all of New York’s five boroughs except Manhattan. Downtown is really only a few blocks long, and the rest of the city is a patchwork of neighborhoods stitched together along the banks of one or more of the three rivers that gave the city its nickname. My father, the man who had raised me since I was thirteen years old, was a pastor at Saint Margaret Mary’s along the Allegheny River. From the ages of thirteen to eighteen, I spent most of my life in that church and the surrounding area. Contrary to folklore, demons don’t feel anything when they walk into a church. It’s just a building. Men claim it as a holy place, but God doesn’t give a shit. The holy places of the world were found in the Middle East or places like the Iadiel where actual sacred events took place. An Angel is buried there, so that pretty much guarantees a place holy status. Point of fact, there were only four known holy places in the entire United States. All the churches and graveyards and such were just so much empty window dressing. A lot of nice brickwork, but as soulless as any other building.