by Bruce Talmas
It was a risk, but what wasn’t these days? Being there in body would give me an advantage. I was still a citizen of Hell, or I at least had dual citizenship. I had power there, and if I was physically present, I could use that power, as opposed to my somnambulant jaunts that left me at the mercy of Lucifer. I wasn't delusional enough to think that I would have the power to take down Lucifer on his own turf, but I could get some answers that weren’t available to me here, and hopefully be able to duck out before Lucifer got wind that I was there at all.
If I were lucky, I could also get weapons. Real weapons that could do real damage to Hellspawn.
What I didn’t know was how to bring the weapons back with me. For that matter, I wasn’t sure how to get myself back once I was down there. This was all virgin territory. None of my kind had ever attempted to physically return to Hell once they were here, let alone make it round trip. In theory, it would work just like waking from a dream: all I had to do was force myself awake to come back to this world. Still, it was an assumption, and I wasn’t real keen on betting my eternal ass on the assumption that I simply needed to pinch myself.
Either way, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. When the going gets tough, the tough…ah fuck it. Sometimes, we just have to accept the fact that people are unpredictable. I just hoped Lucifer hadn’t realized that yet.
Chapter 21
Falling asleep felt like it did for me any other time. It felt like falling into an endless abyss: dreadful and breathtaking. Awesome and terrifying. But this time the sensation was overwhelming. It threatened to sweep me away. I never felt so alive, and I never felt so close to death.
I open my eyes and I’m in Hell. The smoke stings my eyes and burns my lungs. I don’t normally feel that. It must be a good sign. The pain of Hell is usually a torment of the soul. It’s agony times infinity, far too much to be recorded by simple human nerve endings. Stinging eyes are a physical annoyance. I take that to mean that I’m here in body as well as spirit.
Good to know.
I’m also not bound to the desert floor or lashed to a post or even nailed to a cross. There are no flames licking at me or Hellspawn feeding on me. Just stinging eyes and a bit of a cough. I’m just standing around, wondering what I should do. I look around and see the familiar sight of a hundred thousand souls hanging on crosses for as far as the eye can see.
And mine can see far. My old demonic senses are kicking in. I feel more than I can ever remember feeling. I’d never noticed how much my humanity had dulled all of my senses. My human side is still there—I haven’t suddenly become the monster I’d been fighting against all of my adult life—but it has naturally taken a backseat to my demonism. I don’t know why, but it has always worked that way. I don’t have to think about it, I simply rely more on the part of me that feels more comfortable in a given situation, and that part naturally takes over.
As I walk, I sense a presence. Not the damned souls in torment all around me; they’re too wrapped up in their own agonies to even notice I’m there. No, this is something else. A presence all around me. It is Hell—the will of Lucifer—and it knows I’m here.
A blackened chain flashes from the ground and tries to ensnare me. Before I can think, the Masamune is in my hand and is slicing through the chain. It shouldn’t be able to cut through such thick metal…metal that was forged in Hell, no less, but it does. The sword’s blade is glowing white hot and gives off enough heat that I can feel it even above all of the Hellfire surrounding me. The energy from the blade is different. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I can’t explain it, but it feels Good. Good, when all around it is Evil. It thrives on the presence of that Evil, challenging it and ready to tame it.
I take a couple steps, and I find myself moving like Azazel did on Earth. Every step takes me miles. A few steps and I’m beyond the horizon. A few more and I’m to the next horizon. A million thoughts run through my head, but one thought presides over all the others:
This is badass.
I realize that I had it backwards: it wasn’t my humanity that stepped aside to let my demonic nature take over, but vice versa. Hell had never felt like this to my demon half. Of course not. It made sense that Hell would be designed to heighten the sense of humanity, all the better to torment us with. But I’m not nailed to some smoking cross now, and I’m not beholden to the whims of this place. I’m free to wander wherever I please, and I’m a force to be reckoned with down here.
Not to say that I’m gonna go knock on Lucifer’s door and bitch slap him back into the pit. If Lucifer gets hold of me, I have no illusions: I’m toast. I might be powerful here, but he IS here. He has been in power for so long here that he has become one with the landscape. This place is his embodiment. I have to keep moving.
I think of Dis, the capital of Hell. My real hometown. Not quite as nice as Pittsburgh, but still home. I take a couple of steps and stop. I see it on the horizon, rising up from the fiery desert like a giant beetle emerging from the sand. Obsidian walls surround the entire city. Every structure within the city is obsidian as well. Lucifer’s not much of a decorator. No sense of color.
I traverse the remaining distance to the city at the speed of thought. Standing at the wall, I can feel the heat radiating off the tar black walls. Dis is where the denizens of Hell reside. It keeps the bulk of the Hellfire at bay, although if you want to live in Dis, you still need some good central air.
Even though I feel like Superman, Godzilla, and Samuel L. Jackson all rolled into one, I know I have to be stealthy. Openly walking through the streets would be crazy, even if in this state I feel like I could take on all of Lucifer’s hordes single-handedly. I conjure up a mental image of the Hellhole, a place I spent a lot of time at when I was just a demon. Kind of like my local dive bar. A moment later and I’m standing in front of it. Traveling at the speed of thought is going to take some getting used to. I look around to make sure no one sees me, then I duck inside and go to the bar.
It’s empty except for the bartender. I approach him, but he doesn’t pay me any mind. Briefly, I wonder if he can even see me. I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge being led around by the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“What can I get for you?” he asks without looking up, and I realize I’m not invisible after all, he’s just a shitty bartender. I’m at a loss for words. He looks up impatiently and his jaw drops.
“What’s wrong, Gaap?” I ask him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Actually, it’s quite difficult to read his facial expression, his skin being a charcoal leathery hide that renders expression pretty much useless. The closest thing I could think of on Earth would be a rhinoceros that walks on two legs. Only uglier.
“How the fuck…?” is all he can get out.
“What?”
“How the fuck are you here right now?”
“Good question,” I answer. “I’m not exactly sure. Just kinda’ winging it at the moment.”
“This isn’t possible.”
I slap him in his thick leathery face. “And yet, here I am. In the flesh.”
He doesn’t even register the slap. Just keeps staring at me. “Son of a bitch,” he says. “I never…” and then he falls silent.
I laugh. “Me neither.”
He takes a deep breath. He throws down his bar rag. “Now get the fuck out of here.” He starts to come around the bar. He looks serious.
“What? Why?”
“Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what they’ll do to me if they find you here?”
“I know, but don’t worry. I’ll be in and out. Won’t even know I’m here.” I didn’t mention that they already knew I was here, at least in the general sense.
“Famous last words,” he says. “But I’ll be too busy screaming in agony to say ‘I told you so’ if you don’t leave right now.”
I hold up my hands defensively. “Two minutes Gaap. You can give me that much, can’t you?”
He continues moving toward me until I’m face to face with him. Or fac
e to chest. He’s got a bit of a height advantage on me. “No,” he says.
“You’re all I got, buddy.”
That’s enough to hold him in place before trying to beat me to a pulp. Think what you will about demons, but they can be as loyal as any human.
He sighs. “Fine, but in the back. Someone might walk in on us here.”
He leads me around the bar to the back room, which is a combination office/VIP room. I’d spent many nights playing poker in this room. It is also a personal museum of Gaap’s military career. He’d been a renowned general in Lucifer’s army, and probably would be again one day. When you live forever, you just kind of take retirement when you feel like it, then go back to work.
“Talk fast. They must be tracking you by now.”
I nodded, then I tried to gather my thoughts so that I could ask the important questions first. I could see Gaap was getting impatient with me, so I just started running my mouth.
“What’s going on with Belial?” I ask. “Is he on Earth right now?”
Gaap looks over his shoulder twice before answering. “Yeah,” he whispers. “But no one’s supposed to know that. It’s top secret. Something big that Lucifer’s been planning for a long time, but he’s playing it real close to the vest.”
“Who brought him over?” I ask.
“No one knows. Some kind of secret agent. In fact, there was talk that it was you, since there aren’t too many people up there with that kind of power. They thought you might actually be a double agent. I even thought you might be. I’m assuming since you’re asking the question, that’s not the case.”
“Nope. Wasn’t me.”
The alert on the front door rings. It sounds like a screaming baby. Gaap must have armed it when he led me through the bar. “You’ve gotta go now!”
“One last thing,” I say urgently. I reach into my pocket and pull out the parchment from Lynch’s safe. “What does this say?”
Someone calls out from the bar. I can’t hear what they say, but Gaap replies with a hurried, “Coming!” and turns back to me. He grabs the piece of parchment and gives it a quick scan.
“I don’t know. It’s Enochian. Some kind of prophecy maybe. Something about the Antichrist’s arrival. Blood raining from the skies. Normal happy biblical horseshit. Now would you go please?”
“One last thing: Does Belial have an Angel backing him?” I ask.
Belial just stares at me like he can’t process the question. “An Angel? Are you nuts? Not that I know of.”
“Okay, that’s all I needed. Thanks Gaap.”
“Fuck off.”
He goes out into the bar. I hear him through the door as he says, “Hello Officer” loud enough for me to hear.
Time to get the hell out of Hell. I try to wake myself up, but nothing happens. I close my eyes to really concentrate at the same moment I hear Gaap say “Nothing back there but some empty kegs and old pictures.”
Shit. I look up and see a short retractable blade that Gaap used when he was in the military. It was one of his favorite weapons. He called it The Claw. The blade was attached to an apparatus that affixed it to his arm so that, when he flexed in a certain way, it would shoot out like a nasty serrated claw. A lot of things had died under that blade. I grab it off the wall.
Gaap’s arms were a lot bigger than mine, but that didn’t matter, I just needed the blade. I can hear them coming around the bar, Gaap still making noise so I can track their progress.
Out of time, I do the only thing I can think of: I stab myself in the stomach…
…And I woke up on the floor of the barn, just like I left it except for the blade sticking out of my stomach.
Chapter 22
Now that was fucking cool.
I wanted to go back, but even I didn’t have balls that big. I opened my eyes and looked down to see Gaap’s knife in my stomach. It looked like it was being held under a blacklight, still aglow with remnants of hellfire.
Knife in my gut aside, it was a successful journey. I got some answers and I got a weapon. Couldn’t ask for much more than that. I would have preferred a simple pinch to wake up over impaling myself on an infernal weapon, but it did the trick. Besides, Gaap went out of his way to help me; I couldn’t risk being found at his bar. I did technically steal one of his prized possessions, but still I’d call that a draw. Former general or not, Lucifer would have flayed him alive a million times over if he caught Gaap helping me.
The blade in my stomach was cool to the touch, but the wound was burning fiercely. I had a high pain threshold, but even I was gasping as I pulled it out. Stick a Full-Blood with this thing, they’d be in agony. Thinking about sticking Belial with it gave me a whole different kind of warm feeling inside.
I lay where I was for a few moments, breathing hard through clenched teeth and telling myself everything was just fine…except of course for the big fucking knife wound in my gut.
Getting to my feet was a chore, but eventually I made it close to upright. I took a breather before straightening up the rest of the way. It gave me time to survey the damage the infernal hellride had wrought, but it wasn’t too bad. Some smoky clothes and a hole in my stomach, but otherwise relatively intact. In fact, I felt quite refreshed. It was the first time in years that I had a good night’s rest, and I hadn't even been asleep. Maybe that was all that had been needed to recharge my demonic batteries. Full-Bloods needed to go home every couple decades or so; otherwise, they began to decline and lose their physical strength. Maybe I could get by on a trip home once every ten years. A little demonic getaway. I felt healthy and strong, and I had Gaap’s knife. If I could just find somebody to kill with it, I’d be rolling.
The wound healed very slowly, probably the result of it being a Hell-made weapon. It was late morning now, and I had to get moving, but I was still holding my guts inside with my hand. That would make slow going. My jaunt through the pentagram doorway probably raised some alerts, which meant that my enemies up here were likely aware of my presence. Killing me right away obviously hadn’t been their plan before, but I might have just changed that. Scorched as I was on hellfire and whatever the hell else was burning inside me, I was in no condition to fight a battle. Since I didn’t have a car and was a good seventy-five miles north of the city, I started to walk. Unfortunately, the whole moving-at-the-speed-of-thought thing only worked in Hell, so I had to settle for a leisurely stroll back across the countryside, just like any other schlub.
After about a half hour of walking, the wound started closing up and I was able to move easier. A few miles from the farmhouse I came to a small town that I remembered from my childhood. We didn’t socialize with the neighbors much, so we didn’t frequent any of the local establishments, but there were a couple times we’d come into town to shop or to eat. One of the few relatively normal childhood memories I had. I'd been a demon back then, so even that wasn't the rosiest of memories. It was hard to enjoy small-town life when all you could think about were ways to kill it.
I was happy to see much hadn’t changed since I was a child. Not out of any misplaced sense of nostalgia, but because people here were as trusting and naïve as ever. It was like that in most small towns, I’d found. No one ever locked their car. Half the time, they would leave the keys in it for you. I didn’t find any keys, but I did find a suped-up Camaro with expensive rims. A bit gaudy for my tastes, but what the hell.
It was a long drive. I figured I might as well do it in style. The Eminem and Beyonce CDs suggested it was probably some teenager’s sweet sixteen present. Bought and paid for with Mommy and Daddy’s retirement fund, but not enough left over to upgrade the car stereo to MP3s. I didn’t have to justify it, but it made things a littler easier. I’d lost track of how many people I’d killed in the last few days, but it was more than a few, less than a lot. Stealing some kid’s car hardly seemed worth mentioning in comparison.
My cell phone rang just as I got the car started. I pulled out of the parking lot and hightailed it to the highway
while fumbling to answer the phone.
“Yeah.”
“We’re here.” Out of context, I had no idea who ‘we’ were, or where ‘here’ was.
“Glad to hear it. Who is this?”
“It’s Barney.”
Who the fuck is Barney? I thought, before I remembered Barakiel’s conversion to Moron-islam. One question down, one to go.
“Where’s here?”
“Here.” He repeated. I could almost see him pointing at the ground he was standing on.
“That doesn’t help me, Barakiel.”
“Barney,” he corrected. “In Pittsburgh.”
I almost sideswiped a tractor trailer. “What’s that? Right now?”
“No, tomorrow night. I just thought I’d call ahead of time.”
“Asshole, what are you doing here?”
There was a pause. That was always bad where Barakiel was concerned. “We’re not there. We’re here. You’re there.”
He was baiting me, I knew, so I bit my tongue and tried to ignore him. “Is Katie with you?”
“Of course she’s with me.” There was nothing worse than a smug tone from someone who was clearly an imbecile. It was a good thing I was still a few minutes away. It would give me a chance to control my temper. Otherwise I might just shoot Baraki…Barney…on sight.
“Jesus Christ, I didn’t want you to bring her here!”
“Well what the fuck?! You told me to go and pick her up because you were in Pittsburgh. She said to take me to you…what did you want me to do?”
“I wanted you to take her anywhere but here,” I said.
“Well, we’re here,” he repeated sullenly. Hearing it again didn’t make it any better.