Anathema

by Bruce Talmas

“Did he mention Cassandra?” I asked. Rose gave me a surprised look at the unexpected question.

  “Yeah,” she said. “He said that was how he found me, and to let her know what happened that night.”

  Rose looked at me. “Do you think Cassandra’s in on it?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “No, but he knew enough about me to lay another trail of clues for me to follow.” I looked at Celeste. “What’s the number he gave you?” I nodded at Rose, who wrote it down as Celeste recited it off her phone.

  I hefted the .44. “I think this is a little bit of overkill. Don’t you?”

  “You didn’t see this guy. He scared the hell out of me. And he made me just as scared of you. He told me you…He told me that you’ve done things.”

  I laughed. “I’ve done a lot of things. Did he mention anything in particular?”

  She was holding it together, but just barely. I needed to get my information and get out of there.

  “He said you killed people. A lot of people.”

  “Well that’s true,” I said. “But I’m not going to kill you. All I need from you is to tell me what he looked like.”

  She closed her eyes for a second, picturing the crazy john that got off on the act of sacrificing her. “He was tall. A little taller than you. Maybe about twenty years old. Good looking. Really good looking.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Dark hair. Gray eyes. Kinda like you, actually. Except he was younger and not so…” she trailed off.

  “Not so what?”

  “Not so hard, I guess I would say.”

  I nodded. “So he was a younger, softer version of me?”

  She laughed nervously. “I wouldn’t put it that way. Nobody that met this guy would call him soft. But next to you, yeah, maybe a little.”

  “Any scars or anything like that?”

  “Like I said, black hair like yours. Gray eyes. Not blue. Gray. I’d never seen eyes like that before. No scars at all. He was as close to perfect as I’ve ever seen a man that wasn’t on a movie screen.”

  “Did you fuck him?”

  She shuddered. “No. I don’t know if I could have. He was so good-looking, but there was nothing sexual about him. In fact, once he did the little playacting thing and slit my throat, he acted like I was really dead. There were four of them in the room, and once the ceremony was done, they just got up and left. I laid naked on that stupid slab of rock for forty-five minutes waiting for them to come back, but they never did.”

  “Where did they conduct the ceremony?”

  “In a big field north of here. They had the whole area set up like a mini Stonehenge. Rocks were laid out all around the altar where they ‘killed’ me.”

  “Cass said you thought the ceremony was some kind of Summoning?”

  She nodded. “I know it was a Summoning. I’ve read all the books and done all the research. I didn’t pick up everything they said, but I caught enough to get the gist of it.”

  I looked at Rose. He shrugged. It wasn’t great information, but it was more than we had before. At least we had a description of our secret magician.

  I kept Celeste there for an hour, hoping that her mystery contact would show up, or at least call her back. Neither happened. After an hour, I tried the number myself, but it went straight to an automated voicemail.

  Finally, after we’d gotten everything we were going to get, I looked at the prostitute. “Okay,” I told her, “you can go.”

  She got up to leave. When she stood, her skirt no longer covered her ass. It was a nice ass, I had to admit.

  “Oh, one other thing,” I felt like Columbo, “Did they use a demon’s name in the Summoning?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. With a Summoning, you have to keep repeating the demon’s name throughout the ceremony.”

  “Which demon was it?”

  “A demon named Belial. He’s supposedly a vicious lord of the underworld…”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “You know about demons?” she asked.

  “…I know all about him. And some others.”

  “You almost sound like you believe in all this,” she said.

  “You don’t?”

  “I buy into some of the occult stuff. Me and my girlfriends will screw around with the Ouija board every now and then. But summoning demons with black magic? That’s just crazy.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. That is crazy.”

  Chapter 27

  Rose and I left the hotel parking lot. We had to pay fifteen dollars for them to park our car for less than two hours. “Fifteen fucking dollars,” I muttered. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Rose ignored me. “So that girl came there to kill you, right?” Rose asked.

  “Yep.” I pulled out of the garage and onto the street. “How do they justify charging those kind of rates. It’s fucking criminal.”

  “You seem more worked up about the fifteen dollars than about the prostitute who tried to kill you.”

  “Happens more often than you’d think,” I said, “I mean, her being a prostitute is a new wrinkle in the scenario, but you get what I’m saying: You just get used to it.”

  I drove back out of the city. We rode on in silence for a while, Rose dwelling on the idea of having a price on his head if he stayed with me, and me wondering who I could write to regarding the fifteen-dollar refund. The Pittsburgh parking authority, I assumed, if there was such a thing.

  “So why does this Belial want you dead?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” I said, letting the fifteen-dollar dilemma go for the moment. “We’ve known each other for a while, and we always got along well enough. I think I’ve burned some bridges since I’ve been up here, though.”

  “By ‘up here’ you mean what, exactly?”

  “Not being in Hell. It’s where I’m from originally. Didn’t I mention that?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Besides, Belial was always a little jealous of me,” I said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I’m better than he is. He’s very competitive. He probably jumped at the chance to send me back to Hell.”

  Rose nodded in understanding. I’d bet money that he had an older brother. “So Belial is kind of like Hell’s bounty hunter, then?”

  That seemed as good an analogy as any. “Yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it.”

  “So that would make you an escapee from Hell, then?”

  “No. I was sent from Hell, with Lucifer’s blessing. I just didn’t do what I was told when I got here.”

  “Wait a second, you’ve actually met the Devil?”

  “Of course.”

  Rose was in shock. “So, like, actually met the Devil? Lucifer?”

  “Hell’s big, but not that big. Sure, you’ve got billions of human souls suffering eternal torment, but they’re mainly for show. The entire native population of Hell is located in a single city. You’re bound to run into Lucifer every now and then. He’s out and about all the time. I think he likes the attention. If you ask me, he’s got a bit of the narcissist in him.”

  “This is insane,” he said. I couldn’t argue. I’d be feeling the same way if I were in his shoes. But he wasn’t done. He was just trying to process everything. “So there are cities in Hell?”

  “A city,” I said. “Dis. It’s my hometown, if you will.” I looked over at him. He seemed very confused by the whole thing. “Don’t you ever read? Dis is pretty well known.”

  He was rubbing his hands over the interior again. Making sure everything was still real. “I’ve heard of it. I thought it was just a story.”

  “Everything’s just a story,” I said. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

  As I pulled into Rose’s housing plan, every magical particle in my body ignited. It felt like being simultaneously struck by lightning and stung by a thousand bees. My muscles went rigid for a second and I almost wrecked Barney’s car. Thank God I managed to avoid sideswiping a car parked along the street. Barney woul
d have been furious. I’d have never heard the end of it.

  “Watch out!” Rose yelled, a bit too late to do any good. Once I regained control, he looked over at me. “What the hell just happened?”

  “Magic.” The word came out in a hoarse whisper. My vocal cords sounded like they’d been singed. “And lots of it.”

  Rose started looking around. Then it hit him. “Lori,” he said. “Step on it!”

  I did. If I felt the magic this strongly without even looking for it, all bets were off. There was no hiding from it. Whatever Belial had been waiting for, the wait was over. Maybe it was the fact that Rose and I had combined forces. Maybe he just got impatient. Whatever the case, he was laying his cards on the table. He wanted to see if I’d take the bait. Normally, I’d turn around and wait for the odds to turn more in my favor. But Rose’s wife was in danger. I liked her. And I liked Rose, despite his obvious flaws. He’d just lost a son. I couldn’t ask him to sacrifice any more for this war that he never wanted any part of in the first place. He wasn’t about to let it go, and I wasn’t one to avoid a fight, odds be damned.

  I recognized that it was a strangely human sentiment, but it felt right. Maybe it was time for me to stop worrying about just pissing off Lucifer and actually casting my lot in with the good guys. That meant doing things that might not be in my self-interest. The new me was becoming a goddamned boy scout. I didn’t like it. I made a mental note to smack Marchosias when I saw him again.

  On the bright side, it would give me a chance to kill a lot of people. There was always a silver lining.

  We pulled into Rose’s driveway and he was running for the front door before I even put the car in park. That wasn’t the smartest move, but he was beyond listening to me. I waited to see if he was going to get cut down before he even made it into the house. To my mild surprise, he didn’t.

  The front door was closed, but that didn’t mean anything. Whatever they were going to do to Lori Rose may have already been done. I got out of the car carefully, deliberately, and popped the trunk. My demon senses were going haywire, but I forced myself to stay calm. Eyes were watching me as I retrieved my bag from the trunk. Lots of eyes. I flashed a smile into the dark and waited for a response.

  Nothing. But they were there. I could feel them.

  It would be another two hours before the sun came up, but my night eyes could see movement in the shadow. Those shadows could see me, too. I smiled again.

  Let them come. I was tired of the cloak and dagger bullshit.

  Inside, Rose was over the body of his wife. She was lying on the living room floor, not two feet from where we’d shared a glass of wine earlier in the evening. I pulled up short and observed silently. I was an interloper here. I was, at least in some part, responsible for this. It wasn’t my place to speak.

  He drew his gun. I drew mine. He kept it pointed at the ground. I did the same. “She’s alive,” he said, and it took me a minute to process his words. I’d thought for sure they’d killed her.

  “She’s just passed out,” he said. His relief was palpable. “This happens, from time to time.” He looked at me in embarrassment, but I was just happy she wasn’t dead. No more innocent lives lost. It was time to settle this, once and for all.

  “Take her upstairs,” I said. “Lock her in somewhere safe.”

  I went to the front door, pausing only a moment to take a look before closing it.

  Rose saw the look on my face as he scooped up his wife. “What is it?”

  “They’re coming.”

  I could feel the imminent violence approaching. It passed through me like a pleasant summer breeze, warming me. Comforting me. I saw it rising in Rose as well as he came back down the steps, the task of safeguarding his wife's unconscious form completed, and the new, imminently more actionable item of killing the enemies at hand. Finally, the kindred spirit I had sensed in Rose all along was coming to the forefront. It was bloodlust, plain and simple. We could both deny it, but what would that serve? We wanted vengeance, and it was delivering itself to us.

  It was as potent to me as desire was to Cassandra, she’d been right about that. The feeling I felt now was what she had been referring to. This was my drug, my sex, my reason for being. It’s what I was born to do. I embraced it.

  It was the only way we would live through this.

  “Why would they come here?” he asked me.

  “Wrong question,” I said.

  He arched an eyebrow. “What’s the right question?”

  “The only question that matters right now: How do we kill them? They’re the ones that killed your son. And they came here looking for you, or your wife. They’re out there right now. I want you to feel that, deep in your gut, and I want you to use it. Otherwise we’re not getting out of here alive.”

  I could see the realization come over him: this was what he wanted. It was what everyone wanted in the end: to make things right without concern for courts or laws or empty moral equivocation. They were bad, and we were good, at least in this situation. It couldn’t be more simple.

  Now was the time for the good guys to start doing bad things.

  “How many are there?” he asked.

  “At least twenty,” I said.

  “How do we kill them?”

  “Are you a good shot?” I nodded toward the gun in his hand.

  He raised it up to his face like he was marveling at the fact that it was in his hand. He gave it a strange little smile, “Better than most.”

  I nodded. “Good. Shoot anything that moves.” I saw the look in his eye and decided it would be a good idea to clarify: “Anything that isn’t me. If they’re demons, shoot them in the head. Even a high-level demon will be down for a little while with a good headshot.”

  “How do I know whether they’re human or demons?”

  “If you shoot them and they get back up, they’re probably demons.”

  I should have brought Gaap’s Claw with me. I’d been expecting a quiet night in a sex club and a nice chat with Cassandra, but that was no excuse. With everything that had happened, I should have been more prepared for a fight. I hoped I would live long enough to learn my lesson.

  “How many ways are there into the house?” I asked as I surveyed the room.

  “Just the front door and back doors,” he answered.

  “Plus the windows,” I pointed at the big picture window in his living room.

  He nodded to the back of the house. “There are two more that are big enough for someone to get in here on the ground floor.”

  “And they’d come that way?” I motioned back to the kitchen.

  “Yeah.”

  “That means there are three ways for them to enter this room, but the window and front door are close enough that we can treat that as a single point of entry.”

  I grabbed the couch and threw it across the room, giving us more space to work with and impeding our enemies’ progress into the house. Dropping the duffel bag on the floor, I looked up at Rose as I bent down to retrieve the contents. “This is where we’ll make our stand. You focus on anything that comes through that way,” I indicated the hallway that led to the kitchen, “and I’ll handle anything coming from the front.”

  Rose nodded and went to the kitchen. He came out with a box of ammo for his Glock and a couple magazines, plus his backup revolver. It was a six-shot, but those six shots could mean the world if he had to reload the Glock.

  I opened up the duffel bag. It contained what I liked to call my “emergency kit.” Thank God I thought to put it in Barney’s trunk when I left that day.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rose said as he saw inside. It was an admittedly impressive arsenal. We might still get killed, but it wouldn’t be because we ran out of bullets. I’d even thought to put the Masamune in it, which I withdrew and strapped to my back.

  A tingle started in my gut and worked its way up to my brain. Belial.

  “He’s here,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Belial.”
I felt my adrenaline surge. As always, my focus began to sharpen and my body began to tune itself for the coming battle. I could feel my lungs expand and contract, taking in more air. I could feel my blood vessels open up to allow more oxygen. It was a small-scale version of what had happened to me in Hell.

  Then the feeling changed. I could feel a burning in my veins, and my eyes started to water. The taste of sulfur rose from the back of my throat.

  “You’re…uh…smoking,” Rose said.

  I looked at him dumbly. For a second, I couldn’t wrap my mind around his words. And once I did understand the words, it took another couple seconds to recognize their meaning. Smoke was indeed rising from my body.

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “Why are you smoking?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know. It’s never happened before.” Whatever had taken place in Hell was happening again. It was as if my human side and demon side were each preparing for battle in their own way.

  I could suddenly feel Belial as if he were right next to me. I could see him in my mind’s eye even though the walls of the house were between us. We were linked somehow. Whatever was happening, he hadn’t expected it, because it stopped him in his tracks. I could feel something inside him, something akin to fear. Uncertainty, at least. Whatever it was, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it even more when he retreated from it. He wanted to see what was going to happen before he entered the fray.

  “He’s hanging back,” I told Rose. “If I get the chance, I’m going after him.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Whatever you have to do to stay alive. Worse comes to worst, I have some frag grenades in the bag. Don’t worry about me if you need to use them; I’ll survive.” I thought about that. “Try not to throw them directly at me, though.”

  He nodded.

  “Just remember, they’re for when you have absolutely no more fucks left to give. Got it?”

  “No problem.”

  So that was that. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And now we were besties. If I could help him get revenge, he would back whatever play I made.

  The front door thumped against the couch. We both watched as several figures pushed their way into the room. They tried to come in three at a time, and ended up stumbling over each other like they were in a bad zombie flick. I picked up the Franchi shotgun from my emergency bag and took them out as they came in: three at a time. Rose finished off the ones that I merely maimed. They all seemed to be human. When they fell, they stayed down. There were seven dead before the next wave came in through the back door.