The Demon Beside Me

by Nelson, Christopher

  I took Hikari’s hand and squeezed. “No, he’s worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “I troubled him, Hikari. Not just troubling the Choir, I troubled him, personally. If he’s making it personal, nothing good’s going to happen here.” I let go of her hand and looked her in the eye. “Be ready for anything.”

  She nodded and gestured toward the inner sanctuary. I followed her and nodded to Jase as I took my place at the foot of the table. Opheran sat to my right, Tink at his left hand, Hikari at his right. On the opposite side, Caleb sat to the Cherub’s right, Victor at his left. The two imps floated in midair, either not to imbalance the proceedings, or just to stay separate. The Chairman caught my eye and frowned, shaking his head slightly. Another bad sign. I turned my head to look at Opheran, but he was expressionless, simply regarding his counterpart across the table.

  Introductions went around the table, ending with the Cherub. “I am Bartholomew,” he said, making no mention of his rank or titles. “Let us proceed with this, Pastor Pruitt. A simple statement of our initial positions will be adequate to start from.”

  “An excellent suggestion,” Jase said. “Perhaps Prince Opheran would like to make the first statement?”

  Opheran nodded and rose to his feet. “While I do not represent the Host in total, I am authorized and empowered to speak for House Asmodeus. One of our minor nobles has ‘conquered’ the realm of Heaven through methods beyond our knowledge. The House did not authorize or aid this action. In the interests of maintaining peaceful relations with the Choir, even though their agents have previously acted in bad faith, we are prepared to cede our conquest in exchange for minor concessions.”

  As he sat down, Bartholomew rose, without acknowledgement from Jase. “I speak for the Choir, in its totality. The realm of Heaven is ours, and we do not acknowledge its conquest. We demand the immediate release of all claims, and further demand the immediate extradition of the perpetrator to our custody for proper and fitting chastisement. Furthermore, while House Asmodeus may not have authorized this act, your House has tacitly approved and given this crime legitimacy. The Choir demands the cessation of all your activities on this world, and that House Asmodeus turn over all of its worldly assets to assigned agents of Choir within thirty days. Failure to do so will be considered an act of war.”

  No one responded to his words for a long moment. I glanced at Caleb, whose expression could most accurately be considered horrified. Victor was obviously repressing a smile, while Jase was speechless. Opheran seemed frozen in place, but then slowly rose to his feet. “Your demands go beyond any semblance of reasonable negotiation, Cherub.”

  “This is not a negotiation,” Bartholomew replied. “We have tolerated your blight upon this world for far too long. You will surrender your House to us, you will surrender that abominable halfbreed, and you will surrender any claims to our ancestral home. No more, no less.”

  “Abominable halfbreed?” I was on my feet before Caleb or Tink could stop me. “I am the Gatekeeper. Do you understand what that means? I have the power to open the Gates of Ascension, the path that will allow you to return to Heaven and the Host to Hell. Do you even care if your Choir returns home? I have the power to open the Gates, but I do not have the obligation to do so.” I paused a moment to let that sink in. “We’ve already established that you don’t plan on negotiating in good faith, after you sent that inept Archangel after me again. Let me tell you exactly what my position is, Barty.”

  “Barty?” One sculpted eyebrow rose.

  “I have something you want. I don’t want it. You can have it back. No charges, no concessions, nothing in return except you leave me the hell alone.” I pointed at the table. “This entire charade’s unnecessary, especially if you’re asking for ridiculous things. Do you seriously think you’re going to get an entire House to surrender to you simply because of this? If I were in Opheran’s seat, I would have laughed in your face. You deserve nothing of the sort.”

  The Cherub’s expression was stony. His eyes shone slightly from within as he regarded me. “You seek to hold the opening of the Gates of Ascension over us?”

  “Just as you seek to hold the fate of my entire House over my actions,” I snapped.

  “And you believe that you are holding something valuable,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Victor told me what was told to him. If one of ours took Hell from you, you would merely kill him and take it back, yes?” Bartholomew smiled. “Though it pains me to admit it, we are not so different, not in all things.”

  I wanted to take a step back, but the chair was in my way. “What was the point of this, then? I thought you wanted to return to Heaven!”

  “We do,” he said. “However, if we cannot, then we will simply bring Heaven to this world. The first step in doing so is the annihilation of your kind, demon.”

  Jase was on his feet, opening his mouth. Before he could get a word out, the Cherub snapped his fingers. Jase collapsed as if someone had taken a cudgel to the back of his head. The entire church shook and my hair stood on end, as if something electric had just run through my entire body. “What was that?” Hikari asked.

  “The inversion of this sanctuary,” Victor said, rising to his feet and his swords appearing in his hands. “The entrapment of demons, so that we may exterminate them. This is holy ground, fools. The sanctuary draws upon angelic power, and a Cherub may command it. Do you really think that we would be beholden to a human concept?”

  Caleb stood as well, his sword and shield manifesting, but another snap of the Cherub’s fingers forced him to his knees. Opheran transformed in front of us and his presence intensified. Watching a fight between a Prince and a Cherub would have been something, but I had other things to worry about, like a smirking angel approaching with weapons drawn. “Archangel, I shall keep this Prince preoccupied. You will slay the halfbreed,” Bartholomew ordered. I suspected the order was unnecessary at this point.

  Opheran reached forward, hellfire flickering around his claws, but the Cherub was already acting. Concentric shields of force sprang up between them, each of them testing the other’s defenses. I kicked my chair out of the way and forced my own transformation. Victor was stalking around the table as if he had already won, and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do to help Opheran without giving him an opening.

  A hint of movement from my right, and a spiral of magic looped around Victor, hoisting him up and backwards. He hacked away the magic with his scimitars, but Hikari grabbed my hand while he was distracted. “Let’s go,” she shouted, and we sprinted out of the sanctuary. I looked over my shoulder as we reached the foyer. Tink was covering our retreat with a mix of spells I had never seen her use before. The archangel was slowly advancing on her, but she was keeping him too far away for his weapons to come into play.

  Hikari yanked on the doors, but they refused to budge. She swore, sliced her palm open, and slammed a bloody handprint against the door. The heavy wood visibly rippled, but refused to move, and she fell backwards. “That’s not possible!”

  I looked over my shoulder again, just in time to see Tink flying through the air toward us. I caught her before she could slam into the doors and lowered her to the ground. She curled up and coughed violently, blood flecking her lips. Victor appeared in the sanctuary doorway. “Never send a mere human to stand in my way,” he said with a grin, pointing his scimitars at me.

  “She’s anything but a mere human,” I said. “Or did you forget the last time we met?”

  “She’s in no shape to assist you now.” His grin widened and he took a step forward.

  “No, but Caleb is.”

  As the angel spun, scimitars flashing into a guard position, I clawed my hands open and forced ichor from the wounds, then forced that ichor to ignite into hellfire. He sensed it, but I was already charging him. He whirled in an attempt to decapitate me, but I knew I had to avoid those blades. I slid toward his legs like a baseball player stealing home, getting undernea
th his guard, a ball of hellfire still sputtering in my hands. “Gotcha,” I said, and launched the hellfire up toward him.

  He twisted aside, but even so, the hellfire clawed its way up his side, igniting his clothing and eating into his flesh. I knew that wouldn’t seriously injure him, so I gathered my legs underneath me while he extinguished the hellfire and grabbed his ankle. His scimitars started to flash down at me, but I pushed off as hard as I could, my wings popping through my shirt and giving me one good sweep back into the sanctuary.

  One blade carved through my left wing, blindingly painful. I used my right wing to force myself into a spiraling spinning descent. If I timed it right, this would hurt him much more than it would hurt me. Otherwise, this would be a terrible mistake.

  I got lucky. Victor slammed into the Cherub’s defensive shields and I let go and tried to skip away. The discharge from his impact was more than I had been expecting. Angelic magic arced through me, throwing me across the sanctuary. I hit a pew, smashing through it in a spray of splinters and slamming my head into the one behind it. If I hadn’t been transformed, the impact would have broken my neck. Even so, the aftereffects of the magic dazed me. I lay there, vision doubled or maybe tripled. Seeing Victor loom over me with somewhere between four and six scimitars was disconcerting.

  “Time to die, halfbreed.” He spat on my chest, then spun each scimitar, point down, and lunged toward me. Before he could complete his lunge, two bolts of force struck him in the chest and face, knocking him backwards to trip over the pew I had just broken with my face.

  I lurched to my feet. “Stupid angels. Always trying to act alone. Don’t you ever have any friends?” Behind me, Tink was clutching her stomach, but runes hung in the air all around her. Blood streaked down Hikari's arms, power crackling between her fingertips. I held a hand out to Tink, my palm cupping steaming green ichor. She stepped forward, her eyes narrowed and a snarl on her lips.

  “No!” Kibs dove between us and pushed her hand away before it could reach mine. “Don’t do it, you shitheads!”

  “What?”

  “You’ll destroy the church!”

  “So?”

  Kibs pointed toward where Jase had collapsed. “You’ll kill him and destroy everything he lives for!”

  I closed my fist, ichor squirting out to the sides. “Then what do you suggest, Kibs? We’ve got sort of a problem here.”

  “He’s up again,” Hikari snapped, and followed her announcement with tracing a rune in the air. She blew on it, and something flew past me. Victor yelped. “We’ve only got so much blood to go around.”

  “Where’s the Chairman?” I asked.

  “Looking for a weakness in the sanctuary so we can escape and get help,” Kibs said. “You’ve got to collapse the sanctuary somehow. That fucking Cherub’s got us all locked down tighter than a pro dominatrix.”

  “Hikari,” I said. “Try and wake Jase up. Tink, throw everything you’ve got at the Cherub. Try to force him to split his attention. I’ll keep Victor distracted.”

  Hikari flung one last spell off at Victor before running for the other end of the sanctuary. Tink took a few steps back, then knelt and started to draw a circle around where she was standing. It would take her a minute or two to finish that sort of ritual power. That left me with Victor. “Any suggestions, Kibs?”

  “Fuck his shit up?”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Need help?”

  “Don’t you imps have something against taking an active part in fights like this?”

  Kibs grinned, revealing rows of sharp, pointy little teeth. “Considering the circumstances? Fuck them.”

  Victor was starting toward me again, scimitars held in guard positions. He wasn’t smiling anymore, not as purity dripped from a gash across his forehead and his clothes smoldered. I manifested more hellfire and swirled it around with a claw. “Victor, are you sure you want to continue this?”

  “I have my orders,” he said.

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” I lofted the hellfire toward him, a rope of my flame spiraling toward him. One of my uncles had taught me that trick long ago. It wasn’t enough to do any significant damage, but Victor didn’t know that. He slashed at the hellfire, breaking the rope, but the two separate parts continued to spiral in at him. One rope curled around his left arm, setting his uniform sleeve on fire.

  “I’ve had enough of this!” He tore the sleeve free and slashed the other part of the rope into tatters before I could even blink. Then, before I had a change to dodge, he flew toward me, twin scimitars crossed in front of him like a giant pair of curved scissors, his aim placing my neck precisely between the blades.

  What he didn’t notice was the imp appearing on the ground between us.

  Kibs timed it perfectly. A leaping uppercut from a two-foot tall imp, aimed at a target that was in no way sportsmanlike, resulted in the archangel skipping a step as his eyes bugged out. I flung myself sideways as he fell off balance and crashed into another pew. He didn’t jump right back up. I wouldn’t have either.

  Across the sanctuary, Hikari was drawing runes on Jase, probably in an attempt to awaken him. Tink had her ritual circle complete and even as I watched, runes started to manifest in the air all around her. New ones appeared as quickly as she could scribe them. “Kibs, keep an eye on the archangel,” I said. “Tink, you ready yet?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  “Let that bastard have it,” I snarled.

  She placed a hand on the rune hanging directly in front of her. As one, all of the runes hanging in the air aligned and started to glow with magical power. She pushed forward and spells fired, a staggered array of magical bolts. Each one that struck the Cherub’s defenses was absorbed, seemingly effortlessly, but I saw his eyes glance in our direction. Tink growled and closed her fist, multiplying the attack.

  The Cherub turned and gestured at her, just like flicking at an insect. Once again, Tink was airborne, but this time someone caught her. “A good try, human,” Victor said, placing one of his blades to her throat. Tink froze in place. Kibs was nowhere to be seen. What had happened?

  “Let her go,” I said, forcing hellfire into my hands. The fight had taken its toll on my ichor and it was all I could do to keep my transformation in place.

  “Or what, halfbreed?” Victor laughed at me. “You’re all dead now. Perhaps if you beg, I’ll kill her cleanly. Beg for mercy, demon. Go on.”

  Before I could get a word out, the building shuddered again. Victor’s eyes widened and I felt the pressure behind me lessen. I spun around, saw Opheran and Bartholomew facing the head of the table where Jase stood, his eyes open and expression as furious as I’d ever seen the old man. He slammed his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Your sanctuary is hereby revoked!”

  Something tore me out of the church, power that killed and rebuilt me a hundred times just to kill me again. When it left me standing in the parking lot, all it left was the pain, so intense all I could do was scream it out. The only bright point was that I wasn’t the only voice doing so.

  After what felt like an eternity, a cool hand touched my forehead. My eyes snapped open to see Hikari kneeling over me. “You ok?” she asked.

  “Now I know why Azriphel screamed when Jase did that to him,” I said. My throat felt raw. “What happened?”

  “Can you sit up?” She offered her hands and I took them. Looking around the lot, I saw the Cherub and Victor still curled up in pain, but Tink and Opheran were already sitting up as well. Tink caught my eye and scowled at me. I shook my head and her scowl transformed into a smirk.

  “Did you find Kibs?” I asked Hikari.

  “Yes. He’s on the other side of Opheran,” she said, gesturing in that direction. “Jase and Caleb are still inside.”

  I looked toward the church, just in time to see two figures start down the steps. Caleb was a Power fully unveiled, radiating the coldest fury I had ever seen. Jase walked next to him, all the slowness of age gone
from his movements. He looked at me, directly at me, and beckoned. I stood up, ignored Hikari's protests as well as my body's whining for mercy, and walked to the pastor. “Sorry about the mess,” I said.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “This is a reckoning that I never thought I’d see. A church defiled by servants of He who we worship? I owe you an apology. I am sorry, Isaiah. If it wasn’t for my doubts, none of this would have happened.”

  I shrugged it off. “No one’s dead, Jase. As long as we’re here to hear it, you’re forgiven.”

  He offered me a small smile, but then his gaze turned to Caleb, who left his side and was walking toward the prone figure of Victor. He held his hand out to his side and his sword appeared. “Shit,” I said, and forced my body into a trot. I caught the angel before he reached his counterpart. “Look, Caleb, I know you’re mad-”

  “Zay, shut up.”

  “I’m not going to let you kill him.”

  “I said, shut up.”

  “He’s just following orders. If you want to kill someone, kill that bastard.” I pointed at Bartholomew. Caleb turned his head to follow my pointing finger, then looked back at me. His expression didn’t change one bit. “I’m serious,” I insisted. “Besides, Victor is inept. Leaving him alive means we have a known quantity coming after us, someone we know we can handle.”

  Caleb’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded and walked over toward Bartholomew, whose eyes flicked open at our approach. “Are you considering betrayal, Caleb DeMarco?” he whispered.

  “I am considering ridding the Choir of idiocy,” Caleb stated, and slammed the point of his sword down into the asphalt of the parking lot. The Cherub flinched as gravel sprayed him. “You, Cherub, betrayed our human faithful. I could easily charge you with a violation of our honor code and execute you now.”

  “Who would believe you?”

  “Who would stop me?” Caleb shrugged. “Victor, as my companion has pointed out, is inept. Who would believe him? More to the point, who would believe me? I think you know the answer to that.”