The Demon Beside Me

by Nelson, Christopher

  “What the hell have you been doing for the last five days?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Opheran gave me a bunch of shit to do. Plus he made me a Baron to keep me out of trouble.”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?” She put the car in gear and we pulled away. I wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be driving with one arm in a sling, but it couldn’t be any worse than usual.

  “No, it’s supposed to horrify you,” I said. “It certainly horrifies me.”

  She snorted. “You’re such a typical man.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re terrified of commitment and responsibility.”

  “Bullshit. I committed well enough to Hikari.” Her name left a bitter taste in my mouth.

  Tink started to say something, but instead, gave me a sidelong glance. “I can’t very well tell you off for all that, can I? I was encouraging you to dump that bitch for months.”

  “What bothers me is that she was nowhere to be found when Victor was fighting. Did she abandon him? Where is she?”

  “I can ask at the next conclave meeting, but I don’t think she’ll be coming back,” Tink said. “If she does, I’ll probably kill her on sight.”

  “Probably?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “I probably should have asked that first, right?”

  “Caleb’s,” she said.

  “Why Caleb’s?”

  “We still have something to do, don’t we?”

  I knocked on Caleb’s door. It took a long moment, but he pulled the door open and stared at us. He was unshaven and his eyes were red and slightly sunken. The reek of alcohol wafted from somewhere in his apartment. “Are you hung over?” I asked him.

  “I was,” he said. “Then I drank more.”

  Tink jabbed me in the side. I jumped sideways and she pushed forward, Caleb automatically giving way. “What the hell have you been doing?” she asked. “This place is a mess and so are you.”

  I looked at Caleb and he looked back. For a moment, I thought he was going to smile, but he looked away and stepped back. “I’ve been busy,” he said.

  “Doing what?” Tink asked. I stepped in and closed the door behind me. “Looks like you’re been busy drinking every bottle in your apartment.”

  “Like I said, busy,” he said, collapsing onto his couch. “What do you want?”

  “We still have one part of our Gatekeeper contract left,” Tink said, walking out of the kitchen with a pair of glasses in her hands. She walked to the couch, handing a glass to Caleb, then sat down on the other end and sipped from the other. I made a face at her, receiving a smirk in return. “We still need to open the Gates of Ascension.”

  “How?”

  “Hell if I know. Demon, this is your game.”

  I shrugged and leaned against the wall. “I have no idea where those Gates are.”

  “Can’t you just call upon the Horsemen?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t have to.” There had been three of us in Caleb’s apartment a moment ago, and now there were seven. Conquest sat in a chair that hadn’t existed before he spoke, a martini glass in his hand. War’s wheelchair was pulled up next to the couch. Famine sat between Tink and Caleb, kicking her heels against the couch. Death leaned against the wall next to me. Conquest continued as Caleb sat bolt upright. “All that was required was for the surviving Gatekeepers to meet again. Forgive me. I did not think that all three of you would survive to the end of the contract.”

  “All three of us are rather experienced at surviving,” I said. “So, who won the bet?”

  Death chuckled quietly. “I did.”

  Caleb’s glance flicked over to Death, then to me, then away. “Let’s get this over with, then,” he said. “How do we go about opening the Gates of Ascension?”

  Conquest lifted his glass in my direction. “He holds a key still, doesn’t he?”

  I pulled on the chain that lay around my neck, the key to Heaven shimmering into existence. I held it up for a moment, then lifted the chain over my head and flung it toward Caleb, who grabbed it out of the air. “I assume that you’ll get it to whoever needs it,” I said.

  “No real need,” he said. “The Seraphic Council appointed me to get it back and take ownership of Heaven on behalf of the Choir. Thanks, Zay. You just got me a promotion.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit,” he said. “Now I’ll be a Dominion. I really don’t know if I should thank you after all. They’re going to stick me with all sorts of work.”

  “What the fuck is the Seraphic Council?” Tink asked. “I thought the Seraphim and Cherubim simply ran the show?”

  Caleb took a deep breath and looked down at the floor. “We are under martial law,” he said. “Bartholomew consolidated a group of the survivors and forced the issue. We’re in a state of emergency. That’s why I’ve suddenly been jumped two ranks and given command of a new office.”

  “A new office?”

  “I’ve been assigned to create a diplomatic office to ensure that there’s never a third Celestial War,” he said, lifting his gaze and staring at me. “Recent events have resulted in a drastic emergency within the Choir. Didn’t either you ever notice?”

  “Stop being coy,” Tink snapped.

  “How many women have you seen within our ranks?”

  I blinked. “None?”

  “None,” he said. “Why do you think that is?”

  “Because there weren’t enough women to risk in combat roles,” Death said quietly. “The Choir has been breeding itself out of existence.”

  My hands clenched into fists and I almost stopped breathing. Death had told me not to show mercy. I had followed that advice and now I was the cause of the slow death of their race? “That’s why they pushed so hard for a fight now, wasn’t it?” I forced myself to ask. “Because the Choir’s hitting their final crest?”

  “Final? Hardly,” Caleb said. “I have been made privy to the numbers, though. Right now and for the next couple of years, it would have been the largest disparity in military force between the Choir and Host in history. However, after that point, due to our horribly low growth rate, the Host would begin to close the gap. If you had become more militaristic, you would close the gap astoundingly rapidly. The Seraphim and Cherubim decided that we had to force the issue while we had the chance.”

  “So they used Victor as their cat’s paw?” I asked.

  “Yes and no. They had their own plans, but when you claimed Heaven and Victor took that opportunity to press his vendetta against me, they saw their opportunity and gave him the support he needed.”

  I slid down the wall to crouch on the ground. “So regardless of what I did, we would have had a war?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And now?”

  “Now the Choir wants to avoid further military action at all cost. Honestly, we were ready to absorb heavy losses. But we weren’t ready for what actually happened.”

  “I had no idea,” I said. “Shit, Caleb.”

  “Who was going to tell you?” He snorted. “Do you really think anyone blames you for it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  There was a long moment of silence, which Tink broke before either of us could. “What’s going to happen to your race, Caleb? What are you going to do to your women?”

  “What do you mean?” Caleb looked down at the ground again.

  She sighed. “You’re going to go into breeding mode, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not my call to make.”

  “I’m not asking you to defend the decision. I’m asking you what’s going to happen.” There was a peculiar tone in her voice. “You’re going to go ass backwards into a broken society where women have to be pregnant, aren’t you? Going to treat them like property? Pass them around like coins?”

  “Do you really think we’re that monstrous?” Caleb asked.

  “You’re avoiding the que
stion again.” Tink lifted her hand in the air and her knife appeared. Apparently, she had been lifting tips and tricks from the angels. “Don’t you think that’s sort of reprehensible?”

  “To a human, sure,” he said. “We’re not human, Anna. We may look human, we may act human in some ways, but you know we aren’t human.”

  “So you’re saying that they don’t have a choice in the matter?”

  “It’s the survival of our race!” Caleb slapped the arm of the couch and leaned forward, looking past Famine. The back of his neck was red. “Do you think I approve of it, Anna? Is that what you want me to say? I do approve of it. I hate that it’s necessary, but it is. If the Seraphic Council asked me for my opinion of it, I’d tell them I agreed.”

  “That’s a shitty thing to do to your people.”

  “Yes, it is. Ask Isaiah about that. Ask him how far he’d go to save his race from extinction. You don’t even have to ask, do you? You already know. He was willing to kill my entire race. Weren’t you, Isaiah?”

  Tink leaned forward and pointed her knife at him. “Isaiah made his decision because your Choir was trying to commit genocide!”

  “And that justifies what he did?”

  I got to my feet, but Famine beat me to the necessary intervention. She took hold of the tip of Tink’s knife with finger and thumb and pulled it out of Tink’s hand. “That’s quite enough,” she announced. “We aren’t here to listen to you fight each other over the decisions you’ve made. Right or wrong, they’re for each of you to deal with, on your own. What we are here for is the consummation of the contract, and the deal that Isaiah made with us.”

  “The deal?” Caleb asked, turning his head to look back at me. I saw a slowly dawning horror in his eyes. “Did you-“

  “No,” I said. “The deal was that in exchange for getting us all together in the same room, I would fulfill the final terms of the contract and release the Horsemen.”

  I saw Death nodding next to me, and Caleb visibly relaxed. “How are we going to handle that?”

  “Like this.” Conquest set his martini glass down on Caleb’s coffee table and snapped his fingers. Immediately, the room vanished and swirling gray mists invaded. Tink and Caleb fell on their asses as the couch vanished. I snickered.

  “Purgatory?” Tink asked, glaring at me as she got to her feet. “The Gates are here?”

  “Everything is here,” Conquest said. “Because everything is Purgatory.”

  “How philosophical,” I said. “What do we need to do?”

  Conquest gestured past me and I looked over my shoulder. A stone block stood in place, utterly out of place among the mists. Familiar inscriptions covered its face. I stepped up to it, tracing my fingers over the central rune, the triangle that I assumed represented the Gatekeepers. “Looks familiar,” I said.

  “I hope you have a key,” Tink said. “I don’t want to have to bleed and blow it up like we did last time.”

  “Three keys, as a matter of fact,” Conquest said. A key appeared in the air in front of my face, old-fashioned wrought iron. “Unlock the Gates of Ascension, Gatekeepers. The realms of Heaven and Hell will once again become accessible. Your people will be able to return home. Our contract will end, and so will we.”

  I plucked the key and turned to the stone. Three keyholes had appeared, one at each point of the triangle. Tink and Caleb stepped up beside me and all three of us inserted our keys in the stone. There was a grinding noise from within the stone. I took a step back, ready to dive out of the way if it decided it wanted to blow us all up. Instead, the stone simply dissolved.

  “With this, we stipulate that the contract is complete,” Conquest announced. “Do the Gatekeepers agree?”

  “One question before we agree,” I said. “What about the last set of Gates?”

  “The Throne Gates? We do not know the mechanism to open them. They may not be meant to be opened.” Conquest smiled. “Perhaps the power within the Thrones is not meant to be regained.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “Well, I agree, the contract is complete, and you may depart forthwith.”

  Famine departed first, her little girl’s form shimmering, then fading away before any of us could say anything. War was next. One blink, he was sitting and smiling in his wheelchair, and in the next instant the chair was empty. Conquest whipped off his hat and bowed to us before vanishing.

  Death leaned in close to me, whispering in my ear. “Thank you, Gatekeeper. I hope that the small mercy you showed does not come back to haunt you.”

  I blinked and looked toward him. He was already gone. The mercy I had shown? I had asked him to spare Caleb. I hadn’t thought that asking to spare one of the Gatekeepers would have counted. Maybe it wouldn’t. He hadn’t been clear on that.

  “So,” Caleb said, holding up the key I had given him. “Shall we?”

  “You’re inviting us to Heaven?” Tink asked. “Look at that, demon. You’re going to be the first demon in thousands of years to go to Heaven.”

  “I’m not sure whether I should be honored or not,” I said.

  Caleb thrust the key into the air and twisted his wrist. A portal swirled to life in the mists. We stepped through the portal side by side.

  On the other side, we beheld Heaven. Heaven, to put it mildly, was a wreck. Ruins of buildings stood decaying all around us. A fountain sat dry and dusty in a courtyard ahead. The air smelled funny, almost lifeless. The sky was dark red, and the sun that was just barely visible over the horizon was enlarged and orange compared to the sun that Earth orbited. “This was a major city once,” Caleb said quietly, breaking the oppressive silence pressing down on us. “It was one of the first casualties of the First Celestial War.”

  I looked around again. Now I could see the telltale signs where hellfire had melted through the stone and sent dozens of buildings to the ground. “You never rebuilt it?” I asked.

  “There was no point to it,” he said. “Hell’s outer reaches are likely in the same condition. We fought so often over these areas, there was never a point to returning and rebuilding.”

  “But further in, things will be different?” Tink asked.

  “They should be,” Caleb said. He pointed off in one direction. “My home’s about six hours flight in that direction. It wasn’t damaged in the fighting, as far as I remember.”

  “I’d like to see it,” Tink said quietly.

  Caleb snorted, then coughed as the dust swirled around him. “There’s going to be a lot of rebuilding needed.”

  “Humanity is going to go wild,” I said. Both of them turned to look at me. “Don’t look so surprised. There are tens of thousands of demons and angels on Earth. How many of them are suddenly going to vanish in the coming days to come home?”

  “We aren’t that disorganized,” Caleb said.

  “It doesn’t matter if you’re organized or not,” I said. “I’m sure there will be a number who stay behind, but the fact is, you’re going to move a lot of your population to Heaven, where they will be safe.” I put a lot of emphasis on the final word and his eyes widened. “It’ll be just as bad for us. Some of the Houses will simply want to move back home, period, while other Houses will want to stay. We’re going to see a lot of upheaval.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you can all leave and stop fucking with us,” Tink snapped.

  “Fucking brings up another point,” I said. “Thanks for the reminder. What about all the halfbloods in the world? I’m not the only one, you know, and I’m sure there are a few angelic halfbloods out there too. What will their rights be? Which world will they call home? Are they going to be able to travel freely between them?”

  “You’re getting at something here,” Caleb said.

  “Humanity’s going to find out about everything sooner or later,” Tink said. “The Second War didn’t go unnoticed, I’m sure. Mages know. What’s going to happen when the general populace knows? Even worse, what’s going to happen when word gets out that God is dead? Not everyone’s goi
ng to be able to keep their heads on straight.”

  “Humanity’s obsession with religion is worrisome,” Caleb said.

  “Humanity’s obsession with religion is fucking scary,” I said. “You don’t have shit to worry about, but demons do. Can’t you imagine what will happen when fundamentalists realize we physically exist? They’re going to tear people apart, literally, just on suspicion of being a demon or halfblood.”

  “We’re not that barbaric!” Tink protested.

  “Like hell you aren’t,” I snapped. “History’s full of it. This will be the most momentous thing to happen to humanity in centuries, if ever. Not only will they find out that they’re not alone, they’re going to find out the truth behind their religions, they’re going to find out that magic is real, and they’re going to be pissed the fuck off. You tell me you’re going to be happy when you’re burned at the stake for being a witch.”

  That shut her up. Caleb stepped in. “So we need to figure out a way to keep humanity from finding out.”

  “At least not before we’re ready to deal with it,” I said.

  “This is something that the Choir and Host will need to cooperate on, isn’t it?”

  “I would think so, yes.”

  Caleb sighed. “And now I’m the one in charge of maintaining diplomatic relations.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, Opheran’s been hinting to me that he’ll have me handling things like that too.”

  Caleb covered his face. “I just can’t get away from you, can I?”

  “Do you really want to?”

  “Some days are better than others.” He stepped away from us and spread his wings. They glittered redly in the odd sunlight. “For now, though, I need to survey the area, make sure there aren’t any leftover traps or sundry nastiness from the First War. Wouldn’t do to bring our people back here and have half of them get blown up.”

  “Want any company?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “This is something I need to do on my own.”

  “Caleb,” Tink said. He looked over at her and she stepped up to him, then threw her arms around him. He stood there stiffly for a moment, then hugged her back. “Take care of yourself. Come see us as soon as you can, all right? The demon’s going to be staying at my place for a while, until he gets back on his feet, so you know where to find us.”