Demon Squad 7: Exit Wounds

by Tim Marquitz

  I started forward despite the fear clasping at me, but Duke Forcalor’s hand on my arm held me in place.

  “Stay with the humans and finish what they’ve started, child.”

  I nodded numbly while he mustered his magic and loosed a bolt of reddened energy. It streaked across the space between him and Azrael, striking the Angel of Death full in the chest. Flesh charred and burned, the blow sending Azrael stumbling a few paces so that Uriel might stand, but if there was any doubt as to the power of Lucifer’s magic, it was stripped from mind right then.

  Visible despite the whirling clouds of black smoke, Azrael’s borrowed skin bubbled and blistered, shedding the ruinous flesh in the blink of an eye to reveal fresh layers beneath the soot, undamaged. He laughed then, a sound I’d never want to hear again. Its malice drew sharp nails across my spine, nearly crippling me with its jagged edges.

  “Come now, brother,” he said to the slowly retreating archangel. “Am I so predictable now?”

  “Still!” Raguel shouted, drawing his sword across the ribs of Azrael.

  The Angel of Death stepped aside with a hiss, blood arcing free of his wound, yet it slowed him none at all. He lashed out, striking Raguel once, twice, three times, with a flurry of his hands, each blow shattering bones. The bearer of Death’s power flew into a wall, dust and debris exploding around him as he crumpled to the asphalt beneath a hail of stone and mortar.

  Forcalor sped past Uriel and loosed his magic once more, the other archangel scrambling to get his feet beneath him. He looked to me, his cold eyes boring through my soul as I made to follow the duke, and shook his head. Sadness gnawed at me. I wanted so badly to join the fray and defend my brethren, but they had placed a burden on my shoulders I needed to bear before all was lost. The worst had occurred, and we had no choices left.

  “Rachelle,” I cried, running to her. “Focus on the other portal, crack it wide.”

  Sweat dotted her pale brow, droplets flung loose as she nodded. “I’ll…try.” Her voice was weak, worn through with the exertion of fighting against Azrael’s power despite Forcalor’s assistance, but we needed her now.

  “Help me, Michael,” I told the mentalist, and his eyes faded to gray as he reached deep inside.

  Rachelle stiffened, and then let out a weary sigh. “I’m here,” she said, though it was both her voice and Michael’s all wound together.

  “Help keep her strong, Michael.” My heart thundered against my ribs as I freed my mind of its defenses and left them to slip away. “Now,” I told him. “I’m ready.” I wasn’t, but they would know that soon enough.

  Before the words had faded, I felt my consciousness pulled through the telepathic connection and added to the column that was Rachelle Knight and Michael Li. For the briefest of moments we were one, each floating through the mind of the other, our deepest secrets privy to all, but then the order shifted and we pushed Rachelle to the fore with all of our combined energies, a prayer mixed in for good measure.

  “We must…not…fail…” Our voices spilled from formless lips, and through the haze of our symbiosis, Rachelle’s soul pulled from my strength and grasped the portal with her ethereal fingers, tearing with all our might.

  It inched wider with a crack of thunder.

  Twenty-Six

  True to his word, Judas split us up into four different groups. Rala and Shaw went with him and Mia, which didn’t exactly make me feel comfortable, but as long as he thought the little alien was the way out, he’d treat her nice. The same couldn’t be said for Shaw, though if she stumbled in the dark and fell on a knife a couple hundred times, I couldn’t blame Judas for her clumsiness. At least Rala would still have CB to keep her company since the greenies had given him back.

  I demanded Karra remain with me and the old backstabber was okay with that. He sent Venai and Katon down a dark tunnel with a horde of his men, and Rahim and Veronica down another. I volunteered to help poor old Ilfaar along, as he clearly needed assistance given his delicate nature. Nothing more than a useless gimp to Judas, the real prize being Rala in his eyes, Judas waved me on without so much as a second glance. Inwardly I smiled. Ilfaar offered me a nod as I slipped my arm around him and brought him close as we started off. Yet to have our weapons returned, the greenies gave us some distance in their comfort.

  “I’m not sure what you and the wight arranged, but you and I are gonna be the best of buddies until we get out of here,” I whispered.

  “We’ve arranged nothing, friend,” he answered with a cold hint of a smile. “We have only come to an understanding that, out of all of us, I must be the one to make it to the mosaic that controls the gate or else none of us will ever leave.”

  “So the book…? Karra asked, moving closer alongside us.

  Ilfaar shrugged. “It will serve a purpose, no doubt, but I am the key you need to unlock this door. Protect me and see me to the mosaic, and we will be free of this place.”

  He said it so casually, but I knew he meant just us, as in Karra and I. Unlike Judas who planned to bring his extended alien family back to Earth with him, Ilfaar didn’t give a damn who got on the bus as long as he was driving. If he had to run folks over to get on the road, or leave a bunch behind, so be it. My fear of exactly that had been what led me to bring him along with us. While I trusted Katon or Rahim to keep an eye on him, each had been paired with someone less than loyal to our cause. There were certainly twenty damn agendas being tossed around between us all and none of them lined up with mine: getting Karra and the baby home safely. After that was done, I would worry about everything else, but I knew no one else would wait on me.

  In silence, we walked the rest of the way through the tunnel the greenies had carved through the mountain. They’d been smart about it, using a repeating pattern of makeshift stairs to make it more of an upward climb than a long stroll toward our goal. We’d stumble up a dozen narrow steps only to be forced into a tight turn, a short walk, and then more stairs. It was like a fire escape built by the damn Flintstones.

  We went on and on and on, the sheer slog of it giving me a new appreciation of elevators. Finally, when I thought I’d end up overcoming the vampiric resistance to dizziness, the tunnel straightened out before us, angling upward at an easy slope.

  “Here,” one of the greenies said as we walked into the back end of a waiting crowd of her brethren.

  Lined against the wall and leading off into the gloom, they were ready for war. Spears and swords and knives and clubs were out in abundance. A nervous tension filled the room with the bitter stink of sweat and fear. I looked at their eyes as we were brought to a halt, and I was reminded of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots. They didn’t complain or cry or say anything, but there was no missing the look of condemned resignation about them. That’s when Judas’ plan hit me.

  These people were going to pay for his freedom with their lives.

  While the guardians could be killed, they would regenerate right back in the aerie; right back where these people killed it, so right smack dab in the middle of them again. How many of them would the dragon take down each time he re-spawned?

  I tasted bile in the back of my throat, even though I knew it was just my imagination. For all his talk of his people, he was just the same as Ilfaar. If they all had to die for him to return to Earth, he was okay with that. I sighed thinking about it. I guess two thousand years of reflection hadn’t done shit for changing his attitude. So much for the merits of the penal system.

  “They’re going after the dragons,” Karra muttered, coming to the realization at the same time.

  “Sometimes warriors must be sacrificed in order to win the war,” Ilfaar said, though low enough that only we could hear him.

  And I understood that. Shit, I wasn’t invested in the greenies or their wellbeing. I hadn’t promised them freedom or a new life. Still, while I understood it was Judas throwing his sheep to the wolves, we’d be the ones benefiting from it if things worked out. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Outside of o
ur little skirmish, it wasn’t like we were actually enemies.

  “It’s time,” the greenie said, waving her arms so the ones in front could see her. “Make ready!”

  As the greenies girded their loincloths and pushed forward in the tunnel, I inched closer to Karra. The woman in charge tugged a bundle of something from another greenie and handed it over to us. It was the weapons they’d taken. She gave us a pointed look, which I took to mean don’t stab me with these, and went back to riling her troops up. Karra took up her father’s sword and glanced at me, her expression stoic.

  “Whatever happens, just make sure we get home.”

  I squeezed Ilfaar against me tightly. “Oh, we both guarantee we’re all going home, right, buddy?”

  He didn’t bother to lie, choosing instead to keep his tongue firmly planted in his mouth. But before I could wrangle a halfhearted promise from him, the greenie woman called out.

  “Tear down the stone.”

  My gaze shifted pass the masses to see what she was talking about. There at the end of the passageway was a dead end, framed by wooden beams crisscrossing its face at weird angles. Two huge, black stone rods, for lack of a better description, sat moored in slots that had been cut into the thick wood. The rods jutted out several feet from the wall in wooden troughs, reinforced legs built beneath to hold them up. Before I could figure out what they intended, two greenies stepped up to bat with massive wooden mallets. They pulled their hammers back and swung, smacking into the protruding end of the rods with a resounding boom. The sound filled the corridor and set my ears to ringing, but I kept my eyes locked straight ahead.

  There was a dull thud as the rods collided with the wall, and I could have sworn I saw a spark at the impact. A whiff of gunpowder hit me a second later, and then a sharp, brittle crack that sounded like a frost giant rubbing one out. The tunnel filled with light a heartbeat later as the stone split and tumbled away, taking the wooden frame with it. The greenies roared and spilled from the hole. Their wake swept us along with it, and before I could set my feet and slow us down, we were outside.

  That’s where all hell broke loose.

  We were met by the shriek of several very pissed off dragons. Fortunately, we also had a wall of green-skinned martyrs between us and them. At least for the time being. They screamed and charged, spears and bad words flying, taking it to the guardians with a ferocity I hadn’t expected. Still, I couldn’t see them winning, so I took a moment to orient myself to what kind of shit storm we’d walked into.

  It smelled just as good as I’d expected.

  The other groups had spilled from similarly new tunnels blown through the mountainside, placing us all in a half-circle inside the inner mouth of the volcano. I couldn’t see Rala, but I spied Judas hovering about the tunnel off to our left. They hadn’t wasted any time digging into the book because I could feel the tremors of her chanting, the weird pressure tickling my inner ears.

  The stone platform we’d emerged onto was surprisingly wide, reaching out a good thirty yards from the mountain. A high wall rose up at the end of it, and I could feel the gate I’d seen from the sky looming just the other of that. Despite the rage of the dragons, their angry stomps rattling the shelf, and Rala’s chanting, I could feel the ominous pulse of its energies. And within its mixed signals, I could feel the delicate caress of Earth as the portals cycled through. It made me very homesick.

  “We’ll find the mosaic that way,” Ilfaar said, surreptitiously pointing around the wall in front of us.

  I nodded, and we started off, leaving the greenies to fight the guardian that rampaged just a short distance behind us. The nature of the bowl made it so the dragons would have to take flight to get around to us or go through the throng of folks stabbing it. They all chose the throng in front of them, thankfully, the other two guardians being held in check a ways off to our right. The whole battle looked like cockroaches crawling over titans.

  The rest of our group had pretty much had the same idea, waiting back to see how things played out, but they were still stuck in the crush of the battle, an army of green-skinned folks between us. I gritted my teeth at seeing them trapped, the points biting into my lips as we followed the angel’s directions, but it didn’t matter how many times we won out. If we didn’t get to the portal and get it open, we were all dying up here.

  Ilfaar moved with purpose and didn’t leave much room for us to worry, anyway. I released him so we could move quicker, but stayed right on his ass. If he tried to pull something, he’d wish Lucifer had finished him off before I got done with him. That said, he wanted out of here as badly as any of us. He’d lead us to the gate. It was once we were there that we had to worry.

  He pushed past some straggling greenies and ran along the wall, his chopped up hand looking for something. I started to ask, but then I saw his had slip and disappear into the wall. Without hesitation, he turned into it, following his hand to vanish through the stone. A little slower, I ran my hand over the same spot and stepped inside with Karra as soon as I realized it was nothing more than an illusion blocking the passageway from sight. Ilfaar moved along a few feet ahead of us, the passageway sloping upwards sharply.

  “Something tells me you’ve been here before,” Karra said as she held her sword at the ready.

  “Perhaps a time or two, friend,” he answered without glancing back. His gaze was locked on an alcove that opened up in front of us, the shimmer of the portals illuminating the way. I could feel their dull throb.

  We scrambled up the incline to find ourselves on what appeared to be a stone balcony shaped like a crescent moon, set about thirty feet above the battle raging at our backs. The screams of greenies were a morbid soundtrack to the majesty of what lay before us. My brain tuned them out as I saw what loomed below.

  The gate I’d seen from the sky was massive. It gleamed with a green and red sheen, but its lines and contours were nearly impossible to see through the blur of devourers that swam just above it.

  “Holy hell!” I shouted, stumbling back from the open edge. “There has to be a hundred of those fuckers.”

  “I count thirty-five,” Karra corrected.

  “Still.” An unconscious tremble danced along my spine as I inched back, my gaze drawn from the devourers to the flutter of the portals running their paces above. So close to them, I could feel their dimensional flux passing over me, each a bee sting pricking my flesh. Home stung the worse. My eyes drifted along the dancing mess to see one portal standing out from the rest. While the others flickered and hummed, that one seemed a bit brighter, a bit larger; more constant, maybe.

  Thinking Ilfaar had started, I quickly went over to where he stood. He was staring at a thing that must have been the mosaic he’d been talking about. It was very much like I’d picture a control panel on an alien spaceship. A circular pedestal, it was smoothed flat save for the hundreds of tiny divots in the stone, each about a quarter-size around and about that deep, if you turned the quarter on its side. At each hole was a strange image that corresponded to it, though I didn’t have a fuzzy clue as to what they meant. Red lines ran from image to image, some splitting off to dozens while others ran to just one, and then from there to another image.

  “This is it, huh?”

  Ilfaar nodded and pulled his stump from his guts with a flourish before digging inside the wound with his other hand. When he pulled his bloody fingers free, he clutched a tiny stone between them. I knew it the second I saw it.

  “A cipher.”

  “Know this thing, do you?” The angel grinned. “I’m surprised, to be honest, but I suppose some knowledge might make your journey home easier.”

  He ran a red finger along the mosaic, following some lines before coming to a stop at a symbol that looked as if it had been hand-scribbled during a sneeze. It was all over the place within the tiny confines of the outer circle drawn around it.

  “This is your realm here,” he said, though I noticed he didn’t drop the cipher into the hole. His finger slid to
another. “And this one is mine.” He did slide it into that one. Once it was there, he put his hand over it and closed his eyes.

  The mass of portals slowed their frantic whirl and began to nudge closer to each other, a gang of lava lamps spilling into the same container, the edges stretching to keep from bursting. The feeling of home poofed while a strange, otherworldliness took its place. As the portal widened and drew closer to the platform, I could see a desolate darkness through it, a wasteland of a world I couldn’t imagine living on.

  “That’s home?”

  He grinned. “No, but close enough.” Ilfaar pulled his hand from the cipher and saluted. “You need only press your hand upon the stone to will the gate to open.” At that, he spun about and ran for the ledge, which sat nearly level with the now open portal. His feet hit the edge and he jumped.

  Someone slammed into me right then, knocking me backwards into Karra. We both went down, scrambling to keep from falling into the pit of devourers. We managed, barely. Still on the ground, I saw that it had been Shaw who had blindsided us. She reached for the pedestal and yanked the cipher from its mooring as Ilfaar sailed toward the exit with a grin. Though he was almost there, the portal pulled away in a rush, splitting once more into its component passages. Ilfaar shrieked as he realized what happened and spun about midair, his smile cast aside. He howled to see Shaw standing over the pedestal, cipher in hand, and then he fell.

  We hopped to our feet as he hit the gate below. A muffled thud sounded at the impact, and I could imagine broken bones, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Both Karra and I glanced over the edge and saw Ilfaar lying on the glimmering gate, squirming as he tried to get to his feet. He rolled over just in time to see the first of the devourers coming. His screams came next. That was all I could handle.

  I turned away to see Shaw staring at the mosaic, eyes narrowed. “Don’t know which one it is, do you?” I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized that.