Demon Accords 6: Forced Ascent

by John Conroe

  Then the hole rushed up at me and the blackness sucked me in, closing over my head and sealing off all the faces coming my way and all light disappeared as I fell into Hell.

  Chapter 29

  Red. Everything was lit by reddish light. That’s my first impression of Hell. That and heat.

  Like Arizona… in July… times ten. I shot out of the hole upside down, my feet pointed at the churning, blood-hued sky, my hair brushing the side of the gate as I shot up. Flipping forward was reflex, so I landed on my feet, not my head, sulfurous dust billowing up around my boots.

  The once six-legged demon, now five, was screeching and scurrying at the same time, heading out of the roofless, broken-walled structure I found myself in. I was in Hell, and Hell appeared to be modeled after Earth, just with less maintenance. Because who needs a ceiling to the second floor or a roof, or furniture, or even complete walls? The doorway was doorless and the bug demon shot outside, moving pretty fast on five legs. It made it out the doorframe and into what should be the street when a flash of red and black snatched it up and its awful screeching ceased at the same moment that a harsh ripping, tearing sound announced a pattering rain of black blood.

  No roof—check. Front door bad—check. Temperature hot as Hell—check. Time to leave—yup. At least it was only me here, I thought.

  Then a furry black and tan wolf shot out the black gate and landed on all four feet beside me. Before I could blink, five more figures came flashing up out of the pentagonal opening at the center of the pentagram that had been burned deep into the blackened concrete of the floor.

  The whole damn team had just literally followed me to Hell. Right through the gate—the gate that was suddenly shrinking, like a puddle of oil draining away. The grungy concrete that replaced it looked like it had been there forever. The last drop of black sucked itself into the concrete and there was nothing left but pitted cement in the middle of a pentagram. Oracle’s experimental gate closer had worked. Fucking fantastic.

  “Damn,” I said softly, looking at each of my companions. They had landed combat ready, weapons in hand and looking around wildly.

  “This is Hell?” Lydia asked, clearly disappointed.

  “The economy must be down… no money for decorators,” Stacia answered.

  “Shhhhhh,” I said. “Big, big demon outside the door,” I whispered, pointing at the splatters of black demon blood around the doorframe. I could feel it outside the door, waiting.

  Everyone nodded, looking from me to the door. It was quiet outside. Till something screamed in the distance. A building-shaking roar answered it from just outside and something thundered away with ground-shaking steps.

  “You followed me?” I asked into the stretch of quiet that descended after the giant demon had left.

  “Ah, yeah, no shit, Captain Obvious,” Lydia said.

  Tanya just shrugged. “Of course. Wouldn’t you have followed one of us?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s what would of happened,” I said.

  “You guess?” Lydia asked, eyebrows raising.

  “He has never thought about it, but when he does, the answer is obvious, Lydia,” Nika said over her shoulder, most of her attention on watching her side of the room.

  “Okay, here we are, in Hell, which is as hot as itself by the way, and our passage home is gone. What now, fearless leaders?” Stacia asked.

  “We find another gate,” I said, having had all of about seven seconds longer than the rest of them to think about it. “It’s Halloween—Samhain—the easiest night of the year to open gates between the worlds. This looks like a rough proxy for the hotel, exploded and bombed out, but still Hell’s version. I think we should look outside and see if the rest of Washington is copied here,” I said.

  “Because if our world is replicated here—in Retro Apocalypse décor—then another gate might present itself?” Lydia asked.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said.

  “Holy shit, it happened. Chris thinking—the day is finally here,” Lydia quipped, her eyes darting around the room, her heart not really into the insult.

  Arkady moved silently across the floor, pausing by one wall to scoop up a piece of broken mirror and then to the door. He used the shard of reflective glass to check either side of the doorway and when he was satisfied, he poked his head out for a quick glance all around, then pulled back inside.

  A moment later, he was back in front of us, reporting.

  “Structures and buildings roughly anomalous with our Washington, but all ruins. No sign of any demons,” he said.

  “There are a few, scattered about,” I said. The others all looked at me, questioning.

  “What? I can feel them,” I said. Lydia and Tanya shared a glance.

  “Where do you feel them, Chris?” Lydia asked, serious as… well, where we were. “In your head or… elsewhere?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but sudden understanding came to me. My blood—they were worried about my tainted blood. I analyzed the feelings I was getting. Normally if a demon is nearby, I feel it in my head like a pressure against my aura. Like a camper’s tarp with a rock in the middle weighing it down. That was definitely present now, but the knowledge of where they were was coming from elsewhere. Like I could feel them on my skin, the way the heat of a campfire is warm on your face and arms while the back of your neck is cold from the cool night air. The skin on my left arm, biceps area, was telling me a large demon was directly through the wall by the door but getting farther away. The skin on the back of my right leg was feeling the heat of a minor demon in the building directly behind us, and my right shoulder could sense a small demon approaching it from another direction.

  “Um, both?” I said. The bleak look on their faces caused me to rush out an explanation of what I was feeling.

  “Why is that important?” Stacia asked.

  “They’re worried about my demon-tainted blood… here… in Hell,” I said.

  “What? That you’ll go over to the red side?” she asked. I nodded.

  She snorted. “Ain’t happening,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “You can’t know that,” Lydia said.

  “I can. There’s no way I’m going to let him slide that far and I wouldn’t think you would either, unless you’re giving up,” Stacia said, directing most of her words to Tanya. An instant growl thrummed the air as Tanya eyed the werewolf with murder in her eyes. Stacia just stared back at her, arms still folded.

  “She’s right, Tanya. Between the two of you, each with your own bond…” Nika began but cut off when Tanya whipped around to glare at her. “Well it’s the truth, even if it hurts,” Nika finished. “You have your Chosen bond and she has… something else. Some freaky thing, and not as strong, but it’s there nonetheless. The two of you should be able to ground him.”

  “Okay, I’ve got some Hell issues and you two can keep me from flipping out. Let’s move on. Where do we look for the next gate?” I asked, trying to ignore the glaring.

  Nika jumped on my opening. “When I was researching the occult aspects of D.C. and found out about that street pentagram, there was another manmade object that all the conspiracy types talked about as well.”

  “What? What was it?” Lydia demanded impatiently.

  Nika turned and pointed at the carved pentagram on the floor. “What is the functional part of that gate?” she asked.

  “The center,” Arkady answered.

  “And what do you call that shape?” she pressed.

  “A pentagon. Oh! The Pentagon,” Lydia said, putting it all together.

  “But the Pentagon wasn’t built by Freemasons,” I protested.

  “Doesn’t matter. The original site of the building had five roads bordering it, and that resulted in the design shape. Nothing occult about it, but now enough Internet conspiracy sites have latched onto it that there is a large group of believers out there that think it is. So it is,” Nika answered.

  “How far away is it, an
d what direction?” I asked, looking at Nika.

  “It’s south, southwest of here,” Stacia answered. Everyone looked at her.

  “Hello, eighth grade field trip, been here before,” she said, flipping a strand of blonde hair out of her face.

  “That’s correct. About three miles, I think… across the river. At least in our version, it’s across the Potomac River,” Nika said.

  “Okay, so we just gotta cover three miles in Hell, avoid any armies of demons, and then either find a gate in the Pentagon or make one.”

  “Could you? Make one?” Tanya asked.

  “I never tried, but I’m thinking if I do the opposite of how I close them, it might work. Plus, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to try it,” I said.

  “Why? Why doesn’t it matter, Chris?” Lydia asked.

  “Because he’s hungry and there’s no food here,” Tanya said. Sudden realization flooded across all their faces. Most people can skip a meal or two, no problem. Probably be a good thing for some folks. But not me. I don’t have any body fat and if I don’t keep eating, my body will eat itself. Survival’s rule of threes says a human can live three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter, and three minutes without air. It’s a rule of thumb for triaging survival situations. But my rules are different. I could hold my breath for thirty minutes and go without shelter for days, but food… food, I had to have every day. Several times a day.

  “Okay, clock ticking. Got it. What’s the plan?” Stacia asked.

  “We move out, head south by southwest. Avoid confrontation and cross the river. We need the very center of the Pentagon, the open courtyard in the center,” I answered. “Piece of cake.”

  Once my team had the basics of a plan, we slipped into operational mode without effort. Awasos in wolf form took point, followed by me with Tanya on my right and Stacia on my left, Nika and Lydia behind walking next to each other, and finally, in rear guard position, Arkady.

  Between my demon sense and the incredible nose of the were bear-wolf with me, we easily detected most demons hiding in the ruins. We had to skirt around the White House area, as it held a huge number of demons who were fighting an all-out, free-for-all battle on the burnt, smoking grounds that would be where Lafayette Square would be in our world. Amaymon’s legions must have dissolved into chaos when he bit the dust.

  Our detour took us west to 19th Street, several blocks to the west of our original position. The buildings weren’t duplicates of our world, but blocky, ruined representations of them. The air was oven hot, the light dusk-level dim and reddish hued, the sky overhead a roiling mass of black and red clouds. Sulfur clogged our noses, but there were subtle overtones of rotting flesh and general decay. We stuck close to the edges of the buildings, trying to keep out of sight while using every sense to make sure nothing lunged out of a building at us. Occasionally, we’d slip inside a building to avoid a demonic presence on the street, moving into alleys behind before returning to our route of travel. It was slow, tedious work. For the most part, we avoided trouble… for the most part.

  Trouble found us on the corner of E Street NW and 19th. It was buried in the rubble of a building which is maybe why I didn’t sense it and ‘Sos didn’t smell it. We were already past it, ‘Sos and I, when it reared up out of the rock dust and dirt—nine feet of segmented red chiton, a hundred legs, some tipped with insect claws and some with human hands. A giant demon centipede, complete with front stingers and a vaguely human-shaped head. It struck at Tanya, who is easily the fastest of us. It missed. She didn’t, taking its left mandible with a reflexive slash of her sword. It pulled back, maybe to try a second strike, maybe to rethink its attack, maybe to retreat. But what it did was die. Stacia threw a tomahawk, which looked suspiciously like Trenton’s, sinking the blade into its back. Nika stabbed it in the side with her assegai—three times fast. Arkady pinned its tail end to the road with his own sword, which allowed Awasos to slip forward on wolf feet, shift to bear form, and slap the shit out of it with one wicked right paw. Its head slammed into the ground and Tanya, the original target of its attack, leaned forward and yelled at it. Or maybe sang. I can’t really tell what she does. I heard a complicated set of notes and the centademon’s head exploded. We watched its hundred legs drum out the death dance even while we listened to see if our dust-up had attracted attention. Things seemed quiet. Arkady dragged the body to a building and threw it through one of the many broken windows. I watched Stacia clean the demon ichor off her tomahawk with red Helldust, studying the familiar war ax.

  “He left it to me. Arkaday said that Trenton wanted me to have it if anything happened to him. He showed me how to throw it on that stupid farm in Pennsylvania,” she said in a rush, sensing me watching her. When she looked up, her eyes looked just slightly shiny, maybe even wet.

  “It was a good throw,” was all I said before squatting down to scrape up dust and pour it over the huge puddle of black blood. Lydia started to help cover the noisome pool while Nika and Tanya cleaned up their blades. We continued on.

  It took us an hour to travel a quarter mile to the end of 19th Street. Ahead was the area that was analogous with most of Washington’s most famous memorials. But here, in Hell, their counterparts were… different.

  The Washington Memorial would have been to our left. But what towered in its place was a giant red phallus, complete in anatomical detail. To our right, where Lincoln should have sat on his memorial, a faceless statue of a hominoid demon sat upon a basalt throne, squirming, naked bodies trapped under each claw where its hands gripped the armrests. The bodies looked real. So did the blood dripping down the stone.

  “Ah. Been wondering when we’d see the human inhabitants of Hell,” Lydia said.

  “You think those are people who’ve been condemned to Hell?” Stacia asked, curious.

  “They should be here somewhere. Those bodies look pretty alive to me,” Lydia answered.

  Tanya looked at me. “Don’t even think about it. You can’t save souls from Hell. That’s not your charter,” she said, reading me before I could even read myself. She was right. I couldn’t do anything about anyone sent here and I needed to squash my curiosity. General Creek was right, I decided—I do have a hero complex.

  Straight ahead was the Reflecting Pool, only it was filled with blood-red liquid and lumps and chunks of things that had maybe once been alive. We skirted it to the east, sliding around the base of what should have been the World War II memorial but was instead a statue of a grinning Hitler sitting on a throne of bones and skulls.

  “How far to the river?” I asked.

  “The Tidal Pool is just up ahead,” Stacia said, sounding a bit unsure. We moved forward, drifting a bit west, and a wide opening appeared ahead. As we came to it, we got our first view of the river area, but instead of a wide expanse of blue water, a burning, churning pool of molten lava bubbled in front of us, an even wider river of liquid magma flowing on the other side of it.

  Chapter 30

  “How the Hell are we gonna cross that?” Stacia asked as we all looked across the orange river of melted rock, shimmers of incandescent heat rising like a curtain across our path.

  “Bridges,” Arkady said bluntly. We looked at him, but he was looking west where just visible in the distance was a black line arcing over the sea of orange and red. Almost as one, we turned and looked east, quickly finding an even larger black construct that passed over the magma.

  “That big one must be the I-395 bridge analog,” Nika mused.

  “And those dots moving on it are what?” Lydia asked.

  Tanya lightly jumped up on Awasos’s sofa-sized back, then rode his shoulders as he stood up. From her new observation point, she studied the big bridge in the distance. “Looks like lines of naked people, under the whips and claws of demons, moving across the bridge. Hundreds of them. Two lines going in opposite directions. Some are carrying stuff,” she reported.

  “Hey, look, you’re riding bear back,” I said as
her bear lift brought her back down. She just shook her head while Lydia gave me a look of mock disgust. Arkady held out one big hand, palm down and waggled it. “Is almost funny,” he said.