The Angel of the Abyss

by Hank Schwaeble

  “She knows. She forces herself not to think about it when you're fucking her, when she's feeling your cock slide inside her. Oh, the contortions her mind goes through, not to think of you, thinking of her.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Oh, but she knows. She knows how it's her pussy you imagine, her mouth sucking you.”

  Don't let her get to you. Think.

  “But how do you think she'd feel if she really knew? Knew about all the kinky stuff, those all-night marathons, working your way through the classics the way the two of you did. Whipped cream, honey daubing. Fruits. All those creative penetrations...”

  She wants you to acknowledge that it matters by denying it. Wants you to start talking about what Amy thinks, dispute what she's saying. Wants to distract you. Get you to ask questions she wants to answer, rather than the ones you want to ask.

  “You're wasting your breath,” he said. “If you even breathe.”

  Hatcher looked down at the floor. The surface was charred, desiccated. Swirls of dust weaved across it like pairs of phantom snakes. He turned around, facing the opposite direction. Think, he told himself. How big of a step had he taken?

  “Who will you choose if you get her back?”

  He lifted his right foot, held it for a moment.

  “Whose heart will you crush? The one you love? Or the one who loves you?”

  With a little hop, he stepped forward.

  And he was in the underground chamber beneath the village again. The candles were still burning, the overhead lights still shining. The girl still strapped to the chair.

  The first items he noticed were the tools. Handsaw, sledge hammer. Cordless drill. He walked over to them, looked each over, thinking. He picked up the saw.

  Laughter rattled out of the girl's mouth, mocking chortles, wet and raspy. “Oh, please, please do,” she said. “I'm sure your new friend is bored by now.”

  The thing had a point, he realized. Pain probably wouldn't work. He'd been thinking of sawing off its head, only partly, to see if it scared her. But not only was that a low-percentage play, just to see what would happen – he hadn't considered what effect it could have on Micah. He'd have to come up with something else.

  “I can go on like this forever,” she said, cackling now. “How long can you?”

  Hatcher looked up, felt the tug of one thought reaching for another. “Say that again.”

  “Maybe if you cleaned the maggot shit out of your ears, you'd hear me, pigfucker.”

  “Oh, I heard you.” He set the saw back down and looked at the candles, the wax perimeter. The leather restraints.

  He tried to recall what Micah had told him about the spell. The wax was a delineation, that much was obvious, the border for the passage. A containment system. It allowed the user to step into the demon's realm, then back out. Without the wax, apparently mixed with blood, the demon wouldn't be accessible from this side. Or, at least, the demon's realm wouldn't be.

  Can't keep that thing down there forever.

  His gaze floated around the perimeter, then settled on the restraints again. Maybe. He reached for the sledge hammer.

  “Finally!” she said. “I was wondering when you were going to quit being such a pussy. Smash this little cunt's face in! Send bone shards through her brain!”

  “I've got a better idea,” he said, hefting the sledge hammer over his shoulder and toting it as he circled around her.

  Her head swiveled to follow as he made his way to the entrance. She was looking back over her shoulder at him when he stopped at the threshold.

  “And you were the one who gave it to me,” he added.

  The demon said nothing. It stared at him, lips parted, teeth bared, but the totality of its face lacking any discernible expression.

  “Your comment about time,” he continued. “You're right. You do have all the time in the world. Probably more time than the world.”

  Something flickered in the demon's icy glare. A glimmer of comprehension.

  “The spell calls for me to snuff out the candles with my blood to seal our pact, once I'm done. It's the terms of that pact that made me start to think, once you made that crack.”

  He let the sledge hammer slide off his shoulder and eased it down to let the head rest on the floor. “The idea is, in exchange for releasing you, the spellbinder or whoever demands two conditions, freedom from the taint of making contact with you, of interacting with you, and the imperative you immediately disappear and go straight back to Hell. Normally, that would sound fair.”

  Hatcher lifted the sledge hammer, hoisting it with one hand high on the handle, the other low.

  The demon's voice croaked out, dry and coarse. “What are you doing?”

  The hammer swung in a sideways arc and landed with a deep thud against one of the support columns at the entrance to the room. Dirt drizzled down from the ceiling, puffs of it forming clouds that descended more slowly.

  Those quartz-like eyes, wide already, seemed to be climbing from their sockets.

  “You see, unlike the people this spell had in mind, I'm told my soul is already tainted. Besides, I'm working on a deal to wash my slate clean as it is, something way above your paygrade. And while a normal summoning would probably take place in a basement or crypt, this is just a hole in the earth.” He pointed to the support stud with his chin. “I knock this down, you get buried. I climb out, then cave the tunnel. Candles go out, wax line gets crushed, but those restraints, those restraints look pretty durable.”

  He made a clicking sound with this tongue against his teeth and raised the hammer again.

  “You're bluffing! This would not hold me forever!”

  He lowered the hammer to shoulder level. “Forever? No, of course not. But judging from the geologic composition of this hillside, the remote location, and the depth... I'd say, three, maybe five thousand years before anyone had any reason to excavate. Or maybe you'd be stuck longer than that, like until the sun supernova-ed.”

  “You're bluffing!”

  “Maybe if you paid attention, you'd know you said that already.”

  He raised the hammer again and brought it down in a pendulum motion until it crashed against the wood. There was a sharp splintering sound. More dirt rained down, tendrils like columns of sand reaching down and forming tiny round pyramids on the floor.

  Without looking, he raised the hammer once more.

  “Wait!” the girl shouted, the demon's voice chunky and raw, like it was tearing through flesh to escape. Her face and mouth tensed and twisted, hesitating. The words came out in a gush of air. “It is not a demon.”

  Hatcher lowered the hammer. “What's not a demon?”

  “The thing that binds him to me, the thing that binds all Hellbound creatures to each other.” The hardened, crystalline eyes continued to rage, glistening with a cold fire. But there was resignation in the voice. And something else, maybe. A hint of triumphalism. Like she didn't like having to divulge the information, but liked the message.

  He hoisted the hammer onto his shoulder, the weight of its end pulling it like a see-saw. “And what would that be?”

  She lowered her head, stared at the wax line on the ground, motionless. Hatcher was about to snap his fingers at her when she raised those eyes. She looked straight at him for several seconds before Hatcher realized she wasn't looking at him at all. More like through him.

  From that frozen gaze, her eyes suddenly found his. “They are connected by the number of the Beast.”

  “The Beast? You're saying I should check his scalp for sixes? Scratch that. It's not one of my questions.”

  The smile returned, somehow even wider. Her eyes stayed locked on his as her head moved slowly back and forth. “Poor Jacob Hatcher,” she said. “In the deep end of a pool of diseased shit he dug with his own hands, and no clue how to swim.”

 
; “Who is trying to unseat the King of Hell and become the new Czar down there? Is it Micah?”

  “Do you think I would know something like that? I'm a mere sub-daemon, toiling in the dungeons, inflicting petty agonies.”

  “That's an objection, not an answer.”

  She held his gaze for several seconds. “I don't know.”

  Hatcher considered that. “Whose side are you on in this coup?”

  “Side? I serve whoever rules. Unlike you, I understand my place. My loyalty lies with the power. And you have two more questions.”

  Hatcher squatted down, arms hanging from the upside down sledge hammer balanced in front of him. Two more questions. He needed to make them count. Or, he thought, make the last one really count.

  “Okay. On the subject of what's currently going on in Hell, what's the one question that a person like me, someone wanting the most important information about what's happening down there, would want answered?”

  The demon became very still. Gem-like eyes, unblinking, stared into his with a force that was hard to match. “You don't want to ask me that question.”

  “I think I do. Answer it.”

  A few grunts, deep and visceral. She squirmed in the chair, straining against the restraints, her face shifting, expressions moving beneath the surface, like tremors. “The first and only ruler of Hell. The Lord of the Underworld. The only creature powerful enough to have challenged God Himself, powerful enough to have ruled legions of fallen angels since before the Original Sin. Abaddon, whose name means Destroyer... the Prince of—”

  “You're stalling.”

  “Suppose that he, the Father of All Lies is deposed. The question becomes, what happens next? What happens after the most powerful force of evil has been dethroned? That is what I would want to know.”

  Hatcher nodded, the implications posed by the question casting shadows across his thoughts. “Fair enough. Then that's my question. Assume the Devil is overthrown, forced aside. What happens after that?”

  Settling down into the chair, the demon smiled again, broad and sinister, displaying more teeth than Hatcher could imagine ever existing in the mouth of the little girl that was.

  “I have no idea,” the demon said. “Do you?”

  Chapter 24

  Amy had a rental waiting at the airport and was on the highway within twenty minutes of the plane touching down.

  Money, she thought. She was able to use Jake's cell phone to access her car rental account, use her preferred customer status, and walk straight from the gate to the rental zone out to the parking lot and into a car with the key in the ignition, rental agreement prepared and waiting in a fold-over sleeve on the seat. The attendant at the exit pointed a UPC reader shaped like a bulky laser gun at the screen, something beeped on his computer, and the guard arm blocking the exit raised to let her pass.

  The convenience of the future was already here, it just wasn't evenly distributed.

  Getting out of Tucson wasn't as hard as she'd worried it would be. She'd dumped the Hummer in the motel parking lot and jumped in the car she'd left there. It had her luggage in the trunk, and she'd guessed Bartlett's men wouldn't know it. She was able to drop it off at the airport return. If any of them had tried to follow her, she never saw them.

  But the flight was long. She booked the earliest available to Hartford, also using Hatcher's phone, and lucked out that it was leaving only an hour and a half later. But the flight had a connection in Dallas, where there was a delay, so the trip took almost seven hours. It was nightfall by the time she was programming the car's GPS to take her to the only abandoned religious theme park she could find any reference to in Connecticut: Bible Land, USA.

  Thanks to the Internet, she had the address, and thanks to a navigational app she had the route. What she didn't have was a plan.

  According to the map summary, she had about a thirty-minute drive. That meant half an hour to come up with something, anything. Think, Amy. Think, think, think. Bartlett had called it a Doomsday Cult. Sahara had been less judgmental, but they both agreed that whatever it was, Jake was there. She knew nothing about them, or the cult leader. Every strain of common sense in her head seemed to be screaming for her to call the local PD, tell them she had information regarding a kidnapping, drop some NYPD names for them to call and check her out. But that would take time, and she had no evidence. Zilch. They would at least want to know where she got her information before they sought a warrant. She couldn't imagine that conversation inspiring confidence.

  And Bartlett's men were on their way. It was a long drive, but she had no idea how much of a head start they'd actually had. The group may have left the day before, for all she knew. May have already been on the way during that whole show Bartlett put on in Phoenix. In fact, the entire raid may have been used as an elaborate distraction.

  No, police involvement would complicate things, and even if it worked it might tie Hatcher up for days, something she knew he wouldn't want. For now, she was on her own.

  All she needed was a plan.

  Approaching the silo the way she had, although a daunting prospect at the time, suddenly seemed straightforward and obvious by comparison. She knew enough about Bartlett, or was able to guess enough, to assume he would want to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and she had banked on him not being willing to sacrifice one of his own men. He'd used non-deadly force to abduct Hatcher – or so she'd thought – and she'd proceeded under the presumption the general would not graduate to killing simply to keep him. It turned out she was wrong about Bartlett having been Hatcher's abductor, but right about the man not being cavalier about killing. The question was, did that same logic apply to a cult?

  Whatever the answer, things were different this time. She didn't have a gun, didn't have time to figure out how to score one, didn't have a scheme for leveraging a hostage, and doubted either of those things would be appropriate anyway. What she needed was a completely different approach. She may not have had a plan, but she was starting to entertain ideas.

  All-male military units were always going to have a soft spot for women, that had been her starting point. From what she knew about cults, they were always going to have a soft spot for recruits. Maybe she could use that to her advantage.

  Same strategy, different tactics.

  The highway wound through suburban sprawl, punctuated by semi-rural landscapes. The moon was high, brightening the black top and lending a blue sheen to the surrounding sky. Next exit where there were concentrations of bright lights on each side, she eased off. No mall, but she did find a Ross Dress for Less that was still open. Little more than fifteen minutes later, she was checking out with a pair of casual khaki slacks, a loose-fitting white cotton blouse, and a pair of conservative flats that weren't half bad and much more practical. All for less than a third of what she'd paid for those Prada wedges, the same ones she tossed in the trunk with the rest of the clothes she'd been wearing.

  Normally, changing in the car would have made her extremely self-conscious. This time, she didn't even bother to check if anyone was looking.

  By the time the voice on the app told her to take the next exit, she'd gone over the cover story in her head half a dozen times. She was already pulling off the highway when the ring tone on Hatcher's phone sang out.

  Chapter 25

  Hatcher advanced through the tunnel one step at a time, letting his eyes adjust. It was darker than it had been earlier, and he put a hand out in front of him as a lead, moving it from side to side. But he missed the hanging twine, which grazed his face. He fished for it with his hands until he got a hold, then gave it a few tugs. The bell above pealed twice each time he did.

  He waited, listening. After a few moments, he heard the sound of the door being unbarred.

  Dim light filled the edges of the space above him. Footfalls, shadows passing over the cracks. Then a voice, shouting down.

 
“Are you ready to come up?

  “I was actually hoping for a pillow and blanket.”

  “What?”

  Jesus. “Yes. I'm ready to come up.”

  Some muttering overhead, sounds of movement. Creaking noises, successive thumps. The light around the edge started to widen and the basket wobbled and descended. Slowly at first, but it accelerated suddenly enough that Hatcher had to jump back out of the way. He stepped into it, told the man leaning over the opening with a torch that he was all set, and then he felt a few jerking movements under his feet and started to rise.

  There were three of them topside, one with a torch. Hatcher stepped to the dirt floor, and looked around. Something was odd. There had been light up here earlier. His eyes found the candle. It was melted down to a nub.

  One of the men stepped forward and handed him a bottle. “We brought you some water.”

  “How long was I down there?”

  The man exchanged looks with the others, all of them thinking, shrugging. The man with the torch said, “Nine hours? Maybe a tad under.”

  Hatcher said nothing. Nine hours. It just didn't seem possible. His best guess had been an hour and a half, maybe two. Three, if he'd completely lost all track. But nine?

  “Hey, are you okay?” It was the one with the torch, eyeing him.

  Hatcher let out a breath and nodded. “Peachy.”

  “Good. You're supposed to come with me.”

  Hatcher nodded. Micah would want a full debriefing. He wondered how much was caught on video, what it looked like. There was no way he'd actually been down there nine hours.

  But, twisting open the water bottle and chugging down half of its contents in a series of gulps, he did have to admit he was thirsty as hell.

  The man with the torch led Hatcher outside. A man with a flashlight was waiting, standing next to some crates. It was a big Mag-Lite, large and long. He held it out and swapped it for the torch without comment. The man who took it flashed the light ahead and gestured for Hatcher to follow.