Authors: Tim Marquitz
Three
After about forty-five minutes, give or
take, Mihheer’s agonized screams drifted into the background noise of my head. I’d
started picturing porn and quoting rap lyrics to keep from going crazy while
Longinus put the squeeze on the alien. The porn helped, but the lyrics just
made me want to smoke dope and beat bitches. Probably not the best of
distractions, I admit.
I curled up into a ball, my hands over my
head and my face on my knees. I would have gone fetal, but I’m not that
flexible. If I were, I could have found better ways to entertain myself. A
happy ending out of the question, I sat that way until I heard the creak of the
door opening. Against my better judgment—a mental reaction of mine more
prevalent than the training of Pavlov’s dog—I looked up as Longinus reclaimed
his sword from the floor where I’d dropped it, my gaze immediately drawn
through the crack of the doorway and into the room.
What had been gray stone was now dripping
with crimson, not an inch of its natural color showing through. Stalactites of
blood and entrails coated the ceiling, hanging down like sausages at an
old-timey butcher shop. They swayed even in the still air. Wet drips sounded as
though a gentle passed over. My eyes followed the carnage downward. Visible
through the space between Longinus’ legs was a droopy puddle that had once been
something humanoid in shape. Like silly putty washed in red paint, the remnants
of Mihheer lay stretched and distorted, hammered thin into a sheet of boneless
meat. Vibrant greens and blacks stood out amidst the mass, colors swirling to
make intricate shapes, which spoke legions of the torment the alien had
endured.
I swallowed hard and looked up at Longinus.
“So?” It wasn’t much of a question, but it was all I could squeeze out of my
throat right then.
Longinus nodded. He didn’t even bother to
wipe at the blood that coated him as moistly as it did the room. “He gave up
his master’s location a half hour ago.”
A cold chill danced the Macarena down my
spine as I spied the subtle flickers of a satisfied smile playing across his
lips. He’d gotten the information he needed and still spent an extra fifteen,
twenty minutes turning Mihheer into a puddle of goop. I kept my mouth shut, but
it damn sure gave me the willies. You just don’t question that kind of
conviction, which probably explains why so many people in history have happily swallowed
the Kool-Aid. Determination like that carries a weight that’s hard to oppose.
A moist gurgle drew my gaze back to the
room. My heart thrummed at seeing the sludgy remnants of Mihheer twitch, a tiny
wave rippling down the length of his flattened body. He was still alive.
I stood on numb legs and stumbled past
Longinus, amazed and sickened by the destruction that had been visited upon the
alien. To realize all he’d suffered and yet still clung to life was a testament
to the nature of Hell. Torment was a certainty here, but death wasn’t so easy
to come by.
A half-pulped eye turned in the soupy mass.
Its foggy stare settled on me, memories washing in its wake. I’d seen such
butchery before…caused by my own hands.
Arol’s shattered face stared out of the
past, and I recognized shadows of the agony I saw in Mihheer, the final moments
of misery before the end stole in and gratefully washed all the pain away. I’d
given Arol mercy, not because I felt he deserved it, but because it satisfied
something in me to finish it, to have closure for my mother. That bitterness
stung my tongue now that I knew how I’d been used, how Arol’s death had been
nothing more than a means to keep me under Lucifer’s thumb.
I glared at Mihheer. His one eye trembled
in its soggy socket. It begged for release, whimpers squirming out from
somewhere within the carnage of flesh and oozing wounds. Death was coming for
him soon. He was too far gone now to stop it. My hand reached instinctively for
my gun, but all I could think of was Karra. Gorath had her and Mihheer had been
complicit in her capture. My hand fell away from my pistol.
“You did this to yourself,” I told him, my
condemnation his epitaph, the last words he would ever hear.
I turned and left the room, closing the
door behind me, the rancid stench of the alien’s failing life fading away. I
swallowed hard against the bile that stung my throat and looked to Longinus. It
was done. All that mattered now was finding Karra.
“You know where she is?”
“I have the coordinates, but there is more
we need before we can begin our journey.”
“Such as?”
“Blood.”
My eyes involuntarily surveyed the copious
amounts of exactly that still rolling off his face and chest before returning
to meet his eyes.
Longinus grinned. “This is nothing compared
to what we need.” A faint shadow crossed over his features, and he leaned in a
little closer. “Do you have access to your uncle’s dread fiends?”
Right then I realized Longinus had no idea I
was Lucifer’s son…and neither did Karra. Shit. He hadn’t asked how I’d locked
down Hell, probably assuming I’d been given the keys as a going away present by
Lucifer. As the wayward custodian everyone believed me to be, it made sense for
me to have them. I nodded energetically to cover the sigh that threatened to
slip loose, the truth chasing its tail like a lost puppy. There was absolutely
no way I could tell Longinus who I really was, especially not right then.
Hey,
by the way, those dread fiends you want me to gather up—you know, the exact
same ones that ripped you to shreds and left you on physical vacation for the
last four hundred years—well, they were passed down the line from Lucifer to
his newly revealed son…uh, which just happens to be me, the demon giving it to
your beloved daughter in the poop chute. So, you’re asking the kid of the guy
who killed you with dread fiends to go and bring back a bunch of dread fiends.
Kind of ironic, huh?
Yeah, I couldn’t see that going over well.
At least, if I’d inherited nothing else from my father, I was a good
bullshitter
. “Yeah, I know where they’re at. How many will
you need?”
“A thousand, at least. More if you have them.”
He set a big hand on my shoulder and nearly made me tinkle. “This
Gorath
apparently used the same portal Baalth
was using to shuttle power to God and your uncle.”
“But how? It was destroyed?”
Longinus shook his head. “Only the earthly
gateway on this end was damaged. The alien tapped into it the core of it and
shunted him and Karra through to the other side, piggybacking on the foundation
Baalth had already set in place.”
I did the mental math a moment—two plus two
equals nine—and realized something I was pretty sure I wanted to be wrong
about. “So, if he used the same portal Baalth had been using, then Gorath took
Karra to the same dimension as God?” And Lucifer…my estranged father…a person I
damn well did
not
want to see right
at this moment.
“Yes.”
The answer was a punch to the gut. Not only
would Longinus learn who I really was, he’d know I purposely avoided telling
him when there was more than ample opportunity to do so. He’d either think I
was a coward or exactly the same as Lucifer, neither winning attributes for someone
who wanted to continue sexing up his daughter.
I sighed as another thought stabbed my
skull. “Could he have made it all the way there…you know, with Karra?”
“He could, but it would have drained his
remaining energies to do so.”
Which was yet one more ironic twist to the
story line. “That means he popped into the same realm his greatest enemy
resides, in a condition that makes him completely vulnerable. Yet conversely,
that exact same weakness is exactly what allows him to do so without being detected.”
It was so stupid it was brilliant. “Drained of energy on arrival, no one would even
notice he was there.”
“Exactly, but that leaves him desperate on
the other side and in need of power.”
It sounded good in theory, but I’d already
discussed the effects of traveling so far through dimensions with Baalth.
“Won’t that leave us in the same boat?”
He smiled. “That’s what the fiends are for.”
Longinus gave me a shove. “Go get them and meet me at the portal room. We’re
wasting time.”
I shook my head and wandered off without
arguing. Extra torture wasn’t a waste of time but discussing our plans before
we dove headlong into another dimension apparently was. My memory could be
pretty faulty sometimes, but I didn’t recall reading that particular tactically-genius
strategy in Sun Tzu’s
Art of War
. It
started to make sense why Hell had always been on the losing side of the battle
with Heaven. Charge in and die was a valid maneuver, apparently.
~
Just a short while later, I arrived at
Baalth’s toasted little portal room with about fifteen hundred dread fiends in
tow. They shuffled at my back as I popped the door open and went inside.
Longinus was already there, waiting on me. He’d taken a few moments along the
way to clean the blood off and looked almost jovial without the guts of an
alien creature splattered across his countenance. While I had no real desire to
try the stuff, it was probably good for your complexion.
G’Oréal
: “Because you’re worth
it.”
It looked like the rooms could use a good
coating. Outside of a narrow path, which led to the devastated pool McConnell died
in, the chambers were exactly as I’d seen them last. The floor was littered
with rubble and ruin, bits and pieces of the bodies that had been pinned to the
wall were scattered all about. Fingers and toes stood at attention, an elbow
here and there alongside the occasional charred head, which had made it through
the magical tumult that destroyed the room.
Barely a week since it happened, the raw
stink of death still clung to the air. I tasted it with every breath, the smell
saturating the room even over the stink of the fiends. The ground crunched
beneath my feet as I went to join Longinus near the tub. He motioned to where
the portal had been upon the ceiling, where Mihheer had skipped out just before
Baalth went
kablooey
. My gaze followed his, and I
noticed the orb that was there before had been replaced with a hand drawn
pentacle. Crafted in blood—and I had a pretty good idea as to whose—it was the
old school way of gating through dimensions, much like the one Lucifer rigged
up in my house so I could slip down to Hell.
“You gonna be able to crank that old jalopy
over?”
Longinus grinned. “This was how it was done
in my time, Triggaltheron. Blood and willpower and the occasional vial of semen
were all a demon needed to accomplish a goal.”
I twinged at the use of my full name, not
to mention the recipe he was cooking with, but let it go. It wasn’t like we
were eating it. “Okay, Grandpa Longinus; fifty miles both ways to school,
uphill in the snow against the wind, with no shoes…I gotcha.” He laughed, and I
realized I’d said that aloud. “I, uh—”
He waved it off. “I know things have
changed but sometimes the old ways work just as well, if not better. We should
be grateful they still do.”
“Amen.”
He turned to face me, an indecipherable
expression distorting his features. “There are moments when I wonder what my
daughter sees in you…Frank, but there’s certainly no doubting how much you care
for her. You’re ready to cross the universe, risking your life to save hers, entirely
of your own free will, when you could be anywhere else, instead. I think,
perhaps, Karra might have the right of it.”
And here I was thinking guilt didn’t come
in a dildo that big.
I let my breath out slow and easy and
forced a smile. He was right. I was here for Karra and I always would be, but I
damn well knew how temporary these warm
fuzzies
of
his were. Maybe I’d get lucky and we wouldn’t run into anyone who would spoil
my little secret before I was ready to do it myself. I muffled a laugh. Who was
I kidding? Reality was an opportunistic rapist with a thing for my ass. It’d
have me
pantsed
and bent over before I got as much as
a request for dinner out.
With hopes of diverting the train of my
awkward thoughts, I changed the subject. “So, what’s the plan?”
Longinus pointed to the tub. “We’ll use
that as a reservoir. Have the fiends line up and fill it.”
I waved the sub-demons over to the pool,
telling them what I wanted. Despite being ordered to kill themselves, they shuffled
in, the first clambering up the broken stairs without hesitation. It ripped
open its throat with its claws and lay down with its neck over the tub. The one
behind grabbed its legs and raised it up so the blood gushed faster, tossing
the first’s body off to the side when it was done before following its example
into the abattoir. The pungent tang of fresh claret, mixed with that of the
decaying bodies, made the room reek something fierce.
“How’s this gonna work?”
“The blood will fuel the opening of the
gate and provide me with additional power to protect us for the majority of the
journey without me having to expend my own energy.”
Always a catch. “The majority?”