New Title 1

An Agreement with Hell

 

Dru Pagliassotti

 

Apex Publications, LLC

PO Box 24323

Lexington, KY 40524

An Agreement with Hell

By Dru Pagliassotti

Horror, Urban Fantasy

This novel is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2011 by Dru Pagliassotti

Cover art © 2010 by Katja Faith

All rights reserved

www.apexbookcompany.com

To my colleagues and students —

“Oh, summon your sons and daughters, The 'circling hills enfold...”

I

Jack tightened his hands on the .45, feeling the silver crosses on its grip dig into his palms. The protective spells sewn into the lining of his jacket were playing havoc with his nerves, jangling them with discordant warnings of the presence of the
mal'akhim
.

The devils circled around the broken angel like ants around a dead bird, their claws and tongues tentatively touching, probing, tasting. The angel quivered. One tattered wing twitched.

Jack swore. Still alive. He slid the semiautomatic back into his jacket pocket. He wouldn’t get any thanks for blowing a hole through a member of the Heavenly Host. Instead, he slipped out his cell phone and hit speed dial.

“It’s alive,” he said.

“Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?”

“The angel. It’s alive, but there’s a pack of devils around it.”

“Save it. I’m on my way.”

“That’s not my job,” Jack protested, but Andy had already hung up. Jack folded the phone and stuffed it back into his pocket, then swiftly touched the St. Jude medallion he wore around his neck.

He edged away from the concrete pillar. One of his boots splashed in a puddle of water that was all that remained of the dried-up river.

The devils hissed, crouching and raising their sharp-muzzled faces toward him. Mirroreyes caught and reflected him, and Jack winced. Right. What would Andy do?

He’d pray.

“Pater noster, qui es in caelis....”

One of the devils opened its mouth, its wet tongue lolling in a lewd grin.

“...Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regunum tuum....”

He forced himself to take another step forward. His heels were loud on the concrete riverbed, and the devils hissed.

“James,” the grinning devil whispered, its mirroreyes fixing on him and reflecting a fractured visage. “James, what are you doing?”

A bead of sweat ran down Jack’s face. He wiped it off and threw his long red braid over his shoulder.

“Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra.”

“Pray all you want, James. It won’t redeem you.” The devil slid from the angel’s side, its flesh slipping from shape to shape as it stalked around Jack’s heels. Its narrow head brushed his coat hem. “I think you’ll be mine when you die.”

Jack stumbled, recognizing Drink and forgetting the next line. Diabolic laughter sussurated through the shadows beneath the overpass. He heard a sound like a bottle breaking against concrete.

“
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem
,” he said hastily, skipping to the end as the sharp scent of whiskey cut through the devils’ stink. More laughter. The devils weren’t impressed. They pressed closer, their shapes blurring as they smelled his sins and fashioned themselves into temptations.

“Have you prayed for Rose lately?” one asked, looking up at him with silver eyes. Jack recoiled. Despair. He knew that devil, too.

He knew them all. Drink and Despair, Pride and Fear, Violence and Rage, Doubt and—

Bright light swept away the shadows as Andrew’s Dodge roared down the dry riverbed, clanking and rattling. The devils lifted their heads, sniffing for the newcomer’s motives and weaknesses.

Brakes squealed and Andy yanked on the wheel, turning the Dodge sideways as it stopped. The heavy door clanked open as he stepped out.

“Get out of here, you pests.” He lifted his golden pyx. “Go on, before I send you back to hell the hard way.”

The devils vanished. Jack sagged.

“Christ! Why don’t they ever gang up on
you
?” he asked, wiping his forehead on the back of his leather sleeve.

“For one thing, I mind my language,” the laicized priest retorted. Jack grunted and crouched next to the angel, leaving his partner to mutter prayers before returning the pyx to his glove compartment.

The angel wasn’t in good shape. Its wings, one arm, and both legs were broken. Shards of translucent bone glittered in the headlights. Mist poured off its flesh as if it were evaporating.

Its mirroreyes reflected the same incomplete image that had been in the eyes of the devils. Jack looked away, then dragged his gaze back. The angel’s skin was too white, too smooth; radiant with an inner fire and without the pores and hairs that would mark a human. No blood showed where its flesh and bone were broken, and instead of breathing, it seemed to only, perpetually, inhale.

The angel’s resemblance to humankind was a mask hiding a truth Jack knew was unbearable to behold.

“What do you need?” he asked. “What can we do for you?”

“James Ignatius Langthorn.” The angel’s voice was strong and sweet, despite its injuries, and light poured from its lips. Jack held his hand in front of his eyes to block the glare from its words. “Andrew Thomas Markham.”

Andy knelt next to him, fumbling dark glasses from his coat pocket.

“Do you need anything?” he asked, sliding the glasses on. “A prayer? Confession?”

The angel’s one good wing fluttered. Feathers rasped against concrete with the noise of stone grinding against stone.

“Eat and know,” the angel said, evaporating into white ash.

The occult alarms rattling Jack’s nerves faded. He rocked back on his heels and looked at Andy. The former priest pulled off his sunglasses and sat still, letting them dangle from one hand.

“Why do they always do that?” Jack asked. “I hate it when they’re obscure.”

“Angels aren’t talkative.”

“Raphael was.”

“Raphael was an archangel. An archangel wouldn’t get taken down by a pack of devils.” Andy ran his thumb through the ash and crossed himself, leaving a smudge on his forehead, lips, and Hawaiian shirt. Then he dipped his thumb again and repeated the gesture for Jack.

Jack licked his lips. A fire of wine and honey burned the tip of his tongue. For one fleeting moment a single, piercing note drilled through his ears, and he saw a furrowed field streaming with blood, a bone staircase that spiraled down into darkness, worms seething through raw meat, and a hallway full of doors slamming shut.