Tribulation (3 page)

“A Hellhound is
a powerful instrument of destruction,” he continued. “It can serve
in many other ways – their senses are also extremely sensitive,
especially their sense of smell.” The Watcher paused, watching Sam
carefully. “I can see from the look on your face that you realize
the import of this.”

Indeed Sam
could. With such a powerful ally, he could track down Grace. Even
his mother. He wasn’t entirely convinced though.

“Why would the
Hellhound obey me?” he asked.

“Because you
have the blood of the ruler of Hell in your veins. Hellhounds only
obey Princes, and what greater Prince could there be than yourself?
Besides, the ones that come out of the mountain craters are
juveniles. They will bond with the first Prince that they consider
acceptable. Not every Prince is chosen. In fact, few are. Be warned
though. Hellhound juveniles are rare and only emerge at certain
times. You must travel to Hell only at these times. There is also
much competition amongst the other demons for their services. Once
you have bonded, you must leave immediately before another Prince
finds you and kills you for the prize you possess.”

Sam breathed
out heavily, slightly overwhelmed. “But how can I guarantee that a
Hellhound will come for me?”

“You can’t”,
said Samyaza. “It all depends on the strength of the demon Prince
doing the summoning. If you are weak, none will appear. If you are
strong, the statuette also has a chance of summoning a greater
Hellhound juvenile, which is rarer still.”

“Where on Earth
did you get this? And why give it to me now?”

The Watcher
smiled knowingly. “Good questions, but your wording is wrong. It
wasn’t on Earth that I found it. And as for your second question,
that doesn’t require an answer. Just be content that you have this.
Use this opportunity that I have given you. It is simple. If you
want to find someone in Hell, you need to sniff them out. What
better tool than a Hellhound? This object I have given you is rife
with potential. With it, you can save the one who will in turn save
you.”

“Save the one
who will save me?” Sam echoed. Did the Watcher mean his mother?
Aimi? “Who are you talking about?” he demanded.

The Watcher
smirked. “That’s what you need to figure out. I wouldn’t spend too
much time thinking about it, though. Your time is almost up.” With
that, the Watcher spread his wings and launched himself into the
air. Sam watched him go, not for the first time jealously resenting
the freedom that wings brought his distant relative.

Suddenly
irritated, he tossed the statuette into a nearby pile of ash and
thrust his swords back into their respective sheathes. He pulled
out his hoodie from his backpack and tugged it on over his head.
Only then, did he return to the statuette.

Without
touching it, he gazed at it for a long time, unwilling or unable to
tear his eyes away. It seemed somehow alive, almost shifting of its
own accord in the bed of ash in which it nested. Eventually, he
could resist the urge no longer. He picked it up, wrapped it in an
old t-shirt and placed it carefully in his pack.

It wasn’t
destined to stay there for very long. Willing or not, it seemed he
and the statuette had a voyage to undertake.

Hell beckoned,
and its pull was not to be denied.

Colorado

“
For the grave
cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise; those who go down
to the pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.”
Isaiah
38:18

T
he warm winds of Hell comforted him more than they
should. The acrid odor of sulfur threatened to overwhelm his senses
as he breathed in deeply, savoring the smell. It felt good to be
back, even though by rights he knew he should hate this place
because of what it represented; human suffering, pain, torture,
torment.

Sam couldn’t
remember how he got here which in itself was suspicious. He
couldn’t just appear here at will – he’d have to carry out
preparations and he certainly couldn’t remember doing any of those
things. His gut told him that something wasn’t right - and Hikari
had always told him to trust his intuition. If you smelled a rat,
then it probably was a rat. Satan, The Morning Star – was bound to
be involved somehow. Whenever something odd happened, it was
usually due to the machinations of his father.

Sam smiled
sourly. He’d find out soon enough. Like an overly keen schoolboy,
his father was usually all too keen to reveal his hand and show off
his cleverness to his son. He remained where he was, perfectly
still on the black rock of Hell, ignoring the periodic blasts of
fire that spurted from nearby crevices, content to wait.

Some time
elapsed. How much, he didn’t know, but enough to make him restless
and irritable with enforced inaction. He was about to concede
defeat, reluctantly forced to admit that his father might have won
the waiting game this time, when he heard it - a high pitched
scream that rapidly descended into pitiful sobs. Sam cocked his ear
and reached out with his senses, concentrating hard to pinpoint the
source. It came again and this time he got a bead on it.

It was a
woman’s voice. A woman in dreadful pain. It was a sound that could
only be produced by torture. Something about the cry seemed
familiar to him at an almost instinctive level, and a part of him
knew the sound or at least the person who was making it - almost as
if this whole scenario had played out before.

Sam burst into
motion, his hands already flexing with the need to grasp his sword
hilts. Almost immediately, he found an opening in the bleak
landscape and darted inside. He knew that this was suspiciously
convenient but he didn’t care. Urgency filled him and he wasn’t
sure why, his actions controlled by a primal need to aid or end the
suffering of the woman.

He found
himself in a cave, almost pitch black save for a few flickering
flames embedded within wall sconces. An emaciated figure in
tattered rags crouched in the middle of the rocky floor, chained by
ankle and wrist. Her head was down, tucked into her legs, and her
body shook with sobs, now muffled.

A need for
caution and self-preservation competed with a burning desire to
rush over to the woman. His compromise slowed his pace so that he
only trotted towards her rather than ran. Standing over her, he
could see that her back was a mass of bloody wounds. An unpleasant
stench of corruption wafted from her body, and Sam’s eyes widened
in horror at the live maggots feeding on the living flesh.

He was about to
reach down and gently lift the woman up when she raised her head of
her own accord.

The upturned
face was streaked with lines of blackened tears, the deep slashes
on her face leaking a sickly combination of pus and blood. The long
dark hair was matted and woven through with dead snakes. Despite
all this, and the long, long moments since they had last seen each
other, Sam recognized her immediately and he staggered back in
shock.

His mother
opened her mouth, her eyes beseeching. “Help me, Sam. Free me from
this place. Please Sam. Help me!” She would clearly have said more
but lost the power of coherent speech as another wave of pain
washed over her. She started screaming again ...

Suddenly, he
was no longer in Hell.

He was sitting
cross-legged on black soot, surrounded by blackened stumps of what
had once been a pine forest. The view suggested he was high up in
the mountains. And then he remembered.

He’d been
dreaming, which was becoming more commonplace than he was prepared
to admit. He tried not to allow himself to dream anymore. Dreams
for him were dangerous and disturbing, giving his father access to
his mind. That was the whole point of meditation – to stop himself
falling asleep and thereby dream. He wished he could just sleep
without the nightmares, but that was impossible without his
protective pentacle.

Lately,
whenever he let down his guard or was just plain exhausted, the
dreams would come. They were - without exception - about only one
thing. Or one person. His mother. And they were getting worse.

Doubts filled
him. He knew he was being manipulated but that was beside the
point. If there was any chance his mother was indeed suffering like
his dreams suggested, he would really have to do something about
it.

The statuette
waited patiently in his backpack. His thoughts never strayed far
from it. It was time, he realized. Some instinct told him that the
Hellhounds would be birthing soon and with their birth, the means
to his mother’s salvation.

In the decades
the church had stood there, it had never looked so decrepit and run
down. Sam paused just outside the grounds and stared sadly at it
for a while, letting the enormity of it fill him. The once
white-washed walls were now an ashen grey color. The crosses above
the door and the steeple had fallen or been torn from the building
to lie scattered and broken amongst the dirty weeds.

The landscape
was even worse. Sam knew he was in Colorado and had long read about
the beautiful landscape. He’d hoped it might have been spared the
worst that the Tribulation could offer but he had been
disappointed. It had suffered like every other place he had been
to. Worse, in some cases.

The mountain
range towering behind the church would once have had snow at this
time of year. Beneath the snow line, fir, spruce and pine trees
used to dominate the slopes, their verdant green competing for
attention with the dazzling white of the snow. Now all Sam could
see was a universal grey. The skeletal remains of the trees were
shrouded with ash. It was a depressing vista.

That was why
seeing the church, even in its current miserable state, gave Sam a
vague sense of hope. It was his path to Hell and with it, a way to
rescue those trapped there. Sam lowered his head, closed his eyes
and rubbed both hands through his black hair, dislodging the hood
of his sweatshirt. His fingers brushed the horns hidden within the
unruly mass, but he no longer flinched. They were a part of him - a
part that he resented, but was gradually beginning to accept.

He opened his
eyes and stood upright. It was time to focus. He had things to do
and couldn’t spare the time to dwell on the past. Focusing on the
present, he contemplated the church in front of him.

The church
grounds had no outer fence. It was hard to tell through the layer
of ash and weeds but it either had never had one, or its remains
were now buried beneath this foul coating. Sam didn’t really care
about the fence – it was more a matter of where the hallowed ground
started. Hallowed ground could and still did burn him like
phosphorus. Sam had thought that because he was able to wear his
mother’s cross – the one he had once given Aimi – that perhaps his
sensitivity to holy objects and ground was a thing of the past. It
wasn’t. He’d tested this hypothesis in the months since his battle
with the Anti-Christ. Sadly, his reaction to other crosses, bibles,
holy water and hallowed ground was as powerful and as painful as
ever.

It probably
wasn’t going to be an issue in this case, however. He strongly
suspected that the church had been desecrated. The fact that the
crosses adorning the building appeared to have been torn down was a
pretty strong indication. Desecration meant that the grounds
couldn’t harm him, though he wasn’t going to take any unnecessary
risks. Even though it couldn’t kill him, it hurt like nothing else
and it wasn’t something he was in a hurry to feel again.

There was a
path, half buried, that circled the church. Sam suspected that this
path marked the boundary of the church grounds. He took two steps
closer and extended one of his legs over the path, allowing the tip
of his hiking boot to touch the ground. Nothing. Experimentally, he
touched his whole foot down. Still nothing. Confident now, he
jumped over the path. A part of him expected that now he would feel
the searing pain - a little joke played by his father – and he
gritted his teeth as he landed. He crouched, waiting for it. When
the pain didn’t come, he let out a little sigh of relief and
straightened.

In front of
him, the church doors were still intact. Ignoring the flurry of ash
it caused, Sam forced his way up the stairs, pushed aside a broken
pew and some unhealthy looking weeds, and cautiously pushed the
double doors. They opened grudgingly, emitting a grating sound that
set Sam’s teeth on edge. If there were any demons around, he had
just alerted them. Still, the small town he was in was deserted,
and experience had taught him that no humans usually meant no
demons.

He forced the
door open fully. Inside, the pews were scattered, twisted and
broken. As he suspected from the grounds, the place had been
desecrated. Crosses were either hung upside down or missing
altogether. Blood was smeared on the walls and the altar looked
like it had been used for some form of sacrifice. Standard demon
practice.