At The Gates

Chapter Fifteen

Someone behind me yanked my pistol roughly out of my waistband with no regard for the wedgie he’d given me. His rapids huffs warmed my nape.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who it was from the smooth voice of the gun wielder and the gorilla breath of his helper wilting the hair on my neck.

“Hi, Poe. There a problem?”

“Fuck this!” D’anatello’s voice rang out over my shoulder and I cringed. To no surprise, I felt the grip of my own pistol crash into my skull.

Dots of light flickered in my eyes and the next thing I knew, I was hugging the ground. There was a heated conversation happening overtop of me, but the words didn’t make sense. They buzzed and hissed incoherently. Blinking tears away, I peeled my face off the asphalt and rolled over to see Poe and Marcus had finished their argument and stood there glaring at me. Poe held two guns, one in each hand. One of them was pointed quite rudely at my face.

Marcus started to say something, but Poe silenced him with a low growl and a withering look. His eyes flickered with malevolent red energy. He turned his stare on me and my subconscious mind immediately starting flipping through the Rolodex of my memories to see if it could remember having done anything to make him mad since I’d seen him last. I couldn’t recall.

“I can’t believe you, Trigg.” He’d dropped the ever-present mister. He was seriously pissed. “I let you in to see Asmoday so you could stop the storms, not so you could exact vengeance for your cousin. I thought we had an understanding.”

My brain addled from the blow, not to mention the five bottles of Jack Daniels, I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Huh?” I majored in smooth. Admittedly, my test scores really weren’t that high.

Poe dropped down beside me and pressed the barrel hard against my cheek. The lines of his face were drawn tight, the tiny slits of his eyes like murder holes. “Don’t play stupid. Why did you kill Asmoday?”

The words ricocheted around inside my head for a few seconds before finally striking home. “I…” I had to work hard to think back, drawing my memories of our encounter to the forefront. “Wait. What do you mean? I didn’t-”

Poe leaned in closer, his weight on the gun grinding into my face. His eyes flickered back to their normal ice blue. He stared into me. “Tell me why you killed him.”

“I didn’t touch him,” I gasped, my tongue finally finding enough traction to spit out my thoughts. “He was alive when I left.”

He just stared at me for a minute, no hint of mercy on his face. The barrel felt like a cattle brand against my skin as he held it there. At last, he pulled the pistol away and stood, drawing in a deep breath. It reminded me to breathe too.

“Don’t let him trick you. Shoot that demon son of a bitch,” Marcus howled as he stomped back and forth in a tight circle. “He used us, and now Baalth will-”

Poe glanced over at Marcus and finally let his breath out. “Do you think me so incompetent?”

As a mentalist of amazing power, perhaps even more so than DRAC’s Michael Li, Poe might not be able to read my mind, but he sure could tell whether I was lying. He knew for absolute fact I hadn’t been the person to kill Asmoday.

Probably just realizing what he’d implied, Marcus stopped pacing and swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean-”

Poe didn’t give him time to finish, cutting him off with a wave of a pistol. “He’s telling the truth, Mister D’anatello. He didn’t kill Asmoday.” He slid his gun into his holster beneath his suit jacket, and then held his free hand out to me. “The most likely suspect proven innocent, it makes finding his murderer more difficult. I assume your cousin was with you after you left.”

A bit tentative, I locked onto Poe’s hand and he pulled me up. “Yeah she was, until about a half hour ago.”

He nodded as he spun my gun in his hand and passed the grip to me. “I apologize for our presumption, but after your earlier visit, you have to understand our suspicion.”

Seeing how Scarlett tried to skewer Poe, I couldn’t really hold it against him. I shoved my pistol back into my pants and yanked my underwear out of my ass. “We’re good. Now tell me what happened?”

“It’s best we do it on the way.” He snapped his fingers at Marcus who hopped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door, looking like a beaten puppy. Once the gorilla was inside, he motioned me to the car.

I climbed in on the other side of the sedan and slid deep into the comfortable leather seat. The base of my skull pounded out a tribal rhythm as Poe got in the back beside me, Marcus taking off the second the door was shut.

“The storms worsening, I’d gone to speak with Asmoday in the hopes of pressing him for information. The moment I’d arrived in his chambers it became clear something was wrong.” He took a second to regulate his breathing. “The smell of fresh blood and burnt meat filled the chamber. I found him on the floor. He had been torn apart.” He gave me an apologetic half-shrug. “With no way into his quarters except through the gate, which is synched to only me, I have no idea how it happened.”

Nodding, I sunk even lower in the seat. It was weird thinking of Asmoday as dead. As much as I’d wanted to put a bullet in him during his quest to bring about Armageddon, he’d always been too much of a force to take out. With Baalth holding his power in check, he was little more than a haggard drunk.

For him, that must have been the worst part of dying. Taken out like a common human, knowing death was coming for him and not being able to do a damn thing about it. It was a bitter kind of poetic justice that visited him, but I couldn’t bring myself to gloat. I sure did want to though.

Whoever, or whatever, killed him had to be powerful, given they’d bypassed the security on the gate. That alone implied a serious threat. I didn’t mention it to Poe, but I had an idea who it might have been.

We rode the rest of the way in silence until Marcus came to a sudden stop outside the office whose portal led to Hell. We hopped out and Poe took the lead as Marcus drove away, tires screeching. Inside, we worked our way to the portal room and the mentalist motioned to the gate.

“I’ve no interest in an encore performance, so if you don’t mind, Mister Trigg, I’ll remain here.”

Caught off guard by his reluctance, I nodded. I’d never pictured Poe as the squeamish type, so his sudden decision to send me down alone made me nervous. The power in the gate coming alive, I looked to the mentalist and saw tiredness in his eyes, but no hint of deception.

Besides, he had a gun to my head just a few minutes ago. If he’d wanted to kill me, he could have done it with a twitch. No need for an elaborate trap. No matter how much I wanted that rationale to make me feel better, it just kept falling short. There was more to it.

A servant to Baalth, a demon with no qualms about doing things the ugly way, Poe had to have seen a lot of really, really, really disturbing things in his time. So saying, his not wanting to go into the chamber again said volumes about the horror I was walking into. Alone.

Lucky me.

Materializing in Hell, I resisted the urge to take a nostalgic deep breath and held it instead. Boy was I glad I did.

Poe’s description of Asmoday being torn apart didn’t come remotely close to explaining what had really happened. No horror movie I’d ever seen could match the viciousness on display inside his chambers. It brought to mind what had gone down at the DRAC installation, a similar cruelty at work.

The walls and ceiling were stained in the thick redness of his blood, stalactites of dripping flesh hung from the roof. Slabs of meat were everywhere. Chunks oozed down the walls and sat wedged amidst the books on the shelves. Bone fragments littered the room as though they’d been through a wood-chipper, glistening white amidst the moist crimson.

The portraits on the walls were soaked with splattered blood, the paint running with it to blur the once priceless images. Most of them were hardly recognizable, their beauty forever marred; their value measured in dust.

The chair I’d sat in when Asmoday and I spoke was soaked in seeping red, the couch beside it the same. Everywhere I looked there was a piece of Asmoday, some grisly remnant of the demon lieutenant.

While most of it was unrecognizable, I spied a few fingers here and there, and a toe or two. My stomach doing its best to run out of my ass and flee, I eased across the floor, trying not to slip. Every step squished as I crossed the chamber toward the arched doorway that led to the back half of the quarters. The short walk seemed to take forever, the lurid scene splayed out before me.

Finally through the arch, I exhaled hard and coughed, choking a bit as I drew in a breath. The air tasted like death; a bitter, vile stench that latched onto my lungs and assailed my nose and throat.

My back to the main room, I felt my lungs begin to adjust, the carnage out of sight. The only trace something had gone on here was the trail of blood, which led to the king sized bed…and of course, Asmoday’s severed head.

A look of shock carved into his stiff face, Asmoday’s head sat propped upon the mattress. His bulging eyes stared at me sightless, the blanket beneath soaked in black.

My heart pounding, I glanced around the room expecting to see a killer leap from the shadows, despite the reassurance of my senses telling me I was alone. I tried to survey the quarters, but my eyes kept flitting back to Asmoday’s.

Even in death he annoyed me.

Finally, I went over and yanked the blanket up to cover his head, but it had other ideas. Before I could stop it, the head tumbled off the bed and hit the floor with a moist splat before rolling underneath it. Honestly, I’d have just left it there, out of sight, out of mind, but a second wet squishing sound a moment later caught my attention. I kneeled down and glanced under the bed to see what looked like a hole dug into the floor.

Adrenaline spiking my veins, I tossed the bed aside to find the hole was actually a tunnel, dug through the floor to an almost invisible chamber below. Asmoday’s head sat about ten feet down, looking up at me.

So much for my thinking he couldn’t dig his way out.

My mind tripped over that thought. While the location of the hole suggested that Asmoday did indeed dig it, it could very well be the source of whatever killed him. Since Poe hadn’t noticed the gate being used, that made more sense than anything. Worse still, Asmoday’s murderer could still be lurking down there.

Less than excited to go jumping in, I listened for a few minutes while working my courage up. After not hearing anything, I made up my mind and dropped inside, hoping I hadn’t just committed suicide.

I landed in a crouch, my gun held out before me. The room I’d arrived in was small, little more than a ten foot square. An unlighted tunnel loomed ahead of me, the only apparent exit. A quick glance at Asmoday’s severed head made me wonder if I should be going it alone. I decided not to.

“Here’s your chance to be a hero,” I whispered to the head.

A quick kick sent Asmoday rolling down the corridor, bravely charging into the unknown as I covered him from behind. He flopped into the darkness and came to rest about twenty feet away. I waited for a few moments, but nothing jumped out in response.

Comforted by that a little, I followed the head into the tunnel. About five feet past him there was an opening to another chamber. At the edge, I peeked inside and nearly shit myself. The massive room beyond was filled to the brim with dread fiends.

I stumbled backward and fell to my ass beside Asmoday’s head, my back against the cold rock wall. My hand shaking, gun trained on the tunnel entrance, I held my ground, ready to blast the first ugly face that burst into the tunnel.

Sweat ran down the back of my neck as I waited…and waited…and waited, my knuckles aching from holding my gun so tight. At last, my brain registered there hadn’t been so much as a peep from the chamber the whole time I sat there. So, I waited a little longer, just to be sure.

Finally thinking maybe I just hadn’t been seen, I urged my balls out of my ass and got to my feet as quietly as possible. I crept back to take another look. My heart floundered for a second as once again I saw wave after wave of dread fiends.

The shock troops of Hell, the fiends were built for devastation. Thickly muscled, they could snap a man in half without effort. Their mouths are filled with rows of serrated teeth, reminiscent of a mutant piranha. Backed up by an arsenal of sharp claws that grew like bony saws from the tips of their fingers, it wouldn’t take but a few seconds for one to rip you apart. I could only imagine what thousands of them could do. Actually, I could probably just look to Asmoday and get a pretty good idea. Longinus would know too, though I’d never have the sack to ask him.

My heart drummed a retreat, but somewhere in the abyss of my mind I realized there was something strange going on. Though I could hear them breathing, whistled breaths humming in rhythm, they hadn’t moved. The glimmers of their orange eyes stared straight ahead without blinking.

As close as I was to them, I could see the yellow-green bile that oozed across their leathery skin and smell the rancid stink of their unwashed flesh. If I could smell them, they most definitely could smell me, their natural senses far greater than mine.

I looked out across the sea of fiends, and other than the gentle tremble of the porcupine spikes extending from their bony faces, there wasn’t a hint of movement. It was freaky.

While my experience with the fiends was limited to the few encounters where they were trying to rip me to pieces, their current state seemed way out of character. They were obviously alive, so I had no idea what to make of it all.

Logic dictated that if they had wanted to attack they’d had plenty of time to do so. Deep down I knew logic didn’t mean shit when it came to the supernatural world. The rules weren’t the same.

Dread fiends weren’t wild creatures who acted on instinct. They were bred to serve, to kill. I couldn’t predict their response because it all came down to whoever had raised them, impressed their will upon them. So, while my presence might not incite them, I had no idea what would. It could be anything; a wayward fart could send them into a murderous frenzy.

A smidgen of confidence emerging at their continued immobility, I looked over their heads to the other side of the room. Well over two football fields in length, I couldn’t see anything clearly in the gloom, but I spotted an arched doorway at the far end, of course. A narrow path between the fiends led straight toward it.

No idea what lay beyond the arch, I tried to picture the layout of Lucifer’s chambers in the hopes of gaining some perspective. It wasn’t happening. The chamber was obviously built underneath, but I’d never heard so much as a whisper about it. Even with all the secrets Lucifer had shared with me, I’d never known about this place.

That meant two things: I wasn’t meant to know or they were built after Lucifer took off for parts unknown. It was likely the former, if recent revelations were any indication.

Either way, it meant that whatever was down here was here for a reason. Like a kid admonished not to peek, I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to find out what was so important it had to be guarded by an army of dread fiends.

Have I mentioned I’m a tad bit on the impulsive side?

I put my gun away and covered it up with my shirt. Not sure what the trigger might be for setting the fiends off, I didn’t want to risk looking like I was there for a fight. Besides, if the horde woke up on the wrong side of the cave, it wouldn’t matter if I had a million guns. There just wasn’t a win buried anywhere in that massacre. It wouldn’t be but a couple of seconds before I ended up as a chunky, red coat of paint on the walls.

A quick tap to my head cleared that thought away before it could dissuade me. I drew in a deep breath and took one step into the chamber. Nothing happened. I took another and still nothing. By about the tenth step, my ass threatening to turtle, I had passed the point of no return. If they sprung awake then, I was dead.

My pretend optimism fueling my advance, I sped my pace and moved as nonchalantly as I possibly could while running my ass off. The orange shimmer of their eyes stayed on me as I passed, but they never turned their heads or moved to intercept me.

About ten yards from the archway, I nearly barreled into a wall of fiends that blocked the way. My attention on the ones behind me, I hadn’t noticed the ones in front. Breathing like a locomotive, I felt panic start to well up, but it subsided just as quickly when the fiends didn’t so much as blink.

The path cluttered, I peered over them to find a new way to the arch. There wasn’t one. Wedged tight against each other, the fiends formed a solid barrier. I thought about backing up and diving over them, but I highly doubted I’d make it. Ten yards is a long way. Ask any football team.

Flying crossed my mind, but that was a pipe dream. It went up in smoke the second it popped into my head. Images of me crash landing in their midst sprung up unbidden. Even if I managed to figure out how to fly, I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t take offense to the use of magic. So, limited in options, there was only one more thing I could try.

Tentative, I reached my hand out and touched one of the fiends with the tip of my finger. The ooze felt warm as I yanked my finger back to keep it from being bitten off. The fiend just stood there.

A little braver, I did it again, this time laying my palm on its arm. Once more it did nothing. Its lack of response was encouraging. Thinking I could make it, I gave it a try.

My courage tucked between my legs, I squeezed between the closest two fiends, their stench making my eyes water. Neither moved, but their bodies were so rigid they didn’t even sway as I pressed against them. The greasy pus slathered across their bodies made it easier to slide past, though I felt like I was crawling out of an infected boil.

In the second rank, I slipped between two more and found myself surrounded in the third. Packed even tighter, there wasn’t any room for me to get by. Since it didn’t make any sense to go backward, it would have to be forward.

Careful not to bump the fiends, I gently leaned my shoulder against theirs and exerted some pressure. It was as though I were pushing against a brick wall. I’d managed to slide through a couple of inches, but they weren’t budging. As I got to my chest, it was like squeezing a watermelon through a dog’s ass; it just wasn’t happening.

Determined to get through, I put my weight into the move and I slid a few more inches but was unable to go further. While not quite the immovable object, they were as close as I would ever see. Worried I might wake them if I pushed any harder, I tried to back out only to find I was stuck.

Wedged between their arms, I had one elbow grinding into my spine while the other pressed into my stomach, the fiend’s hand grazing my crotch. Even as easy as I am, it didn’t feel good.

Unable to go either way without a jolt, I got up on my toes and tried to save some space that way. It didn’t quite work out as planned. Only able to lift up a little, I was still stuck, only less comfortably.

The stifling air was filled with the stink of dread fiend, every breath was torture. I could taste the decay. My stomach grumbled, compressed as it was between pointy elbows. To make things worse, an oozing pustule broke open on the shoulder of the fiend before me.

Yellow-green goop boiled out of it and ran like a putrid caterpillar down the fiend’s arm and onto my chest. It soaked through my shirt, its pulsing warmth lapping at my skin. Spurred on by the biochemical assault upon my sensibilities, I tried one last time to slip past, but I remained stuck. I pushed harder and then harder still, squirming to be free. They didn’t budge.

“Move damn it!” The words were out of my mouth before I’d even realized I said them.

To my horror, they did. The pressure suddenly relieved, I fell on my ass as the fiends stepped away, the room filled with a horrific symphony of snarls and rumbling growls.

On the ground, surrounded by dread fiends, I did what any self-respecting hero would do in my situation. I curled up into a ball and pleaded for my life.

To my utter and complete surprise, it worked.

After a few moments of me sitting there with nothing being gnawed off, I suddenly realized the room had gone quiet again. I dared a peek past my forearms to see the fiends were still there, but they’d gone rigid once more.

I uncovered my face completely and glanced around the room to find they’d stepped to the side, pressing into an even tighter group than before. Amazingly, the path to the arch was clear.

A tentative sigh of relief slipping out, I got up and willed my feet forward before they changed their minds. The last few yards flew by and I reached the doorway, casting furtive glances inside to make sure I wasn’t walking into an even worse situation.

The room beyond free of dread fiends, I went inside in a hurry. As I crossed the threshold, magical flares along the walls flickered alive, filling the room with gentle light. A closet in comparison to the fiend room, the walls of the chamber were carved at odd angles, sharp corners jutting into the room. It took me a second as I moved around, but I realized it had been cut in the shape of a pentagram.

On the furthest wall was another tunnel that had been recently dug judging by the rough edges. Broken rock and gray dust sat at the mouth, piled several feet thick. I ducked around the opposite side to keep the tunnel in sight as I surveyed the rest of the chamber.

In the center of the room, upon a raised dais of blackened marble, stood a trophy case, kind of like the ones used to showcase sports uniforms. Its muted gold frame was intact, but the glass that made up the front wall was shattered. Pieces lay on the ground before it, glistening in the light.

On its remaining walls were elaborate, mystical symbols etched into the glass. The writing flowed along the breadth of the glass and seemed to segue seamlessly from one to another, its sequence lost only at the shattered pane. Though I couldn’t read a word of it, it was written beautifully.

That meant bad.

In general, magic is ugly. Based in a primal brutality, it comes to life in fire and fury through sheer force of will. It’s the battering ram and the bullet.

Now when you get into symbols and scripts, it means the mystical energy has been harnessed to a specific use, which is most often defensive or meant to counter offensive magic. Crude symbolism limits its potential, the essence of magic born of imagination and creativity. Like art, the more beautiful, the more transcendent, the more effective it is; the more versatile.

The artistic script on the case told me it was meant to hold or protect something powerful. The broken glass outside of the case meant whatever was inside had let itself out.

That’s real bad.

A spider-like shiver ran down my spine. Coming down here, I had a pretty good idea who might have whacked Asmoday, but now I wasn’t so sure. If whatever was in the case was sentient, then that only added to the suspects and muddied the water.

Honestly, I didn’t really care who killed him. As a matter of fact, that person did me a favor as it cleared my debt to Asmoday without me having to welch. That point aside, the empty case was just another problem I had no idea how to fix.

Feeling a bit exposed with the dread fiends at my back, I made my way to the tunnel. A quick peek told me it curved upward. Once more attempting to picture the rooms above, I thought I could guess where it would come out at.

No sounds echoing through the tunnel, I pulled my gun out and headed in. The slope wasn’t too steep, but it still rose quickly. After just a few minutes, I’d reached the other end and let my senses loose for long range recon. They didn’t pick anything up. It seemed I was alone.

Out of the hole, I popped up into what could be considered the foyer of Lucifer’s quarters. The massive stones that sealed the chamber after Lucifer’s departure had been removed by Asmoday and never been replaced. Now, the archway led out into the open expanses of Hell. From there, a knowledgeable person could get anywhere.

That didn’t bode well.

Despite my anger at my uncle, I couldn’t help but feel a bit proprietary about his quarters. It would nag at me until I made sure there wasn’t anyone hiding in them or messing with his stuff. Besides, I had Rachelle hide Eve in Lucifer’s God-proofed room and I needed to make sure the bone was still there.

A quick search of the place eased my mind, finding Eve right where Rachelle had put her. The place being empty made it even more so. Able to do it myself this time, I stashed the bone where no one would find it. Hopefully I could remember where I put it when the time came to retrieve it.

Getting ready to leave, I had an idea. As one of the first beings to come into existence, Lucifer had a wealth of knowledge on tap. While he wasn’t around to ask questions-not that I would right now anyway-there was still plenty of information stashed away in the books he kept in his chambers.

In the off chance I might learn something useful, I returned to his room and plopped down in front of a stack of ancient texts.

Reminded of my lessons as a child, I wished I’d paid more attention then because cramming for tests never works out.