by Eric Vall
“Right,” I said as I continued to scan the residence for any sign of activity. “Just be careful.”
The silhouette of the man in the window pulled the outline of the woman in close, and their lips appeared to touch tenderly.
“What the fuck?” Cupiditas was audibly rattled. “Are you sure that’s Sister Ira? She’d never submit herself to another demon.”
“Who else could it be?” I shushed the blonde. “Maybe they’re putting on a show for company.”
“Uh, that’s definitely not a show.” Liby chuckled as we watched the two silhouettes kiss passionately and push their bodies close together. “Though if it is, I really want to know what kind of stuff they’re into.”
The man and woman in the window began to disrobe each other without breaking their smooch, and then they disappeared out of view.
“Hey Todd, are you in the house yet?” I asked through the transmitter.
“Squeezing through the window right now,” Todd’s voice answered. “Holy fuck, this place looks nicer than Quinn’s mansion!”
“Be on high alert,” I warned. “The people in the house moved out of our sight. They looked like they were getting frisky so I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up in one of the bedrooms.”
“Ohhh yeah.” Todd snickered. “I’m inside, and I can hear them loud and clear. They’re really getting into it in there. Wanna hear?”
“Just come down and unlock the door, Todd,” I said with a sigh.
“Can’t you give me a second?” the imp implored. “I can be done in--”
“Todd!” I tried to bring his focus back to the mission.
“Alright, alright,” he said. “I guess I’ll just have to wait until we’re back at our place. I’ve got a new contraption in the second bedroom that I’ve been dying to try out.”
I gagged. “I’m gonna pretend we didn’t hear that. Just get down here.”
“On my way, Jakey,” Todd confirmed.
I restarted Shadow’s engine, flipped on the low beams, and kicked her into gear.
We drove up to the front of Franklin’s house as if we were regular visitors, and then the four of us slid out of the vehicle as quietly as we could. The succubi and I made our way to the large brown front door, pretended to knock, and then stood back and waited.
The whole exercise was probably pointless, but we at least needed to put on a good show for the security cameras. Once we’d killed this fucker, I was going to have to go in and erase some of the footage, anyway. That would make it look like Franklin didn’t want anyone to see him coming and going late at night, and further the claims of infidelity.
A few seconds later, we heard the click of the locks, the rattle of the deadbolt chain, and the door was opened by an unseen force.
“You rang?” Todd’s voice giggled softly.
“Good job, bro.” I smiled at the space where I thought the imp stood.
As I entered, I took a second to admire the structure. Unlike our Presidential suite at the Mandarin Oriental, the entire interior of this house was ripped straight out of the seventeen-hundreds Colonial. The light-colored hardwood floors blended in with the cream wallpaper and the white molding. Every now and again, the bright palette was broken up by the occasional accent of a dark wooden chair or banister. The furniture looked old and antique, and even the light in the entryway radiated out of a chandelier that looked like it was at least a hundred years old.
Todd was right, this place was a lot fancier than Robert Quinn’s mansion. Though I still wasn’t sure if I preferred it to our luxurious dwelling back in Phoenix.
“Did you see anybody else while you were scoping the place out?” I asked the imp nervously.
“Nada,” he retorted. “Just the two lovebirds.”
We made our way up the beautiful wooden staircase, and I couldn’t help but cringe every time the wood creaked underneath our feet.
“I don’t think you gotta be too quiet.” Todd giggled. “I don’t think those two could hear an airliner taking off right at the moment.”
“Was it Sister Ira?” Sia asked the imp.
“I didn’t see them,” Todd answered, “but I sure as fuck heard them. I could have sworn this dude was fruitier than Fruit Loops, but I guess not.”
Once we were at the top of the stairs, it was easy to understand what the imp was talking about. The entire area around us was filled with the sound of muffled groans, moans, and grunts. It sounded like they were really enjoying themselves.
It was almost a shame that we were going to have to interrupt them.
Just down the hallway was the source of the noise, a large entryway with white double doors that were left wide open.
I looked at the succubi and then motioned for them to move in on both sides of the structure. Cupi and Liby sprouted their wings and then floated softly up to the ceiling. There was only a two or three-foot clearing between the roof and the top of the doorway, so both women had to press their bodies tightly against the ceiling as they passed over.
Once they were finally safe on the other side, I nodded and summoned a ball of red Hellfire into my hand. My four friends followed suit and readied their own glowing flames.
I started the silent countdown with a “one.”
These two were gonna be a challenge, but I knew that catching them by surprise may even the odds in our favor.
Two.
I took a deep breath as adrenaline coursed through my body.
Three.
The five of us leapt around the corner and unleashed a hailstorm of spells at the two figures on the bed.
The fucker must have really been surprised because I could see the whites of his eyes from all the way across the room.
Franklin quickly shoved the woman on top of him off and rolled out of the way of the attack just before the bed was incinerated, stabbed, and disintegrated all at the same time. The politician came up swinging with a blast of his own red Hellfire, but I quickly knocked it away with a purple shield.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the naked woman try to make a run for it, but then a blast of Cupi’s blue fire stopped her in her tracks.
“We can be real boner-killers sometimes, huh?” Todd chuckled and turned visible once again.
“Let her go!” Franklin demanded. “She’s innocent. She has no knowledge of anything I’ve been doing.”
“Even better,” I sneered. “You’re doing our job for us. I thought you were gay, anyway?”
Franklin looked puzzled for a second, and then grew angrier.
“Is that what Ira told you?” he growled. “Why the fuck does she keep telling people that?”
Before I could even process the information or make a snide comment, I reached out with my green flame and tossed a large dresser at the fucker. Todd followed up with a couple of baseball-sized blasts, and Liby hurled a few glowing yellow spears.
Franklin blasted the deadly piece of furniture with red Hellfire into smaller chunks of wood and splinters. Without missing a beat, he cast an emerald spell over the chunks, twisted his body, and then used them as makeshift shields. Libidine’s spears and Todd’s fireballs lit up the remnants of the dresser, but Franklin was unscathed.
“Liby!” I ordered. “Get that woman out of here and see what she knows. Then make her forget all of it.”
“Got it!” the curvy succubus called out. Then she backflipped into the air and then flew toward the frozen woman. Cupi released her spell on the naked blonde, and then Libidine picked her up in her arms and darted out of the room.
While that was happening, I didn’t waste a second to toss a ray of jade fire around Marvin Franklin. As the flames surrounded him, I moved my enchanted hand to the side and sent him hurtling toward the flaming bed.
Franklin tossed up a violet shield of his own to stop his trajectory, and I heard a wet pop as he collided with his barrier. He shot a blast of red Hellfire down into the ground and rocketed himself upward, out of the trajectory of my jade trap. Before he could
come down on the ground, a fireball from Cupi struck him in the shoulder and sent him spinning backward. Franklin crashed into the bookcase on the wall behind him and completely decimated the piece of furniture.
The naked man pulled himself out of the rubble, and he was now looking much worse for wear. Franklin now wore a third-degree burn on his left shoulder that appeared to still be bubbling with red-hot gore. He gritted his teeth, clapped his hands together, and summoned yellow Hellfire into his palms as he pulled them apart.
I was prepared for a handful of enchanted spears, but Franklin’s hatred spell manifested itself very differently than Libi’s. The yellow fire engulfed his body and lifted him up into the air.
Sia and Cupi tried to halt his ascent with a blast of black and blue flames, but the attacks did little but bounce off.
Franklin laughed maniacally, raised his arm above his head, and placed his open palm on the ceiling of the room. The yellow fire spread across the Colonial interior as quick as lightning and headed downward.
“Off the ground!” Cupi demanded as she scooped up Sia in her arms and lifted off into the air while I hopped up and summoned a platform of purple Hellfire beneath my feet.
Not a second later, the rush of yellow flames met up on the floor, and massive yellow spikes shot out from the walls, ceiling, and ground. If any one of us had been standing there or even near a wall, they would have been skewered, but thankfully, none of us had… and then I remembered Todd.
That’s when the imp let out a high-pitched scream, and my heart hit my stomach at the thought of my best friend being skewered by this fucker. I looked down and saw that the imp was perfectly fine since his body was pinned harmlessly in the space between a few of the spikes.
“Worst game of Twister ever!” the imp grumbled. “Here, Jakey.”
Todd fumbled around in his pocket and then produced a familiar black cube. It was one of the portable Demon Traps Raphael had given us, so I summoned it into my free hand with an emerald flame, and then I quickly shifted my flames to red.
Before I could use the Key of Solomon, Franklin clapped his hands together like a crocodile, and the walls of the massive spike trap mimicked his actions. As the entire room of death slammed down on us all, I was forced to drop the Demon Trap so I could call forth four small purple walls around my friends and me.
Even so, the impact of Franklin’s attack drove me to my knees and nearly knocked me off my ledge. I grunted as I held my ground and pushed back with my power. I was the only thing keeping my friends from being turned into human pincushions, and there was nothing in the world that was going to get me to release my spell.
“You’re much more annoying than Ira warned,” Franklin hissed, “but you’ll break eventually. I’ve got all damn day, ‘Marcus.’”
“Jacob!” Sia exclaimed. “Your Divine powers are taking over!”
I could feel the holy energy surging through my body as my horns sprouted from my temples. I let out a primal scream, stood back to my feet, and forcefully pushed the massive spikes away from my friends.
“Well I don’t have all fucking day, ‘Marvin,’” I growled as I released the purple spell above me and blasted the fucker with a brilliant white light.
The spikes on the floor and ceiling disappeared as Franklin refocused his energy into a protective violet barrier of his own. The white light struck the shield, but instead of ricocheting off, it drove the fucker up into the ceiling. The politician let out a wail of pain as his burnt shoulder struck the roof.
I halted my attack, and Franklin fell from ten or more feet onto the ground.
“Hold still!” Todd giggled as he snatched up the demon trap I’d dropped on the floor. “This will only hurt for a minute.”
The Key of Solomon projected out onto the fucker’s collapsed body, ensnaring him in its spell.
Or so we thought.
“Why isn’t it working?” Cupiditas gasped.
“Forneus couldn’t possibly be that strong!” Sia added.
I had no idea why our trusty demon trap didn’t work, but I sure as fuck was going to find out.
Franklin giggled as he weakly pulled himself to his feet. His nose was bloody and broken, and the gash on his shoulder was now so gnarly that you could see all the way to his bones.
“Ira’s plan worked perfectly,” he cackled as he nursed his useless left arm.
“Start talking,” I demanded, “or we’re going to make your death a whole lot more painful.”
The politician’s hand lit up as he produced a small yellow dagger. Without another word, he plunged it upward toward his skull.
“Wait--” I implored but was cut off by a blast of blue Hellfire.
Cupi’s spell struck Marvin Franklin’s hand a millisecond before he delivered the fatal blow and froze him in time. Sia followed her sister’s lead and quickly ensnared the fucker with her black Hellfire.
Franklin’s body was lifted into the air as he struggled to breathe. He tried to cast some sort of defensive spell, but Sia’s magic reduced his spell to little more than a few brightly-colored sparks.
“You heard Jacob,” the madame hissed and then lowered the flames so that Franklin’s head was free. “Start talking.”
Marvin Franklin simply laughed. “You should have seen the look on your fucking faces,” he taunted. “You all thought that demon trap was gonna work!”
“Why didn’t it?” I demanded. “Is that your black Hellfire power? Immunity to demon traps?”
The fucker started to cackle even louder at my words. “You still don’t get it, do you?” He grinned. “I’m not a demon.”
“Nice try, Forneus,” Cupi spat. “We know who you really are. Only somebody as fucking sinister as you could come up with such a convoluted scheme to gain access to the Porta ad Inferos.”
“Don’t talk about your sister that way, succubus.” Franklin chuckled. “It was her idea.”
“You’re the demon of rhetoric and manipulation.” Sia tightened her spell, and there was an audible pop from somewhere inside the politician’s torso. “Do you really think we’re going to fall for your tricks?”
“Plus you’re a politician,” Todd added. “I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”
“Believe what you want,” Franklin shook his head, “but I’m not Forneus. I’m just a plain ol’ mortal who got wrapped up in the demonic world.”
“A mortal?” I sneered. “You seem pretty powerful in the dark arts for a fucking mortal.”
“That’s what happens when you’ve been a loyal follower of Azazel for centuries, poser.” He laughed. “Unlike the rest of my brethren, I didn’t fall for you and the traitorous succubi’s charm. Once the Father of Warfare has returned, he will join with his brethren and bring the Army of the Divine to its knees.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, kiddo,” Todd scoffed. “We already know where the Porta ad Inferos is. After we splatter you all over this beautiful interior and tarnish your legacy, we’re gonna go there and stop Sister Ira.”
“Tarnish my legacy?” Franklin cackled.
“We’re gonna make you more disgraced than OJ, bro,” Todd warned. “Political legacy ruined, publically disgraced, all that fun stuff.”
“Do you honestly think I give a fuck about the mortal name of a long-dead demon?” Franklin shook his head.
“So Forneus is dead,” Sia confirmed.
“Forneus was weak,” the politician explained. “My master and his brethren killed him a long time ago. Sister Ira suggested I take on his alias just to fuck with you. It looks like it worked.”
“That does sound like Ira,” Cupi noted with a shrug.
“My legacy will live on eternally as the man who finally gained the Demonic access to the Porta ad Inferos, the mortal who brought about the end of the Divine rule!” Franklin’s voice now grew shrill and insane.
“Too bad you won’t be around to see it, huh?” I growled.
Without another word, I used my green Hellfire powers to
pick up two broken pieces of the oaken dresser. I raised them up on each side of Franklin’s head, tossed up a purple barrier behind the fucker, and then I slammed the debris together.
Fragments of skull bone and gore sprayed across the violet shield with the first blow, but Franklin simply laughed in agony. The second time, the fucker’s jaw was dislocated, and his tongue flapped helplessly out of his mouth as he continued with the gurgled howling. Finally, the third blow reduced his head to a bloody pulp, and the cocky fucker was silenced.
Sia released her spell, and Franklin’s dead body fell to the ground.
“We need to go find Liby and the Archangels,” I commanded. “If Sister Ira has played us this far, then chances are she’s still one step ahead of us. We need to change that.”
“What are you suggesting, Jacob?” Sia questioned.
“We need to do the last thing she’d expect,” I said as I made my way out of the room. “We need to head straight to the source, the Portas ad Inferos.”
Chapter 15
“This is a foolish idea, Jacob,” Raphael warned as I walked around the hotel room gathering up our stuff. “Seeking out the Porta ad Inferos will lead you to nothing but pain and suffering.”
“We have to get ahead of Ira,” I retorted angrily. “She’s going to find out about her little boy toy’s death soon, and then she’s gonna come looking for us. I’ve already told Jane and Oliver to head out this way and meet us by the property.”
“Alright,” the Archangel continued, “say you get there before her. Then what? The pit cannot be closed. Will you just wait for her with your army of cultists at your side?”
“Maybe.” I shrugged and tossed some of my clothes into my duffel bag. “If that’s what it takes to stop Azazel from being reborn, then I’m ready to go to war.”
“There hasn’t been a legitimate battle between the forces of good and evil in centuries,” Raphael pleaded. “Even our little scuffle with Azazel and his minions was just that, a scuffle. I can assure you that Ira will not be coming to the Porta ad Inferos alone.”
I dropped the duffel bag onto the floor in a fit of anger and turned to the Archangel. “Then what are you suggesting?” I demanded. “That we do nothing while that asshole Azazel is revived an hour away from here?”
