Baptisms of Fire and Ice

by Nadia Sheridan

  Adara, tears streaming down her cheeks, pressed her father’s cold hand to her lips and replied, “I promise, Dad. I promise.”

  Her father had died six minutes later.

  Now, six months later, as Adara Caine faced the Low Prince of Sloth in the special collections room of the Edgerton College library, she recalled her father’s dying words.

  They invigorated her, body and soul, sent adrenaline pumping through her veins, stoked the glowing ember of her god shard into a roaring fire. They reminded her of what was at stake—all the precious moments in life she had yet to experience—and hardened her resolve into stainless steel.

  Barely moving her lips, Adara spoke too softly for Belphegor to hear. “Listen up, guys. We have a single advantage here, and that is the fact that Belphegor hasn’t seen Victoria in action. He doesn’t know what she can do, so even if he senses her shard activate, he won’t know what effect to look for. And we can use that ignorance against him. So here’s my plan:

  “On my signal, Enzo and Victoria, go directly for the cornerstone. Solomon, on my next signal, create a storm above you and fill it with as much rain as you can. And Gideon, when you think the time is right, freeze as many imps as possible in a single bubble.”

  She looked to Jefferson. “You and me, we’ll go for Belphegor, and the rest of the SWAT agents can provide cover fire, incapacitate any imps still roaming free after Gideon works his magic.” She paused. “Unless you have objections to that course of action?”

  Jefferson smirked. “None at all, Ms. Caine.”

  “What about the banishment spell?” Gideon murmured in her ear. “Shouldn’t we try that first?”

  “I don’t think there’s much of a point,” Adara answered, gesturing to the flickering construct of the cornerstone. “It won’t stall Belphegor for very long, if at all.”

  Gideon followed the line of her finger to the center of the spell, which had now begun to bow outward. Beneath the golden glow, you could just make out the shadow of something dark and slimy that resembled a meaty, humanoid fist the size of a wrecking ball.

  “Shit,” Gideon said. “That’s the demon’s full form, isn’t it?”

  “I’m pretty sure it is. He’s on the verge of breaking through. If we send the sliver of essence he’s using to possess that human body back to Hell, it’ll make his full form slightly stronger…”

  “And because the cornerstone is so weak at this point, that might actually decrease the amount of time it takes him to break through,” Gideon finished.

  “That’s my hypothesis,” she said.

  “One I agree with.” Jefferson crossed the hall, his focus on the water pipe ten feet overhead. “Ms. Caine’s strategy is sound enough, and I trust her judgment regarding the capabilities of your god shards, since she has one of her own. So unless someone has an alternative plan to suggest, I say we get a move on.”

  No one protested.

  Jefferson motioned for all the SWAT agents to get into a firing position around the doorway. As they moved, he jumped straight up with what looked like no effort at all, grabbed hold of the water pipe with one hand, and squeezed so hard the metal tore wide open with an echoing screech. High-pressure water gushed out of the hole, hit the tile floor with a splash, and spilled through the doorway of the special collections room.

  Belphegor eyed the growing puddle and chuckled. “What, do you think I’m afraid of going for a swim?”

  “You will be by the time I’m finished with you,” Adara countered. She tucked her hands behind her back and took on a casual air, sticking out two fingers where the greater demon could not see them.

  “Ooh, such bravado.” He raised his hands, and black flames flickered to life at his fingertips. “Have you already forgotten what happened last time we met?”

  Adara had warned everyone not to get too close to Belphegor, so as to avoid being affected by his energy-sapping sloth ability. Problem was, she didn’t know its exact range of effectiveness.

  She, Jefferson, Enzo, and Victoria would have to be very careful as they maneuvered about the room. If they drew too close to him and didn’t pull away quickly, they’d end up drained and helpless on the floor, easy pickings for the imps.

  “I haven’t forgotten a single moment,” she replied, dragging one of her shoes back and forth across the stream of water, disrupting the flow in a way that mimicked a young child playing in a puddle. “We humans can learn from our mistakes.”

  “But you usually don’t, in my experience.” Belphegor snapped his fingers, and the floating flames rapidly expanded, not into the shapes of spectral horses made of fire and wrath but into the snaking shape of a long, scaly dragon whose flame-filled throat trilled with glee. “Even those few humans who are capable of learning a thing or two rarely learn enough fast enough for it to make a difference when it comes to fighting something whose nature they cannot comprehend.”

  “You assume we need to understand you through and through in order to defeat you.” Adara took a step forward, the water on the floor rushing around the rims of her shoes, and stuck out a third finger behind her back. “But from where I’m standing, it seems all we need to know is how to mow down your ugly imps, kick your ass back to Hell, and put some duct tape on God’s fancy cornerstone spell. And we already know how to do those things.”

  “You underestimate us, little girl,” Belphegor scoffed.

  “Do I?” Adara faked a laugh. “Because I’ve been standing here chatting with you for three minutes, and you haven’t even noticed that we already attacked.”

  All the amusement fell from Belphegor’s cracking face. “Come again?”

  “Oh, don’t tell me a great prince of Hell didn’t sense our god shards activating.”

  He narrowed his eyes to slits. “I sensed all three, but you’ve done nothing with them.”

  “On the contrary,” Adara said, winking, “we’ve done quite a lot.”

  Adara exposed her hand with three fingers up, pointing to Belphegor’s left, and the greater demon fell for the oldest trick in the book. He looked to the left just as Enzo and Victoria rushed out from behind the pile of toppled stacks to his right.

  They went through the imp blockade using Enzo’s power—the imps scrabbled uselessly at their intangible forms—and made a running leap for the cornerstone spell. They landed near the back end of the circle and slammed their hands onto the wildly flickering edge.

  The first two fingers Adara had stuck out had been the signal for Enzo and Victoria to make a run for the cornerstone. Adara had not seen them pass, as Victoria’s power had blocked her perception of them. But she had seen the water on the floor get subtly disturbed by their footsteps, which was why she’d kicked the water up herself, so Belphegor didn’t notice their approach.

  The third finger Adara had raised was meant for Solomon, who’d immediately begun conjuring a storm cloud in the hallway. Between the water in the air and the water on the floor, his cloud had grown into a fat, rain-laden gray mass in a matter of seconds.

  Now, as Adara looked his way and nodded, he thrust his hands in a sweeping arc, directing the cloud to move. The cloud billowed through the doorway, floated to the high ceiling, and spread across the entire room.

  Belphegor, furious at the deception, prepared to sic his fire dragon at the two impertinent humans on the cornerstone boundary. But he didn’t get the chance.

  Just as Belphegor moved to cast the flame dragon, Solomon let out a grunt of strain—and the storm cloud unleashed its rain. A roaring downpour engulfed the room, so dense that it was practically a waterfall.

  The flame dragon steamed at the contact from the cool water, and its form quickly lost integrity. It disintegrated into nothing but discrete licks of fire that popped and crackled at the onslaught of water.

  Practically fuming from his crumbling ears, Belphegor shouted, “Imps, attack!”

  Half the imps lunged for Victoria and Enzo. The rest darted toward the doorway, intent on mowing down the other shard hol
ders.

  Gideon, who needed no signal to do his part, activated his shard power. All the imps who’d gone for Enzo and Victoria had so closely packed themselves together to mob the vulnerable humans that Gideon was able to catch them in a single bubble a third the size of the one he’d used at his apartment building.

  Imps froze mid-step and mid-lunge, many of them stuck in midair. None of them were aware that time had stopped moving around them and that their efforts to win this battle had been thwarted.

  But the imps heading for the doorway witnessed the plight of their comrades and snarled at Gideon. Adara placed herself in front of him, urging the imps to attack her first, and marched into the room.

  When the imps were five steps from tackling her, she let out a loud exhale—and became one with the water on the floor.

  Lifting her liquid body high, she raised the water to either side of her, completely blocking off the imp’s access to the hallway. As she did this, Adara spotted a flash of movement slip past her wall from the hallway. She smirked with her mouth that wasn’t really a mouth, knowing that Belphegor was in for it.

  The imps reached her water wall in the same moment Jefferson reached the greater demon, and two mighty battles began simultaneously.

  Adara whipped her water into a series of vicious rip currents that grabbed hold of any imps stupid enough to leap at her, spun them around so fast they were nearly torn limb from limb, and spit them out like cannonballs. Disoriented imps flew off every which way, bowling down other imps, crashing into the ruins of bookshelves, ramming holes straight through the drywall.

  When the imps finally realized there was no way to get past her, they turned back to make a run for Victoria and Enzo instead. The two shard holders were seemingly oblivious to the dangers all around them. Drenched to the bone but not shivering. Surrounded by imps but not quivering.

  They had begun the incantation for the cornerstone repair spell, and the intense focus of the casting had consumed them. The glow of the cornerstone had spread to their bodies, illuminating them from the inside out with a haunting, unearthly light.

  The cornerstone spell was five times longer than the banishment spell.

  It was up to the others to buy them the time they needed to cast it.

  So Adara was relentless. She didn’t allow the imps to get away from her.

  She siphoned more water and spun it up into a vortex like the one she’d used to break down the door at Hudson and Grail’s. Taking aim at the center of the mass of retreating imps, she launched the vortex. It thundered across the room, picking up books and shelves and other heavy debris as it went.

  The vortex swallowed imp after imp. Dashed their brains out against the floor. Pummeled their bones with leather-bound tomes. Impaled them through their chests and throats with sharp-edged chunks of wood. Rammed them into one another, again and again, until skulls shattered and skin tore and the water was tinted that sickly acid orange.

  The vortex ran the length of the room, skirted past Jefferson and Belphegor, curved around Victoria and Enzo, and crashed against the far wall. Or rather, through the far wall.

  The impact carried so much force that the entire wall imploded, and the water from the dissipating vortex flooded into the conference room on the other side, carrying with it the limp, bloody bodies of three dozen imps.

  With so many imps down for the count, Adara dropped the protective wall that cut off the hallway from the room. The SWAT agents who’d been waiting near the threshold took the fall of the wall as a cue to fire. They fired a hail of perfectly accurate shots that battered the remaining imps as the little monsters tried to flee to safety behind the piles of waterlogged books and broken shelves.

  Satisfied that all the imps were occupied, Adara gathered more water and made her way toward Jefferson and Belphegor.

  During the time she’d spent handling the imps, the vampire and the greater demon had been fighting a brutal duel. Jefferson was inhumanly fast and strong, and he’d “chipped away” at Belphegor’s façade: ripped off a hand, shredded the throat, torn out a kneecap and sent the demon to the floor.

  But Belphegor had powers the vampire did not. At some point, he’d cast the net of his sloth ability onto Jefferson.

  Now, they were both kneeling, arms tangled together as the tiring Jefferson tried to rip off Belphegor’s stolen head. Belphegor had tossed aside all his arrogance, and his black eyes were zeroed in on the vampire’s slackening face, all his concentration dedicated to siphoning away what remained of Jefferson’s energy.

  Had the two of them been the only people involved in this battle, Belphegor might’ve won. But their duel was part of a much larger conflict, and the demon had long lost the opportunity to choose a single nemesis.

  He had picked a fight with everyone on earth, and he was going to pay for it.

  Adara picked up speed as she neared the dueling pair and narrowed her body until she was a sharp blade of water hurtling toward the demon. At ten feet away, she felt the edge of Belphegor’s slothful influence waft over her, a cloying miasma that tried to drag her to the floor.

  Unlike a human body though, running water was a force of nature that did not bow to human foibles like exhaustion. So even as Belphegor ate away at her energy reserves, her water body and the spiraling flood behind it kept rushing forward.

  She hit him with the force of a tsunami woken from the depths of a rocking sea. The front edge of her form struck him at a sharp angle and sheared both his arms clean off. She swallowed the rest of his body whole, and he tumbled back into the bulk of the water Adara had carried with her.

  The wicked currents jerked him around and around so fast that he couldn’t get his bearings. And when Adara slung him out of the water, carried on the front of a powerful spout, the only thing he could do was gasp at the realization he had lost.

  His body struck the floor with a loud splat and popped wide open like a split balloon. Partially decayed organs spilled out across the floor, and a deluge of dark blood stained the standing water red. Cracked bones stuck out of rent flesh, and tendons snapped like rubber bands lay twitching near the body’s broken joints.

  The boosted body was in ruins, couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand. All Belphegor could do was lie there and stare at the storm on the ceiling.

  Adara cautiously drew near, a low wave held behind her just in case the demon attempted a last-ditch attack. But Belphegor didn’t budge. His oil-black eyes remained fixed on a nondescript point. His twisted fingers remained limp and grasped for no weapon, conjured no fire. His mouth remained stagnant, producing no sounds, words or swears or otherwise.

  It seemed he had accepted his defeat and let the fight drain out of him with his blood and other fluids.

  Or at least, that was what Adara thought—until Belphegor started laughing.

  The sound could hardly be called laughter, really. A faint, repetitive wheeze barely audible over the roaring rain from Solomon’s indoor storm.

  But Adara, made of water herself, heard the sound through its vibrations. She felt within that steady rhythm a sense of triumph and elation. As if, in the seconds he’d lain helpless on the floor, doing nothing, Belphegor had gleaned some important piece of information that Adara had completely missed.

  Adara couldn’t speak in her water form and so couldn’t ask him what was so funny. Instead, she examined the special collections room from top to bottom, side to side, searching for whatever it was that had led Belphegor to believe he’d won.

  The last detail she came to was the fragmenting cornerstone. Enzo and Victoria were still hard at work on the repair spell—it sounded as if they were two-thirds of the way through the incantation—and the imps who’d leaped at them were still caught in Gideon’s time bubble.

  But something had changed. The bulge in the center of the cornerstone had grown substantially larger, and something that resembled an enormous hooked claw had broken through the barrier and now protruded into the room. The claw jerked back and forth, gradually wi
dening the hole it had punched through the fabric of reality and further weakening that portion of the barrier.

  In seconds, the hole had grown big enough for a second claw to poke through. As soon as it did, a sizable section of the cornerstone spell flared with a blinding light. Then it flickered out altogether, leaving a quarter of the spell’s overall structure dark and completely nonfunctional.

  The cornerstone was on the verge of collapse, and Belphegor’s full form was actively breaking through to Earth. They had a minute, maybe less, judging by how quickly the hole in the center was widening, before Belphegor came through in all his unholy glory and slaughtered them as easily as a human could squash a bug with a boot.

  Like that wasn’t enough of a threat in and of itself, those two enormous squirming claws were able to channel more of Belphegor’s power from Hell to Earth than his stolen human bodies ever could.

  Black fire belched through the hole in the spell and gathered at the tips of the claws, forming a black sphere of flame. The fire was so hot that it flashed the pouring rain around it into white-hot steam. More steam rose from the surface of Adara’s water form even though she was standing fifteen feet away.

  Enzo and Victoria were closer to the claws than Adara. They both doubled over, gasping in pain, as the immense heat washed over them and scorched their exposed skin. They almost bumbled the incantation. But somehow, they both managed to push on through the pain and keep speaking the words that would save the world.

  “So close,” Belphegor’s broken body rasped from the floor. “You came so close to winning, Adara, but you just weren’t quite quick enough.”

  With that proclamation, the portion of Belphegor’s essence embedded in the body burst out from beneath the flesh as an amorphous black cloud. It shot across the room, wrapped around the claws protruding from the floor, and sank into them, rejoining the whole of the greater demon’s true form.