by N. P. Martin
“No. This is my fight, no one else’s.”
“He’ll kill you, August.”
I squinted out towards the horizon again and steeled myself against the rushing wind. “Only if I let him.”
“No, I’m coming over there. This is as much my responsibility as yours, August, probably more so.”
I shook my head. “No, Ray—“
“Yes!” he shouted. “You’re my nephew, the son I never had. I’ll be on a plane within the hour. I’ll teleport of it as soon as I can. Somewhere over the Atlantic probably.”
I sighed, knowing there would be no talking him out of it. Not that it mattered anyway. By the time he got here, it would most likely all be over and either Mr Black would be contained for good or I would be dead.
“Alright, Ray,” I said. “I’ll see you when you get here.”
I hoped.
47
Abandon All Hope
I TELEPORTED DOWN of the top of the Moreland Building to an alley down below. Then I walked around front and hailed a taxi as I didn't want to use any more of my magick reserves teleporting (something told me that I would do best to conserve and build up my magick as much as possible from then on). The cab driver was a young Asian guy in his twenties who was blasting out Hindu drum and bass music inside the cab. "Hey man," he said cheerfully as he pulled out into traffic, causing the car behind to sound its horn, which the cab driver completely ignored. "Hope you don't mind the music. It gets me through the day, you know?"
The hectic music seemed to pummel at my skull, and I winced. “Maybe just drop the volume a little.”
"Oh sure, man." The driver turned the music to half volume and looked at me in his rearview mirror. "That okay?"
I could have done with no volume at all but decided not to argue the point. Instead, I just nodded and stared out the window at the passing traffic and the scores of people walking around in business suits. We were heading through the heart of the financial sector, where all the big banks and stock brokers resided in their intimidating skyscrapers. Everyone seemed to be engaged in animated conversations, either on the phone or with other people. I imagined they were all making deals, hammering out conditions, issuing demands, all with the sole aim of making more money, and in doing so, increasing their power and prestige.
Like any of that will matter if Mr Black gets his way. Nothing will be around to matter if that happens.
It was a depressing thought that the whole world could be devoured by an ancient being that was insatiable in its appetite, consuming every living thing until there was nothing left but a barren husk of a planet. It was frightening to think that one person (my father) was able to go so far in their insanity that they would gladly wipe out a whole world (billions of souls!) if it meant they got more power. And what was Mr Black intending to do with all this power when he got it? Use it to wipe out more worlds in the universe, continually chasing power for power's sake? Or did he have some other plan in mind? I didn't know. The only thing I knew was that I couldn't give Mr Black the chance to make good on those plans. Even if it meant my own annihilation, I had to stop him.
"So hey, man, what you make of this big storm coming, huh? It's scary shit. They say it's the biggest storm to ever come out of the sky. You see that shit on the news yet?"
In my reverie, I had barely noticed that we were now on the expressway, heading towards Freetown. “What?”
“The storm that’s coming, man.” The cab driver stared at me in the mirror like he fully expected me to know what he was talking about.
“Storm? What storm?”
The cab driver shook his head. “Seriously, guy? It's all over the news."
"I saw the news earlier. There was no mention of any storm."
“That’s because it just appeared, like an hour ago.”
“Appeared? Appeared where?”
"That's the weird part. They say it came from space and it's coming down right on top of us, man. Right on fucking top of us! You believe that? As if this city hasn't got enough problems. How am I going to drive cab in a storm?" He was gesticulating madly with his hands over the wheel, barely looking at the road ahead, the drum and bass still pumping in the background. "I can't drive cab, I can't feed my family. It's that simple.”
If the cab driver was telling the truth about the supposed coming storm (and he seemed to be), then I wondered at the precise nature of it. Storms didn’t come from space. They were born in the Earth's atmosphere. Which meant whatever was coming down over the top of us, it was no storm, but something else entirely.
Like a portal forming.
"Son a bitch," I said, shaking my head, realizing with near certainty that Mr Black was a lot further on in his plans than I thought. If the portal was forming above the Earth already, that meant it could open at any time, and Rloth could enter this world. And once the Dimension Lord got through, that would be it. There would be no stopping an ancient, primordial being such as Rloth. The powers of such beings were insurmountable, and no mere mortal (or Mage) could ever hope to stand up against one. Unless, like Mr Black, you offered up human sacrifices.
Taking out my phone, I called Leona. “Creed,” she said upon answering. “I take it you’re calling about the storm.”
“It’s not a storm,” I said, aware that the cab driver was listening in.
“Well, no one knows what else to call it here. No one has seen anything like it.”
“That’s because it’s a portal, created by you know who.”
“Shit.”
“How about we’re fucked if we don’t find a way to close it?”
“And how do we do that, Creed?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had to close a portal like this before. No one’s been fucking insane enough to open one before.”
“Creed?” It was Brentwood.
“Brentwood,” I said, sighing.
“What are you doing to resolve this situation?”
“I’m doing my best, is what I’m doing.”
“You know what this gathering mass is?”
"Gathering mass? It's a portal, but you can think of it as the end of times because that's what's going to come slithering through it at some point that I haven't been able to determine yet."
“Jesus Christ. What do you need to stop this, Creed?” Brentwood asked. For the first time since I’d known him, he sounded desperate. I couldn’t blame him.
“Probably the one thing I don’t have. Time.”
“Then you’d better find time, Creed, or—” He stopped short.
“You do realize I don’t work for you, right?”
“Cut the bullshit, Creed. You know what’s at stake here.”
“The entire human race,” I said, the words underscoring the unbelievable direness of the situation. The cab driver was frowning at me in the mirror, probably thinking I was mad the way I was talking, or that he had stumbled upon a player in a giant conspiracy.
“That’s right,” Brentwood said, sounding like the enormity of the situation had just hit him full force as well. “Whatever you need, Creed.”
How about a different father? You got one of those handy?
“Sure. I’ll keep you informed.”
“I know you will. In the meantime, I have no choice but to declare a state of emergency in this city. The brass are breathing down my neck, asking how I’m going to fix this. You’re the only one I know who can do that, Creed.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but—“
“But nothing. The city is already in a panic and it’s spreading fast across the whole country. Just tell me what you need and it’s yours, Creed.”
“Okay, Brentwood. I’ll call you when I need you.”
“Make sure you do.”
Brentwood disconnected us, which pissed me off slightly because I wanted to talk to Leona again. What with the end of the world coming fast, I felt the need to hear her voice in case I never got the chance to again. At the very least, if all became lost, I wante
d to be with her at the end.
“That some crazy shit you talking there, man,” the cab driver said. “Portals and shit? What you on about, man? It's fucking aliens, ain't it?" He slammed the steering wheel with both hands. "I knew it! It's those gray motherfuckers, right? The ones with the big eyes? What they want, man? You think I’ll still be able to drive a cab when they take over? Hey, maybe they let me drive one of their space ships instead, huh? Long as they pay well, who cares, right?”
I shook my head at the cab driver, wondering if everyone was going insane and if the portal had something to do with it. “Yeah, right.”
The cab driver shook his head as we finally made it into Freetown. “Fucking aliens, man.”
As we drove down a nearly deserted street in East Oakdale, my gaze out the window went to the gable of a building. Spray-painted on the bricks in red were the words: ABANDON ALL HOPE.
Outside the cab, the sky seemed to have darkened dramatically in the last five minutes.
When he dropped me off, the cab driver looked over his shoulder at me and said, "Hey, man. What do you think the aliens eat?"
“Us,” I said, staring back at him.
The driver gulped and drove off.
48
Dealing With The Devil
A SURPRISE AWAITED me when I got inside in the Sanctum, and not the good kind either. When I walked into the dark living room, I looked left into the kitchen to see Blaez sitting, staring intently at something in the living room, his hackles raised as if in response to a threat. "What's up, Blaez?" I asked the Garra Wolf as I wondered what had his attention. His yellow eyes glanced at me briefly and he growled slightly as if to warn me of something. Frowning, I turned to see what Blaez was trying to warn me about and I caught the outline of someone sitting in the armchair by the window. Assuming it was Sanaka again (as he was the only one who could bypass the locks), I flipped the light switch on the wall and nearly cried out in shock when I saw who was sitting there.
It was a man in a tattered and torn suit, and he looked like he had just been in some sort of accident. He was covered in blood, and his neck was twisted at an odd angle as if it had been broken. I was also horrified to see a jagged length of bone sticking out of one of the man's thighs. Blood dripped down his leg as it pooled around his bare foot. The other foot still had a scuffed black shoe on it. And to top it all off (as if this stranger wasn't gruesome enough looking), one of his eyeballs was hanging out of its socket, resting grotesquely against his blood stained cheek. Hard to guess at the man's age due to the damage on his face, but I put him in his late fifties. The balding head seemed to suggest so anyway.
All I could do was stand there and stare at the broken figure currently staining my armchair and floor with his blood. In a situation like that, it was hard to know what to say. “Who the hell are you?” just didn’t seem to cut it, especially when I wasn’t even that surprised that a man who looked like a walking corpse was sitting in my living room. Such was my life.
I was glad when the man finally spoke first, although when he did, his voice didn't seem to match him. The voice he spoke in was deep and gravelly like a lid grating on a stone coffin.
“August Creed,” the man said, smiling and showing me a mouth full of broken, bloody teeth. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I can see that. Who are you?”
The man smiled again, blood spilling out of his mouth as he did so. “Don’t you recognize me?”
I didn't until his eyes glowed a deep orange color and then, for just a second, the man was replaced by the demon I had summoned. Baal. ”You," I said, not knowing whether to feel relieved or keep feeling worried. “Why are you in that body?”
“It was the first hunk of meat I could find,” Baal said. “This man was killed by one of your metal machines. I will find a better hunk of meat when I leave here.”
I crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and poured myself a whiskey (and no, I didn’t even entertain the ridiculous notion of offering the demon one). “Why do you even need a human vessel?”
“It’s been a long time since I played here. You summoning me here made me remember the fun to be had.”
“The fun? I can only imagine.”
The demon gave a throaty laugh. “Yes, you can.”
I sat down in the other armchair next to the fireplace and gratefully drank some of the whiskey. “There may not even be a world left to play in soon. I take it you know this.”
Baal nodded in his meat suit, or tried to, given the state of the man’s broken neck. “I am well aware.”
“Have you come to honor our deal then? Do you have a lead for me?”
Careful, Creed. Not so demanding. Remember who you’re dealing with.
"It's not a deal yet," the demon said, his eyes amber again, that unmistakable fire in them. "It becomes a deal when you submit to my terms."
"Which are?" I asked, sipping from my glass, trying to play things cool, which was difficult. The mere presence of the demon in the room was intimidating, to say the least. It could have dragged me right then to the Underworld if it wanted and there wouldn't have been a thing I could do about it. Plus there was that poor man's broken body. His soul was probably still trapped in this world somewhere, hovering around the scene of his accident, nothing but a ball of rage and frustration, knowing that a demon was walking around in his body.
Baal rose suddenly, the body he was in stiff with rigor mortis, making horrible cracking sounds as he moved and bent at odd angles. Then he rushed towards me at a speed that shouldn't have been possible, zig-zagging across the floor in the blink of an eye. "What do you suppose I want, human?" Baal asked, looming over me as I continued to sit in my chair. The man's body didn't seem as tall when he was sitting, but it did now as those still glowing eyes looked down on me.
I shook my head, trying to stay calm. “Apart from my soul, I really wouldn’t know.”
Please don’t ask for my soul. I just got it back.
“Souls are plentiful. I don’t need your soul.”
Relief washed over me, though I didn’t show it. “What then?”
“I will need you to find something for me.”
I frowned. “What, like an object?”
The demon forced its neck forward with a horrible snapping sound. “A human.”
“Okay. You want me to find someone. Who?”
“I will let you know.” He continued to stare down at me as he licked his bloody lips.
“So the lead then?” I said, wishing the demon would step back away from me, which it didn’t. “I don’t mean to press you, but time is running out here.”
"I can tell you where your daddy is at this moment. Will that suffice?"
“You knew all along, didn’t you? You knew it was my father.”
“Yes.”
I didn't ask Baal why he didn't think to tell me before. His tone made it clear that no justification would be forthcoming, however. "Where is the bastard?"
The demon leant over slowly, snapped his neck down another bit, so his eyes were level with mine, that busted face and dangling eyeball too close for comfort. Then he chuckled, a sound that made my stomach tense. “Your daddy dearest has been right under your nose all along, August Creed.”
"Where?" I asked, and the demon told me where my father was supposedly holed up. My stomach turned over when I realized I now had a location for Mr Black, which meant there was only one thing left to do, and that was to finally confront the bane of my existence.
“You will hear from me again, August Creed,” Baal said as he limped out of the living room and into the hallway, leaving a trail of blood on the floor behind him.
“If I’m still alive to hear from you,” I said back, though I don’t think the demon heard me. A moment later, I heard the front door open and then shut again, the demon off to find a new body to have its fun in.
Blaez padded into the living room after Baal had left. The wolf stopped by a large pool of blood on the floor, sniffed it,
looked at me and then started lapping it up.
“Nice, Blaez,” I said, shaking my head at the wolf. “Real fucking nice.”
49
Final Goodbye
ACCORDING TO BAAL, Mr Black was just a short distance away from the Sanctum, holed up in an abandoned building, no doubt waiting on the source of most of his power, Rloth, to make an appearance. I stood in the living room for another few minutes after the demon left. While Blaez continued licking up blood from the floor, I considered my next move, soon realizing that there was only one move left to make, and that was to battle Mr Black. There would be no use taking weapons with me as they would all be useless against him, as would any fancy spells. Mr Black would block them all. He would be using raw black magick against me, unfiltered by any spell, directed by his will alone. That’s what it was going to come down to, I knew.
A battle of wills.
His against mine in a battle of dark versus light.
Only Mr Black was more powerful than me, and I wasn’t even sure if my magick would be light enough to counter the darkness in his, especially because I allowed black magick into myself only a few days before. I could feel it in me still, deep in my core like a dormant monster, ready to grow if I fed it. I could have gone to Sanaka’s and had him do a Purification Ritual, but there simply wasn't time for that. The only thing to do was to trust in my magick and hope it was enough to defeat Mr Black.
Blaez was staring up at me, having finished with the blood on the floor, an expectant look in his eyes as if he knew something was about to go down. “No point telling you to stay here,” I said. “World’s going to end anyway if I can’t stop you know who.” Blaze raised his head and barked once as if to say there was never any doubt that he was going with me. “Gimme a minute. There’s a call I have to make.”
It was a call I wasn’t looking forward to making either. To Leona.
“Hello?” she said upon answering.
