by Eric Vall
“I think it would be wise if we asked some locals,” Libidine suggested. “They have surely heard legends about this sacred place.”
“Or they’re all going to think we’re a bunch of loons who got into a little too much reefer.” I laughed and nudged the imp beside me.
“I’m glad you can joke about this, Jacob,” Cupi spoke up. “We already know that Azazel is onto us, and he surely isn’t too happy about the fact that we’ve killed one of his most successful pimps as well as every henchman he’s sent after us. I’m just wondering what he’s going to send our way next.”
“Relax, Cupi.” I looked at her in the rearview mirror. “The four of us are a great team, and we’re only growing stronger by the minute. Azazel won’t know what hit him!”
“I wouldn’t advise you to go up against this guy in combat.” Cupi’s eyes narrowed. “He’s slain entities much more powerful than any of us. That’s why he was once one of Lucifer’s top commanders.
“Was, one of his top commanders,” I pointed out. “You said he got his ass kicked and lost a lot of power, right?”
“Yes,” the blonde woman sighed. “He is still very dangerous, though. We just need to find a way around this conflict without any chance of a physical confrontation.”
“Exactly,” I smirked. “That’s why we’re going to this run-down church in the middle of nowhere. We get in, we find the sacred texts, do some chanting, cast Azazel back to Hell, and then we can be back in our apartment partying by the end of the week.”
Libidine and Todd both cheered at my words, but Cupiditas remained silent.
The succubus crossed her arms and stared out at the coastline, her thoughts distant. I’d seen Cupi rattled before when Earl first appeared back at the bar, but this time was different. When she’d spoken about her pimp, she sounded worried yet hopeful that he could be defeated. There was none of that in her voice today, only pure terror.
We were now about a mile out from the town, and the growling of my gut reminded me that we couldn’t fight evil on an empty stomach, so I pulled Shadow over at a small seafood restaurant that stood right on the beach.
The place was beautiful, a white and black building modeled after the traditional colonial style that would have been common in the revolutionary era. Large bay windows on the front of the facade allowed us to see into the establishment as we approached.
I heard the sound of Todd’s lips smacking, and my stomach gurgled happily at the sight of all the freshly caught seafood at the tables.
“Table for three?” the bubbly blonde hostess asked as we entered the building and walked up to the seating area.
“Four,” I corrected.
The woman behind the counter raised her eyebrow, puzzled. “Do you have someone meeting you here later?”
“Uh, sure,” I confirmed.
“Excellent! Table for four out on the patio. Please follow me!” She smiled sweetly at us.
As we walked out onto the patio section of the restaurant, the view nearly took my breath away. The whitewashed deck overlooked a large stretch of beach, where tourists were laying out sunbathing, playing with their children in the sand, and taking a dip in the brisk water. It was in the late afternoon, and there was no place I’d rather take in the sunset than a sandy beach with a belly full of fresh seafood.
“What can I start you off with?” a tall man wearing a black tux appeared at our table with a forced grin.
I turned to the succubi. “Do you guys like red wine?”
“I’m open to anything,” Liby said with a shrug.
Cupi gave no response.
“Merlot it is. And then we’ll take four whole lobsters, the fresher the better. Just don’t bring them to us still pinching.” I winked.
“Right away, sir.” The waiter happily picked up our menus as he realized how big of a gratuity he was going to be getting from this meal.
I moved over to the other side of the table where the two succubi sat, and wrapped an arm around both of them.
Libidine nuzzled her dark head of hair against my shoulder happily. She always smelled sweet, with a flowery, lilac-like aroma that wafted around her wherever the beautiful succubus went.
Cupi smelled good, too, but her scent was more of a warrior’s musk, similar in odor to evergreen or eucalyptus. Even with my arm around the blonde, she continued to ignore my touch.
“Cupi, please don’t worry so much,” I pleaded with the athletic succubus.
“I just don’t see why we are celebrating. We’re not even close to victory. In fact, I’d put our chances of victory at nearly 3,720 to 1.” She frowned. “Those are not good odds.”
“Are you sure you’ve never watched those space opera movies before?” Todd giggled from the empty seat across from us.
“Okay, so say we find this place, and it doesn’t have the archives we thought it did. Say it doesn’t even exist. So what?” I ruffled Cupi’s short hair as I spoke and got an annoyed response from the blonde. “We can still continue to fight off whoever Azazel sends our way, or we can keep running. We have enough money to last us a lifetime, and our powers will only get stronger and stronger the closer we become.”
“Jacob.” Cupiditas warned. “I’ve fought alongside him, and I’ve fought against him. And honestly? I’m not sure which one was worse. Azazel is ruthless. Even if we keep fighting off his assailants, then what? He’s eventually going to try to come after us himself. When that happens… A suicide pact has to be on the table.”
“A what-pact now?” Todd exclaimed.
“I’m serious, Todd,” Cupi snarked. “If Azazel takes us alive, he’s going to do horrific things to us that I can’t even think about without wanting to vomit. And if we actually have the gall to fight back against Hell’s greatest general? He’ll make it ten times worse. Look at how much we struggled against our pimp. Azazel is fifty times the warrior he was!”
“Then we’re just going to have to get fifty times stronger,” I mused. “And hope that the Chapel of the Trinity has what we are looking for.”
The tension in the air was so thick that you could cut it with a knife.
Right before either of us could say our part, the waiter returned with our order on a rolling cart.
He plopped down four plates on the white tablecloth, each containing a bright red lobster that still steamed from the cooking process, along with a small container of butter sauce. The waiter smiled as he passed out three small forks, the kind typically used to pull the meat out of the shell of the crustacean. Next, he tossed down a basket full of the region’s famous cheddar bay biscuits.
Last but not least, he set down three wine glasses in front of us and then produced the restaurant’s most expensive bottle of merlot from the lower tier of the cart. The man brandished a wine opener momentarily before he jammed it into the stopper on the merlot and twisted, and the bottle opened with a small pop as the red wine was exposed to the air for the first time in years.
“Would it be possible to taste test the wine first?” I suggested. “These girls over here aren’t big drinkers, and I’d hate to give them something they weren’t going to enjoy.”
“Of course, sir!” our waiter exclaimed.
The man in the nice clothes poured a tiny amount of the merlot into the wine glasses before he passed them across the table. Cupi sniffed the fermented juice in her cup cautiously, but then took a small sip. Libidine, on the other hand, simply shrugged and put down the entire sample in a single gulp. I wanted to feel fancy, so I swirled my merlot around in my glass a little to mix up the flavor.
The liquid in my cup reeked of the alcohol within, and it tasted dry when it finally touched my lips. I tipped the glass back and swallowed the wine with an excited gulp. I looked around at my friends, who all nodded happily to indicate they wanted more. I motioned to the man with the bottle and pointed to our glasses.
The waiter caught the gist and poured out the wine into three perfectly even portions, about halfway up the glass.
“Bon appétit,” he said with a bow before he walked away.
Todd didn’t hesitate. The second the waiter’s back was turned, he tore into the biscuits. Three of the golden appetizers floated in the air and then were demolished into nothing more than a spray of crumbs as they vanished down the imp’s gullet.
I picked up my lobster fork and motioned for the girls to follow my lead. Libidine grabbed hers, but Cupi refused.
“Come on, Cupi,” I pleaded. “You can’t let fear get the best of you. There are two ways you can look at this. The first is that we’re doomed. It’s all hopeless, and we’re going to be tortured eternally for interfering with Azazel’s business. Or, you can see it my way. We’ve already overcome some ridiculously stacked odds, and we operate perfectly as a team. And you know what? Despite the bloodshed and the stress, I’m having a blast with you guys! We’re having fun, and we want to keep having fun. Azazel and his goons are the only things standing in our way, and we’re going to find something in the Chapel that will tell us how to kick his sorry ass.”
I reached out to touch the blonde succubus who looked at me pitifully with her violet eyes. “You’re never going to have to go back to Hell, not on my watch.”
Cupi sighed with a half-smile. “I hope you’re right, Jacob. If not, then I hope Azazel straps me up right next to you in the torture chamber. That way, I can keep telling you how wrong you were for the rest of eternity.”
“There’s my Cupi!” I exclaimed as I kissed her on the cheek. “Now, we can’t search for ancient church secrets on an empty stomach. Let’s dig in.”
Before I could stop her, Cupi slammed down the tiny fork into the body of the lobster, picked it up to her mouth, and bit down on the entire tail. There was a loud crunch as her mouth filled with a mixture of delicate meat and rock-hard shell. The blonde’s face contorted into a look of disgust as she swallowed the contents.
Todd and I couldn’t contain our laughter at the situation.
“I thought this was supposed to be a delicacy on Earth Realm? I think I’d rather eat Vargrats!” she gagged as she took a large sip of wine.
“That’s because you don’t eat the shell.” I laughed and began to dig out the lobster meat with my fork. “Here, let me show you. A little patience goes a long way, you know.”
“My sister has never been one for patience. Why do you think she was nicknamed after Greed?” Liby giggled.
“Haha,” the blonde succubus retorted sarcastically.
Todd wolfed down his entire lobster in less than five minutes. The spot in front of him looked like a disaster area, with speckles of red shell, butter stains, and crumbs all across the pristine tablecloth. Satisfied with himself, the imp let out a loud burp to announce that he was finished.
“Whew, I don’t think I’ll have the munchies again for weeks.” Todd’s disembodied voice chuckled.
“Who are you kidding?” I asked as I took a bite of claw meat. “You’ll be hungry again before we even hit the road.”
“You’re probably right. This smokin’ body of mine is a unit,” the imp joked. “It needs four-thousand calories a day to keep up its appearance. Speaking of, I think I’m going to go and work off some of this meal. If you get my drift.”
“Alright. Just don’t do anything too crazy. And if you do? Don’t get caught,” I ordered Todd with the point of my fork.
“Roger, Captain Ralston.” He giggled before I heard the sound of his hooves hitting the wood, and he ran off to cause mayhem.
“So, we know that we are in the correct vicinity of the Chapel of the Trinity, but how are we going to find it?” Libidine pondered. “Our map can only take us so far.”
“Excuse me?” a voice behind me spoke up. “Did you say The Chapel of the Trinity?”
I turned around to see a short brown-haired man not much older than I was. He had a button nose and beady green eyes behind wide-brimmed glasses that looked like they could pierce into your very soul. Upon first glance, the man looked like anybody else. Yet, there was something that just seemed off about him. At first, I wondered if he was one of Azazel’s assailants, but the lack of purple eyes seemed to confirm that he wasn’t a demon. He stuck out his hand to shake mine.
“Name’s Thomas Parker,” he said as he shook my hand. “Paranormal investigator.”
My heart dropped into my stomach as I hoped that he hadn’t been watching us the whole time. I smiled at Thomas and shook his hand enthusiastically.
“Marcus,” I lied. “Marcus Pearson.”
“I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, Mr. Pearson, and I wanted to introduce myself!” He clapped his hands together.
“Why were you eavesdropping on us?” Cupi asked nervously, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see her grip tightening on her fork.
“Oh, I wasn’t eavesdropping, I swear.” Parker placed his hand over his heart to solidify his claim. “It’s just that it catches my ears when somebody else speaks of my life’s work.”
“Oh?” I questioned.
“The Chapel of the Trinity.” he continued. “I’ve spent the last five years traveling all around New England searching for the holy location. It’s like the El Dorado for paranormal nuts. What’s your interest in it?”
“Uh, we were just traveling through town and heard about it from a few of the locals,” I lied. “We wanted to see if the urban legends were true. Plus, my girlfriend over there is a huge fan of anything to do with the occult.”
“The occult?” the man questioned excitedly. “What have you heard?”
Libidine thought fast on her feet. “Somebody told me that there was a portal to Hell in the catacombs beneath it.”
“Huh, that’s a new one.” Thomas shrugged. “Well, good luck finding it. I’ve tried everything, even Ley Line Maps. Nothing seems to work.”
“Ley Line Maps?” I played dumb to see if this guy knew anything we didn’t.
“Yeah. If you chart out all the Ley Lines, points of strong magnetic force and magical influence, there are patterns all across the globe,” Parker explained. “That little podunk town up the road matches up perfectly with a bunch of the lines, but when I followed the exact geographic coordinates in my GPS, there was nothing but an open field. So, I’ve been going back to the drawing board to try to find the Chapel.”
“What were the coordinates, exactly?” I asked. “Just in case we wanted to scope it out.”
“I can promise you that there’s nothing there,” Thomas chuckled, “but if you’re really that morbidly curious, I suppose I could take you there.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Cupi shook her head. “We prefer to do our paranormal investigating on our own. No offense.”
“None taken. There’s just something that’s so satisfying and surreal about being out there in the middle of the night, alone with nothing but yourself and the surrounding spirits. I totally get it. Here.” Thomas pulled out a pen and scribbled down the GPS coordinates onto a napkin. “Use them wisely, fellow legend trippers.”
“Thank you, Thomas.” I nodded at the man as I shook his hand again.
“By the way, I love your purple contacts.” Thomas smiled at the girls before he turned and walked back to his table.
“We need to find Todd and get out of here.” I motioned for the succubi to follow me as I tossed down a few hundred on the table. “If that guy is right about the coordinates, then we may have found our Chapel!”
“But I thought he said it was just a giant field in the middle of nowhere?” Liby questioned.
“Exactly,” I explained as we followed the hoof prints in the sand along the beach. “Think about it. A wide-open field in one of the oldest and most well-developed parts of the country? No farmland, no housing, not part of a park or forest? There is totally something there.”
“You think it might be hexed?” Cupi asked. “Shielded by some sort of magical spell?”
“I’m almost sure of it. What are the chances that an expert on the Chapel and a Ley Lin
e map in Todd’s antique book are both wrong?” I shrugged coyly.
“How the hell are we going to get it to reveal itself?” Libidine questioned.
“This is why it’s so important that we find our three-foot-tall friend,” I laughed. “The ever-investigative Todd brought his entire paranormal library along with him. If there’s a way to get the Chapel of the Trinity to show itself, it’s gotta be in there.”
“Uhg, I feel so strange speaking the words of the Holy again.” Cupiditas commented as we continued along the coastline.
“They’re just words. You know what they say. Sticks and stones may break my bones-” I started.
“But ancient religious spells will send you to Hell for all eternity,” Libidine laughed.
“That’s not the saying I learned.” I smirked. “But I suppose it’s true in this situation.”
We didn’t even need to keep following the hoofprints in the sand to find Todd. There was a woman lying topless a few yards down the beach on her stomach, with the upper half of her bikini sitting in the sand beside her. Her bikini top suddenly floated upwards and then began to move across the beach via invisible imp. The woman jumped up in surprise as she covered herself, and then she started to run after the moving garment. She held one arm across her bare breasts as she bounded after the bikini, but her chest was so massive that her efforts were completely in vain, and her large breasts bounced in unison as she chased the invisible imp.
The garment halted mid-stream and then fell to the ground suddenly. The topless woman grumbled as she reached down, picked up her top, and wrapped it back around her chest.
“What a rush!” Todd’s disembodied voice giggled as hoofprints appeared in the sand next to us. “So, what’d I miss?”
“A lot, actually,” I explained. “We need to head back to Shadow and get on the road. I think we finally know where the Chapel of the Trinity is.”
I explained everything to the imp as we made or way back to the Jeep. The sun was just setting as the four of us slid into the black interior of Shadow, and I paused before I twisted the key.
