by Eric Vall
I wanted us to enjoy this sunset.
Cupiditas was afraid of what would come next, but I was determined that this would not be the last sunset we’d ever get to see.
Chapter 21
“You sure you don’t know how to cast a spell to get rid of Mosquitoes?” Todd said as he swatted at the pest on his arm in annoyance.
It was pitch-black out here in the New England wilderness, and the only thing that lit our path was the Hellfire that the succubi and I had summoned to our hands. Bugs chirped all around us, and our sense of direction was further disoriented. Thomas was right, this place really was out in the middle of nowhere.
We had to leave Shadow up on the side of the road a few miles back and continue on foot through the brush of the forest. She was built for a bit of off-roading, but these trees were so dense that there was no way the vehicle would have been able to get through. It was probably less suspicious this way, anyhow.
We continued to rustle through the forest for about ten more minutes, and we constantly checked the map to make sure that we were still on the right path. As I brushed away a tree branch from my path, I stumbled out of the woods and onto a grassy clearing. The term “large” wouldn’t have done it justice, as the area was at least six hundred square feet in size.
As I continued through the clearing, the entire world was quiet. Bugs stopped chirping, and the sound of the croaking frogs went silent. Even my friends’ footsteps behind me sounded muffled and quiet. There was some form of otherworldly magic in the surrounding air, something that made the area feel like it was a place ripped out of space and time.
This had to be the place.
“So now what?” Libidine asked as she, Cupi, and Todd joined me in the clearing.
“We chant.” I nodded at Todd, who carried one of his favorite paranormal books. “This thing is full of enchantment rituals and their counter-spells.”
“What do we need to do to make this work?” I questioned.
“Just repeat after me.” He nodded as he leafed through the book and came to a halt in the middle. “Let’s try this one. Oh holy one, hear our cry. Please reveal to us this sacred location that you have blessed and hidden away from your enemy Lucifer and his minions.”
It took a few tries, but eventually, all four of us were able to get the incantation to come out clear as day in unison and in Latin.
A few moments later, the wilderness returned to life. The song of the crickets rang throughout the night sky along with the howl of the wind and the buzz of different insects as they passed us by.
Most importantly, however, was the glow of the silver ectoplasm-like circle that appeared in front of our position. It sizzled in the air as it spun and rose upward to reveal chunks of broken-down cobblestone and brick. The circle evaporated into thin air when it reached the point of a decrepit steeple.
There it was, the Chapel of the Trinity.
“Well, son of a bitch.” Todd chuckled at the success of his spell. “I guess the Toddster is a regular wizard!”
“Fuck yes, he is.” I ran over and hugged the imp in celebration. “You did it, you beautiful bastard!”
“No homo?” Todd raised an impish eyebrow.
“No homo,” I laughed.
Even though we had found the Chapel, we still needed to go inside and see if there were any clues that could help us with the whole Azazel situation. The Chapel wasn’t a sprawling cathedral by any means, but it was still quite massive for being located in the middle of nowhere in Maine. If it was truly as important as we’d heard it was, then maybe this was a case where size didn’t actually matter.
Cupiditas and Libidine looked hesitant to enter the building.
“What’s the problem?” I called back as I walked through the threshold.
“Demons and churches generally don’t mesh well together,” Libidine explained. “If an evil entity goes into a holy building without permission or a valid warrant, it could cause a major incident. Heaven and Hell made an agreement centuries ago that we couldn’t enter each other’s sacred sites without proper validations.”
“Well then, you all have my permission to enter!” I laughed and motioned the women into the building.
Todd didn’t wait a single moment before he charged into the chapel with a maniacal laugh, and the succubi both cringed.
Once they realized he had gone through without any problems, they opened their eyes and cautiously made their way into the building.
As soon as I walked inside, the smell of rotting wood and mildew-covered stone hit me like a ton of bricks. This place had to be at least two hundred years old, and it hadn’t been used in decades. The Chapel of the Trinity wasn’t like most modern-day churches, where people held potlucks and rummage sales and community events. This was a simple place of worship, through and through. The main entrance led directly into the chapel where broken pews were blackened and moldy. Rubble from the half-collapsed roof was littered throughout the building, leaving a massive hole in the ceiling of the Chapel.
Being a Catholic church, statues were located along the walls at nearly every ten-foot interval, as well as on both sides of the stage. Each of them looked like they had once been magnificent structures made of marble and hand-crafted by the finest artisans of their generation. Now, they were little more than pedestals with a crumbling mass of deformed stone figures at their top. The remnants of the broken marble lined the floor along the outer edge of the pews.
“If I was a hidden library full of Vatican secrets, where would I hide?” Todd pondered and tapped his chin with a chubby finger.
“I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure,” I said as I looked around the abandoned building. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“You’ve literally fought Bull-dudes and demon pimps, but this is the place that gives you the heebie-jeebies?” Todd giggled.
“I dunno. I was running on pure adrenaline when I fought those guys,” I shrugged. “This chapel just gives me an eerily calm vibe. It’s unsettling, that’s all.”
“We could try to comfort you, if you’d like,” Libidine said as she turned her head down towards the floor and looked up at me with her big eyes.
“Demons having sex in a church? I’d really prefer to not burst into flames today.” I laughed.
“Guys, I think I’ve found something!” Cupiditas called from behind the altar on the stage.
Liby, Todd, and I dashed over to the blonde, and our footsteps echoed on the broken-down mosaic floor tile. Cupi had gone behind the altar and knelt down beside the decaying marble structure. Her eyes were closed as she felt around the cold tile beneath it.
“Now’s not the time to be finding religion, sister,” Libidine joked.
“Shush now.” Cupi shot back. “The floor is uneven under this tile. I’m just trying to see if-- Aha!”
The blonde succubus grasped a piece of the decrepit flooring that had been jutting up from the ground. In one motion, she broke off the tile and revealed an etching underneath. She kept at it until every piece of the material surrounding the marble podium was removed. Each section that was pulled up revealed a new part of a pattern that was etched into the stony floor. Cupi let out a sigh as she pulled up the final piece and then sat back on her knees to admire her work.
“Do any of you recognize this symbol?” Cupi shook her head back and forth in amusement.
A circle encased the altar. Much like the Key of Solomon, this design had inscriptions all along the outer ring. The altar itself sat at the very center of the protective circle, surrounded by an off-kilter square whose corners touched the inner side of the circle and was itself surrounded by more inscriptions. A final, double-layered circle encased the entire base of the podium.
“It’s the Fifth Pentacle of Saturn,” Todd couldn’t believe his eyes. “It was one of Solomon’s magic circles used to protect a home and one’s possessions from any demonic influence.”
“Fifth Pentacle?” I asked.
“Yep.” The imp
nodded. “There are seven Pentacles in total. They can either be drawn around objects or worn on the spellcaster as an amulet. They all do different mystical shit.”
“Can we just burn the pattern off the ground?” Libidine asked as she summoned red flames into her hand. “It seemed to work for Earl.”
“Absolutely not!” Cupi warned and pushed down her sister’s weapon. “If a Pentacle gets destroyed, then whatever it’s protecting is destroyed, as well.”
“Like an ultimate ‘Fuck You’ to demons who try to get around them,” I added. “How do we get in?”
“We don’t, Jacob,” Cupi explained. “You do. You may be a mortal with demonic powers, but you’re still a mortal. You should be safe to enter.”
“Should?” I questioned.
“No time to argue.” Cupiditas pushed aside my query. “We need to get this altar moved. Sister?”
Libidine nodded at the blonde’s words. She outstretched her hands as her eyes began to glow with green flames. The crumbling altar was encased with the glow of the succubus’ telekinesis, and I heard a faint rumble in the air. Liby slowly lifted both shimmering hands into the sky. The altar lifted into the air, its base whining as it was pulled loose from the floor, and Libidine slowly moved over to the side of the stage. There, where the structure once stood, was a small circular wheel similar to that of a submarine’s hatch.
“Welp, I guess I’ll see you guys on the other side,” I quipped.
Cupiditas nodded. “If you find anything that looks important, teleport it up to us so we can sift through it. We may not be able to travel down there, but we can still cover more ground that way.”
I sauntered over to the wheel, took a deep breath, and then reached down. The metal of the lever was cold and slimy, and my hands nearly slipped off when I tried to turn the mechanism. I readjusted my grip and heaved the wheel clockwise. There was a loud metallic groan as the mechanism moved with my motions, but after the first rotation or two, the wheel gave no resistance whatsoever.
Dust sprayed up from the outermost ring of the seal as the entire hatch lurched upwards on its hinge. With one last heave, I yanked the Fifth Pentacle open to reveal a long, narrow tunnel with a ladder. All three of my friends looked at me in concern as I squatted down on the floor and threw my lower half into the tunnel.
“Good luck, Jacob,” Libidine encouraged me. “We’ll hold down the fort here until you get back.”
I gave the group a final nod before I began to descend the ladder and into the abyss. As each foot clanged on the rusty rungs beneath me, I wondered how long this thing had been sitting here as well as just how rickety it’d become. The rungs groaned loudly with each step, and I started to get concerned that it wasn’t going to hold up for the hundreds, if not thousands, of feet that I still needed to go. The entire Chapel of the Trinity was crumbling, and I was sure that the centuries-old tunnels in its bowels were no exception. For all I knew, they might have already caved in. But this was our best shot at taking down Azazel, so I had to continue.
My hands scraped against the corroded metal, each touch sending flakes of rusted iron into the air. The tunnel around me was not much wider than I was, and I couldn’t imagine a larger person trying to get down here. Then again, if most demons were as hulking as Gallu, I could understand the design.
As I adjusted my weight to move my right leg downward, I heard the sound nobody on a ladder wanted to hear: a metallic pop. The rung that held my left hand broke loose from the wall, and my feet slipped out from under me. I clung to the ladder for dear life with my right hand as the momentum smashed my body violently into the wall of the tunnel behind me.
As I struggled for breath and tried to scramble back onto the small rungs, I began to panic and hyperventilate. The walls of the tunnel felt like they were closing in on me like the iris of a camera. I desperately heaved my feet toward the ladder, but they continued to slide off with each attempt. My palms had gotten sweaty, and I could feel my fingers struggling to hold my weight as they slid further and further off the rung.
There was only one way out of this. Just as my right hand lost its grip, I conjured up a jade flame around myself. My body became weightless for a moment, and I let out a sigh of relief. If I wanted to get down to the ground safely and efficiently, I was going to have to use my green Hellfire magic to lower myself down like I’d done at the Excalibur. I did so, and soon felt my feet land on the soft dirt of the ground, and I released my spell.
There was no light in the bowels of the Chapel, so it looked like I was going to have to create my own. I thought back to the succubi in the car and conjured a wave of red Hellfire into my hands. My torch hands outstretched to reveal a short hallway connected to a dark room. I walked through the broken-down rockwork of the walls around me for what felt like two-hundred feet or so. Finally, I found myself in a massive pit of darkness at the hall’s end that was somehow even darker than the rest of the building. I dug down deeper into my passions to intensify the fire in my hand. The flickering flames illuminated the room, and I found myself in a library that was bigger than most modern-day houses.
This must have been the archives.
I quelled the flames in my right hand and began rummaging through the old texts that sat before me. Without my friends present, it was difficult to distinguish which ones were crucial and which ones were just ancient rubbish. Some of these could have been recipe books instructing us how to make the Pope’s favorite chili for all I knew. My Latin was rusty, but I could make out enough of the wording on some of the books and the scrolls that I was at least able to make some educated guesses. Words like “Demons” or “Spells” or “Vatican” or “History” all seemed like they could be important, so I used my emerald flame to teleport them up to the succubi and Todd.
I had probably been down in the catacombs for at least an hour when I finally stopped to take a break. Even though I’d been searching diligently, I still had five more walls worth of material to go through.
I was starting to grow impatient. We could go through this way quicker if we knew what we were looking for or if I had more hands.
Fuck it, I was going to teleport the whole collection.
I closed my eyes, stuck out both of my open palms, and extinguished the red flame. In the deepest pit of my being, I brought forth feelings of envy and disgust. I thought about how Earl had hurt Cupi. About how Azazel kept trying to take away the only things in this world that made me happy. How he wasn’t going to stop until I was dead, and how it was up to us to stop him.
Not the forces of Heaven, not the military. Two succubi, a mortal, and his imp. That was some bullshit.
The entire archival room lit up with the roaring green flames that sprouted from my hands. Each ball of fire expanded and traveled down my arm as my entire body was engulfed with emerald embers. I felt weightless once more, and then my body rose into the air like a marionette.
As my eyes opened, I felt more powerful than I had ever been. I clenched my fists closed, and the entire wall of books vanished with a poof of smoke.
I concentrated my energy on my own body, and I could feel my spirit traveling through space and time. Finally, I appeared in the main part of the chapel above the gigantic pile of books I had just transported. I released myself from the spell and tumbled down the mountain of books onto the ground safely.
“That’s one way to make an entrance.” Todd chuckled as he jumped up from his makeshift desk at one of the pews.
“I got lonely,” I said as I stood up and brushed off the dirt and cobwebs from my shoulder. “Have you guys found anything yet?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Cupi nodded grimly.
“Unfortunately?” I asked.
“Let me show you.”
She walked toward me holding an antique text that was bound with a grey covering. As I took the book from her, I could feel its age. The cover was coated with a thick layer of grime, and the material looked like it was made from some sort of lambskin.
Todd scuttled over to show off what they had found inside. “Here, let me get that for you.” He giggled.
Todd blew on the cover of the text and sent a thick layer of dust into the air. He giggled as he stood back and let the succubi open it to the page they had referred to.
“See this here?” Cupi explained as she pointed at the words on the page. “It talks about when Azazel and the rest of the demons were banished to Earth Realm at the end of our Revolution.”
“Okay.” I coughed from inhaling the dust. “I thought we already knew that?”
Liby took over now. “We did, but there’s a passage here that caught our attention. This book was written in the 1500s. It says that the demons faced by our forefathers still walk amongst us today and are infiltrating our society to bring about its destruction.”
“So? That’s just general religious zealot nonsense.” I shrugged. “You can hear that by turning on the TV to a megachurch channel.”
“That’s what we thought, as well, but...” Cupiditas grabbed another book from the broken pew at her side. “This book was written in 1982. Check it out.”
“1982? So somebody has been here in the last hundred years,” I joked as I took the text from the blonde.
This book looked and felt like it was still in near-pristine condition, even though it had been sitting in a dusty archive for years. The pages were still crisp, and the cover was worn but not ragged. I examined the page in front of me, and what I read nearly caused me to drop the book in shock.
It was a list of well-known public figures from the seventies and eighties, including mob bosses, politicians, CEOs of multimillion-dollar companies, and even a few celebrities from TV and movies. The shocking part was there, next to their name, was a single line.
Confirmed Demon.
“I don’t believe it…” I muttered to the succubi.
“I told you, bro, but you said I was just crazy.” Todd shrugged as he kicked back on a rotting pew.
