by James Hunter
“Even so,” Levi said, slouching forward, running one hand over his balding head. “Let’s say that works—that we can get him into the arena. What then?” he grunted, nostrils flaring. “You expect Lazarus to assassinate the King of Pandæmonium in front of an arena full of the most powerful demons in Hell by himself? It’s impossible. No one could manage that. No one.”
“No one said it would be easy,” she replied coolly, crossing her legs. “If it were, someone would’ve done the deed long ago.”
“There’s a difference between not easy and impossible,” Levi replied.
“Doesn’t your own book teach that all things are possible?” she quipped.
“You’re missing part of it,” Levi grunted in reply. “All things are possible with God. God isn’t here, he isn’t in this place. And this is suicidal.”
“No, it’s not suicidal, and it’s not impossible,” I said, feeling butterflies kick and swoop inside my gut. “There’s one guy that could do it. Azazel.” I leaned over and pulled the book I’d scavenged from Azazel’s desk from the drop pouch at my side. “He was planning to kill Asmodeus. I’m not a hundred percent sure how he was planning to do it, but I think it has something to do with the colosseum. Look at these.” I flipped the book open and set it on the table. “He’s got a metric ass-load of stuff in here, most of it having to do with the colosseum.”
I started pulling out pages of blueprints. Some for the Flesh Palace. Others for the animal cages, situated below the first- and second-tier seating. Even some for a sprawling labyrinth called “the Nekropolis,” located directly beneath the colosseum itself. Very interesting.
“Obviously, he had some kinda plan in the works,” I said, gesturing toward the pages. “The three of us just need to figure out what the sneaky bastard had in mind.”
“I’ll put coffee on,” Heckabe offered, sliding from her chair, and heading to the empty bar.
For the next three hours, we pored over the material, guzzling down cup after cup of hot joe as we searched for any insight into Azazel’s plan.
Heckabe was hunched over the animal cage schematics while Levi examined the Nekropolis blueprints for the thousandth time, tracing over the delicate lines with a pudgy finger. “I don’t know what Azazel was planning,” he finally said, “but I might know how we can do this thing. Look.” He hunched forward, spread the sheet out across the table, then carefully smoothed the edges down. “There’s a whole cavern located below the arena floor, and those?” He jabbed at a ring of fat lines. “I think those are columns.” He paused, waiting expectantly.
“And why exactly does that matter to us?” Heckabe asked, rubbing at her temples as though she couldn’t bear to look at the damned blueprints for another second.
“It means whatever’s down there is man-made, and those pillars are probably supporting the arena floor. And if that’s true, then I have an idea. Might do the trick, but we’ll need bombs. C-4 probably. Dynamite. Det-cord. A few other things as well.”
My eyebrows threatened to invade my hairline as I heard him talk. Levi struck me as a soup-kitchen volunteer, not a demolitions expert.
Heckabe offered a feral grin, stood, and headed over to the back wall.
Near the bar was a bookcase filled with old tomes and topped by bronzed idols from a multitude of ages. She slipped a single volume free from the bookcase, and suddenly the whole shelving unit groaned and bucked, pulled back, then slid into the wall. Behind was a steel-plated door with a keypad boldly displayed in the center. She punched in a numeric code and pulled open the door, which moved on silent hinges.
An emergency exit sat against the far wall, but the rest of the small room was a full-on armory. Guns. Ammunition. Swords. And, of course, explosives. A lot of explosives. “Weapons shouldn’t be a problem. Now, why don’t you share what you’re thinking with the rest of the class.”
Levi rubbed his palms together in nervous anticipation as he surveyed the Nekropolis schematics. “Okay, here’s what I think we should do …”
TWENTY-FOUR:
Sleep Well, Sweet Dreams
After another three hours of planning, followed by a scalding hot shower, I flopped down onto one of the gaudy velvet couches and pulled over a silky soft throw pillow edged in gold. I had no idea what time it was here—there didn’t seem to be days or nights, just endless toil—but I was exhausted to my soul, and every inch of my body ached and throbbed in time with the beating of my heart. Levi’s magic ichor was some truly incredible hoodoo, but it didn’t fix everything.
It felt like years since I’d had a decent night’s sleep. And considering what I’d been through since waking up on that friggin’ toilet, I felt I’d earned a little shut-eye.
“Yancy,” Levi said, shuffling over with a chair in his dinner-plate hands, then taking a seat. “We need to talk about the scythe. I understand not wanting to clue Heckabe in”—she’d finally left half an hour ago, heading back to her sleeping quarters above the bar—“but this is serious. Even with the best plan in the world, we can’t beat Asmodeus without that. So, what do we do here?”
“The only thing left to do,” I replied while stifling a yawn with my fist. “I’m gonna go have a chat with that shitheel Azazel and find out where he stashed it.”
His jaw clenched tight, and the chair creaked beneath his weight as he hunched forward, elbows planted on his thighs. “You know it’s dangerous, right? You’re vulnerable to his influence. If he gets control …” He trailed off, not finishing the thought. He didn’t need to. If Azazel got loose again, it would probably be game over for me.
“We don’t have another option,” I mumbled, already drifting off. I reached up and pulled down a thin blanket resting on top of the sofa. “It’s this or stay in Hell while the world spins outta control.” I heard him mutter some vague response filled with words like idiot and reckless, but it was all gibberish in my ears. I breathed out, letting the tension drain from my shoulders, and closed my eye for what felt like only a heartbeat.
When I opened my eye again, however, I wasn’t in the glitzy basement of the Crossroad Saloon. Instead, I stood on a narrow street, lined on either side by two-story buildings with balconies jutting out over the wide sidewalks. Bourbon Street, smack-dab in the French Quarter. Except, everything was wrong here.
Broken.
Instead of glowing streetlights, the city was dead and powerless. The shop windows were all busted out, shattered glass decorating the sidewalks. Several buildings leaned drunkenly on their foundations, while a few more were nothing but charred piles of blackened debris. The ones that remained standing were covered with bullet holes and marred by deep fissures that pulsed with angry violet light. Rubble and garbage adorned the narrow alleyways and streets, and creeping vines wound their way through the wreckage, reclaiming whole sections of the city.
Shit. I turned, taking it all in. What had happened here? It looked like a drunk Arnold Schwarzenegger had ridden a friggin’ tornado through town while simultaneously firing a Ma Deuce with one hand and a rocket launcher with the other.
The crunch of rubble caught my ear, and I wheeled left, instinctively reaching for my pistol, which wasn’t there.
A dark figure, obscured by deep shadow, shuffled out from the surprisingly intact doorway of a nearby brick-fronted eatery. As the figure moved closer, the shadow fell away revealing the familiar face of Cassius Aquinas. He was a creature of water and spirit, permanently grafted into a piece of my soul.
And boy did he look like a bag of month-old ass.
He was supposed to be my mirror image: a typical guy in his late forties with cropped hair and an unremarkable height and build. Pretty average—aside from the sea-blue skin and shimmering emerald eyes, which marked him out as the Undine he was. Like I said, though, he looked bad. Real bad. His skin was pallid and waxy, too thin in places, and crisscrossed with a host of scars, some old and faded, others new and vibrant. One eye was gone, just like yours truly, but his left arm was also missing, cut
away just below the elbow.
In many ways, Cassius was the embodiment of my subconscious mind, and, as a result, he tended toward the finer things in life—good cigars, great hooch, Italian suits, silk pajamas. No jeans or Wild Turkey for him. Now, though, his outfit seemed more appropriate for a post-apocalyptic refugee than an easygoing, blue-skinned Playboy from Glimmer-Tir. He wore shredded, dirt-caked BDUs with bulky riot gear strapped in place. The word “WARDEN” was stenciled across his vest in glowing letters the color of hot coals.
Other sigils—each offering a weak trickle of light, like a bulb on the verge of burnout—ran over heavy shoulder pads, razor-edged gauntlets, and steel-plated shin guards. The whole outfit looked so worn out that a stiff breeze might unravel every stitch. In his remaining hand, he clutched a formidable broadsword pulsing with golden energy the exact color of Levi’s ichor, while the barrel of a tactical shottie poked up over one shoulder.
“Yancy,” he said with a nod, his voice a harsh, exhausted whisper. “Good to see you back in the driver’s seat.” He faltered, glanced around the desolate city street, then shuddered. “Now come give me a hand. Livin’ is a bitch these days.” He stumbled forward a step, then two. I rushed over, relieving him of the golden sword as I slipped beneath him and slung an arm around his shoulders. Steadying him. He leaned his weight into me and gave me a tired grin of gratitude as we awkwardly staggered over to the side of the street.
An overturned table lay on the sidewalk between two buildings, next to a pair of dilapidated chairs—broken but serviceable. I leaned the strange broadsword against the table, then carefully, slowly, lowered Cassius down, easing him into one seat before righting the other and dropping down with a groan.
“Thanks,” Cassius said, slipping a hand into a cargo pocket on his thigh and pulling out a fat stogie with frayed edges. Even his cigar looked down and out. He slid the smoke between his lips, and instantly the tip flared to life, a bright cherry shining in the night. “Be a gent and get me something to drink, will you?” he asked, slumping back in his seat, puffing contentedly as he stared hazy-eyed at the rubble and destruction. “Manifesting just about anything is damned tough these days.”
I nodded and focused on my empty hand, imagining a frosty glass filled with a generous dollop of Pappy Van Winkle. For a moment nothing happened, but as I fixed the image in my mind, brow furrowing in concentration, a glass appeared in my palm. It was perfect and indistinguishable from the waking world. I handed him the drink, which he accepted gratefully, then formed one of my own, leaned back, crossed my ankles, and sipped slowly.
You don’t shoot Pappy, you savor it.
“I’m glad to see you’re alive too,” I finally said over the restless drone of cicadas in the background. “After what happened with Azazel … Well, I wasn’t sure how you’d manage.”
“Not well,” he replied tersely, throwing his head back and draining the rest of his glass in a single pull. He hurled the glass aside with a contemptuous flick of his hand. It shattered on the sidewalk nearby with a crunch, but Cassius didn’t seem to give two shits.
“Is that what happened, here?” I asked. “Did Azazel do all this?”
“Most of it,” Cassius said, standing with a groan. “It’s bad, Yancy. About as bad as things get. He’s spent the last six months setting up shop, building his fortress and dismantling ours bit by bit. And what he didn’t destroy, Levi’s exorcism did.” He faltered, looking left then right. “Don’t get me wrong, we probably wouldn’t have survived but for another month without the golem’s intervention, but the cure was almost as bad as the disease. Like chemo. Nearly killed me in the process. Not sure I’d survive another round.”
He reached down, snagged his golden sword, slipped it into a leather sheath at his hip, then rested his hand on my shoulder, fingers digging down. “Time for you to see the full extent of the change.” Without asking for permission, he wheeled around, dragging me with him. In a single step, we shifted, vanishing from Bourbon Street and manifesting high overhead, suspended like a cloud, held in place solely by Cassius’ mastery of this world.
We twirled in a slow circle, surveying the landscape with an eagle-eye view.
The French Quarter stretched out directly beneath us, and from this vantage, it was easy to see the network of cancerous, violet fissures running over the asphalt and crisscrossing the brick-fronted shops. Looking at the damage made my brain ache and burn. It was almost like seeing a broken limb for the first time after a bad accident. Jarring. Surreal. The extensive damage probably also went a long way toward explaining my memory loss.
Off to the west, the edge of the city ended abruptly, cut away by a dusty stretch of barren earth maybe two hundred meters wide and chock-full of trenches, uneven berms, machine gun nests, and endless spools of razor wire. On the far side of No Man’s Land was a towering stone wall, fifty feet high, with a single massive gate. Lining the top of the wall was a host of weaponry—everything from medieval ballistae and trebuchets to modern day Howitzers and heavy-duty rail guns that looked like they belonged on a destroyer.
Suddenly, the devastation made a bit more sense.
Beyond the wall was a familiar landscape: all yellow hardpan and towering black termite mounds, dotted with fiery windows like a thousand winking eyes laid out in a circular pentagram a mile in diameter. It was a pretty good imitation of Pandæmonium—Flesh Palace and colosseum included—though strangely devoid of life. No cars. No markets. No hawkers or freakish pedestrians trundling along from nowhere to nowhere.
It was Hell if Hell were truly a place of the dead.
“That,” Cassius said around the fat cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth, “is all Azazel’s work. The Big Easy is the physical representation of your mind, and that”—he jerked his head toward the megacity—“is the representation of Azazel’s mind. That shithole’s been my only view for the past six months.”
“Where’s Buné’s mindscape?” I asked, squinting as I searched for some sign of the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.
“That’s probably the only good news,” he replied grimly. “Turns out, Azazel ain’t no dummy. He used all of his influence while we had him locked up to build an underground bunker to hold that nutty son of a bitch—and it’s a good thing too, ’cause I think Buné might be even worse than Azazel. That entire city down there is one giant containment seal, and Buné’s prison is beneath the surface. The seal allows Azazel to harness Buné’s power, which is how he’s managed to knock off all those demon knuckleheads.”
I grunted noncommittally, eyes running over the lines of the hellish metropolis, lingering on the edges of the massive pentagram encircling the buildings. Now that Cassius mentioned it, I did recognize a few demonic sigils meticulously carved into the hardpan like old scars.
“And Azazel?” I asked, folding my arms against a sudden chill, despite there being no breeze. “Where’s he at?”
“Down below, right in the center of the colosseum. Levi’s exorcism locked that son of a bitch up. I’ve never seen anything like it, Yancy. One minute I’m hunkered down in the French Quarter, doing my absolute damnedest to weather another attack, and then? Then the whole earth starts to rattle and shake, my teeth quivering inside my head. I thought it was finally over. The end of the world. My world anyway.” He paused and stole a sidelong glance at me. “And yours, too, I suppose.
“But once the world stopped shaking long enough for me to pull myself off the floor and look up, I saw a wave of golden light sweeping in from the east. A tsunami of power, a hundred feet tall, just rushing through everything. I thought Azazel had pulled some kinda fast one on me. But when the wave hit, it went after Azazel’s corruption. Eradicating it like alcohol killing a bad infection.” He glanced down at his missing arm. “That’s how this happened—Azazel’s power had even started to get into me. But as hard as Levi’s power hit us, it absolutely hammered Azazel’s little fortress over there.”
Cassius paused, shrugged, looked away. “Aft
er a while, I finally got ballsy enough to go take a peek, and that’s when I found ol’ Azazel locked up inside this crazy-ass dome. Like a supermax for spirits. Your mind came back online not long after, and I started piecing things together a bit.”
“Can you show me the prison?” I asked, feeling a flutter of worry in my gut. “I need to talk with Azazel.”
“Seriously?” he replied, anger simmering just below the surface of his words. “After all this, you still want to talk to that ugly bastard? After what he did to you?” His voice rose, the rage boiling over. “After all he did to me? Look at me, Yancy!” he screamed into my face, fingers digging painfully down. “Look at me! Do you see what he’s done to me? He took my eye. Took my arm. Every day since you brought him on has been a fucking war zone—one I never wanted to be a part of.”
He was shaking violently, his blue lips pulled back in a snarl. “You never asked me to fight this battle, you just accepted the damned Seal like a sucker, and enlisted me to mop up your mess. If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead already. That or a brain-damaged husk with Azazel permanently calling the shots.” His voice dropped low, his face contorted in pain and hate. “Do you even care? I know you saved my ass all those years ago, and I’ve tried to pull my weight as a thank you. But this? This is goddamn treason, Yancy.”
I glanced away, unable to meet his angry glare, unable to look him in his worn and tired face.
He was right, of course.
I treated him like he was just another piece of myself, but he wasn’t. We were bound—a parasite and its host—but he was still a living, thinking being. And I’d done this to him. After I’d accepted the Second Seal from Chief Chankoowashtay, the leader of the People of the Forest, he’d slugged me in the jaw, but I hadn’t understood what was in store. Not then. I’d brought this trouble down on our heads, and he’d been the one to suffer the constant war against Azazel and his corrupting influence.
