Mouth of Madness

by Hunter Blain

  “Well done, Master Locke,” Silver congratulated his servant. “What about the vampire?”

  My eyes went wide at the realization that Locke could have set us all up.

  Don’t you do it, I sent out mentally to Locke.

  “He will be along momentarily. I tricked them into thinking we had set a trap for you,” Locke lied.

  Oh, thank Lilith, I thought to myself as a smooth sigh of relief left my chest, staving off the anxiety that had begun to flame.

  “Then why is he already here?” Silver asked as a hand the size of a two-story house punched through the parking structure and enclosed around my paralyzed body. Disbelief froze my muscles for a fraction of a second too long, and I had to curl into a ball to prevent the massive hand from breaking my limbs. There was a sudden surge of g-force as I was hoisted upward, almost losing my lunch in the process. I clenched my jaw and screamed a guttural cry as the hand tightened around me, again, and I was forced to try and simultaneously bench and leg press the closing fingers. Huge chunks of concrete crumbled to dust against my body from the pressure. I knew Asmodeus wouldn’t toy with me a second time and would rush to squish the life from me, even if Silver had commanded him to merely subdue his prey.

  “Now!” I heard from somewhere far away, as if I were in a car and someone across the street was yelling at me.

  The fingers stopped tightening as Asmodeus let out a bellow of challenge. I took the brief reprieve to reach behind my back and unsheathe the silver kukri, which hummed with delicious power that only those fearful of its bite could feel.

  I slashed at the palm of the demon lord, who answered by throwing me through the air like a trebuchet powered by a nuclear reactor. The skin on my face was flattened and stretched as my mouth billowed open, flapping in the powerful wind; it felt like I was being dragged behind a truck on a gravel road. My brain brought forth a random thought whilst careening through the sky at a bajillion miles an hour; why hadn’t I just used the stupid kukri earlier rather than go through my damn chest, snapping my own spine, and reaching for the katana? As my face was peeled back to the point of tearing, I barked out a single laugh at my own foolishness while sending an emergency signal to my hand to not drop the kukri while traveling at light speed. I was confident, with my wide-open mouth filled with more air than should have been possible, that I looked hilarious—or terrifying. But back to the issue at hand.

  I sent out my bloodwings as I crossed the threshold of the sound barrier, and immediately had my manifestations broken backward. I yelped and was surprised that it had actually hurt. It wasn’t like losing the blood energy, but it sure as shit wasn’t pleasant. With a wince, I retracted the manifestations and went back to the drawing board.

  An idea came to me, and I called Mjolnir into my hand and willed a slipstream in the direction I was going, focusing on curving it around. Once inside the stream, everything smoothed over. The intense pressure trying to rip my skin eased as the skin on my face ached and the elasticity healed. I opened and closed my bone-dry mouth, licking like a dog who had peanut butter stuck in its back teeth. I noticed one corner of my lips had been torn, along with my cheek up to my ear. I wiggled my toes and looked down, then barked out a curse as I saw that both my brand-fucking-new boots and even my socks had been torn away.

  I finally reversed direction and looked around, gathering my bearings as I sheathed my silver kukri.

  “Ho-leee shit,” I drawled as I realized I was now flying over the gulf coast, heading back toward land. The island of Galveston came into view, and comprehension of Asmodeus’ strength began to manifest. “Nolan Ryan freaking threw me over a hundred miles in only a few damn seconds!”

  I concentrated on the stream and flew faster now that I knew exactly where I was. The lights from homes, cars, and poles lining the streets blurred like laser beams as I flew faster than I ever had before. My friends needed me. There’s no way any of them could stop Silver or Asmodeus alone. Hell, I couldn’t even take them one-on-one…on, um, one.

  In the distance, I saw roiling clouds spurting forks of lightning that were a mix of blue with green and purple. I scowled, baring fanged teeth as I sped ahead.

  I arrived within a few seconds, dropping the stream and manifesting my wings again as I soared to attack Silver and Asmodeus from the air.

  Grabbing onto the pent-up raw power circulating through the clouds, I willed Mjolnir to gather the electricity.

  “BLITZKRIEG!” I roared as my own bolt of lightning exploded from the tip of my hammer to smash into the demon lord’s massive back. A spiderweb of electricity arced in all directions, but the brunt of my attack shot directly into the demon’s core, stunning him.

  An idea came to me and I focused on slowing all the molecules around Asmodeus. I had never tried this before, but the theory seemed sound to me: if I could create heat by exciting the molecules, slowing them should do the opposite.

  While the demon lord was stunned, I willed the air directly around him to freeze. I searched in my peripheral vision for Silver at the same time, watching for a sneak attack.

  The desired effect was met as frost grew on Asmodeus—ironically—like a wildfire. As frost accumulated into thick sheets of ice, the demon lord’s movements were seriously hindered. The sound of breaking glass rang out as the beast slowly turned its torso around in my direction, breaking his ice prison with sheer strength and unwavering determination.

  Something caught my eye, and I looked down to see Ludvig come bolting out of his parking garage on the ground level, his wand blazing to life. Magni was a short way behind him, eyes wide with barely restrained terror. I admired him at that moment for his bravery.

  “Ludvig!” I shouted, urgency injected into my words.

  “On it!” he responded, seeing my plan and sending out a geyser of ice shards that flew like daggers of varying sizes. The smaller pieces shattered against the giant’s thick hide, but the larger ‘sicles punched home.

  Asmodeus responded by bellowing in rage and then pulling his arms into his torso, lowering his massive body into a crouching position. My face scrunched in confusion until his skin began glowing with hellfire, easily melting the accumulated ice sheets. Ludvig and I stopped our attacks as we stared in awe, just as he thrust his arms outward while straightening his posture, sending out a sphere of hellfire in all directions.

  “Shit,” I squeaked as the bubble of death grew in size and rushed to greet me.

  Everything crawled to a halt. Depweg and Locke were closest to the attack, with Ludvig and Magni not far behind. They were going to be engulfed in the hellfire if I didn’t do something. I was confident no one but I could survive the attack from the demon lord, Asmodeus. My pendants would keep me alive long enough for Silver to do with me as he wished, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

  Lily flashed through my mind, and I had the overwhelming desire to see her again.

  My mind smoothed to a pristine glassy consciousness as I felt something shift in my already predatory eyes. I was vaguely aware of plumes of white billowing out of my sockets as I stared at the hell-bubble, frozen in time. I felt nothing but an undeniable determination to save my entire circle of friends. No fear. No anxiety. Only focused willpower.

  I pointed Mjolnir at the hellfire, moving so fast that everything was still frozen in place, and focused on making the air around the bubble swirl and condense, leading up to me.

  The sphere started to elongate into an egg shape before a tendril burst from the top like the world’s biggest pimple. Hellfire rushed in a vortex toward me, where I compacted it into an orb the size of a basketball, forcing the unholy energy to squeeze into an area far too small for its raw energy, forming hell-plasma.

  The roiling energy arced out sporadically, like solar flares, contesting my hold against it.

  More and more of the bubble was sucked away while the players on the chessboard remained frozen in time. My expression was stoic as I commanded the focused energy to surrender to my iron will. N
o one was going to hurt my fucking friends. No one was going to keep me from seeing the woman I loved.

  As the remainder of the flames were sucked into my prison of unbreakable will, the frozen river of time resumed at my behest.

  Asmodeus’ bellow vibrated in the air for miles around before being cut off by the awareness that his attack had somehow been stopped in the blink of an eye.

  His massive horned head shot around in all directions, unable to comprehend what had happened. Melted ice that hadn’t been evaporated into white steam sloshed off him, cascading to the ground in sheets.

  “Hey, shithead!” I called out in absolute confidence mixed with defiance of the demon’s rank. This was my world. As he pivoted his massive body and tilted his head upward, I teleported through the air to appear right in front of one of his enormous flame eyes. I reared my hammer back, willed the flames to adhere to my commands—changing the very matter of which they were comprised—and slammed a blue, white, and red orb of heaven-plasma into his socket.

  A flash of surprise crossed his features before three-quarters of his head exploded, like putting a stick of dynamite in a watermelon. Heaven-plasma erupted out and around his body like a water balloon bursting on someone’s head as his remaining eye flickered, dimmed, and then puffed out. A deep sigh escaped his throat as his body expelled its final breath.

  Something happened, then, that I hadn’t expected; the body toppled to the ground and did not turn back into the ectoplasm from which demons formed their earthly bodies.

  I stared in awe as I understood that this was the demon lord, Asmodeus, who had lived since before time was time. Eons of existence had brought him to this exact moment to be snuffed out by my hand. Not only had I killed two angels—my heart panged at the thought of Da—but now my first real demon. Not only that, but a freaking demon lord. Silver had actually opened a door to Hell big enough for Asmodeus to bring his corporeal body to this plane.

  Silver…

  I brought myself out of my awestruck state and searched for Grand Master Silver, who stood by a downed Locke and unconscious Depweg. Silver was just as stunned at what had happened to his pet as I was.

  My gaze flicked to Depweg, and I saw a stream of blood leaving his mouth, and an unseen wound on his torso oozed blood from underneath his body. It looked like a pool of black in the sparse light of the pale moon. The clouds were moving apart, no longer under anyone’s spell, illuminating the scene second by second.

  The plumes of crimson and white that wafted from my eyes began to roil like steam from a boiling teapot as energy started collecting around my floating body, crackling the air. I wasn’t sure where the raw power was coming from as I didn’t feel my well of reserves diminishing at all.

  “What are you?!” Silver cried out as a blur sprang from the shadows and wrapped its arms around the paralyzed man.

  “He’s but a vampire, as am I,” Ulric whispered into his ear before continuing, “Samael sends his regards, warlock.” Ulric sunk his fangs into the man’s neck and inhaled his entire body’s worth of blood in one gulp, shriveling the man into a mummified husk in an instant, an expression of horror and shock permanently etched into the corpse’s desiccated features.

  Ulric reached around and grabbed the staff Silver had been holding, breaking brittle fingers as if they were made of dried dirt. Silver’s body crumbled as the outstanding debt of his unnaturally long life span was cashed in within a singular moment in time. Even his bones broke into clods of dust which the wind carried away.

  With control of the obsidian staff, and having just inhaled the warlock’s essence, Ulric looked up at me with eyes that were shifting between red, purple, and green like a kaleidoscope.

  A feeling of dread suffused my body as an idea screamed in my mind.

  “What have you done?” I asked in a disbelieving whisper as my anger pulled on the chains of restraint. I was aware that the energy around me and the plumes fuming from my eyes had ceased.

  Ulric heard my question and beamed a smile at me as battle robes materialized on his frame, sheathing him in crimson armor.

  “I have just become the most powerful warlock in the world, John.”

  I screamed in fear-laden rage, sending an emotionally charged bolt of lightning from Mjolnir at the vampire warlock who wielded the Spear of Destiny.

  Ulric positioned the staff in front of the attack, its base resting on the ground. The lightning crashed into the tip before splashing harmlessly into the concrete around him.

  My maker looked up at me with a devilish grin, pointed the spear at me, and let it glow bright with hellfire in preparation for an attack I probably wouldn’t be able to block. I remained in the air, unconsciously flapping my wings, unsure of what move to make. My mind raced, trying to decide what kind of attack he was about to throw my way before he did something I wasn’t expecting.

  Ulric let the spear dim before fading out completely.

  I scowled in confusion and Ulric answered the wordless question I asked, “Not yet, dear John. Your part has yet to be played. He has plans for you, yet.” Ulric’s grin widened as a purple-and-green portal opened under his feet and he descended with a wink.

  I was left floating in the sky above the corpse of a demon lord and my friends.

  My friends!

  I teleported to Depweg and felt his neck. His heartbeat was weak, but it was there. A sigh of relief left me as I rolled him onto his back, only to be replaced with a surge of crippling dread. His intestines were spilling through a gash in his abdomen that spanned his entire front and was deep enough that I knew I would see his spine if I pried the puckering flesh apart.

  I pushed everything back in as carefully as I could, and then sent out a flood of my blood through both hands, coating his entire torso. I focused on healing the wound and was dismayed when I found I couldn’t do it. Acting on instinct, I willed a bloodpatch over his wound to at least stop the loss of precious blood, though I knew there would still be internal bleeding if I didn’t get him to Doc Jim quickly. I unconsciously smiled for a nanosecond amidst my panic as I remembered it had been Depweg who had taught me to do a bloodpatch on wounds that couldn’t be healed. Funny how things came full circle.

  “Locke? Locke, are you with me, man?” I called out urgently to the man-child who answered with a muffled groan.

  “Ludvig? Magni?” I yelled over my shoulder.

  “We’re here!” Magni answered. “Ludvig’s hurt, but-but I think he’ll be okay!”

  “I gotta get Depweg to the doc. Meet you guys there!”

  “Okay!” he answered, though he sounded somewhat overwhelmed.

  I scooped my brother up in my arms, extended my bloodwings, and was about to leap into the air when I noticed they were covered in bloodfeathers rather than the usual leathery skin I was accustomed to. I’d worry about that later.

  I leaped into the air and began furiously flapping my wings in the direction of Doc Jim. I groaned from exertion with each beat of my wings as I clenched my jaw hard enough to fear the bones popping out of place near my ears.

  “STAY WITH ME, MAN!” I cried out over the howling of the wind. Depweg responded with deafening silence as his body remained limp in my arms, the whistling of the whipping wind my only answer. His skin was fading to the color of virgin snow, all but his lips, which were blooming a shade of bluish purple.

  “DEPWEG!” I shrieked before peeling my eyes off of my dying friend to peer at the horizon. I was heading in the right direction, but not going fast enough to save his life.

  An idea burst through the bedrock of my panicking mind and offered an obvious solution.

  “FUCK!” I yelled in agitation at my oversight and the time I had wasted as I shifted Depweg around, bringing his chest to mine while my left arm hugged his torso under his armpit. My hand couldn’t secure all the way around him due to how thick and wide his muscular back was, so I opted to grab hold of his shoulder using his rear trap muscles as a handhold.

  With my right han
d free, I willed Mjolnir to it and summoned a slipstream to carry me at impossible speeds toward Doc Jim’s.

  “Please be there,” I prayed to myself.

  Within a minute, I partook in the roughest gentle landing of my career, forgetting that I didn’t have my wings outstretched thanks to my reeling mind. At the last second, I shot them out at the realization of my folly and nearly broke both knees and hips in an attempt to not fall forward while holding onto Depweg with only one arm. Ignoring the pain in my healing joints, I strode forward in the parking lot of the clinic and sent a force of sheer will into the front door I knew to be locked. It exploded as if a Mack truck had rammed into it going at full speed. A part of me wanted to marvel at what I had just done, but Depweg’s cold skin pressing against my cheek and hand demanded complete authority over my thoughts and actions. I knew that if he died, his soul would go to Hell, and I couldn’t—no, I wouldn’t—let that happen. I didn’t care what he had done, he didn’t deserve to spend an eternity in Hell, especially considering he was my friend and would have a massive target on his back because of that simple fact.

  I stepped into the clinic waiting room while shouting, “Doc?! Doc, are you here? Emergency!”

  I made my way to the OR and was met by Doctor James Hunt, who was exiting his spare bedroom, wiping at his eyes as he hurriedly shuffled.

  “John? What is it?” he asked as he laid eyes on the near lifeless Depweg. Shifting to a clinical professionalism, he asked, “What happened?”

  “He was cut with something that I couldn’t heal and his intestines came out. The-they’re all fucked up, man. Please, you have to help him!” I was on the verge of hysteria.

  “Set him down here, quickly.” Doc Jim pointed at the operating table I had become all too familiar with. I did as commanded while the supernatural doctor grabbed a special bag containing silver instruments. He ran an IV into Depweg’s shrinking veins, taping it in place before making his way over to a locked steel cabinet on the wall.

  He punched in a code on the digital keypad—which had illuminated as he approached—and the steel door swung open to reveal a blood bank refrigerator. He opened the clear door and grabbed a bag of blood that was labeled with Depweg’s initials.