by Marcus Wynne
Um, remember what I said about the young Lauren Bacall? Imagine that whisper . . . I’d say it was overwhelmingly arousing, but I wouldn’t want to incite her anger. Don’t mess with the Goddess in any of her incarnations or manifestations, that’s my rule.
“Um, ah, yes, absolutely,” I said.
And I don’t think it was my imagination that I saw a sly grin come across that fierce visage before she turned away to keep her eyes on the descending trail.
We slid up onto her back, me in front, First In Front behind me, then Otto, facing rear for security. Burt flapped his wings.
“Love you to pieces, sweetheart, but this ol’ crow is gonna hang onto his dignity and fly,” he said.
And in the way of power animals and guides, he flapped his wings and hovered just above, eyes up, our own aerial surveillance and acquisition platform.
Tigre came up off the ground. Her fur was silken beneath us, pulsed with her breath and the pounding-pounding-pounding of her gigantic heart.
“Hang on, boys,” she purred. “It might be a bumpy ride.”
She began to bound down the trail, in long, loping leaps that ate up distance, more and more in each bound . . .
“Hey, Otto,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Did you read Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness?”
“Of course.”
“Steel General?”
He laughed. “My favorite character of all. You are thinking his mount?”
“Yep.”
“Perhaps someday they will make a film of that novel. Epic in reach. One of his best and often overlooked.”
So there we were, loping down into the bowels of Hell, mounted on the back of a gigantic spirit tiger, me, a Lakota war chief, Hitler’s best commando and a big black crow . . .
I so looked forward to telling that story to Jolene.
That thought brought a welling of emotion up in me. I’d kept it buried, but that’s a dangerous thing for a practitioner . . .
“Shaman,” Burt said.
“Medicine Man,” First In Front said.
“Light Warrior,” Otto said.
Tigre laughed. “Hardheaded mortal.”
Like I was saying, a dangerous thing for a practitioner to do, keep emotions buried—emotions provide the charge for the Work, or they can—and buried emotions are like land mines, nuclear land mines, that can go off with little or no warning. Part of the ongoing task of the Light Worker is working to keep the channel clear, that’s to clear out the stuff that comes up and out with life. None of us are perfect; that’s the point—it’s the constant process and the journey that is the destination.
So we have to work on our stuff constantly.
But back to anger and rage, borne out of fear . . . I feared for her. And that enraged me. And I had to let that come up so that it can be released and transformed. Use it. Release the energy. Easier said than done. Transform it into love, which means I had to get past the fear and connect with the deep love I had for her . . .
“And she for you,” Tigre said.
“Yes,” I said. “And she for me.”
“Mind on the ball,” First In Front said.
“You play ball?” I said, surprised.
“We Natives invented it, white man.”
Um, okay.
The alcoves that held trapped souls and spirits grew more numerous, began to stack up in rows above one another, each glowing like a light, making the way brighter, though we passed them in a blur: there were glimmers of faces, hands clawing at the bindings, some huddled and staring . . . all of them calling out variations on “Free us! Free us!”
Ahead, a widening in the path, like a mezzanine (some part of me was giddy with thought, wow, I’m at the Mezzanine of Hell), a widening that grew, and lined up across the path, barring our way, small figures that grew, and grew, and grew . . .
. . . the first line of Guardians, Dark Side issue.
Battle.
I raised the Sword. Brilliant blue light rippled across the edge and the point. I pointed it at the growing ranks, and Tigre redoubled her speed, wind howling at my face and blowing my hair straight back. I felt like Gandalf leading the charge of the Rohirrim in The Two Towers, except with less hair.
The line grew.
Goat-soldiers. Big ones. The industrial strength and size. About six feet on their hind legs, running all the cool-guy gear—Mayflower nylon, M4s, and . . .
. . . enormously oversized penises.
Not to gross you out, but like the size of a baseball bat on steroids, with a spiked ball on the end. Like a mace, but made out of man parts.
Behind the ranks, stood one massive Archdemon—goat-headed, and this guy had an erection, sprouting spikes from the end, like a fire truck ladder.
And a huge double-headed ax.
Game on.
Tigre smashed into the line like one of the Oliphaunts in the battle for Minas Tirith in The Return of the King. Long lines of fire arced up at us, but I waved the Sword and a brilliant bubble of blue light surrounded us and it turned back the bullets.
The line shattered, tried to regroup and swarm us, but I waved the Sword and the goat-soldiers fell back, like mosquitos against an electric swatter, sparking as they fell. Some of them snatched at Tigre as she burst through them, swatting them aside with great sweeps of her gigantic paws, First In Front slashed at them with his war knife, cutting them away from their tenuous holds on my white tiger’s fur, Burt led a murder of crows again and again on the scattered and broken line of the goat-soldiers, Otto fired short, discrete bursts from his MP5K, taking out goat-soldiers in a steady accretion of loss . . . every swinging dick.
The Archdemon held up his hand, and Tigre stopped.
The goat-soldiers held their fire, and Burt and his brethren circled our heads.
The Archdemon clopped forward. His erect phallus bobbed slightly, well over our heads. The ax was held at port arms across its chest. No firearms, but then, he was on his home turf, so firearms would’ve seemed, well, superfluous.
“Marius!” it said. The voice—it seemed like a male voice—was rough and gruff like the hair on his chinny-chin-chin, hearty like a demented frat boy’s at the end of a long drunken night. “So glad you could make it. I’ve been wanting to meet you for oh such a long time . . .”
“You have my name,” I said. “Who are you?”
It grinned. Huge teeth and then an obscenely long tongue appeared and licked its lips, like a Rolling Stone poster sprung to life.
“I have a name, human, but I won’t give it to you.” He tapped the enormous phallus with his ax. “This will tell you . . .”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Big Dick? Enormous Prick? Or just This Way to the Asshole?”
“SILENCE!” the demon bellowed.
We all laughed.
“Definitely a big dick,” I said.
“I am lust incarnate! I am Asmo—” it began.
I cut it off. His speech, I mean. With a blast from the Sword. Asmo-Big Dick took two steps back and fell on his big ass.
Much to the astonishment of his minions, my allies and companions, Big Dick His Own Self, and . . . yes, me.
“Anything you can imagine, visualize and will into existence,” Tigre said. “Be careful what you wish for . . .”
“I can wish for a little more of that,” I said.
Asmo-Big Dick stood up. While it hadn’t affected his erection any, a little bit of stuffing had been knocked out of him, and he was less sure . . . and that uncertainty radiated out to his followers, who held their fire.
And a little bit of stuffing was knocked out of me, too. Like I’ve said before, it’s not me . . . it’s that which moves through me. And having the Archangel Michael’s Sword—or one of them—is a pretty heady thing on any day; knocking an Archdemon down with focused intent and the wave of the Sword is pretty heady on any day as well, only doubled (okay, maybe tripled) my pleasure.
That’s the danger.
; Pride is the great danger, the deadliest of the sins, the rock upon which we will founder. The practitioner that starts taking credit for the Work the Creator does through him or her is a practitioner that may find himself sans power and allies when he needs them the most—humility is the most necessary attribute, and that is like wisdom: it comes from experience, which comes from making mistakes.
I had to rein myself in, manage the Power, manage the experience of the Power, and not mistake that Power that moved through me like music through a piano for being me, the beat-up old saloon piano.
“Time for less smack talk and more smackdown, demon,” I said. “Move aside. We are here on business for the Light.”
Ol’ Asmo didn’t like that.
I held the Sword up and said, “Not my will, but yours, Creator. Strike in accordance with your Plan, not mine.”
As they used to say on The Sopranos, “Bada boom, bada bing, ain’t no big thing.”
Just a bolt of blue lightning punching a smoking hole all the way through one hellishly endowed Archdemon, and torched about a third of his shaft on the way through. Not that he seemed to notice as he toppled.
His followers scattered, nary a shot in our direction.
Tigre rumbled with satisfaction beneath us; the purr of a contented elephant-sized tiger is an astonishing thing when you are seated upon it.
“Not as difficult as I expected,” Otto said.
“He is only the first,” First In Front said. “There are seven. He is the first, and the least among them. This was only the beginning of the test.”
I turned to face him. “This you’ve been shown?”
“Not my first time at the rodeo, white man,” he said. “You’ve got a long road ahead of you yet. And then the return.”
“Let’s not put the cart before the horse,” Burt said.
Tigre rumbled. And began to descend, leaving the scattered bodies of the goat-soldiers, every swinging dick of them, behind us.
“Do you see what is coming next?” I asked First In Front.
“Much the same as you were shown, Marius. There is a sequence, each Guardian progressively more difficult, and along the way, there will be at least one that resonates with some deeper aspect of yourself,” he said.
“This was Asmodeus, the Archdemon of Lust,” Otto said.
“That would explain his, um, equipment,” I said.
“Common with Dark Siders,” Otto observed. “If the Seven Guardians are aligned with the tradition, we should encounter next Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and finally Pride. That gets us to the Throne Level.”
“That’s where she is?” I said.
“What were you shown?” Tigre said.
It’s strange, being in the Other Realms in the flesh, with my spirit allies and guides in the flesh as well. The knowledge that they conveyed to me through themselves was, well, just available to me. Like you know that apples are red and crunchy, the sky is blue, and grass is green—without even thinking about it. You just know.
“Yes,” I said. “She’ll be there. We will have to fight one of the Champions.”
“Which one?” Otto said.
“Not clear,” I said. “Who do you think?”
“One of the Fallen, I fear,” Otto said. “Those are the Dark Side’s Champions. And you are a Sword Bearer . . .”
“You have known others?” I said.
“Yes,” Otto said. “Those that were taken up, and those that fell.”
“I’ll add that to the list of stories we’ll tell someday soon,” I said. “Anything I need to know right now?”
“Nothing you don’t already know,” Otto said. “There is a weakness in the Seven Great Sins that you will resonate with, more than one . . . the Power that moves through the Sword magnifies all things and repels the Dark, but you can fall prey regardless . . . if you allow yourself.”
“Wasn’t Lust,” I said.
Tigre laughed, a deep throaty womanly laugh that chilled me—in a good way.
“You love women, and Woman, Marius,” she said. “Your sexuality is channeled in a healthy fashion with a woman you love. You . . . appreciate women, but you don’t fall prey to lusting after them and pursuing the wrong types. At least, not anymore.”
Spirit guides. No hiding the truth from them. Especially those representatives of the Divine Feminine.
“So who’s up next?” I said. “We looking for Gluttony? Who would that be?”
“Starts with a B and ends with a bub,” Burt said. “No lightweight, either.”
* * *
The path wound round and round. The alcoves for the soul-lights were stacked high and packed deep, each one a container for a tortured being, each one alone and cycling through the emotions that had captured them there. The ones on the level of Lust were, well, inventive at best, sad and sickened at worst. I tried not to look at them.
“Well, here we go,” Burt said. He was above us with a flock of ravens and crows, acting as our own personal Predator and Raven coverage. “Told you he’s no lightweight.”
Starts with a B and ends in a bub, as in Beelzebub, Archdemon of Gluttony. I’d say Lord of Gluttony, but that might be a bit too grandiose.
As in big.
But maybe not.
Beelzebub . . . Ever see the carved happy Buddhas? The one with the jovial fat-faced Buddha and a huge round belly atop pillarlike legs? Okay, take that image, put a greasy face with yellow eyes and fangs protruding over wrinkled lips, the head the size of a president’s on Mount Rushmore, sitting atop fold upon fold of greasy yellow brown meat stacked high like the Michelin Man after he’d been locked in a truck full of Twinkies for three months, a spare tire that would end world hunger if rendered down for fat, and with a gigantic much-gnawed limb of some kind of gigantic creature as a club. Swarming around him were foot soldiers, bulbous things with enormous bellies and huge gaping maws for mouths, all sprouting teeth and long tongues, clubs the weapons of choice . . .
. . . from time to time Mr. B the Unhappy Buddha would drop his club on a mass of his own minions, reducing them to mash, and the rest would swarm the mash like cockroaches on a donut at lights-out.
Which gave me an insight into our fate should we stumble at this particular threshold.
Tigre slowed to a trot.
“Best not to take this one lightly,” she said. “He is more than he seems and contains much power for the Dark.”
As we approached the next landing, the landing of Gluttony, BiggityBub’s minions formed lines, five deep, in front of us. They were Super-Sized and no Happy Meal—the heights varied but averaged at least twelve feet, and probably close to half a ton of meat on the hoof. No cutting implements, only the cudgels and clubs for rendering meat into mash . . . and those oversized maws sprouting teeth.
I felt as though I’d fallen into a Pieter Brueghel painting crossed with a screenshot from the Fellowship in Moria, except instead of a flaming Balrog, I had an obese demon swinging his meat.
Tigre stopped short. Her breath was like a bellows.
The other sounds took a while to sort out. There was a steady grinding which issued from the mouths of the lesser demons; a wet sound, of sweaty meat flesh rubbing against each other, the occasional explosion (literally) of a foul fart.
They didn’t say much, but then, they didn’t need to.
Beelzebub spoke. His voice was huge, but not what I’d expected. He had a sweet, almost simpering quality to his voice that was at serious odds with his appearance. But then, demons are known for that, yes?
“Marius Winter, Marius Winter,” Beelzebub said. “And in such fine, fine company. How tasty! We have your tiger, your crow, your Lakota war chief and you brought along Otto Skorzeny! Hello, Otto, so nice to have you here. Perhaps we’ll have you to dinner.”
The massive maw split in a semblance of humor.
“Or for dinner, haw haw haw!”
“HAW HAW HAW!” echoed the ranks of his minions.
“We require you to make way,
” I said. “We must pass.”
“I’m aware of that,” Beelzebub said. “Your desire. Tell me something, Marius . . .”
The voice was rich and sweet, cloying really, like an unskilled baker’s attempt at a fine pastry, too much sugar and poor-quality flour baked unevenly.
“. . . have you ever considered just asking to pass? It’s so very very rude to tell me, here in my home and place of employment, that you require me to make way. I’m very busy, you know. Lots of mouths to feed and all that.”
The huge belly rippled with laughter.
“Not that there’s much here to feed my hungry children,” it went on. “Not more than a few mouthfuls, except for that pretty little tiger of yours. I might make a nice centerpiece out of her.”
We considered each other.
“Hunger, Marius. Have you known hunger? Of course you have. At least, appetite. Hunger of the senses, too . . . that’s what this is all about, yes? Your hunger for your woman, your sweet Jolene . . . not lust, no that’s too nasty for you, you’re too good for lust . . . but hunger? Sure you hunger for her . . . else you wouldn’t risk your soul and the souls of your companions for her. Because that’s what’s on my table tonight . . .”
“Not quite yet,” I said.
Belly laughter. Ripples of fat like waves in a stagnant pond, and the odor that was released each time was near to unbearable.
“Oh, certainly, not quite yet. Of course. So you are like viands on the shelf?” Beelzebub’s laughter grew. “It would please me to taste you, Marius. A soul like yours, so many experiences, so many lives, so many different flavors of experience. Tasty. It’s not just the meat of your body which you so foolishly brought with you here—and that of your friends—but that which ensouls the body, that very tasty substance. You’re like fine aged meat to a human . . . and I enjoy the taste of human,” it said.
While it talked, its minions inched forward. If it was distraction, it was poorly executed. Tigre flexed her paws and the huge claws slid out, scored the rocky path.
Beelzebub smiled even wider.
“Not your first visit, I understand,” it said to her.
