by Barry Reese
“But now he knows that the Bleeding Hells exist,” Max countered. “He’ll want to bring them all together again so he can make a play for power, just like Arias is doing!”
“Then you’d best keep your own blade someplace well protected. Without all four, he can do nothing.”
The Peregrine sighed, knowing that Keane was right. He noticed that the force field surrounding himself and the criminologist was down, however, and elected to do something that would make his true feelings known.
The Peregrine jumped for Satan, who was shocked by the sudden turn of events. The vigilante drove a hard kick into the villain’s midsection, following it up with a powerful lefthanded blow to the man’s chin. Blood sprayed from Satan’s mouth as he staggered back.
“We’ll play it your way,” the Peregrine said, pointing a finger at Satan’s chest. “But if you try anything out of line, I’ll kill you where you stand. And someday, down the line, you’re going to get a visit from me. And we’re going to talk about what you did with my friend’s life.”
Doctor Satan wiped his wounded lip with the back of a crimson glove. His tongue then darted out to taste the still seeping fluids. “I can’t wait, Mr. Peregrine. I suspect you and I will have a lot to talk about…”
CHAPTER IX
The Jewel of the Seraphim
Jacob Duval pulled the shutters tight on the windows and tried to ignore the howling of the wind. A storm of some kind had moved in and brought with it a terrible chill that froze the blood in Jacob’s veins and made the whole house quake as powerful gales blew past.
Jacob was a young man in his early twenties with curly brown hair and a classically Jewish appearance. His beard was full but not overgrown and he was attractively thin. There was an earnestness to him that appealed to young ladies, many of whom sought to win his eye. But Jacob was a studious man and he ignored the fairer sex for now, seeking instead to become a lawyer.
He shivered, picking up a throw blanket that he wrapped about his shoulders. He wore only pajamas and socks, which did little against the sudden harshness of the cold. He began to prepare the fireplace for use when an odd sound caught his attention: it sounded like the wailing of a tiny voice, one whose gender could not immediately be determined.
Living in New York City meant that strange sounds were often heard in the dead of night… but the oddity of this one was that it sounded like it came from inside Jacob’s apartment. In fact, it seemed to be emanating from within the locked drawers of his work desk.
Jacob slowly approached his study, where the noise appeared to grow ever louder. He retrieved his keys from a nail on the wall and sat down in front of the desk, turning his head to the side. The little wail sounded frantic, reaching down deep inside Jacob’s head and stirring his soul. This was the call of something from Beyond, something that would not be ignored.
As a child, Jacob had been fascinated and repulsed by his father’s collection of occult oddities. They definitely caught hold of the young boy’s imagination but there was something unsettling about many of them: a crystal skull that was rumored to be cursed; an ancient Viking weapon known as the “Sword of Hel,” and a book bound in human flesh. When Jacob’s father had passed away, he had not wept upon hearing that his father wanted the collection sold and the proceeds to go to his son. Jacob wanted no part of the accursed things.
But his father had made one exception: a stunning blue-white gem set on a leather cord. The Jewel of the Seraphim, he had called it. Jacob had thrown in his desk drawer upon returning from his father’s funeral and not given it one more thought since.
But as Jacob unlocked the drawer and opened it to reveal the Jewel, Jacob wondered what strange story lay behind the piece of jewelry.
When the Jewel was revealed, Jacob stood up so quickly that his chair flipped over and slammed against the floor. Within the gem, Jacob could see what looked like a tiny winged figure. It was beautiful with smooth features and a soft glow that surrounded its body.
The wail now formed into words that shot forth into Jacob’s brain: Turn around now! The shadows come!
Jacob looked over his shoulder and felt a scream bubble up from within. It exploded out as he saw wisps of darkness slipping under his door and down through the chimney. These forms coalesced into solid shapes, looking cloaked figures with drawn hoods. They reached for Jacob, speaking in unison:
Give us the Jewel of the Seraphim. Give it to us and your life will be spared!
Jacob acted without thinking, snatching up the Jewel and dropping the leather strap about his neck. He then bolted for his bedroom, slamming the door in the faces of the shadow wraiths.
And then came sounds of gunfire and shouting. Jacob swallowed hard, wondering if this was all a dream somehow. But then a bullet tore through the door and embedded itself in the wall above his head, confirming the reality of the situation.
A woman’s voice came through loud and clear, saying “They seem to be hurt by the light! Let’s keep that on them!”
Jacob saw the flickering shadows beneath his door and realized that someone had started up the fire place. He smelled burning wood and heard the screeching of the inhuman shadow things.
Those are friends, the thing in the Jewel whispered, its words once again entering straight into Jacob’s mind.
“Who…? The people with the guns? And what the heck are you?”
My name cannot be pronounced by your mortal tongue, but I am bound to this gem. I have but one purpose and that is to close the gate to the realm of the cutters and the slicers. The ones with the guns are seeking to use me for that purpose. We must work with them.
“But… I don’t understand.”
Give me to them, Jacob. This is your purpose. To watch over me until I am needed. You have done well, even though you knew it not—just as your father did before you.
The sudden silence outside his bedroom door made Jacob pause in his internal conversation. The door suddenly flew open as a man dressed in black kicked it in. The only parts of the man’s face that were visible were his mouth and a pair of incredibly penetrating eyes. A long cloak, cut to resemble bat wings, fluttered after him and finned gloves adorned his hands.
Behind him was a trim woman of pleasant shape. Her auburn hair was tied back to avoid being distracting in battle, her eyes partially hidden by a domino style mask. She wore slacks and a button-up shirt, a long coat over both.
“Jacob?” the man in black asked. “I am the Black Bat. This is…” the man paused, glancing at his companion.
“Call me a friend,” she said with a smile.
“I’ve heard of the Black Bat,” Jacob admitted, thinking of the lurid newspaper headlines that alternately hailed the Bat as a hero and other times as a hardened killer.
“Then you know that I fight against criminals. I’m working on a case now that might put everyone in the city at risk. We need you to give us the necklace.”
Jacob stared past his rescuers, noting that his apartment was a wreck… but there were signs of the shadows any longer. “It says I should do it.”
Evelyn blinked in confusion. “Who says…?”
“The Jewel.” Jacob reached up and removed it, holding it out with trembling fingers to the Black Bat. “It told me that I should give it to you. It mentioned a ‘realm of cutters and slicers’—what does that mean?”
The Black Bat stared at the gem. “It’s an awful place: a sort of hell where these demons live, who exist only to cause pain. They think that hurting others is some form of high art.” Quinn blinked in surprise as the tiny angelic form within the gem suddenly fluttered about, a smile on its features.
“It’s beautiful,” Evelyn whispered from Quinn’s side. The light from the gem glittered in Evelyn’s eyes.
“Who sent those… monsters after me?” Jacob asked.
“Some very bad men,” Evelyn offered. She smiled again at him and Jacob felt his knees go weak. Even with the mask, she looked familiar somehow. He had seen her somewhere before? S
he looked a little like the girl from Amazonian Princesses from Mars, that cheesy B-movie he’d seen at the local theatre a few weeks back… but what in the world would an actress be doing running around with a man dressed as a bat?
“Is there something I can do to help?” Jacob said, surprising even himself.
The Black Bat regarded him for a moment before finally speaking. “I would prefer that you stay here, where you’re safe. I think it’s very brave of you to offer your assistance… especially after seeing some of these creatures face-to-face… but this is simply too dangerous to let you get involved in any further.”
Jacob ran a hand through his dark hair and nodded. “When it’s all done, can I… can I have that… back?” he wondered, gesturing towards the Jewel.
From within its surface came a warm burst of laughter, followed by the words If I survive, I will come back, Jacob. Perhaps our story is not finished, after all.
CHAPTER X
The Gates of Hell!
Arias reached back and pulled the small band from his hair. His reddish curls fell about his shoulders, giving him a somewhat feminine appearance. His full cupid-bow lips and soft skin accentuated the fact that he was not the most masculine of men. But Arias’ beauty was marred by the horrible scar he bore, a jagged line that had cost him much in the way of pain.
Arias sat nude on the floor of his lair, directly in the center of a meticulously drawn pentagram. His associate, Marlon stood nearby, just outside the occult symbol, smoking his third cigarette in the past fifteen minutes. Marlon smoked and drank heavily when he was nervous and he was most assuredly nervous now. He’d come to respect the abilities that Arias possessed but they still freaked him out.
Marlon was not a religious man but he believed with all his heart that there were things in life that no scientist could explain. The existence of the Bleeding Hells was something that he had doubted at first but as they had moved down the path towards this point, he’d come to believe in it. He wanted it.
Marlon had been with every kind of woman imaginable. He’d even dabbled with men. He’d tried it rough, soft and everything in between. Mixed in with all the sex had been drugs—mounds and mounds of them. But there was always a piece of Marlon that had wanted more, always wanted the next big high. If even half of what Arias said was true, then the Bleeding Hells would be the ultimate high. There would be pain, yes… but eventually the pain would become pleasure: a pleasure that, according to legend, would last for eternity.
And so he sold his soul in exchange for pleasures of the flesh.
Marlon stared at the four Knives of the Elohim, laid out before Arias. Their natural glows were much more intense now, as their proximity to each other seemed to increase the glare exponentially. “What now?” Marlon asked, blowing out smoke with each word. He took another drag on the cigarette and then tossed it to the floor, stamping it out with a foot.
“Now,” Arias said, closing his eyes and lifting the first of the knives. “We usher in a new age for the world.”
“Are you scared?” Marlon asked. “I mean, even a little?”
Arias laughed but did not open his eyes. “No. I’m more excited than anything. You?”
“Same,” Marlon lied.
“That’s good. It’s kind of late to back out now, Marlon.”
“I’m not.”
“We failed to stop them from getting the Jewel of the Seraphim. I sense it.”
“So they can stop us?”
“Only if they find us in the next few seconds.”
Arias slashed the air with the blade, whispering several words in ancient Sumerian. He repeated the ritual with each of the four blades before finally throwing his hands into the air and screaming “Painus volthoom anumus! Painus volthoom anumus!”
Marlon raised a hand to shield his eyes. The light from the blades was so bright now that the crook could barely make out the form of Arias in the center of the pentagram. It looked like Arias was rising to his feet, arms spread wide as if in supplication.
A noise like the cracking of a door echoed throughout the room and Marlon felt a gust of wind suddenly buffet his body backwards.
Through the glare, Marlon thought he saw a figure emerge to stand beside Arias. The figure was male and just as nude as Arias was, but he stood over seven feet tall and strange objects protruded from his body: something like a railroad spike bisected his skull and barbed wire wrapped about his chest and waist, digging into the skin.
Words filtered to him through the wailing of the wind, a conversation occurring between Arias and the newcomer. The strange creature’s voice sounded harsh and cruel, its words coming to him with the scent of rotting death.
“You have summoned us?”
“I wish to know your secrets,” Arias replied. “I am willing to be your vessel in this world.”
“My brothers and sisters cannot enter through this small rift. You have succeeded in freeing only myself and not all of our kind. Another spell needs to be enacted, on higher ground. What is the highest point in this city?”
“The Empire State Building. I can perform it there.” Arias sounded excited, exultant.
“Then there is only one more thing to be discussed. You have the sacrifice?”
“I do.” Marlon saw Arias point towards him. “He has grown bored with this life and wants to know your pleasure.”
The strange thing laughed then and it was a horrible sound, one that made Marlon immediately regret his decision to go along with this. He thought suddenly of his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in over a decade. She’d been so good to him and so sad when he’d turned to a life of crime. He wished that he hadn’t let her down.
Marlon fumbled in his pocket for his pistol as the monster approached. Marlon could see its flayed skin and the many wounds that marked it from head to toe. “No,” Marlon whimpered. “Arias, I helped you!”
Arias seemed to fade away then, into glittering bursts of starlight. The mage was absorbed into the demon, becoming one with him. It was the way of the spell, that a mortal should share his form with the demon so that the demon might better understand his new home. In exchange, Arias became one with an entity of pure power and ageless wisdom.
And the last payment was the blood of a mortal sacrifice.
It was with two voices that the demon thing now spoke. “Marlon, I’m inside here. It’s me—Arias.”
“Then please… help me!” Marlon pointed his gun at the horrible thing that approached. When it became apparent that his entreaties were falling on deaf ears, he began firing his weapon. The bullets ripped through sinew and bone but did nothing to deter the monster’s progress.
When the demon thing spoke again, there was little trace of Arias any longer. “I am more than I was before,” the creature said through blackened lips. A bloated tongue snaked out and tasted the air, as if sensing the almost tangible fear that leaked from Marlon. “No longer am I simply Arias. I am one with a greater power now. I am Ba’al.”
Marlon screamed as Ba’al reached out with a flayed hand and gripped him about the throat. The sudden pressure caused Marlon’s terror to quickly become soundless and he was lifted off the floor, his feet kicking at thin air. As he eyes bulged from their sockets, Ba’al seemed to smile.
“I hope you get what you always wanted, Marlon. Your physical death will only be the beginning. I can promise you that you’ll experience things you never imagined. Your every nerve ending will be excited until you beg for release, thinking that you can’t possibly take even one thing more. But there will always be more. More blessed pain to blot out your every thought.”
A single tear ran down from Marlon’s right eye and Ba’al leaned forward with his cracked, blackened tongue to lick it up.
A moment later and it was all over, at least in this world. Marlon’s spirit had been dispatched through the ether and his body was a bloodied ruin, several of its choicest organs having been ripped from the carcass and devoured by Ba’al.
Ba’al suppressed his
human host’s glee at having turned the tables on the insufferable Marlon, instead focusing on the far more important task that lay ahead. In order for the gates to be opened, the spell would need to be performed one more time, on the highest ground possible. The Empire State Building would do nicely and there would be no need for a human sacrifice this time.
The demon closed its seared eyelids, preparing to use the human magician’s spell casting abilities to teleport straight to the Empire State Building. Surprisingly, he felt something blocking his path, an invisible barrier of mystical energy that restricted his ability to move freely on this plane.
Ba’al allowed his consciousness to expand outwards, until it sensed the source of this impediment. Doctor Satan and the villain’s nemesis, Ascott Keane, had worked this spell together. A surprise, to be sure, and not one that Ba’al found amusing.
The demon strode from the room, leaving behind the forgotten corpse of Marlon Woodson. The man who had sought the ultimate in physical sensation was now condemned to another place, one where his torments would continue for all eternity.
Ba’al, meanwhile, had chosen to move by more conventional means towards the Empire State Building. Outside, he found Marlon’s roadster waiting for him and the demon managed to call upon the memories of Arias in order to access the vehicle’s controls.
Down the streets of the city sped the demon from hell, a shining roadster under his command.
CHAPTER XI
Allies & Enemies
The two men were beautiful to watch, each having trained their bodies to physical perfection. Tony Quinn and Max Davies were very much alike, with Quinn standing just a bit taller and Max being just the smallest amount broader in the shoulder. But in terms of their grace and skill, they could be confused for being twins.
Evelyn Davies and Carol Baldwin stood just outside the mats that had been thrown on the floor, creating a small sparring area for the men in their lives. Evelyn had found that they were joking when Max and Tony had suggested a tussle to pass the time but soon enough her doubts were put to rest.
