“This might be a bad idea,” Clint gasped, as they reached the bubbling rift.
“We have to,” said Laura. The building shifted unsteadily.
They stared into each others eyes. Clint leaned in and kissed Laura on the mouth. He wrapped her body in his arms and pulled her tight. The foul smell of brimstone emanated right next to them from the rift. Laura kissed him back just as fiercely. The hot blood running from Clint’s leg touched against her own. They broke apart, and Clint’s hard-laboured breath came warm and sweet against her face and neck.
After a few seconds—longer than was wise—she grabbed Clint’s chin. Rubbed her thumb on the cleft in it that she used to think was stupid when she was younger, and now loved. She kissed him again, quickly. Clint took her hand. They shared a last look, and stepped together into the rift.
They emerged into the Infernal Plains. The ground was made of dry, brown mud. Cracked and hard as rock. Lightning flashed in the sky from dark purple storm clouds, that looked to be as permanent and unmoving as the mountain range far off in the distance.
Clint and Laura tightly held hands. They had not heard much about the demon realm, but all of what they knew was bad. No one came here except under the most serious, perilous circumstances. When they had run out of all other options.
There wasn’t a single ally to the human race in the demon realm. The hell spawn might make uneasy treaties with fae, that more often than not ended in betrayal and bloodshed, but they never bandied words with humans. Never wanted anything from Earth but its surrender and destruction.
It was something in the arch demons’ blood, who were the Lords of Hell, and Diablo the demon-god himself who had sired them, that gave all hell spawn endless hate for humankind.
Laura turned, taking sight of the black citadel to their side, and the winged creatures flying in circles around it. It was far enough away that Laura did not worry about anyone in it spotting them. More pressing was the encampment immediately next to it, at the bottom of the ridge where Laura and Clint stood.
The rift closed. A thunderbolt smashed into the ground next to the citadel. A dry wind came ratting from the East, across the dry mud plain. It smelt of death and disease.
Not one living thing was growing on the land. Worse, not a trace of water. Laura was thirsty from her exertions. Her lips were already dry, and starting to crack. Her throat felt swollen. Not a problem when, normally, at the shifter hall after a hard exercise, she would fill a bucket from the well, raise it high and gulp it down.
No sweet groundwater here. Whatever we find, if we find anything, will be brackish, and likely gives us sickness.
“Not what I wanted for a resting ground,” said Clint. He smiled when Laura turned to face him.
“It won’t be,” she said.
Clint took in a deep breath and slumped to the ground. “No, of course not. We’ll make it out of here. After we find Zyzz.”
“After we find Zyzz,” Laura agreed. “How bad is it?”
Clint turned his leg. “The bleeding stopped, but I can’t run.”
He’s lucky the glass didn’t cut a major vein. Laura began to inspect it, thinking of how to bind it, when came the sound of clinking metal.
She perked up, held herself back from shifting, knowing that she only had a bit of shifter magic left to use.
The clinking came closer, out of sight but near. Two guttural voices joined the sound. Soldiers, talking in a demonic tongue. Making their way up to the ridge from the encampment below.
Laura knew it without having to see. Soldiers on patrol? Or were we spotted, and they’re coming to kill us?
Clint heard them now too. He narrowed his eyes. “We have to kill them before they raise an alarm,” he said.
He’s right. It’s too late to run. And even if we did, where would we go?
Laura shifted. She padded silently to the side of the ridge, and saw the curving path leading up from the camp. The ridge was not as steep at the path, more a gentle slope. Perhaps caused by thousands of feet going over the path, for hundreds, or thousands of years. Or a stream of water.
The more Laura looked at it, the more the path seemed to her like an ancient riverbed, long ago dried out, that had once come down from the mountains, cutting through the ridge to reach the lowlands below. Now it made an easy path up the ridge, that Laura and Clint had completely missed. It was hidden from view unless you were standing right next to it and looking down. As Laura was doing, crouched and ready to pounce.
She was patient. Bobcat shifters quickly learn that they are not as strong or resilient as their wolf and lion brethren. Of all the shifter types, they are among the most fragile. Bobcat bones are lighter, and less heavily muscled. Allowing them to move with greater agility, sneak and track without being seen. If shifter types were classes in a D&D game, bobcats would be the rogues.
Laura’s bushy tail swished from side to side, sweeping away the dry blanket of dust on the cracked ground. The Infernal Plains was far from Laura’s ideal terrain; there were few places to hide and wait in ambush. Not even long grass. But she did have the high ground, and the element of surprise. Two advantages that trump all else, and that no bobcat shifter would let go to waste. There is only one opportunity. Then, the advantages are gone.
“What are you waiting for?” Clint whispered. He had made his way next to her, and lay on his stomach, peeking over the edge on the path below. It was a good twenty-foot drop to where the soldiers walked. Another couple of minutes until they reached the top of the ridge and spotted the two humans. Mage, seer, shifter, gifted, ungifted, it didn’t matter. The hell spawn would torture and kill them equally. You had to give them that, at least. They didn’t discriminate.
All humans die.
Fortunately, the two hell spawn below were short in stature. Arch demons, when breeding their minions, almost always make the ones in human shape seven feet tall and bulging with muscles. Not so with these two. Perhaps they had been created for a specific task. They carried long spears, and had round, copper shields strapped to their backs. Limiting Laura’s options for her ambush attack.
She glared at Clint, telling him to keep quiet. He got the message and didn’t make another peep. Cursing, Laura was sure, the fact that he would be useless in the fight.
Or maybe…
A plan formed in Laura’s mind, simple and perfect. It took care of the problem she had previously been mulling over: how to take out both hell spawn at the same time without them seeing her first, and beyond the vision of the camp. It was a certainty that Laura would kill the soldiers if she pounced on them right where they currently walked. The problem was that the path was still in sight of the encampment. The path did not curve sharply enough to put the soldiers both out of sight of the encampment and far enough below that Laura could wait perched on the ridge and pounce without being spotted. And when the soldiers did get to the part of the path that was far enough around the curve, they would basically be at the top of the ridge.
Laura slinked away from the edge. Clint followed. When they were a few feet away, she turned to him. “I’m using as bait,” she whispered.
“Good,” said Clint, happy to be of some use.
“Go to the top of the path. A bit further back,” said Laura, directing where Clint should stand. “There. Now lay down. Try to look more helpless. Good.”
Laura left him there, laying on the dry, dusty mud, and went back to where the ridge looked down over the path. The soldiers were almost at the top. The tip of their spiked helmets were close enough that, if Laura was positioned above them on the ridge, she could reach down and smack them with a paw. But she was not directly above them. She was closer to the encampment, where the top of the ridge was higher from the path. She watched their backs closely, and went over the edge.
Laura hit the path without making a sound. Maybe I can get used to this landscape. The mud was excellent at muffling her movement.
She padded up the path a dozen steps behind the soldiers. If t
hey sensed something amiss and turned around, she and Clint would be in a heap of trouble. But if her timing was right…
A few seconds after Laura landed on the path behind them, the soldiers stopped in shock. Their guttural voices rose in volume. Not in alarm, but with excitement. They lowered their spears and walked forward. Completely focused on Clint, who moaned and clutched at his leg, and shuffled pathetically in an attempt to put more distance between him and the hell spawn.
Five steps before the hell spawn reached her mate, Laura pounced.
She hit the soldiers from behind, ignored their armor and driving her long claws into the gap between the top of their shields and the bottom their helmets. The force of her ambush knocked them over, and drove her claws in all the way to the bone. With a cupping motion, she pulled both claws out from the soldiers’ necks at the same time, severing their spinal cords and killing them instantly.
Their armor clinked as the soldiers hit the ground. Laura grabbed one with her jaws, Clint took hold of the other, and they dragged them off the path, back to the top of the ridge. Then Laura began to dig, throwing chunks of mud as all four paws clawed into the ground. She gulped past a dry throat, knowing there was a ways to go. It was a terrible waste of energy, but she could think of no other way to hide the bodies than to dig them a grave. Black spots came at the edge of her vision. She momentarily slowed, feeling light-headed and letting it pass. She hadn’t been injured at all in the library, or in her ambush.
Water.
The memory of it made her mouth water. She panted with her tongue out, saliva dripping onto the mud. Laura was getting hot under her coat of fur. Even with the partial cover of storm clouds, the Infernal Plains was deadly hot.
While she dug the hole, Clint stripped the hell spawn of their gear. He took off their copper breastplates, greaves, gauntlets, helmets, spears, belts, and armored boots. Everything, stripping them down to what they had been spawned with. Sadly enough, they closely resembled humans. Only grey, ashen skin and abnormally large hands gave them away as creatures from another realm.
“Why would an arch demon want to make humans?” Clint asked. He thought it over in silence.
When Laura finished digging, she transformed back to a human and slumped to the ground. “I don’t know,” she said, looking at the naked hell spawn for the first time. It was odd. The hell spawn’s flesh was even soft, the same texture as Laura and Clint’s. But they clearly were not human, nor had they ever been. Their green blood betrayed the fact that they had been born in an arch demon’s lair. Baptised with black magic. They were sworn enemies to all of Earth and humankind, yet their faces looked so familiar.
“Do those faceplates close?” Laura asked, eyeing the pointed, copper helmets.
Clint picked one up, moved a piece of metal attached by a hinge to the front of it and closed it like a door over the bottom half of where the face would be. “Let’s hope it fits,” he said.
“Read my mind,” Laura muttered. “Let’s get them in the hole. Who knows when more will come up the path.” Could be right now. Without my bobcat ears, I wouldn’t be able to hear them.
They lugged the bodies into the hole, filled it with mud. There was an arch demon’s citadel and his war encampment on the lowlands below. Zyzz was captured, missing, certain to be tortured or dead within hours. The mission to save Mona had ended in disaster. Laura and Clint would likely die within a mile of where they currently stood, launching a desperate, ad-hoc plan to survive into the next hour.
And all Laura could think about was water. The coolness of a winter stream. The feeling of a refreshing, morning drink running down her throat. Water of any kind. Brackish, stagnant, muddy, covered in swamp slime. It didn’t matter.
Laura gulped. Ran a dry tongue over dry lips. She rose, and swayed from the head rush.
Clint put on the hell spawn armor, squinting his eyes as he tightened the copper greaves over his wounded leg. Laura did the same, and after a couple of minutes they were fully dressed as arch demon soldiers. The two shifter mates squared off in front of each other.
I can tell it’s him by his eyes, but not much else. The helmet’s faceplate hides most of his face. The rest of his skin is covered by the armor. Except for a few cracks, at the elbows, neck and knees.
“We’ll go into the camp,” said Clint. He slid the hell spawn’s dagger back into its sheathe and buckled it to his waist. “Find water and food. Try to keep an ear open about Zyzz. He should be down there, somewhere.”
“Let’s go,” said Laura, voice cracking in her dry throat. She set off for the path. Soon, she and Clint would be strolling into an arch demon’s war camp. And then I’ll find out if hell spawn even drink water. The region didn’t look to have felt rain in a thousand years. The ancient, dried out water bed could have been made before the demons had ever arrived to this land.
“The ungifted say that even Mars has water,” said Clint, stepping up next to Laura and matching her pace.
Laura snorted. “Mars doesn’t have arch demons to suck it dry,” she said. “This place is Diablo’s playground. I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled a Mad Max and scooped up all the water for himself.”
“And every living thing with it,” said Clint. “Maybe we’ll have to beg for them to feed us.”
They rounded the curve in the path. The walls of the ridge rose tall on either side. Ahead sprawled the arch demon’s encampment, for as far as Laura and Clint could see.
22
Maggie stood at the front of Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral, waiting for the bishop to arrive.
It had been ten years since the bishop last visited San Francisco. Longer still since she had ordained Maggie as the cathedral’s resident priest. While Julia, as the bishop, retained full authority and control of the cathedral and its jurisdiction within the city, that power had been passed on to Maggie in her absence. From the letter than had been sent ahead of bishop Julia’s arrival, it sounded as if she had come back to stay.
Maggie shifted her feet, brushed and fidgeted her white, gold-laced robe. She recalled that Julia was extremely strict. Orthodox to the core. Unafraid of excommunicating sinners from the church, or condemning them to hell in the confessional.
There can only be one reason why she is returning: word got to her of the city’s dire state.
It at once made Maggie hopeful, and nervous. The vampire incursion, the attack on Club Noir, the stolen bodies, the rogue necromancer, had all happened under her watch. In that, she had undoubtedly failed. But surely the bishop would see that it was due to events far outside Maggie’s control.
A black carriage pulled by four chestnut mares turned onto the street. The holy Chi Rho symbol, the overlapping P and X of the Catholic Church, was the only decoration, stamped in silver on both sides of the carriage, and on the top. Calm down, Maggie told herself. It’s a good thing that she came. She will help us take back the city.
The horses clattered to a stop in front of the cathedral. The driver, a stout, elderly man with a large, grey moustache and a top hat, stepped down from the bench at the front of the carriage. He opened the carriage door, and a tall, leather boot attached to a long leg stepped out onto the little stretch of wood under the door that was used as stepping ledge between the street and the inside of the carriage. The wheels were large enough that, without the ledge, one would have to awkwardly grab hold of the door and half-jump, half-climb their way inside.
Bishop Julia exited the carriage with every bit of the grace that Maggie remembered. She looked not a day older from their last meeting—or their first, for that matter. Julia had been the one to teach Maggie her daily illusion spell, to give the appearance of youth.
Julia could change her appearance to any version of her former self. Yet she had maintained the same version since Maggie had been assigned to San Francisco.
Julia was tall, well over six feet in height, with long legs and and a sweeping black robe to match dark leather boots. A silver cross hung from a silver chain around
her neck. Her grey hair was tied in a tight bun, every strand pulled back so that you could see her hairline. It sharpened the viewer’s focus onto her face, which was full-lipped and wide-mouthed, sparkling blue eyes that looked far younger than her grey hair. In fact, her hair was the only sign that she was old. Her skin was soft. Not rosy, like Maggie’s, but not bearing wrinkles either. The complexion of a healthy twenty-something, who spent time in the sun. A scattering of small brown freckles decorated her cheeks, and over the bridge of her small nose.
Julia stepped off the carriage ledge, onto the pavement and made her way up the cathedral steps two at at time.
“Bishop Julia,” said Maggie, lowering her head.
Julia brushed past without so much as a glance in Maggie’s direction. The middle pair of three sets of double doors was already open, and she walked at the same brisk pace inside the cathedral.
Maggie moved to follow, almost colliding with the carriage driver, who was huffing and puffing, carrying a large luggage bag in each hand. They were old, with leather straps and buckles instead of zippers. No wheels.
Maggie eyed the carriage. The horses were not tied up, but seemed content to patiently wait on the street for the driver to return. Maggie slipped back into the cathedral’s cool interior.
It was midday. The stained glass windows were fully alive in red, blue and yellow light. A radiant display that shone down on the pews, altar, statues, gothic pillars and smooth granite floor in beams of holy light. It was the effect that had, for a thousand years, drawn the faithful inside and assured them that, yes, there is something greater than themselves. A place to look beyond the horizon.
The stained glass windows were spotless, as was the entire cathedral. If there was one thing that Bishop Julia could not criticize, it was the upkeep of the building. But that is a basic minimum.
Julia strode all the way to the altar, took the four steps as one, and sat herself in the lush chair that was too large for Maggie, but perfectly sized for Julia. She was the one for whom it had been crafted.
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