Keira didn’t reply instantly. She continued to stare at him, then her arms folded across her chest. “What do you want?” she asked.
“I’m going to take Jamana up with me to earth when I leave,” Alex said.
“Jamana?” Keira repeated the name before familiarity struck and she said, “The demon maid? You want to take her up with you to earth? That’s it?”
Alex had thought it would be tough for him to convince Keira to allow Jamana to leave with him. He was prepared to dig his heels in and demand it. Now, he felt like he’d sort of sold himself short. He could have demanded much more. He should demand much more. But in that moment, Alex’s mind was a blank. So, he nodded begrudgingly.
“Fine,” Keira said. “Take the demon back up with you. But you need to be able to stop Satan from escaping. If you fail, if you die trying, I’m going to hurt Jamana so bad, she’s going to wish she was dead. But she won’t die,” Keira growled. “Oh, and I’ll also go after those runaway humans. And when I catch them, and I will catch them, I’ll turn hell very Abrahamic for them. I will drive spikes in them. I will burn them in fire. I will pull their eyes out. Our physicians will put them back together and it will start all over again.”
“Jesus,” Alex muttered, a little taken back. “That’s a bit dark, isn’t it?”
“Yes Alex, it is dark. In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re in hell. I’m a fucking demon and I’m angry.”
“Can’t believe I wanted to fuck you,” Alex said a little sullenly.
Keira pushed her chair back and leaned over the table, her face inches away from his. She wore a low-cut top and Alex caught an eyeful of her breasts. “You stop Satan from escaping, Alex, and I’ll let you fuck me. I’ll let you do whatever you want to me. Whatever you want.” Her hands gripped his collar and pulled his face even closer. “But remember the price if you fail.”
Chapter 42
They would be leaving for the Great Depression immediately, Keira said. And she wasn’t kidding. Alex barely had time to say a hurried goodbye to Jamana. He told her where he was going, and then wondered if that had been a good thing to do. Jamana was very much like Melissa. She worried too much.
Alex was back on a hell horse, riding through the demon city of Katarnak. The heat was searing, the air was thick and ashy. Alex had his sword strapped to his back, but he wished he’d grabbed something to wrap over his head and around his mouth and nose. It would make managing this heat so much easier.
He wondered why the demons didn’t do that. And then he realised they were demons. The heat wouldn’t bother them at all. Satan was technically a demon, and he rode on a freaking pool of lava to earth’s surface.
They rode their hell horses for three hours and they rode them hard. Still, they were no closer to the Great Depression. Alex knew because he had asked, much like an annoying child did when seated in the backseat of a car, he’d asked every ten minutes. It pissed off Keira to no end, and it was totally worth it, even if it did make his throat sore from having to shout over the sound of hell horses’ hooves hitting the hard rocky ground.
They rode for another hour before Alex spotted the beast in the sky. It was like a large black kite gliding in the red sky. As it began to descend, its shape became more prominent. It had long black wings with big sharp talons at the end. Its legs were thick and powerfully built with bulging muscles. Its tail was long and pointed at the tip and its body was twice the size of a hell horse. It was covered in black scales that shined like oiled metal. It dropped onto the ground a hundred feet in front of them.
The hell horses came to a sudden stop a few feet away from the creature. Alex stared in wonder at the beast. It didn’t have eyeballs. It had the holes for them, but it was hollow. The beast should have been blind, but Alex knew it wasn’t. It could see him, and as if to prove its point, a flame suddenly burned in each hollow eye.
“That’s a dragon,” he said in awe.
“Yeah,” Keira said. “Why so surprised? You’ve seen a dragon before.”
“Not in daylight,” Alex said. “Can I ride it?”
Keira’s face broke from its angry stony pissed off bitch to a natural smile. “Thought I’d have to drag you onto it.”
Alex dismounted from his hell horse as did Keira. The dragon seemed to know her, and it lowered its head, which Keira stroked. Then, the dragon folded its knees and lowered itself until the underbelly touched the ground.
Placing a foot on its wing and using the scales on its neck, Keira climbed onto the dragon’s back.
“You don’t need to climb up like that. Jump from here. You can do it. You’ve jumped from much further,” Lucifer said.
It was true that Alex had jumped further and much higher. But that was part of the problem. He’d always jumped a lot higher than he was supposed to. Sometimes with painful consequences. If he got it wrong here, he would jump over the dragon and land on his bottom on the other side. That would be painful, but more than that, it would be embarrassing.
“You risk nothing, you gain nothing,” Lucifer seemed to goad him.
“And what do I gain from showing off?”
“Access to her panties,” came the immediate response. “Don’t even deny it. You know you want to pull those leather pants off and see what colour her pussy is, and then fuck it.”
Alex rolled his eyes. He stepped up to the dragon and placed one foot on the wing, then grabbed the metallic scales to hoist himself up onto the dragon’s back and behind Keira. The scales were hard and cold, like metal armour.
Once seated, the dragon rose onto its powerful legs and flapped its wings. It rose off the ground like a hovercraft would, floating straight up. They were a hundred feet above the ground when the dragon straightened its neck like a spear. They shot forward and Alex tightened his grip on the scales as the sudden rush of wind almost knocked him off.
He’d fallen from the sky on his entrance to hell, and it had not been fun. He was not in the mood for it to happen again.
“Are they not coming with us?” Alex shouted in Keira’s ear against the rushing wind.
Down below, Magnamus, Cierrella, Corcin and Mariah weren’t even little specks anymore. They had been completely left behind.
“They’ll meet us there, along with the rest of Satani’s army in case we fail. Chances are they’ll arrive too late to stop Satan. Even we might be too late.”
Chapter 43
They flew for hours and hours. Alex lost track of time. The red sky darkened, signalling the start of night. As the night progressed, Alex began to feel overcome by sleep. He dug his fingers in-between the scales and held onto them as tightly as possible. At one point, Alex’s eyes closed, he felt his fingers loosen and his body tilted to the left. He woke with a jolt and grabbed onto Keira to stop from falling.
The demon didn’t appreciate being squeezed by his powerful arms so suddenly. She glared back at him, but Alex didn’t care. It wasn’t like she was going to push him off the dragon. She needed him.
As the dark red sky suddenly changed to a lighter shade, signalling the start of morning, the dragon began to descend. They had arrived. Below him, Alex could see the Great Depression. It was aptly named.
The flat ground came to a sudden end. It dropped for thousands of feet, like a steep cliff. Beyond it, stretching for miles and miles was an enormous depression. But it wasn’t flat land. It was littered with hills. And on those hills, there grew trees. Sure, the trunks and branches were black, and the leaves were red, but Alex had never seen so many trees in one place in hell. It almost looked pretty.
“Merculis Azarath made it through,” Keira said. She pointed down with her finger.
At first, Alex couldn’t see anything. But then he noticed the red leaves were more densely populated in some places. It took him another moment to realise it wasn’t the leaves that were red. It was the trunks and branches. They’d been painted red in blood.
Alex saw the bodies. Some were demons, some were… he couldn’t tell what they wer
e. It became worse the further they flew in. In some areas, the trees had been destroyed, branches broken, trunks uprooted. In the space created, there were dozens of bodies. Demons and monstrous with long necks, big heads, long sharp teeth, some with wings.
Ahead of them, there rose a mountain amongst the hills. Midway up the mountain was a cave. The flat space before the cave was filled with dead demon bodies. If Alex had to guess, there were about a hundred dead demons down there. The same number that were supposed to be guarding the cave for Satani.
The dragon landed in front of the cave. Keira dismounted gracefully and Alex slid down the rough scales and stumbled forward when he hit the ground. Keira stroked the dragon’s head and whispered in its ear. The dragon let out a low growl in response before it flapped its wings and flew off into the distance.
Alex watched the formidable beast fly off. When it was nothing more than a little speck in the red sky, he turned to Keira. “Don’t you think we could have used the dragon’s help in this?”
“No,” Keira said. “The dragon can’t help us here.”
“I’m pretty sure it could have been of help,” Alex persisted as he stared at the darkness that was the entrance to the cave. He looked down at the dead demon bodies that surrounded them. They were alive not so long ago, alive and inside that cave. Now, they were dead, probably replaced by Merculis’s demons. “Can the dragon breath fire?”
Keira nodded, and opened her mouth to talk, but Alex cut her off.
“Seriously?” he grumbled. “You don’t think the dragon could have helped by breathing fire into the cave? You do know Merculis probably has the place filled with his demons, right?”
Keira closed her mouth and stared at him for a long time.
“It was a good idea, wasn’t it?” Alex said. “You’re thinking you should have kept the dragon, aren’t you?”
“You’re an idiot, Alex,” Keira said sharply. “This is the entrance to Satan’s prison. It’s protected by powerful magic. The dragon’s fire wouldn’t make it inside.”
Alex was going to make a comment on how he wasn’t stupid, but decided against it. Keira wasn’t her normal calm and collected self. She was agitated. Her hands hovered around her waist, her fingers wiggling.
“The tunnel will lead in for ten meters. It’ll then open up into a room. Demons, monsters, whatever Merculis has, will be waiting for us. If we manage to kill them, we continue further in. I don’t know how many rooms there are, or what lays in wait for us,” she said grimly.
Alex squinted as he stared down the cave entrance. He could see nothing but darkness. It reminded him of the staircase that led up to Satani’s quarters in the Red House of Satan, back up on earth. He didn’t like that place, and he didn’t like the cave entrance either. It felt like a foreboding place. A cold emanated from within, adding to the effect.
“So, just to clarify,” Alex began, “everyone or everything inside the cave is going to try and kill us?”
“They might succeed,” Keira said.
“Like fuck they will,” Alex grunted.
He pulled his sword out and stepped into the cave. It hit him straight away. The deafening sound made his eardrums feel like they were ready to explode. His sword fell out of his hands as he dropped to his knees and covered his ears. Keira, who walked in after him, was already on the ground curled up in a ball.
Alex wanted to do the same when he realised he could see Keira. The room wasn’t pitch black anymore. It wasn’t just him and Keira in the room. There were four demons in the corners of the room. Their faces were pure concentration as they inched towards him. And they did inch towards him, as if struggling against winds hundreds of miles per hour. They wore black armour with the blue demon face painted on the chest. They held black swords in their hands.
Merculis Azarath’s demons.
Alex’s sword lay on the ground beside his knees. With enormous effort, he pulled his right hand away from blocking his ear drum. The deafening noise increased. It sounded like a rocket with an almost endless fuel tank had just launched inside his head. It was going to explode eventually, and when it did, it was going to take his head with him.
His hand wanted to go back up to his head. He wanted to cover his ears and lie on the ground, curled up in a ball, eyes closed shut, wishing he was somewhere else, much like Keira was doing. But the demons edged towards him, swords raised and intense concentration on their faces.
Alex gripped the handle of the longsword and lifted it up. It felt heavy. Much heavier than it should have been. The weight strained against his wrist. Alex climbed to his feet, his head spinning, he blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision and focus on the four demons that came at him.
The first brought his black sword down, aiming for Alex’s head. It was a slow strike, but still, it took Alex every effort to raise his own sword and block it. Their two blades rested on each other, both human and demon exhausted from the feeble battle, it seemed.
Mindful that three other demons were coming for him, Alex raised a foot and kicked the demon in the chest.
It was a slow and weak kick, matching their sword play in intensity. At best, the demon should have taken a step back.
But that wasn’t what happened.
The demon’s body flew off the ground and crashed into the wall behind as if it had just been punched by the Hulk. The demon’s blood coloured the wall as the body slumped to the ground.
Alex’s eyes widened. Contact was hard to make in the cave, but the slightest touch was a killer. With this new knowledge, Alex moved to face the three other demons, his mind on high alert. As he concentrated hard, the noise in his head subsided some.
He dispatched them with ease, doing much better in this room of deafening sounds than they seemed to be. He parried the first demon’s strike, then as the second lunged in, Alex struck back with the handle of his sword. The demon’s skull cracked as if it were no thicker than an eggshell.
The third demon struck wildly, aiming to decapitate him. Alex rolled underneath the strike, then came up behind the demon and sliced him across the back. It happened in slow motion. Everything happened in slow motion until the blade struck the demons back. Then it seemed to speed up as a cut appeared on the demons back before it snapped in half.
Alex moved onto the remaining demon and punched him on the nose with his left hand and simultaneously parried the demon’s sword with his own. There was a crunch as the demon’s nose broke, a sound that he heard over the deafening noise. Then, the demon’s body lifted off the ground and flew back, as if it were a puppet suddenly jerked back by its string.
Some of the demon’s blood had splattered onto Alex’s face when he broke its nose. He wiped it off and took in his surroundings. It was a dimly lit cave, but by what, or where this light was coming from, Alex couldn’t tell. The walls were of red, but either side of him were two black patches. The one to his right was where he had entered through. The one to his left must lead further inside the cave.
Keira remained on the floor, her hands pressed against her ears, her eyes closed, her face scrunched, she was still curled in a ball. Alex grabbed her by the foot and dragged her towards the black rectangular shape to his left.
As he stepped through, the deafening noise suddenly stopped. This room was much bigger. It was also full of dead demons. And… what looked like an oversized octopus. The creature had an enormous round head that was twice the size of Alex. It had a dozen or so tentacles, but instead of having sucklers on them, it had sharp red thorns. Most of the dead demons on the ground had those thorns sticking out of their bodies. Others seemed strangled to death, or crushed by the tentacles.
In the end, the powerful beast was brought down by dozens of spears that had been driven into its head.
“Holy fuck,” Keira muttered. She was leaning against the cave wall when she slammed a flat hand against her ear, as if trying to push out the remaining sounds still stuck in there. “What happened?”
Alex told her what had happene
d, how he’d defeated the demons, how the battle seemed to take place in slow motion, except when he struck a body. Then, it seemed the force multiplied. But it wasn’t consistent, he thought, as he remembered how the demon’s head had exploded, rather than being flung backwards with the body.
“Good stuff,” Keira said, as she stepped away from the wall and staggered on her feet. Alex held a hand out to steady her. She took it and leaned on him. “That first room might be the worst of it. I don’t think Merculis is expecting anyone to get past it. We wouldn’t have either, if it weren’t for you.”
Alex hoped she was right, that the first room was the worst of it. They moved over the dead bodies and around the monster’s head and through the black opening in the wall. What followed was more of the same. The rooms differed in size. Some were as small as eight-squared feet, others were over ten times as big. Some had been booby trapped, others had beasts waiting in them. All had dead demons on the floor.
It must have cost Merculis a small army to break through these rooms. It made sense now why they hadn’t tried this route in the first place when they could have snuck Satan out by opening a portal to earth.
Alex lost track of how many rooms they’d been through. As they stood in front of another black opening in the red cave wall, Keira told him what would follow would be Satan’s prison. She knew because of the warmth emanating from the darkness.
Alex was ready. He’d already faced Satan once before. If the devil had broken free from his prison, Alex was going to have to kill him this time. He didn’t know how he would do that, didn’t even know if it were possible. The last time he drove his sword into Satan’s chest, and that hadn't work.
It didn’t matter though. Alex was certain he would figure out a way to finally end the devil. With longsword held in both hands before him, he stepped into the darkness.
The Devil's Apprentice: Book 2: Descent to Hell Page 22
