by Aaron Crash
Jack stopped time, but things were already so quiet in the dead space it wasn’t dramatically noticeable. Except for the lack of wind and the silence, since all traffic on Plum Creek Boulevard had been stopped.
Jack wore the Eternity Cannon in a holster strapped to his thigh. He’d bought leather compartments for the two extra cylinders and he attached them to his belt. He had eighteen magical rounds. He brought his Beretta in his shoulder holster, with two extra magazines. Lastly, he’d carry his shotgun with a bandolier of shotgun shells.
Gabby wore her white business suit, no heels, but then her cute feet were tough as nails.
Bailey wore the slutty red dress, and she’d found thick chains for the two hell keys. She carried the skull key in her fist. The crossbones key hung over a shoulder. The demon let out a nervous breath. “Okay, it’s not like we’re going to wind up right at the duke’s palace. We’ll be close, maybe a half-mile away. I’m pretty sure we’ll appear at the D’Nyr Gate, and it should be a straight shot from there. We can set up our ambush outside Tanichron’s gate. Then we wait. Kerrata won’t be there alone. He’ll have other Interim with him, I’m pretty sure. Fucking Fugs.”
“Don’t need to curse,” Gabby said primly.
“Oh, right, because we’re currently not fucking,” the demon spat back.
“Be nice!” Gabby shouted. Her halo flashed, and in a heartbeat, she had her divine horn and her sheathed sword hanging off her golden belt.
Bailey turned both pale and sarcastic. “Sure, Gabby. Whatever. I’ll be nice to you on our way into hell, where we’re risking our lives for some dumb bitch. Sure. This is exactly the right time for me to be nice. Let’s just go.”
Gabby frowned. “I’m sorry.”
Jack wasn’t sure why the angel apologized because it was the demon that was cracking under the stress.
Bailey rammed the dagger-long skull key into the bank’s bare wall and turned it. The entire back side of the bank seemed to turn to dust, but it was like looking at a picture of a wall crumbling. Then all of reality was torn away, and the bank wall was gone, the bank was gone, and there was a three-story hole in the world. Beyond was a blasted wasteland of stone structures, all in disrepair, underneath an orange sky that looked like it was on fire. The dry heat washed over them, and Jack could smell burning hair. He had to check his own skull to make sure it wasn’t him.
Overhead, a central orb of reddish-yellow fire burned unevenly in the orange swirl of decaying clouds. It seemed the smell of the human hair burning came from there. When he focused on that abysmal sun, the stink grew sharper.
Bailey summoned her war pick, and her dress ripped open, the red fabric falling to the ground of the parking lot as she strutted forward onto the blasted cobblestones of hell. A leather skirt and complex leather top replaced what she’d been wearing, with black boots that went up to her knees. Black vambraces covered her arms. It looked like a cross between armor and bondage gear. But this was the real Beyazul Baal, the real demon. She didn’t need to hide her true demonic self, and she wasn’t. She had her leathery wings, her black horns, the black eyes, and the vicious black spike of a tail, ending in a length of polished, razor-sharp bone.
She turned and pointed her war pick at Gabby. “Hide your halo for as long as you can. And don’t fucking blow your horn if you can help it. If we can get in there, get Annie, and get out without your legion knowing, it will be better for everyone.”
Gabby nodded. She did take off her jacket and blouse and spread her white wings. She also dropped her skirt. Dressed only in bra and panties, she floated upward with the orange hair-burning sun glinting off the metal edges of her fluffy wings.
Jack put the shotgun on his shoulder and strutted into hell for the first time, but probably not the last.
The smell of the torched hair was abruptly tinged with the chemical stink of something rotten, covered in bleach, and set on fire. That was followed by the stink of rot. It was like the land itself was rotting, and it was. Where there should be dirt or sand, there was flesh covered in a layer of white, powdery mold.
Bailey saw his disgust. “This section of hell was built on the corpse of one of the elder demon gods, a world-devouring horror, and it’s best not to think about that. A happier thought? Damned souls had to bring all of the stone here. The dukes give them Corpus bodies that are mostly wounds, rashes, and blisters. Good times. The damned souls in their rotting bodies have to repair it every ten thousand years or so. It’s probably due for repairs.” It was funny. The demon seemed almost embarrassed by the horrible state of her homeland.
Bailey plucked an ash-gray tunic out of nowhere. She tossed the clothing to the angel. “Put this on. There are slits in the back. You don’t want the demons looking at your titties.”
Gabby grabbed the gray tunic and slid it on, adjusting it so her wings were still workable. Then she smiled. “I think I’ll change up my appearance a bit since, well, you look so good, Bailey.”
Gabby turned her golden bracelets into vambraces which ended in gauntlets, protecting her hands. Golden boots reached up to her mid-thigh. Her halo morphed into a golden helmet, open except for a noseguard to show her pretty face. A golden cuirass covered her chest.
It was a great transformation.
“Why didn’t you armor up in the Land of the Tossed?” Bailey demanded.
The angel smiled. “I have my reasons. My very mysterious angelic reasons.”
Bailey returned the smile. “You’re the best, Feathers.”
Jack loved it when the two women got along.
They were standing on a hilltop of rotten flesh, with a crumbling archway above showing two demonic figures fucking, though the exact details were lost to time. However, he could make out the demon crouched with her ass up while a huge horned man-shaped fiend gripped her hips. Behind them was a mountainous region of mold. In front of them was a series of hills, covered with more crumbling stone, with some bridges connecting them. Most of those bridges were destroyed, though, leaving ragged gaps between them.
Things chittered in dark cracks, and eyes twinkled in the shadows, in the darkness. The orange light was horrid, but it was better than the darkness.
Bailey pointed to a hilltop where a disintegrating stone building teetered. “We need to get to that hilltop over there. I can use my wings to glide, but I can’t really fly. Remember, everything will want to kill you. If you see something, kill something. Your average imp is cautious, though, since this is such a violent, terrible place. Shit won’t attack you unless it thinks it can kill you. Hopefully, we look badass enough that they won’t attack us.”
A grand wall blocked out the horizon farther down the road. That wall was a thousand feet tall, with huge spikes of rusted metal pushing out from the top of the ramparts. In the middle of the chiseled yellow rock stood a gate of desiccated wood and rusted metal fittings. The gate was at least two hundred feet tall and a hundred feet wide. There were massive rusted hinges on either side. When that gate opened, it would squeal like a whole hog farm.
Bailey nodded at the massive wall, which extended across the land. “That’s the duke’s palace. We do not want that gate opening. We want to ambush Kerrata before Tanichron even knows we’re here. Kerrata should be coming across the southern Sin Road. There.”
She pointed to a crumbling highway of rock cutting across the decayed land.
“Let’s get to it,” Gabby said. “This place is very unpleasant.”
That was an understatement.
Bailey was able to jump and glide from ledge to ledge, while Gabby jogged with Jack. When they came to a broken bridge, she’d take hold of him and fly him across.
The teetering building was a good ambush spot. There was a set of wrecked steps leading from the bottom floor of the leaning tower down to a flat section of the southern Sin Road. The three of them found good positions under the creaking stone.
Bailey tried to act cool, but it was clear she was scared. She kept touching Gabby. “Remember, i
f that gate opens, that means Duke Tanichron is coming, and he’ll be coming with his horde. We can’t handle that fucking action, and we don’t want to try. So if the gate opens, we run back to the D’Nyr Gate, and I use the crossbones key to get us the fuck out of here.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Jack agreed.
Gabby, though, was silent. That didn’t bode well.
The demon wasn’t about to let that go unnoticed. “I need a ‘Yes, Bailey’ from you, Feathers.”
“Yes, Bailey,” the angel said. “But I came here to get Annie. If I have to choose her life over mine, I won’t do it. It’d be better for me to die here if it meant Annie would get her life.”
The succubus exploded. “That’s the kind of fucking bullshit—"
Jack cut her off. “Look!”
Creeping down the Sin Road came a wheeled wooden cart pulled by two giant herd animals that looked like a cross between toenails and water buffalo. Their faces were yellow chitin, a single block of toenail, and they walked on bloody stumps...at least it looked like they were trailing blood from their matted, hairy legs. Had Kerrata walked the hooves off his oxen, or was this like the road repair crews, human souls given painful form for the enjoyment or convenience of demons and Fugs?
Surrounding the cart were what looked like cheap copies of Kerrata himself. Instead of being man-shaped, the Kerrata copies looked like dogs, with two big horns curling back from their heads. They had no discernible features, just the horns covering their faces. They didn’t have claws or paws. Instead, their four legs ended in sharpened bone points. If those nasty pups couldn’t ram you to death, they’d impale you with their spear-like peg legs.
Annie was tied to a post on top of the cart. Though she wore a hood, Jack recognized one of the outfits she wore as a teller. Standing next to her was the huge figure of Kerrata himself, riding along. His arms and legs were emaciated, but he had the huge curling horns, the overly large claws, and the gigantic, spider-like feet. How many toes did he have on each foot? It looked like eight at least, each tipped with a long talon. He wore a broad leather belt with a many-tailed whip coiled and tucked into one side.
Bailey counted up their enemies. “So there are two weird oxen things, fifty fugly dogs, and one big stupid Kerrata, who wants to become an Interim Lord by way of a deal with a Hell Duke. I don’t think he’s going to drain Annie dry. I think he’s going to just toss her to Tanichron and demand an eon palace of his own.”
“What about those things?” Gabby asked grimly.
Overhead, the sky was full of what could only be flying fingernail birds—like the toenail oxen, these flying Fugs had the faces of fingernails, sharp and jagged and dirty, with bright pink wings and the long whiptail of a manta ray. These barbs weren’t black but a sick yellow color instead.
Jack was reminded of the cyclops birds that he’d fought on the freeway and in the Cast Away, Gone Astray.
“I’m going to have to use my horn,” Gabby said.
Bailey sighed. “You’re going to have to use your horn.”
The three were hiding in the old stone structure, which had enough of a roof to hide them from the skies. But there must’ve been another fifty of those fingernail birds. They were hopelessly outnumbered.
But it wasn’t like they were going to turn around and run back to the D’Nyr Gate.
Jack turned to the women. “So I have the Tempus Influunt stopped. At some point, someone mentioned two other temporal zones, the Influunt Divinatio and the Influunt Diaboli. The timestream in heaven and the timestream in hell. What if I could stop the Influunt Diaboli? Even if I could just do it for a few seconds. Then Gabby might not need her horn.”
He checked his Septua energy matrix.
<<< SEPTUA SANCTUS >>>
Level: 2
Current Kairos: 160/200
Current Corpus: 200/200
Current Nefesh: 200/200
Current Ijjinaya: 200/200
Current Psyche: 200/200
Current Morpheum: 200/200
Current Decaysia: 175/200
Special abilities:
Potential Auxiliary Storage: 100/100
Aeterna Kalpa Olam Hosted Synchronization
Septua Conversion and Transfer
<<< SEPTUA SANCTUS >>>
His Septua levels looked good, and he had lower than normal Decaysia. However, he was going through Kairos energy like it was grape Fanta. Once the shooting started, he’d get a refill, and he had his auxiliary storage. He just needed to know if the Influunt Diaboli worked with Kairos energy alone, or if there was something else to it.
From the looks on the faces of the women, they didn’t know either.
Bailey sighed. “Dammit, Jack, I’m a sex demon, not a theoretical physicist. You shouldn’t be dicking with things you don’t understand.”
Jack smiled. “But you know me, I love dicking. Guess we’ll see how much of a Time Knight I am. I might just come in the dick of time to save the day.”
Gabby squinted at him. “You didn’t just say that.”
He shrugged. “Let’s just kick some fucking Fug ass so none of us—and I mean none of us, Gabby—has to make the sacrifice play.”
“Amen to that shit,” Bailey agreed. “Let’s be quiet. When the time is right, we’ll ambush their Fug asses.”
“I hate that word,” Gabby complained.
There was ten feet of decaying stone steps connecting their hilltop bunker to the road.
They waited as the toenail oxen approached, leaving behind trails from their bloody stumps. And the chitin dogs clacked around. They did have black nostrils under their horns but no discernible ears, eyes, or mouths. They snuffled a bit, but they probably only smelled the decaying meat of the ancient dead demon around them.
Overhead, the fingernail birds circled, their fleshy yellow barbs trailing their pale bodies.
Just before Kerrata’s cart lined up with their steps, Jack looked down at the toy soldier on his hand. He was a soldier all right, and he was fighting an evil army that had captured an innocent soul, a powerful soul, if all the gossip was true.
Jack was going to save her.
He considered the toy soldier. He held his thumb over the tattoo and concentrated. He drew in a mixture of Kairos and Decaysia—there was more than enough of the death energy to go around. The land was literally leaking it into the air like a graveyard version of a Yellowstone geyser.
With his thumb near the tattoo, with his intentions clear, he felt the entire realm of hell around him, countless demonic creatures, things that fed on the last of the Nefesh of damned souls, the Decaysia of the dead god, and, yes, some things that fed on fouler things.
Stopping the Influunt Diaboli would be like throwing himself into the cogs of a giant clock. There was no way he’d be able to pull that off without destroying himself.
He thought of what Gabby had said. Was Annie’s life more valuable than his own? Probably. But he wasn’t about to throw his life away if he wasn’t sure that Annie, Bailey, and Gabby would survive.
Jack gripped his shotgun. “Time to rescue the damsel in distress.”
“Fuck yeah.” Gabby’s curse came as a surprise.
Bailey had no reply. Her normally calm and cool demeanor was gone. The demon was sweaty, pale, and afraid.
Afraid or not, it was time to fight.
Chapter Thirty-Four
JACK FOLLOWED THE ANGEL and the demon down the stone steps and onto the Sin Road.
Bailey and Gabby cut a path through the chitin dogs with longsword and war pick. Bailey had an extra move she made, swinging the chain on her pick to crack open the horned skull of a dog, or sweeping out the sharpened bone feet of the Fugs, sending them to the ground. She also used her tail, which was soon as bloody as the dual spikes of her pick.
As for Gabby, she was like a living ray of light that slashed through creature after creature, cutting the Fugs in half, either by width or by length. She worked with her wings as well as her blade, sweeping her
feathers into the backs of the chitin dogs, hacking through their spines. The dog-like Fugs bled black, and that gore stank like everything else. No wonder the chitin dogs didn’t smell Jack and his friends—they probably couldn’t get over the stink of their own internal organs.
Jack protected the women as they fought. When any of the chitin dogs came close, he unloaded his shotgun, that first shot working to splatter their bone and brains across the cobblestones. And when one of the fingernail birds flashed down, Jack turned the barrel skyward, blasting the creature out of the air. Those things must have a mouth somewhere because they went shrieking down to the ground to be trampled under the chitin dogs.
Every kill gave him Kairos, and he added it to the pile—he was far from dipping into his auxiliary supply.
Some of the Fugs were so battle-crazed they tore each other apart to try to get to Jack and the women. Good. The monsters were doing Jack’s job for him.
Gabby launched herself into the air, white wings spread and gleaming, her longsword raised. She shot up and hacked through fingernail birds during her ascent. She also had her big bugle in her left hand to use as both a shield and a cudgel. Whirling, she took out three of the fingernail birds at once with the hidden blades on her wings.
A bird struck at her with the long barb of its tail, but she caught the attack on her horn, shrugging it away. Watching her fight was like watching a ballet of death—that was a billion years of training in action.
Bailey leapt onto the cart, half jumping, half using her black wings to glide down onto the splintery wood. Jack clambered up a wheel to get to the top of the cart. He didn’t want to be on the ground with those chitin dogs. The fingernail birds were easier to kill.
Kerrata let out a choking laugh. He freed the toenail oxen. The massive animals turned, bellowing from mouths underneath their yellow toenail heads.
Annie struggled against the pole where she was tied.
The big horned Fug turned and slapped her. “Give up hope, bitch. Always hope with this one. Always such hope. Even while I sucked the quick minutes out of her. I like the slow seconds, like that other bitch I snacked on. Those slow seconds allowed me to find an army, gave me the power to come to hell. Those slow seconds were deliciously good.”
