by SM Reine
“Search for surveillance on Malcolm Gallagher,” she said. “Look at December fifteenth.”
That was the date where a demon had escaped from Union custody—the date when Allyson had pistol-whipped Malcolm. I’d told her that day so that she could use it to defend me.
When Director Grimsey loaded the video and turned the laptop to show it to the others. I couldn’t see the screen from there, but I didn’t need to. I remembered seeing Allyson assaulting Malcolm perfectly.
“Summon Zettel and Whatley,” Director Liberty said.
Now Lucrezia looked annoyed. “They’re busy preparing to escort you to the other trial.”
“Would you prefer that we sentence Whatley without speaking to both of them first?” Grimsey asked. She’d paused the video in the moment before it blacked out again, destroyed by the demon.
Lucrezia checked her watch one more time. “It’s eight o’clock. Finally.”
The doors behind their table opened. There was nothing on the other side but shadow, vast and enormous.
I hadn’t been in that room before, but I was certain there should have been a hallway, another room, or something else vaguely normal like that. Not shadow. Especially not inside of the Union’s wards.
A brute emerged.
It was wearing ribbons around its neck, just like the ones I’d seen behind System Computing Services. Its chest was bisected by a massive mouth. It was dripping ichor onto the carpet.
And with a single sweep of its giant hand, it smashed Director Kirby into a wall.
“Shoot it!” Grimsey shouted, leaping over the table. She was agile for an old woman.
The kopides guarding me opened fire.
I didn’t see if they knew to aim for the eyes. Suzy plowed into me, knocking me behind the guards and out of danger. “It was a trap,” I gasped. “This whole trial—it was a fucking trap!”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Suzy said.
“Why were you trying to screw Malcolm over?”
“He’s Union and he deserves it.” She unlocked my cuffs, and they jangled to the floor. “Don’t argue with me. Save it for later.”
I tried to run for the doors that we’d come through, but they opened before I reached them.
Allyson Whatley and Gary Zettel stepped through. They were wearing full Union gear: combat boots, body armor, and even these weird face masks connected to oxygen tanks hanging from their backs.
The witch also had ribbons draped over her knuckles, her wrists, her gun.
“Oh, fuck,” I said.
I lunged aside just in time.
There was so much gunfire in the room that I couldn’t tell who was shooting at what.
It didn’t help that I started sneezing. A lot.
Magic boiled through the room, turning the air to molten energy. It was all I could do to huddle in the corner and keep breathing.
Metal hit the ground beside me.
A gun.
I swiped a hand over my blurry eyes, struggling to clear my vision. It was Allyson’s AK-47. She had dropped it to guard herself with magic, ribbon-wrapped fists lifted in front of her chest.
She hurled energy at Suzy.
And Suzy deflected it, clutching ribbons of her own.
“What the hell?” I asked. Gunfire was still chattering nearby, so I couldn’t hear my own voice.
The ribbons that Suzy held were splattered with ichor. She must have stolen them off of the brutes at System Computing Services somehow—most likely when Fritz had taken a team to investigate. Suzy was still the most powerful witch I knew. She’d only needed the few hours I’d spent in a prison cell to figure out how to operate Allyson Whatley’s magic.
Now they were facing down, witch against witch.
On the other side of the shimmering air, the other doors stood open. There were two brutes in the room. There wasn’t room for more than that, but it didn’t matter: two brutes were more than enough to assassinate three directors working for the Office of Preternatural Affairs.
I could only watch as one of them seized Grimsey’s legs and ripped her in half.
Lucrezia de Angelis was nowhere in sight.
It was too much to hope that the brutes had gotten her, too.
I didn’t watch the brutes kill the kopides who had been guarding me. They were screaming loudly enough that I could hear them over the sizzling and popping of the battle magic, and that was a sound I was never going to forget.
Instead, I grabbed Allyson’s gun. It burned with magic against my fingers. I understood, immediately and instinctively, that the ribbons augmented her aim in the same way that my poultices augmented my strength.
Zettel aimed at me when I stood with the AK-47 braced against my side. I didn’t hold still long enough for him to shoot me. I threw myself behind a toppled table, over in the corner nearest the door, and used it as cover.
Aim for the eyes.
One of the brutes tossed a body aside, then rounded on me.
I was close enough that I could see its eyes now. They were beady-black pinpoints barely inches above the gash of its mouth. Ichor drizzled over its upper lip, slid off of its fangs.
Squeezing the trigger, I let bullets fly. Allyson’s magic sent them straight into the brute’s eyes.
Its torso snapped back. Ichor splattered on the doorway behind it. When it fell, I swung around to shoot the other, and it only took a single burst of fire to bring it down.
They were both dead.
The shadow dispersed from the doorway behind the table, and I saw the hallway I’d have expected on the other side. It was like any other hall in the base. Eggshell-white walls, concrete floor. Except the door at the end stood open, and there was red-orange light on the other side, so bright that it was like the Union held the sun captive on the other side.
Still no sign of Lucrezia de Angelis. She’d vanished as surely as the shadow.
“Hawke!” Zettel roared at me from the other side of Suzy and Allyson.
He couldn’t shoot at me through the seething wall of their magic, no more than I could shoot at him.
At any other time, I would have been thrilled to watch the witches battling. A fight between two powerful women was exhilarating and a little bit sexy.
But this was Suzy going after Allyson Whatley.
They might have been a match, magically speaking. Politically, Suzy didn’t stand a chance. The directors who had seen the footage of attacking Allyson Whatley were dead. Even if Suzy survived, she was definitely out of a job.
Suzy hurled magic at Allyson again. The air shook so hard that I couldn’t see any of them through the swirling splash of colors.
When my vision cleared, they were only inches apart, fists near fists.
The whole room shook. A crack raced from the floor to the ceiling, splitting everything in half. Blood trickled out of Suzy’s nose.
They were evenly matched while using Allyson’s ribbons, but Suzy looked like she was about to fold.
Allyson shrieked as she made one last push with the magic.
Suzy’s protective shield snapped.
An invisible fist shoved against my partner’s chest, and she went flying, hurtling down the long hallway toward that bright light. Allyson fell to her knees. She coughed blood onto the floor as Zettel leaped to her side.
I jumped into the hallway after Suzy, slamming the doors shut behind me.
It wouldn’t keep them out for long. But hopefully Allyson wouldn’t be able to cast magic at my back without opening those doors.
A small body in a tailored suit was crumpled at the far end of the hallway.
“Suze!”
I let the AK-47 dangle from its strap on my shoulder as I raced to her. But I stopped short once I saw where that blazing orange light was coming from.
There was a broad ring of rocks at the center of the room, sort of like the kind you’d see at a summer camp. They were stamped with a cruelly jagged alphabet that I couldn’t read. The floor was crusted with sulfur for several
inches radiating away from its perimeter, along with a lot of orange dust. Fritz had once told me they had that orange dust in parts of Hell. How my boss was familiar with the type of dust that came out of Hell, I didn’t want to know. As with all relationships, some things were best left a mystery between kopis and aspis. Like using the bathroom with the door closed when taking a dump.
It was that portal that Malcolm had mentioned. The one that led into the City of Dis.
Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see all the kennels ringing the room. Big kennels, just big enough for each one to hold a human being inside. All the doors stood open. The cages were empty.
All the humans Aniruddha and I had seen at UNR had already been taken to Hell. And they’d been taken by the Union.
“You again,” said a voice to my right.
I turned, and there he was—that demon in the slim black suit with the silver pin on his collar.
You know, the one who had crushed Agent Carthay’s skull under his heel.
I lifted the gun, took a step away.
The demon backhanded me.
My skull hit the wall and I blacked out.
I’d gone camping with my family once when we were kids—only once. I’d gone with Pops and my siblings, Domingo and Ofelia. All four of us out in the wilderness. Unfortunately, none of us had ever been the great-outdoors type. I’d hated leaving my comic books, and Domingo had been bored out of his mind. A bored Domingo had always been a bad Domingo. And a bored Cèsar had no way to escape him.
Long story short, we’d been out camping in the desert, there had been a campfire, and Domingo had shoved me into the coals.
I was fine. It was fine. The burns had healed.
But I’d never forget how much it had hurt.
You don’t forget pain like that.
When I woke up, I thought that I was in the campfire again. It was that hot.
I was still on the floor of the portal room. Suzy’s loafers were just a few inches from my face, but they were blurry, rimmed by the brilliant orange fire of Hell.
And just beyond her, there was that demon. He stood three stories tall. Bigger than the room we stood in.
He hadn’t had time to kill me yet. I must not have blacked out long.
“What is this?” he murmured, kneeling beside Suzy.
I tried to roll over. Tried to push myself up onto my hands. But everything hurt, and I couldn’t move.
He reached a massive hand out to stroke the hair off of Suzy’s face.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
I was so relieved to hear her voice. Getting punched with Allyson’s magic hadn’t killed Suzy.
Which meant both of us were alive, even if that only held true for the next twenty seconds.
I tried to sit up again, but I still couldn’t. It wasn’t just the pain now. It was like my brain wasn’t communicating with my extremities. Fresh panic swept over me as I remembered my head bouncing off the wall.
But even though I couldn’t sit up, I could wiggle my toes. I wasn’t paralyzed.
Magic burned between Suzy and me. She had managed to keep holding some of those ribbons, and some of them were smoldering in her hand.
She was casting magic at me. Holding me down.
Forcing me to play dead.
“Does this one need to stay alive?” the demon asked.
“Which one is that?” Lucrezia de Angelis emerged from behind him, strolling alongside the demon with no fear in her eyes. She bent down to look at Suzy. “Oh, Agent Takeuchi. Hmm. No, I suppose don’t need that one. She knows too much. Go ahead, Belphegor.”
The demon—Belphegor—reached for Suzy again.
I fought against her magic. I strained to yell, to get up, to fight.
She wouldn’t let me move.
“Fuck off,” Suzy said.
She punched the air in front of Belphegor. Magic flowed from the ribbons, cocooning her body in white light.
My throat closed. I couldn’t breathe.
Suzy’s ribbons flared.
Reality warped. The walls distorted around me as though I was looking at everything through the bottom of a Coke bottle.
And when the light faded, she was gone. All that remained was one of those ugly, plain loafers a few inches from my nose.
Suzy was too good at magic. Even the residue that lingered after her spell was enough to kick off my allergies. My throat didn’t open, and breath didn’t return.
I blacked out.
Again.
And the last thing I saw was Lucrezia shaking hands with Belphegor.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SOMEONE SLAPPED MY FACE. Once. Twice.
“Come on, Hawke. Wake up.”
Another slap.
Consciousness crashed over me, and I sat up, lurching onto my knees. “Suzy!” I shouted, reaching for the place she had been resting—so close to me, even though I couldn’t grab her.
She wasn’t there. Just an ugly loafer.
Fritz kneeled beside me, steadying me with a hand on my arm. “Can you breathe?” He thumped me on the back.
I was wheezing like a chain smoker, but I could breathe. “What’s going on? Where’s the demon?”
The portal had gone dark and the room was empty. There were no kennels, no Belphegor, no Lucrezia.
Just Fritz and me.
“You were late for my trial,” I said.
Fritz grasped my forearm and hauled me to my feet. “Had to take care of a few things. Sorry.” He didn’t look bothered by the portal to Hell. With the orange dusting his shoulders and crusting his hair, he looked completely at home. “Where’s Agent Takeuchi?”
It was hard to swallow around the lump in my throat. “She left. Magically. I don’t know where.”
“Ah,” he said. “She’s better off wherever she is.”
My thundering headache faded enough that I realized I could hear voices. I peered down the long hallway. There was a Union unit working on the room where my brief trial had been held—the room where the splattered remains of dead directors mingled with the bodies of brutes.
Memory came rushing back to me. Director Grimsey getting ripped apart. Shooting the brutes. Suzy versus Allyson. My stomach lurched, and I clapped a hand over my mouth.
“Lucrezia did this,” I rasped through my fingers. “She let the demons in to kill the directors. She was talking to Belphegor like they were friends.”
Fritz’s eyes widened. “Belphegor?”
“The demon I saw at SCS. He was here.”
“I’m still here,” said a deep, hollow voice.
Belphegor emerged from the corner.
I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have magic. I didn’t have anything.
All I could do was open my mouth to shout for the Union unit in the other room—but before I could make a peep, Fritz put a hand over my mouth. “Don’t,” he said.
He kicked the door shut.
We were alone with Belphegor.
The demon approached us, motions so stiff as to be almost robotic. “Young Friederling. It’s a pleasure.” He extended a skeletal hand.
To my shock, Fritz stepped forward and shook it.
The touch of Belphegor’s spongy flesh jolted Fritz’s kopis senses so hard that I felt it through the bond. My ribs expanded until it felt like my heart was going to explode out of my chest. Sweat erupted on my forehead.
“Belphegor,” Fritz said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Has it? How long?”
“Twenty years on Earth, I’d say.”
Belphegor hummed his interest. “Not long at all. You are much taller now, though.”
“You haven’t changed,” Fritz said.
“Not in a long time.”
“You know this guy?” I asked. It felt like I was going crazy—Fritz friends with the demon that was friends with Lucrezia, who had just tried to kill Suzy, right after killing those directors. My brain was fried with confusion. Or maybe a mild concussion. It was hard to tell.
>
“Belphegor, this is my aspis, Agent Cèsar Hawke,” Fritz said. “Cèsar, this is Belphegor. He’s currently steward of the House of Abraxas, one of the noble Houses of Dis.”
“A pleasure,” Belphegor said to me.
I couldn’t say the same.
“You’ve been acquiring slaves from Earth more rapidly,” Fritz said. “I saw your corral. Unusual for you to gather so many people from a single location on Earth.”
Belphegor inclined his head. “Yes, at the order of Judge Abraxas. He’s been stocking our kennels.”
“What about the agreement with the House of Belial?”
“The House of Abraxas recognizes the agreement.” Belphegor said it so blandly that I wasn’t sure if he was being snarky or what. Was it even possible for hellborn to be snarky?
Fritz seemed to have a much better idea of what was going on than I did. That was why he was the demon-hunter billionaire with a hot zombie wife and I was the clumsy, pathetic witch who alienated all his friends. “Where is Abraxas?”
“Excellent question.”
“Is he alive?”
“Most likely.”
“Is he in Hell?”
“Likely not,” Belphegor said.
“And the other touchstones?”
“Dead.” The demon seemed to relish that one statement. He rolled the word over the glistening tongue that thrashed between his teeth. “Along with the treaty.”
Fritz took a step back from Belphegor. A big step back. It nearly put him in line with me. “I see.”
“That treaty may have failed, but the agreement between the Houses of Belial and Abraxas remain. For the time being, I remain steward of the House of Abraxas,” Belphegor said. “I won’t hurt you or your…aspis.” He rolled that word through his teeth, just like the word “dead.” The pits of his eyes bored into me. “For now, we are at peace.”
“We are never at peace. However, I hope to remain business associates for the foreseeable future, whatever your alliances in Dis may become in the following years,” Fritz said. He made a good effort at sounding calm, but there was the faintest tremor in his voice. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Fritz afraid before.
