'Tween Heaven and Hell

by Sam Cheever

  The first gargoyle just had time to open its mouth to voice its displeasure before the gleaming, red machine plucked its ticklike body off the ledge and carried it, screaming in terror, high into the clouds. The thing was torn between its desire to escape the nose of the Viper and its instinctive knowledge that the alternative wasn’t a good one. Fortunately for the gargoyle, I was fully capable of making that decision for it.

  Emo and I waved gaily at the screaming monster before I put the Viper into a nearly vertical dive and dropped its unpleasant nose cargo into thin air.

  As I pulled the Viper’s nose back up, Emo grinned at me. “Now that’s the way you should always hunt ’goyle.”

  I couldn’t help agreeing.

  By the time we returned to the cave, the second gargoyle, though gargoyles are very dense creatures by nature, couldn’t help figuring out that something was amiss in wonderland. It had dropped from the ledge and was ambling clumsily around in circles in front of the cave, screaming its fool head off. As the Viper buzzed it, the thing sprang almost fifteen feet off the ground and swung a tree-like arm at us. I heard its claws glance off the Viper and frowned. “Watch the paint job, bud!”

  “This one won’t be quite so easy, Astra.”

  I smiled at him. “Wanna bet?” Swinging out over the river again, I turned the nose of the Viper to face the cave’s entrance once more and dropped to hover about 5 feet off the ground. Then I eased it forward until the pacing gargoyle was within sight. It didn’t take long for the thing to see us and make a move.

  With a roar, it took three great hopping steps, springing fifteen feet off the ground with each touch of its powerful feet and legs and landed on top of the Viper. As the thing scrambled around above our heads, I thanked the Big Guy that I’d spent the extra money to get the indestructible metal frame as well as the essential rust proofing and eased the Viper straight up into the air. I kept it flat so I wouldn’t lose my cargo before I was ready.

  Emo chuckled. “You know he’s gonna tear Hades out of your paint job when you try to slide him off.”

  I just smiled.

  When I couldn’t see the ground anymore, I pushed the stall button and, as the Viper performed the expected drop, I hit restart and drove the stick forward. The gargoyle, which had been left behind when the Viper dropped, grappled for the machine’s sleek surface as it shot away from him, but came away with nothing but two pawfuls of air. We listened to its screams as it rushed to meet the broken spine that was waiting for it on the hard ground below.

  I turned to my partner and said, “What was that you were saying about a back door?”

  I dropped the Viper into hover about a quarter of a mile from the cave and we stepped out. We approached the cave opening at an angle from the back, just in case there were any more surprises waiting for us.

  The vegetation around the cave was dense almost to the point that it was impassable. I could see, here and there, evidence that something had passed through but it was obvious that pains had been taken to keep the vegetation in place.

  We moved through the tangled growth as silently as possible, our progress slowed by the need to keep our approach inconspicuous. As we reached the place where the vegetation broke to provide a narrow clearing before the cave’s entrance, I motioned for Emo to stay in place while I left the safety of the overgrown weeds and moved into the open area.

  Removing my belt of crosses, I wrapped it around both hands, leaving about a foot of chain between my hands to use as garrote if necessary. I kept my back pressed against the rough-hewn stone that formed the face of the cave and slid sideways to the edge of the opening. Once inside, I stopped and listened carefully for a moment before going any further. An indecipherable sound thrummed at the very edges of my hearing, nearly vibrating my bones with its intensity. It seemed to be coming from the depths of the cave and didn’t appear to be coming any closer as I listened.

  As I squinted into the darkness, I sensed Emo coming into the cave behind me. I glanced at him and raised my eyebrows in a silent question, but Emo just shrugged. I motioned for him to follow me into the cave.

  As we moved into the cool dimness of the cave, I concentrated on using my sensing power to discover the auras of any creatures that might be lurking along the darkened walls or tucked into the heavily shadowed niches. I didn’t sense anything, which surprised and concerned me a bit. I had trouble believing that Nerul was this careless. The alternative was that he was aware of our presence and was allowing us to sneak up on him. Not a pleasant thought either.

  The further we went into the cave, the louder the humming became, until I finally recognized it as a ritual chant. A light now flickered off the walls of the passageway ahead of us, calling us like a beacon toward the thrumming chant. Where the light touched the wall, it gave off an unnatural reddish glow that furnished the illumination with a demonic feel.

  As we neared the flickering light, my pulse seemed to pick up until it beat against the inside of my skin in rhythm with the haunting tones of the chants. I felt myself growing increasingly stressed until I found it difficult to move forward. Until finally, when we came to a Y in the passageway, I stopped.

  To my left was the flickering light and chanting. To my right, darkness and silence. I looked back and forth for a minute and then, feeling indecision weighing on me like a giant iron ball, I closed my eyes and leaned back against the hard, uneven surface of the wall. On some level I was aware that the wall was sticky to the touch and coated with something that had a foul smell, but I was unwilling to give up the support.

  Emo stopped behind me but didn’t speak. Silently he reached out a hand and wrapped it gently around my upper arm. I covered his hand with one of my own and took several deep breaths, forcing myself to calm down and wondering what was giving me such a feeling of impending doom.

  Take the passageway to the right. My eyes flew open and I looked at Emo. He looked back at me with a question in his eyes.

  I realized with a start that Dialle was back in my head. I decided to try an experiment. What the Hades are you doing in my head again? I thought right back at him.

  For long seconds he didn’t respond and I thought I’d failed to reach him with my silent question. Then, incredibly he answered me. I live to get into your head…among other things.

  I shivered. Har, har. Go away. You’re distracting me.

  Take the right passageway, it comes out behind and above the conclave. Nerul knows you’re coming, but he’s expecting you to come from the passage to the left. He has guards stationed there.

  I thought about that for a minute and then nodded, causing Emo to give me a strange look. Okay. But go away, this is giving me the creeps.

  When he didn’t respond I figured he’d gone. If he ever really went away. At this point I was beginning to believe he’d just moved into my head and put his underwear in my mental drawers. Nahhh, that couldn’t be, I was pretty sure he didn’t wear underwear.

  I moved into the passageway to the right and Emo followed silently. I suddenly realized how great it was to have a partner who trusted me enough not to question everything I did and I made myself a mental note to tell him how much he meant to me if we managed to live through the night.

  The passageway, while basically unlighted, seemed to glow with a faint green luminescence that didn’t have a visible source. In contrast to the rest of the cave, the walls of the strangely lit passageway were surprisingly smooth and had the appearance of being manmade. The rhythmic sound of chanting faded as we followed the endlessly curving passageway. The passage ended abruptly and Emo and I found ourselves standing in a small cul-de-sac of space with nowhere to go except back where we’d come from. “Shit.” Way to go, devil in my head. You really aced this one.

  Trust, Astra. Use that with which the dark Goddesses have seen fit to bless you.

  “Bite me.”

  Emo, who had been walking around the stone cul-de-sac feeling the walls, swung his head around at my murmured exclamation and
cocked his head at me. I ignored him.

  Closing my eyes, I reached inside my head for the spark I knew would ignite the power. After a frustrating moment of nothingness, I felt the power catch hold and start to build. Throwing my head back to open my senses up completely, I let the power flow completely through me, not asking it to focus or channel as I’d done before. The result was amazing to me. I can’t even imagine what Emo was thinking watching it happen.

  My whole body began to tremble as the power rolled off me in waves. Dimly aware that Emo had backed away with a bark of surprise, I managed to keep my eyes closed and my attention locked onto the power that was now pulsing out to fill the small alcove. As it probed outward, gouging thick, electric fingers into the cracks and crevices of the small space, I became aware of an emptiness behind one of the walls. I took a deep breath and withdrew the power to refocus it in that direction.

  With a rumble, a pinpoint of light appeared in the very center of the wall and grew, moving outward until a small archway was outlined in the wall. I motioned for Emo to precede me through the opening and then followed quickly. I barely made it through before the thing closed again, leaving us in almost total darkness.

  Emo said nothing, but through the velvet black of the enclosed space I could feel his startled gaze on me as surely as if we’d been sitting together in a sunlit room. “I’ll explain later,” I whispered to him. “Right now we need to keep moving.” Having said this, I began to wonder where exactly we were moving to. Since I didn’t have a frunkin’ clue.

  Once our eyes had become accustomed to this new space, we realized we were standing in some kind of meeting or office space, with several chairs scattered around the walls and a large desk or table that was situated in the center of the room. The floor beneath our feet was soft, like carpet, only strangely not exactly like carpet. It felt silky and expensive. A pulsing glow pulled my eyes toward the ceiling where some kind of dropped ceiling made of stained glass hovered over the room. The thousands of pieces of colored glass were forged together to represent a terrifying representation of the devil, sitting upon his flaming throne in the heart of his hellish kingdom. Around him, a variety of demons and lesser devils feasted on the unfortunate inhabitants of Hades.

  Emo tugged at my sleeve and I tore my gaze from the nightmare in the sky. He pointed through the darkness to the far side of the room, where a gentle green light pulsed, illuminating the entrance to another passageway. I nodded and he took the lead into the passage.

  We emerged after only a couple of moments, into a huge cavern whose walls dripped, literally, with fresh red blood. The room was almost unbearably hot, a fact which I attributed to the thousands of candles that burned and dripped from the walls and that were placed in a giant pentagram on the dirt floor of the cavern. The heat could also have come from the hundreds of bodies that were packed into the space.

  Emo and I stood on a ledge that was about fifteen feet long and ten feet deep. The ledge jutted out over the cavern and, unlike the rest of the space, was cast in deep shadow that was only peripherally touched by the flickering candlelight from below. Standing on the edge of the ledge, immersed in shadow, I could only imagine that we were totally invisible to the chanting crowd below us. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this was not so.

  Watching the scene below, it was all I could do to keep my knees from buckling. I glanced at my friend and partner and the look on his face made me want to get him out of there. Instead I reached out and gave his arm a comforting squeeze.

  Emo’s face had turned a slightly greenish hue and his skin was damp with sweat. As he watched the primitive and strangely erotic scene below us, his tongue came out and he was literally panting, something which I had only witnessed once or twice before and which I found incredibly disconcerting. Unfortunately, though Emo was only about half devil, when he witnessed scenes such as the one he was viewing in that nightmarish cavern, his devil came up in a big way and he really had to fight to control himself.

  Unable to help him, I left him to his struggles and tried to deal with my own. Being some part devil myself, I was dimly aware of a primitive mental compulsion tugging at me as the deep-throated chanting pounded into my brain and the smell of blood and death floated up to our secluded ledge. However, I was much more angel than devil and my struggle didn’t concern me overly much.

  Below us, on a wide, flat-topped table that appeared to be carved out of rock, a woman and a man lay, side by side, naked and covered in slick, red blood. The man was fully aroused and, as we watched, he moved to cover her writhing body with his own. The chanting increased in its intensity as he slid his body against hers and, as he plunged into her, she threw back her head and screamed. It was a scream as primal and disturbing as I had ever heard, filled with pain as well as pleasure.

  Their mating was violent and quick. As they cried out in climax, the hundreds of masked, cloaked figures around them surged closer to the rock altar and poured blood from squat, silver pitchers onto their writhing, panting bodies. Then the cloaked figures converged on the still writhing couple, pulled the man off the woman and lifted him high in the air over the altar by holding him under his arms and legs. The chant grew in intensity as they held him aloft over the woman and then softened again as they set him down to stand beside the table.

  The man was tall and ugly. His body was well muscled and looked extremely strong, but his face was the face of evil, with pocks and a huge, hawkish nose below deep-set eyes that were the color of mud. Underneath the quickly drying blood, I could see that his body was covered with the pentagram tattoo that told me he was a practicing Satanist.

  Pulling my gaze from the man, I now saw that the woman was strapped to the rock altar. As I watched, several of the cloaked figures crowded around and took turns with her, lowering themselves onto her glossy blood-covered flesh and driving her into spasms of agonized pleasure with their attentions.

  Although the woman’s reaction to this devilish gang rape seemed more pleasure than pain, something about the woman made me want to intervene. She was incredibly, inhumanly beautiful, with ankle-length black hair that flowed off the side of the altar and pooled on the gory surface of the cavern’s floor. Her black, catlike eyes and high cheekbones gave emphasis to a heart-shaped face that could have been drawn from a dream by the world’s greatest artist to represent one of God’s favorite angels. The eyes that were raised to me as the man again covered her were almost purple they were so black and held mine pleadingly.

  For a long minute I was so mesmerized by her that I didn’t realize she was looking directly at me, as if she’d seen me standing there. Then, with a start I realized who she was. Shit.

  Emo turned to me, his face even paler than before and coated with sweat. “Yes. It is Dialle’s queen.”

  Though I wanted to turn away in disgust, I found that I couldn’t pull my eyes away from hers. Dimly I wondered if she was using some kind of power on me.

  Emo seemed to be thinking the same thing because he wrapped a hand around my arm and gave me a little shake. I shook my head and pointed, drawing his eyes toward the scene below.

  The man convulsed on top of the woman for the final time. As he screamed out his pleasure, one of the cloaked and masked figures pulled something from beneath its cloak and, grabbing the man’s hair, dragged it efficiently across his neck. The man’s flesh parted with a squishing sound and his body jerked as it emptied hot, frothy blood onto the woman below him. The woman’s riveting eyes finally left mine as they closed and her slender body arched to meet the hot offering, apparently reveling in it.

  The cloaked figure with the now bloody knife turned around and, reaching up to remove its white, featureless mask, revealed to me a coldly handsome face set behind the most chillingly evil pair of eyes I’d ever seen.

  Nerul held the dripping knife aloft and smiled at me. “Tweener Astra, though she would never admit it, Queen Kaline is most grateful for your appearance. Without your interference, this ceremony would
have gone on until the dawn. The queen isn’t accustomed to being used by common Satanists and lesser devils. Her pleasure in the experience is like arsenic to her delicate soul.”

  I stared at him, unable to come up with one of my usual smartass retorts. After a seemingly endless passage of time, during which I realized my thoughts were not alone in my head, I said, “Nerul. You put on a pretty disgusting show. Obviously you were expecting me.”

  The devil threw back his glossy head and laughed. As he did, his robe opened to expose a broad, golden chest covered with soft curling black hair. His pecs expanded as he tucked strong, square hands into the open sides of the robe and pulled it back to rest on his narrow hips. He was entirely naked beneath the blood-soaked robe and he appeared to be very happy to see me. His straight, black hair was pulled severely back from his face and looked very short from the front, though it may have been pulled back from his head in a ponytail—it was hard for me to tell from my vantage point. The midnight velvet of his eyes, which were deep set and tapered up like cat eyes beneath thick black brows, sparkled in the candlelight and left a trail of fire on my body wherever they focused. Although I knew it was magic and was entirely in my head, the effect was wildly erotic and I had to put a lot of thought into not drooling. My reaction to the evil package before me really pissed me off and the thought that I was still suffering some residual reaction to the ceremony I’d just witnessed didn’t make me feel any better.

  “Look, Nerul, as you probably already know, I’ve been sent here to give you a message. If you staged this performance for me you’ve wasted a lot of time and,” I looked meaningfully around the cavern, “it appears a shitload of blood. I have no interest at all in your sick ceremonies.”

  Nerul threw back his beautiful black head and laughed, the sound bringing the short hairs up on the back of my neck. “You flatter yourself overly, little Tweener, you have merely come upon our nightly rituals, your presence is purely an added spice to our proceedings.”