The Demon Behind Me

by Christopher Nelson

  “Chairman,” I said.

  “Kiblognocchius’s injuries are severe.” The Chairman’s eyes were glowing fiery green. “His injuries are due to you.”

  “No,” Tink said. “That’s not true. He saved my life. The demon wasn’t even there yet.”

  “He spent too much time with humans because of your influence, Marquis. He chose to sacrifice himself to save a human. We cannot allow the mentally impaired to represent our Consortium.” The Chairman fluttered a little closer. “Once he is healthy enough to stand for himself – excuse me, poorly worded. Once he is able to represent himself, he will be interviewed to determine if he is fit to continue services.”

  “And if you determine he’s not fit?” I asked.

  “He will be dismissed from the Consortium.”

  “Which means he’ll be dismissed from imp society.” The Chairman didn’t reply. “I assume you’ll be making the final decision on whether he’s fit or not. So, what’s your price?”

  “My price?” The Chairman hissed. “Are you implying something, Marquis?”

  “You’re going to cast him out because of me,” I said. “Don’t bullshit me. I’ve seen how the imps have been acting around me lately. Less respect than usual. Even outright lies.” The elder imp’s eyes narrowed at those words. “Yeah, outright lies. Told me the other side of the portal was clear when it wasn’t. Ended up with a bunch of dead kids. I know you don’t give a damn about humans, but I do.”

  He snorted at me. “Misunderstandings are not lies. The physical exit of the portal was clear of obstruction.”

  “Don’t play semantics with me.”

  “Oh? And why not, Marquis?”

  “Kibs got hurt and you’re taking the opportunity to hurt me too because I pissed you off. Fine. I accept responsibility. What do you want? What would it take to encourage you to consider him fit?”

  “Before this can get too far into things I shouldn’t be involved in,” Caleb said, “Could I get a portal back to Earth, Chairman?”

  The Chairman sniffed and flicked his hand at the other imp, who led Caleb away immediately. “We know of your plans to rescue the Duke of House Lucifer,” he said. “The plan must fail.”

  “Not an option.”

  “Then Kibs will not fare well.”

  I crossed my arms. “You don’t want House Lucifer back because you want some power within the Host. I don’t disagree with you in principle, but you’re pulling a power play during a war. I don’t get it. If you win, it means we surrender. What good is having power within the Host if the Host is powerless?”

  “You think the Host is what matters?” The Chairman chuckled. “The humans are what matter. If we succeed in gaining a vote on the Council, we gain regardless of who wins the war. If the Host wins, we gain power relative to the Houses. If the humans win, we seek their favor as the ones who delivered the Host’s surrender to them.”

  “Well, I’d prefer the first option to the second, given a choice,” I said.

  “You know Kane isn’t going to give a shit about you giving him the Host,” Tink said. “Winning is something he considers inevitable, period. Maybe you’ll get a thank-you card in the mail for speeding it along, but that’s it. He doesn’t think like most of us. He doesn’t reciprocate, not with gifts, not with favors, not with anything he doesn’t specifically ask for. The only value you’ll have to him is doing whatever he demands of you, for as long as you do it.”

  “So? We will serve the humans as we do the Host. We will negotiate a Pact with them on our own terms.”

  “Why would we give a fuck about you?” Tink shook her head. “Dude, we have the internet, we have cell phones, and we have more than enough lawyers. Communications and law are solved problems for us. What else are you going to do? Phase back home and just never deal with shit again?”

  I bit my tongue. The imps could do so much more, but there was no reason to give anyone any ideas. “Look, Chairman, I’m hesitant to help you gain power in the Host. We both know you don’t have the same interests and goals as the rest of us. Still, I don’t want you to ruin my friend over this. Failing the mission is not an option, but I’m willing to consider something else. What’s your end goal?” I asked.

  The Chairman crossed his arms and sank half a foot in the air before rising back up to eye level. “Representation in the High Council,” he finally said. “Non-negotiable.”

  “You have representation,” I said. “You’re always there for High Council meetings.”

  “We are there as a servant, not an equal. We must have equal respect and status to a House. If you are going to resurrect the House of Lucifer, weakened as it is, you cannot act as if our Consortium is a lesser power any longer.”

  I stroked my chin. He definitely had a point there. “Does the Pact address this sort of situation at all?”

  “No. Only that the Consortium and Syndicate provide services to the Host and Choir, respectively.”

  “I would say one of your services would be to provide the input of the Consortium to the High Council, as you have a unique perspective,” I said. “Providing services to the Host and having representation in the High Council aren’t mutually contradictory. As you know, I advise our High Prince, and I believe we can motion to allow you to have an equal standing at the table on that basis. There’ll be more ties and gridlock, but it’ll get you what you want.”

  “If this motion passes, I believe it will herald a new age of cooperation between the Host and Consortium, one which Kiblognocchius helped create through his selfless actions in honor of your friendship.” The Chairman’s eyes glittered. “I hope for his sake and yours this motion passes.”

  “I can’t assure it’ll pass,” I said.

  “That is an issue for you to solve,” he hissed before phasing out.

  “Wait. Wait, Chairman?”

  “Yes?” He phased back in as I waved my arms around in the air.

  “Could we get a portal back home, please?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “It’s not as bad as I thought,” Tink whispered to me. She tilted her head toward a woman across the street, wearing a headscarf and holding a little boy’s hand. “I thought we’d be heading back into the middle ages.”

  The streets of Tehran were crowded and more boisterous than I expected. There was a near-permanent traffic jam in progress no matter where we went, causing a haze of exhaust to hang in the air all around us. We crossed streets as safely as we could. Horns sounded in chorus whenever we took a few wrong steps. People bumped us as we walked down the sidewalks and yelled at us. I hated big cities.

  “We’re almost there,” Caleb said over his shoulder. He sounded exhausted. We’d only been in the city for an hour and the atmosphere was taking its toll. “The Grand Bazaar is just ahead.”

  Leviathan had shared their data taps with us. It took Kalil five days to sift through the Conclave’s network to pinpoint the location of their Tehran facility. While he worked on his search, we bought clothes fitting a group of tourists and practiced simple phrases in Persian under Caleb’s instruction. The angel spoke the language fluently, which shouldn’t have surprised me.

  Our insertion into the city was easier than we had expected. The Consortium flipped from surly to overly cooperative. They provided us with a list and analysis of available portals. Caleb picked one on nearly the opposite side of the city. He argued we needed to blend into the city first, not just appear on their doorstep. I argued a longer approach would give them more chances to detect us. He won the argument, but I considered his current exhaustion a moral victory.

  The Grand Bazaar was as crowded as the rest of the city, but with people instead of cars, and shouting instead of horns. Merchants called out to us and I repeated “No thank you” to anyone who seemed to be talking directly to me. Our group was large enough to seem like a tour group and the street merchants were relentless in their pursuit of potential targets.

  Opheran had a
ssigned six demons to my team so we’d equal the Choir, in numbers if not in skill. Four of them were from House Intelligence, while another two came with the High Prince’s personal recommendation. I assumed they were probably in whatever our special operations group was. I didn’t ask and they didn’t tell. All of them were patient enough with the masses of people around us, but I could sense ichor pulsing restlessly. If any mage spotted us, we’d be at the center of a disaster.

  At one end of the bazaar, a huge mosque stood, dozens of worshippers and tourists passing in and out through its grand front entrance. We didn’t enter directly, but skirted around it. A couple of our team members took pictures to work the tourist angle. We made our way around until we saw the nondescript door in a nondescript area, almost conspicuously plain amongst all the beauty of the mosque. It took effort to focus on it, as if the door didn’t want us seeing it. Approaching it seemed to be outside of the normal tourist pattern and someone pointed at us. We ignored them and clustered around the door. “This is all yours,” I said to Tink.

  She put her hand on the latch and pulled. The door swung open to reveal stairs leading down. “Well. This wasn’t the main entrance. Probably an emergency entrance or exit. I know I just tripped an alarm. Good news, it would have tripped for anyone opening the door, so they don’t know if it’s just a lost tourist or what. Bad news, I tripped a fucking alarm, so let’s get inside, fast.”

  Caleb rushed our people down the stairs. I brought up the rear, closing the door behind us, just as more bystanders pointed in our direction. “Tink, can you lock this?” She brushed past me and drew a quick rune on the door with a couple of drops of blood. I pushed the door closed and felt a magical lock click into place.

  We rushed down the stairs to find our team waiting. The angels had already torn away their outer clothes to reveal their combat uniforms. Swords and shields appeared in their hands. My demons were in a hodgepodge of uniform styles, most of them carrying a pistol at their hip, as well as whatever other equipment they thought would be useful. Tink ripped off her dress and headscarf, revealing form-fitting black clothes below, with multiple knives sheathed in open sight. “I don’t suppose anyone has a map,” I said.

  “Footsteps,” one of the angels said. We were in the middle of a hallway with doors up and down either side, both ways leading to corners. The walls were bare concrete and plain fluorescent fixtures hung overhead. He gestured in one direction. “Two sets.”

  “Silent takedown.” Caleb pointed and two of the angels floated down the hall toward the ceiling, their wings hanging nearly straight out behind them. As they neared the corner, they nestled up against the near wall. Two mages rounded the corner at a rapid pace, both stopping dead at the sight of a dozen intruders, and then falling dead as the two angels dropped silently sword-first onto them. We dragged them down the hall, leaving an unfortunate blood trail, stashing them in the stairwell we had come down. Magic could clean up the mess, but we weren’t going remain stealthy for long. “Let’s split up and do this,” I said. “We verify if they have prisoners here, put some of Leviathan’s toys on their computers, do as much damage as possible, and get the fuck out of here.”

  “We’ll take this direction,” Caleb said, pointing toward the bloody corner. “See you in a while.”

  I pointed at the doors lining the hall as the angels moved away. “Let’s check these out.” All of the rooms seemed to be storage, holding simple clothes and basic toiletries. One room held boxes full of canned food. This place would be able to survive for weeks without outside help. We torched each room with hellfire before moving on around the corner. More rooms lined a hallway, but this one seemed to lead on to a larger artery, and there were definitely voices coming from that direction.

  Before we could check any of the doors, a figure walked past the hallway ahead of us, then backtracked. “Who are you?” she asked.

  One of my demons, pistol already in hand, shot her in the forehead.

  Ten minutes later, we were exchanging hellfire, gunfire, and spells with a team of mages while alarms and shouts raged around us. “I know this is one of their important facilities,” I shouted to Tink over the howl of sirens, “but you’d think they’d run out of people eventually!”

  She was dripping blood from both hands on the floor, but not casting any spells. If they had any defensive wards running, she’d be the focus of attention. One of my team had taken a hyper-velocity spell to the face, so she’d picked up his gun to keep herself from being bored. “I hope the angels are doing better,” she growled before peeking around the corner.

  “Think it’s time to break out the big shot?”

  She flinched back just in time. A spell shattered the concrete right where she had been. “Do you think we can? I can’t stick my nose out there safely, let alone cast something.”

  “We’ll just have to cast something where we don’t need any sort of precise aim.” I looked across the firefight and made sure I knew where my entire team was. “All accounted for. No friendly fire unless the angels show up at exactly the wrong time.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  I pulled up a ball of hellfire and gestured toward the mages. “Wide area flamethrower. Even if it doesn’t kill any of them, it’ll make them pull back for a moment or two.”

  She nodded and prepared the spell while I concentrated on forcing more ichor into my ball of hellfire. This was going to take a lot out of me, and if they had a counter spell ready it might fry her, but it was either take the risk or split the team up and go solo. When we were both ready, we got down on our bellies and inched toward the corner. She had to crawl partially on top of me to line her spell up with the hellfire, planting a knee right on one of my kidneys for leverage. “Lose weight,” I suggested.

  “Fucking die. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah. Let’s do this.” I stuck my hand out around the corner. She lined up and cast her force spell in one motion. Her spell took my hellfire and pushed it into an enormous arc. I forced more ichor into the spell to give the effect just a little more longevity. Green flame licked its way down the hall in a wave, eagerly seeking anything consumable. I took the risk of sticking my head around the corner a little to see the aftermath.

  “Down!” I ducked my head back and heard a crack from the hallway, followed by more screams. One of Opheran’s specialists grinned at me from across the hall and gave me a thumbs up before rushing around his corner. I followed him a little more cautiously.

  My hellfire ate into the concrete in places and into human bodies in other places. I kept against a wall for the little cover it provided, avoiding any live hellfire. “You’re carrying all sorts of interesting things,” I said to the demon as I caught up to him. He had a satchel at each hip and a bandolier of what could only be variations of grenades across his chest.

  “They knocked my first grenade out of the air,” he replied. “But you distracted them for this one. Careful. Some of them might not be dead yet.”

  I looked at the handful of mages lying crumpled around us. “We’re not taking prisoners from this one,” I said. “If they’re down, make sure they never get back up.”

  “Aye,” he said. “Did you see what happened with our hellfire?”

  “I was a little busy.”

  He gave me a grin, but immediately transitioned to a serious expression. “We knew they had spells to shield against hellfire, but this time, they were putting it out, too.”

  The temperature seemed to drop. Hellfire simply didn’t go out on its own. It consumed anything it touched until none of the flame remained. “How quickly were they putting it out?”

  “Not immediately. But fast enough to worry me.”

  The adaptability of human magic was going to take away every one of our advantages. Even a graze with hellfire would disable a human as it chewed into them, but if the mages could put it out before it dug in, they’d be much harder to take down. “Even more reason to make sure they don’t ge
t back up.” I turned back to Tink, who scowled at me as per usual. “You know we can’t take the risk of them nailing us in the back.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to. Come on. Check all these rooms. Hurry up!” We split up among a few rooms off the main arterial while we could. One of my team found a not-quite-dead mage and lost his left arm from the elbow down for his lack of caution. Another found an office and the intelligence team got to work setting up some of Leviathan’s toys.

  Another group of mages caught up to us, but Tink and I repeated the earlier tactic. Our amplified hellfire pushed them back, then explosives finished them off. I looked around for the next location to move to and pointed to the far end of the arterial, which looked like it split into another intersection. “Careful getting up there,” I said. “An army could be waiting around those corners.”

  “Stay back.” The demon carrying grenades selected one from his bandolier and led us down the hall. We slid down the hall behind him until he held a hand up. While we stayed still, he pulled the pin and rolled the grenade down into the intersection. It went off in a puff of white smoke and glittering sparks.

  “What’s the smoke supposed to do?” I asked.

  “White phosphorus,” he said. “Not the best choice for making smoke, but you don’t want to touch any of it. It burns hot and doesn’t stop until it’s spent, like a weaker sort of hellfire. If anyone caught a piece of it you’d hear them screaming by now.”

  I nodded and looked back at the team to make sure they had heard the caution. “Move up.”

  This part of the main arterial ended abruptly in both directions. One portion seemed to be the landing for a pair of elevators, while the other only had a sturdy looking door at the end. I pointed to the door and we carefully stepped around the sparks of phosphorus and tried not to inhale too much of the acrid smoke.

  “Got another one of those?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” he said.