“Fair enough. It would keep me away. Maybe you’d like to announce my arrival?”
Muriel rolled her eyes, stepped forward, and opened the door for all to go through, directing them inside with waves of her hand. He smiled and gave a quick salute to the security camera in a corner above the door before walking inside, followed by Dylan, then Voltumna and Gazardiel. Finally, Muriel came in and locked the door behind her.
Standing behind a table with a computer and monitor, speakers, and a camcorder on a small tripod, were six demons in human form. Seeing Jeremiah’s approach, they all began to shift form.
The man on the far left, skinny and dark-skinned, grew a few inches; his shoulders broadened, and his skin began to take on a black glistening hue, like oil glimmering in the fluorescence from the humming suspended lights. Spikes grew out of his chest and knuckles. And when he smiled, a red liquid oozed out of the corners of his mouth. His hair retreated into his skull, and his jaw jutted out grotesquely, sprouting fangs where the bottom canines had been, still dripping a substance resembling blood.
Next to him, a smaller woman, oriental and older, began convulsing. Her neck stretched and elongated; it gained green scales that ran up it and onto her face as she ripped off her blouse at the neck. Her torso had also begun to scale over, and her limbs were also gaining length. A serpentine tongue shot out of her mouth, now lined with rows of fangs, and she hissed loudly. Her eyes were yellow slits, and her hands, scaling over now themselves, were growing talons.
The man to her right, middle-aged, tall and overweight, with pale skin and unkempt hair, suddenly smashed through tiles in the suspended ceiling as his size increased. His hands, larger and thicker than a gorilla’s (and still growing), started crushing tiles to reveal an oversized head. His eyes had fused into one, enormous eye. The eyebrow at the end of his sloped, horned forehead kept arching almost curiously as his eye darted back and forth at Jeremiah and the demons behind him. His clothes fell in tatters to the ground as muscles began forming everywhere. And he roared dramatically, ripping down the metal framework the tiles were sitting in.
The Hispanic woman to his right ducked and turned invisible as she may or may not have avoided the falling debris.
Jeremiah laughed, and waved his hand, “That’s enough.”
The last two demons burst into flames and wailed miserably, writhing on the ground, dying. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Muriel, Gazardiel, and Voltumna had also transformed while he was watching the others shift. He rolled his head and his shoulders, then burst into flames himself as the screams of the dying tapered off.
“If anything else catches on fire,” Adversary’s distorted voice warned from the speakers, “kill the boy.”
Gazardiel hopped up, tugged the boy away from Muriel, and put a talon to his throat.
“Gladly,” she squeaked, taking a handful of Dylan’s dark hair and pulling his head back to reveal a vulnerable neck.
Dylan whimpered, and his legs began to shake in primal fear of what was transpiring around him. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t help it.
“Be strong!” boomed Jeremiah’s voice from the pillar of fire. “This is under control.”
“Thank you for coming, Jeremiah,” Adversary greeted as his remaining demons began repositioning themselves in a circle around Jeremiah, with the obvious exception of the invisible one. Jeremiah could still feel her, but he couldn’t pinpoint her.
“I have a feeling you’ll regret bringing me into this,” Jeremiah replied.
***
Raul dreamt uneasily as he lay in Lonny’s recliner. He stood in an undefined (with the exception of the rocky ground he stood on) blackened expanse, but he knew that somewhere—beyond—there was light; he just couldn’t see it.
Inexplicably, he could clearly make out the form of his Magister and the girl, Abigail Martin. They stood only a few feet from him, but neither seemed to notice his presence. They were speaking, but he couldn’t make out any words. For some reason, he thought they might have been talking about him.
She was still the beautiful young woman he’d known and fallen madly in love with. Her flowing hair was reddish-blond; her skin was so soft and fair, and she held herself with such composure that, like when he was a boy, he wanted to just go wherever she went.
But Abbie was sad, and so was the Magister. They believed Raul to be dead, and he felt their grief clearly. He wanted to tell them, but there was no way. The Society relied upon his secrecy and anonymity now. If the Elder Prophet Council ever learned of his existence, questions he’d never want to answer would be asked. He had a responsibility to the people he protected.
“She’s strong,” he heard in Nadia’s voice.
He turned to see the Oracles standing behind him.
“But you’ve hurt her,” Mirza added sadly.
“These thoughts are private,” Raul muttered. His voice wasn’t raspy in his dream; rather, it was clear, with a faint Spanish accent.
“Perhaps,” Mirza agreed. “But they are not your thoughts. They’re hers.”
“You hear yourself the way she always heard your thoughts,” Nadia explained as she looked at Abbie and smiled briefly. Then, she frowned and looked back to Raul. “You made her believe you were dead, Regent Habsburg.”
“I was being hunted,” Raul protested. “It was for everyone’s protection that I went into hiding. Then, the Society took me in. And I can’t just reveal myself, now.”
“We have noticed that age affords great lessons from experience,” Mirza mused, “but it also defies change.”
“You still agree with the Chancellor?” Raul reasoned.
“We did,” Mirza amended. “But after much deliberation, we don’t agree that the ends justify the means.”
“What does that mean?”
“The Society of Minds must move forward, or it will stagnate and eventually die,” Nadia predicted. “These options are unavoidable. The design of the institution and its reliance on ritual are dooming it to a slow, inevitable death. For the good of the order, we must embrace technology, publicity, transparency, and inclusion, or humanity will never recognize us. This, to a degree, was the Chancellor’s plan. But, his plan is flawed, and it appears to us, now, that the Society of Minds will not be ready to create this wave of change for some time. You are needed back at headquarters, Regent. The Chancellor requires your wisdom.”
Raul woke up with a sense of urgency. He kicked the recliner’s footrest down and stood in a fluid motion, earning a startled look from Lonny, who was playing a video game. Then, Raul remembered that he was supposed to be protecting Lonny.
“They said they wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” Raul reasoned, once again with a raspy voice. “I guess I need to have faith that they’ll keep their word.”
“What?” Lonny asked, setting his controller down.
Teacher began moving and explaining very quickly. “I’ve got to go. I should be back before long. I have friends watching over you who will let me know if you’re in danger.”
Then, he found a shadow and disappeared.
***
“I’m not your enemy, Jeremiah,” Adversary intoned in his hollow pseudo-voice. “And I hope to convince you not to be mine.”
“I’ve come all this way to get a screensaver on a computer monitor, and you’re still speaking to me with a voice changer?” Jeremiah demanded. “Maybe it wasn’t prudent to throw newly fallen angels up against someone with as much experience as I have. People are bound to get hurt. Why don’t we agree to have our little chat; everyone drops out of his or her battle form, and you give me your word that Dylan and I will be able to walk out of here without incident if we wish?”
“As you’ve demonstrated,” Adversary pointed out, “when my ‘newly fallen’ are not in their demonic forms, they’re very susceptible to your combustive attacks. I’d rather not see them wasted so, even if my supply is great.”
“Of that, I’m sure,” Jeremiah granted. “But I promi
se: your neo-fiends are still vulnerable. None of them is prepared for what I have in store.”
“I only need one,” the voice replied. “Only one needs to survive to critically injure or kill the boy. And I’m not above hurting him to make a point.”
Laughter bellowed from the pillar of fire. “Neither am I. I don’t believe I appreciate being blackmailed anymore. I have a different proposition. How about I burn everything you’ve built in San Francisco to the ground, and you run for your life? Do whatever you wish to that little burden. Our negotiations are at an end.”
A burning hand shot out of the fire and grabbed something that no one else could see. His hand shook some, but he steadied it, and suddenly there was a figure next to Jeremiah, wreathed in flame and screaming her agony. He gripped her by the neck, shook twice; the fire turned from red to blue, and he dropped her in a heap at his feet. She made no more move or sound.
Gazardiel, on the other hand, cackled madly and dragged four talons across Dylan’s neck. The boy’s tender flesh parted in four places, and dark red blood issued forth like a maroon turtleneck. His eyes rolled back in his head, and the imp pushed him over, laughing maniacally the whole time.
***
Raul stood in a world of shadow. It was dreary and ugly, but it was probably the place he was most comfortable. He could watch the real world, but not take part in it; he could keep a protective eye on Lonny, while maintaining his protégé’s sense of independence; he could scout out a location in the real world before appearing in it. Typically, however, Raul just used the shadow to move almost instantly from one location on Earth to another with a thought and a little effort. More often than not, he knew where he was going to be was a safe locale, and would simply move from shadow to shadow, even if the two shadows were thousands of miles away.
This time, he was compelled, beyond his sense of urgency, to wait and watch. The compulsion had a familiar feel to it, like something he’d seen before but didn’t quite recollect. So, he waited and watched.
The Chancellor’s office was dark, except for the glow of a computer screen that illuminated most of his torso and part of his electronic wheelchair. There were several different scenes taking place on the monitor simultaneously. Probably the most noticeable of all the video feeds on the screen was the one that held a man-sized cylinder of fire that sent chills up Raul’s spine. He’d seen that fire before. Among other things, Byron was watching Jeremiah. The Regent had heard that the demon general had been killed, but he’d always suspected that it took more than most would believe to actually take Jeremiah out.
The other scenes were hard to make out from afar, and it looked like Byron was speaking into a microphone, so Raul stepped out of the shadows quietly and eavesdropped despite himself.
Chancellor Hixson pressed a button on his keyboard and leaned up to the microphone. “I’m not your enemy, Jeremiah,” Byron said. “And I hope to convince you not to be mine.”
Chapter 5
Jeremiah lost control for a moment. He didn’t think he’d react as violently as he did from the attack on Dylan. After all, he’d assumed it would happen, but, when he saw the boy fall to the ground, he roared and Gazardiel also burst into flames.
She ran around the room, screeching and flailing her arms. She wailed curses at Jeremiah and pleaded with Adversary. Finally, she collided with a wall and toppled backwards. Gazardiel twitched for a second and whimpered; then, she stopped.
Jeremiah spun from the scene to see Muriel with her arms thrust forward. The cyclopean ogre was bending down to grab the burning arch-demon—for some reason—but he was moving very slowly, as if his arm were travelling through a thick fluid. When it completely froze, the giant’s hand was just inside of Jeremiah’s fire.
Laughter boomed from the pillar of flame again, and Jeremiah said, “Good move, Muriel. Hold him for a second, and I’ll take care of the others.”
He looked behind him and saw that the walking mound of earth, Voltumna, stepped back several feet in a couple easy paces and stood out of combat. Jeremiah decided that would be an interesting matter for later, and turned in time to sidestep a desperate slash from the reptilian demon and then an ensuing snap of her fang-filled maw.
Jeremiah caught the oily demon’s punch in his hand, stepped around the arm he had captured (fire crawling down the wrist and onto the glistening, black forearm), locked it at the elbow, and used it to swing his captive around and hurl him at the other mobile demon. They collided with a thud, and Jeremiah commanded the fire that was working its way across the oily demon’s chest, as well as the flame now singeing flesh and hair on the giant’s arm, to rage just as the fury inside him did.
The fire around Jeremiah dropped, and he looked fatigued. “Can you immobilize the giant for a little while longer, while the fire takes over?”
“Not a problem,” she answered, moving one arm to point at the reptilian demon as it started to rise, freezing it underneath its burning companion.
Jeremiah bent down to tend to Dylan. He placed his hand on the boy’s throat and willed what little energy he hadn’t devoted to incinerating his enemies into healing his prophet ward.
“Muriel, what are you doing?” Adversary’s voice demanded.
The regeneration was taking nicely, and it looked like Dylan had managed to subconsciously slow the bleeding. Jeremiah nodded—this should satisfy the Elder Prophets. Well, they probably wouldn’t like that he’d known his actions would get Dylan assaulted, but big tests require big stakes. He stood back up and faced the camcorder, confident that the boy would be healed up in a few days with his supervision. Now he just needed to rest.
“She’s mine, now,” Jeremiah declared over the screams of burning demons. “You have Register of Azacles, I presume.”
The cacophony of tortured howls eventually ceased, and Adversary asked, “How did you know? And how did you break my control?”
Jeremiah smiled. “The Register of Azacles is an artifact, created by a demon hunter, Azacles, who died long ago. He used it to summon recently fallen angels to him or a different location so that he or some other hunter could wipe them out en masse while they had nothing better to do.”
“I’m aware of all of that,” Adversary hissed. “That’s why I took it.”
Jeremiah, unperturbed, replied simply, “Who do you think killed Azacles five hundred years ago? He was taking potential fodder from me, and it started pissing me off. Incidentally, it isn’t that hard to snap a demon back with real fealty. I should know; I’ve had to use my charm and intimidation in the past to break the effects of the Register more than once. That’s why I finally went looking for it myself. I thought it destroyed. Evidently, I was wrong.
“I knew what the culprit was and how to overcome it as soon as I recognized the effects. There was evidence any demon who had spent more than twenty-five years on this planet could see. First, the power of fealty doesn’t work over more than ten or twenty miles, and even twenty miles is pushing it. Second, fealty draws lower demons into the direct service of their more powerful overlords—no big surprises; they might have gone as far as make a verbal or written contract at some point in a very long relationship. Demons, like angels, always know who their bosses and their subordinates are. Fealty doesn’t cause lower demons to congregate in a location far from the more powerful demon who controls them, but it could cause them to seek that more powerful demon out. Neither does it rend their essence from their physical shell if they should get out of line, similar to an incident that Muriel recounted for me.
“I can forgive her mistake because she’s young—new to the world of demons. Yours, of course, I forgive because you are not a demon.”
***
“I’m aware of all of that,” Byron spat into the microphone. “That’s why I took it.”
“When I implied you were playing with fire,” Raul said, stepping out of the shadows and startling the Chancellor, “I didn’t think you would take it as a literal challenge. What are you doing, Byron?”
>
Chancellor Hixson craned his neck around awkwardly to try to see his uninvited guest. “Raul, I wish I’d known you were coming. I would have made some tea.”
“I need answers, my friend.”
“This is a really bad time, Regent. Maybe you could come back later?”
“You’re dealing with Jeremiah? Do you have any idea what kind of atrocities can be reasonably attributed to him?”
Byron chuckled. “Of course I do. You don’t think I’d walk into this unprepared, do you? Get it? Walk into this? I can be funny too.”
Raul looked around at technology that he believed he would never be able to understand. There were flashing lights on a tower. On the desk was a large boxy screen with many feeds, like the one with Jeremiah, who was still talking about some book. Raul then noticed an old, leather-bound book on the tray over Byron’s lap.
“Can we just disconnect the demon and distance ourselves from this for a minute?” Raul asked. “I think we can be reasonable.”
Byron held up a finger to relay to Raul that he needed a moment. He pushed the button on his keyboard and spoke into the microphone again, “I see now that I should never try to manipulate you again, Jeremiah. You are obviously more than even I took you for.” Then, he turned back toward Raul, who had come around so that Byron could face him, and said, “I know you’re concerned about this demon, but you don’t need to be. I have this situation completely under control.”
“You don’t have Jeremiah under control,” Raul refuted. “He is wholly evil.”
“Was,” Byron corrected. “He was evil, but he’s trying to become an angel again. He can be trusted.”
“No, he can’t,” Raul disagreed. Then, with a sigh he added, “And I guess you can’t be either. Byron Hixson, with my authority as a Regent, I am placing you on suspension and house arrest until an independent party can determine what has transpired here. Kindly disconnect yourself from the demon.”
Beyond the Shadows (To Absolve the Fallen Book 0) Page 8
