by Tim Marquitz
I dropped on the mattress and Karra kneeled down before me, handing me the case, at last. She stared into my eyes, hands on my calves, rubbing them gently, almost unconsciously. Whatever she’d found had to be horrific for her to cling to me as though I’d fall apart. She swallowed hard, and I couldn’t bring myself to take my eyes off her, as if I could will away whatever she found and chase away the worry that had so infected her expression. At last, I looked to the case in my shaking hands and pulled out what was inside.
It was old parchment: letters of some kind. Written in faded ink, the writing was plain, lacking confidence, but it had the graceful line of a woman’s hand. It struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t imagine how. I read the first line:
Dearest Lucifer,
I have missed you these past moons, and worry for your safety. I pray you are well.
Still unsure what Karra had read to worry her so much, I continued on, skimming the missive through squinted eyes. It read as a love letter, though the woman appeared to have no idea who my uncle truly was. The line about her praying for him was absurd. It made it obvious the writer was human.
I have seen no sign of Arol since our abrupt parting.
A sudden tremble shook my hands, my fingers clenching and nearly tearing the page in half. Arol was Lucifer’s brother; my father. His name hadn’t passed my lips in nearly five hundred years. Karra tightened her grip on my legs, but I barely noticed, my eyes devouring the words before me. Should you encounter him, I beg you do not tell him of us, for it would only enrage him beyond control. The child grows strong within me, and I would not have it without its father. This is the only request I would ask of you, fair Lucifer. Return to me soon, my love. Charlotte
My heart went still in my chest, the papers slipping from numb fingers and fluttering to the floor.
My love. Charlotte.
Darkness fluttered before my eyes and I fell back onto the bed, staring up at the carved stone ceiling. My head spun as a churning sickness welled inside me. Had Azrael been telling the truth?
Charlotte.
The name repeated inside my thoughts, circling inside my brain like a vulture, swooping over and over to tear away tiny pieces of my sanity.
My love. Charlotte.
The bed shifted, and I felt Karra’s warm breath on my cheek. She spoke to me, but I couldn’t understand her, the words muffled and unclear. The only thing that mattered right then was the name- Charlotte — and what these letters meant.
They were written by my mother.
Stiff fingers wiped the tears from my cheeks I hadn’t known I’d shed until I felt their warm wetness smeared across my face. Karra cradled me as confusion crashed over in tsunami waves, battering my memories and washing away the lies that had collected on the shore of my life.
There was so much I didn’t know, so much I was raised to believe; so many lies fed to me. Just as the rest of the Demonarch had always wondered what Lucifer saw in me, I, too, had always wondered. Here before me, in the papers scattered across the floor, was the answer.
For all that Lucifer had hidden from me, this was by far the worst violation of the trust I placed in him. Bile filled my throat as the pieces fell into place, fury burning away my confusion. I sat up in a rush, Karra clinging to me to keep me on the bed.
“Lucifer had an affair with my mother and had gotten her pregnant. He stole her away from my father.” I pulled away and got to my feet. Karra jumped up beside me, sympathy etched across her face. She had understood what the letters meant when she stumbled across them. “My mother was killed because she was carrying my uncle’s child. No matter who killed her… Lucifer caused her death!”
Blinded by the realization, I shrugged away from Karra and ran for the nearest of Lucifer’s thing. She let me go. At the bookshelves, my fists flung loose of their own volition, smashing into the shelves. Splinters of wood and the books we hadn’t yet rifled went flying, torn pages filling the air with a confetti rain. Continuing around the room, I destroyed everything in my path. Marble statues and priceless works of art exploded in my wake. I felt my fingers snapping like twigs against the cold stone of the monuments, but I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt; needed to.
Blood splattered my face as I pounded another statue into dust, droplets landing in my mouth and stinging my eyes. The coppery taste on my tongue riled my senses as I reared back to strike another blow.
“Rough day?”
I spun around at the sound of the calm voice, and growled. Baalth stood in the doorway looking like he’d just come back from an island vacation. Dressed in his customary suit and tie, his skin was tanned and his black hair and goatee were immaculate. There was no sign of his recent battles with the power he’d stolen from Glorius.
For some reason, seeing him so rested and at peace with his personal demons only infuriated me more. “Fuck you!” I scooped up the letters and stormed over to Baalth, throwing them in his face. Blood soaked into the paper and splattered across Baalth’s expensive suit.
He stared at me without flinching as the letters fluttered to the floor. A shadowy darkness swirled in his eyes. “I suggest you watch your mouth, Frank.” His voice was quiet, a gentle breeze. It only pissed me off more.
“Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you! You knew!” I shouted, poking him the chest to punctuate every word.
I didn’t even see him move.
Something slammed into my chest and sent me hurtling across the room. I crashed into the bed frame, the thick exotic wood snapping into tinder with the force. My skull smacked into the wall behind it, its solidness stopping my momentum with a bone-jarring thump. Karra was at my side immediately. She was a blur of movement and sound, my brain rattled into near incoherence.
“Don’t ever presume to touch me again, Triggaltheron.” The steel of Baalth’s voice cut through the clutter in my head.
I felt Karra stiffen and move to stand, but I managed enough presence of mind to grab hold of her wrist. “No.” My voice sounded like brittle glass. She tensed against my grasp but didn’t break away despite how easy it would have been.
A shadow hovered over me and I felt the wash of Baalth’s power as though I were being stung by a million wasps. “I don’t know what’s caused you to be so foolish, Frank, but I will not entertain such blatant disrespect. Not now, not ever.”
“You were Lucifer’s lieutenant,” I heard Karra tell him through the fog in my head. “You had to know what was going on between Lucifer and Frank’s mother.”
“And you would be Longinus’ daughter, I presume. I can smell his stink on you,” Baalth answered. I felt Karra’s rage and tightened my grip. “What I know is no concern of yours. If Frank wants to have a civil discussion, he knows how to find me. Until that time, I can’t be bothered with either of you.”
I opened my eyes just in time to see Baalth wave his hand, tracers of magic at his fingertips. Then we were gone.
Chapter Eight
Dumped unceremoniously into my living room by Baalth, the short fall to the floor jarred some sense loose. My eyes rolled around in the sockets for a few seconds and then settled. While things were a little blurry about the edges, my vision was clearing. Karra helped me onto the couch and I heard Chatterbox clucking away across the room.
“Are you okay?” Karra asked.
My head pounded like it was a kick drum for the band Deicide, and my chest felt as if I’d played chicken with a nuke and lost, but it wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, but I didn’t want to look at them. They’d heal soon enough, but I wasn’t up for watching it happen.
I shook my head. “Yeah.”
Karra apparently took my indecision as the former. She disappeared from my side as my eyes focused slowly on the porn Chatterbox was watching on the big screen. I looked away when I could see it clearly, my stomach roiling at the sight. All I could picture was my mother. Lucifer had stolen her from my father, and she’d been killed for it. To top it all off, I’d been used to slay Arol for Lucifer�
�s lust, pure and simple. I was nothing more than a pawn; a pawn and a murderer. I could add patricide to my resume of fuck ups.
My screamed protestations played on inside my head.
My father is dead.
Azrael’s words came back to me: Of all the lies you’ve swallowed, like the lonely whore desperate to find love in a mouthful of bitter seed, that’s the greatest of them.
The uncertainty spewed from me. I crumpled over and puked, the lies of my life spraying warm and wet across the carpet. On my knees, I hovered weakly over my vomit. My body shook violently as I puked again and again and again, my throat shredded in its vehemence. Red streaks of blood lent color to the whitish bile as I coughed up chunks of phlegm.
Karra returned and pulled me onto the couch, pressing a smooth glass vial against my lips before I could protest. I tasted the bitter fluid of Lucifer’s blood and went to spit it out, but she pressed my mouth shut. The healing power of the claret went to work without me needing to swallow. I wanted to scream, to kick, to rage against the essence she’d made me consume, but I couldn’t find it in me to be angry at her. She’d done nothing but what she felt was right. I couldn’t hold that against her.
As the blood went to work, I sunk down into the couch with a ragged sigh. Karra settled beside me, her hand caressing my cheek as she whispered her love in my ear. Her words couldn’t chase away the pain of what I’d learned, but her touch and soft kisses were enough to soften the edges just enough so I didn’t snap…again. Unable to hold it in any longer, I fell into her arms and wept.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, my breath coming in roughened gasps, but Karra held me close the entire time. After what seemed like forever, my tears had started to run their course, the sterile sense of realism and cynicism, which had abandoned me, crept back, encasing the wounds in its empty anesthetic.
“ Fffurrrriiiieeeeessss! ”
Chatterbox’s voice broke through my misery. Karra hopped to her feet. Alone on the couch, I looked up through wet eyes to see her in a fighting posture, staring at the front door. A dozen or more growls erupted around the house and I wondered what had set the dread fiends off when I suddenly remembered having ordered them to silence. They spilled out of the spare bedroom without a sound and into the hallway just as the front door was torn from its hinges. Through it came a band of werewolves, all gnashing teeth and slashing claws. Their growls and howls made my ears ring.
Glass shattered behind us as more of the werewolves burst through the windows. Chatterbox threw himself forward and rolled off the table to hide. Just as I hopped to my feet, the forty dread fiends crashed into the line of weres before they’d gotten more than ten feet into the house. The looks on the werewolves’ faces were priceless. Surprise!
The fiends tore into them without mercy. Karra and I stood back and watched as the werewolves went down in a whimpering heap of bloody and savaged fur. Several of them scrambled to escape but the fiends were having none of that. Arms and legs were ripped free and flung about the living room, decorating my house in shades of red and brown. Judging by the smell, there was some shit mixed into the whole concoction of carnage.
Before I could even think to call the fiends to heel, they had slaughtered all of the werewolves. Mangled bodies were littered around my living room, my kitchen, and dining room. There was more red on the walls than there was white. Everything was coated in a layer of werewolf gut juice.
“Put the door back in place,” I yelled to one of the fiends. It complied immediately, snatching up the door and holding it inside the broken frame to keep it there. It wasn’t perfect, but it’d do to block people’s view from the outside. “Clean this up,” I told the rest. I didn’t have to tell them to do it quickly, as that was implied in the tone of my voice. While the fiends weren’t anything resembling smart, they were well trained.
I ran to the windows and yanked the curtains closed. Peering out between them, I didn’t see anything to make me think the attack had been witnessed; not that there were a whole bunch of folks still living in my neighborhood. After all the weirdness around my house, the storms created by the Tree of Life were the last straw for most of the people. A whole bunch of them up and moved away, abandoning their homes to never come back. I imagine some of them had gotten caught up in the deadly fall and were killed, but regardless, the nearby population had dwindled in just the last few days. While that was good in a sense, it made it real easy to pin the tail on the paranormal jackass when shit like this went down. Hoping I’d gotten away without being noticed this time, I went back over to watch what Karra was doing.
She lifted one of the werewolf heads and set it on the table where Chatterbox had been just a minute before. The zombie head peeked up from his shelter underneath and gave a crooked smile, not that he could give any other kind. It took me a second to figure out what Karra was doing, staring into the dead wolf’s eyes, but I got it. Unlike me, she didn’t need a living body to interrogate.
After a moment, the wolf’s eyelids fluttered and its eyes filled with reddened life. Its gaze swung around and found Karra’s as it licked its lip, its blackened tongue lolling between its shattered teeth.
“ Mmaasssstttteeeerrrr,” it said in a roughened imitation of Chatterbox’s dragged-out enunciation.
“Why are you here?” Karra asked it.
Despite spending a bunch of time with Chatterbox, and having seen Karra’s powers in action, it was weird watching her carry on a discussion with a dead werewolf.
“ Ttriigggaallltthherrronn.”
What a surprise. Not in the mood for Captain Obvious’ charade, I stormed over and grabbed the werewolf head by its scruff. “No shit, Sherlock, now tell me why you want me.”
Karra must have commanded it to answer because it did without hesitation.
“ Rreeevveeenngge.”
I flung the head into the dining room for the fiends to collect and dropped back onto the couch. The cushions squished. The rutting sounds of Chatterbox’s porn hit me right then and I mashed the remote to shut the TV off.
“Looks like the weres are pissed at me for ruining their attempt at becoming the dominant life forms on the planet.” I let my head fall back into the cushions and ignored the clinging moistness that stuck warmly to my scalp. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Karra gave me a pity smile, and I peeled myself off the couch and went to the kitchen. I pulled the last of my beers from the fridge and returned to the living room. After Karra waved off my offer of the beer, I popped it open and took a big swig and went to the front door to see if it could be fixed or it needed to be replaced. I ordered the fiend out of the way and it stepped aside, carrying the door with it.
My heart nearly exploded when I saw there was someone standing right outside. The beer fell from my hands and shattered at my feet…again.
Tall, humanoid in shape, and obviously male, the stranger was dressed in what looked like rumpled leather armor. It was covered in strange designs I couldn’t quite figure out. There were too many inconsistencies to the coloring; some parts were a dark brown whereas others were pale, almost pink. My eyes focused and it suddenly hit me that the designs weren’t designs at all, but faces.
The armor stared back at me through dozens of dark and dead eyes, the plates of the suit crafted entirely out of what looked like people. Their torment showed in their frozen expressions. I recognized one of the faces that made up a part of the thigh. It was Asmoday’s.
My gaze snapped to the stranger’s face. He smirked, but nothing in his manner-barring the outfit made out of people-came off as aggressive. Short black hair covered his head except where a curved set of horns erupted from his scalp. They sprouted thick just above his temples and rose up a little before curling toward the back of his head. They ended in sharp points. His eyes were a bright, yellowish-orange and looked like two suns set into the recessed sockets of his skull. The rest of his face was fairly human in shape, a wide nose just above a normal looking mouth.
He grinned at me and shot that perception all to hell. A mouthful of shark-like teeth reflected the inside house lights. I let my senses loose and picked up a conflicting mix of power and emptiness, but there was also a hint of the same oddness I’d felt when scanning Xyx and Hasstor. I recognized his aura.
Without warning, a flash of bluish energy exploded before me, symbols and sigils appearing in the magic, and the stranger disappeared. Tracers of his power were still shimmering on my retinas moments after he was gone.
Karra ran up behind me. “What the hell was that?”
I reached out into the stormy night, unable to detect a presence of any kind. “I think we might have found who was inside the case.”
She pushed past me and surveyed the street. “I felt his power right before I ran out here. What happened? Did he say anything?”
I shook my head. “He ported away without a word. I opened the door and he was standing right here.” I pointed to the porch. “I didn’t sense anything from him until right before he took off. The fiends didn’t react at all.”
We both looked to the sub-demon holding the broken door. It stared at us, but it hadn’t moved an inch since I’d told it to step aside. Ordered to protect me and the house, it should have engaged the guy immediately, but it hadn’t done anything. It acted like it hadn’t even seen him.
A dim bulb flickered in my head. “That would explain how he managed to kill Asmoday without the fiends tearing him a new one. I mean, it doesn’t exactly explain why they aren’t reacting to him, but it does tell me how he could have waded through thousands of them to reach Asmoday.”
“Why would he come here?” Karra asked.
I shrugged. “Apparently, it’s in the bad guy handbook that they have to fuck with me first. I would also imagine my being related to Lucifer,” the name tasted like shit on my tongue, “has something to do with it. I mean, who wouldn’t be pissed after being locked up in a trophy case for who knows how long?”
Karra reached out and took my hand. “You’re not safe here if he can just ignore the fiends.”
