Echoes of the Past ds-4

by Tim Marquitz

  Distracted by the spy, Karra and I hadn’t had the chance to search the rooms. As close to the case room as the room was, I was hoping Baalth had overlooked something when he made that section into Asmoday’s rooms. Unlikely, but who knows? Baalth had been pretty messed up by all the magic he’d inherited from Glorius, so it was possible he missed something I could use.

  I wound my way through the halls and into the chambers, breathing a sigh of uncertainty. So far, I’d dug up nothing about the alien and way more about my mother and Lucifer’s relationship than I wanted to know. It was hard to find the motivation to start looking seeing what might turn up. I could end up being related to Justin Bieber, or something equally horrific. That would seriously fuck up my day.

  Finally, I convinced myself to get to work. I dug through everything, tearing into Asmoday’s books and ripping apart the shelves, shredding the couches, chairs, and bed, making sure there was nothing stashed inside any of them. There wasn’t. I even examined all the paintings he had hanging on the walls. I felt a little bad about damaging some of them seeing how they were masterpieces long absconded with from Earth. Still, I didn’t find anything. I even went around the room knocking on the walls and stomping on the floor to see if there were any hollowed spaces where Asmoday might have stashed something. Locked away without his magic, he would have had to work hard to hide something where Baalth wouldn’t find it.

  Then it hit me. When I’d come to visit Asmoday, he’d been covered in dirt. I didn’t give it much thought before, not even after I’d found the hole beneath his bed. I assumed that whatever was in the case had dug its way up to Asmoday, not the other way around. That changed things.

  I went to the hole, which led to the case chamber, and peered inside. Nothing seemed strange or different, but it was hard to tell from the angle I was leaning at. No faith in my magic to let me hover like I’d seen McConnell do, I called for a couple of the dread fiends. Once they arrived, I dropped into the hole and had them pick me up. With the two of them doing a cute pirouette beneath me, I ran my hands across the walls, searching every inch. About a third of the way around, chunks of stone fell away against my hand. My pulse ramped up. I dug away the rest of the stone and moist dirt behind it and found a small cubby hole. Taking a deep breath, I reached inside. My fingers touched something soft and cool. I withdrew it to find a rolled parchment.

  My find in hand, I shooed my helpers away and ran down the tunnel to the fiend room where I had better light-not to mention where I felt safer should the spy decide to come back. Hands trembling, I examined the parchment and realized it was a thin sheet of flesh. A Cradle of Filth song came to mind, but I pushed the image aside. Durable and well preserved, the parchment was most likely demon skin, and given the circumstances I’d found it under, I imagined it was Asmoday’s. I shook my head thinking about it. He’d a tough run of it, hacking a piece of his own skin off and then having his face used as decoration on an alien’s outfit. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

  My attention back on the parchment, I unrolled it to see what was inside. A warm flush washed over me as I spied a number of the alien symbols etched across the sheet in dried, brown blood. Next to them, written in Latin, was what I imagined was the translation to the symbol beside it. I nearly shouted my excitement as I continued to examine the parchment. While it was clear the Latin key didn’t cover every single instance of the alien language, a number of empty spaces set beside the symbols, there were quite a few that were translated. It might not be enough for me to figure out what was written on the book or cage, but I had no doubt I could find someone more capable to wrap their head around it.

  As I was in the process of high-fiving a dread fiend, I felt a cold chill come over me. I had a sudden feeling there was someone coming. An inner sense told me to hide. Not known for psychic tendencies or accurate gut feelings, I felt compelled to listen to this one because it was so clear. I scurried into the mass of dread fiends and quietly ordered them to close ranks to keep me out of sight. They complied. I was immediately surrounded by a wall of hairy, muscular funk that made me second guess my choice of hiding places. I peeked out between the legs of the fiends, doing my best to ignore the implications and the hanging dangly bits, and watched the tunnel. Time seemed to creep, but after a moment I heard the quiet slap of footsteps. My eyes locked on the entrance, I was surprised to recognize the person who slipped into the room.

  It was Poe.

  Without so much as a glance toward the fiends, who didn’t react to him at all, he made his way past and went into the case chamber. No clue why Poe would be here, let alone be ignored by the fiends, I circled around the back and peeked after him.

  Poe stood in front of the case. He ran his hands across the remaining glass, tracing the symbols with his fingers. His eyes were narrowed as he focused, and it made me think he didn’t have any better an idea what it meant than I did. He spent a few minutes examining it, and then turned around. He headed straight toward me. I slipped behind the wall of fiends again and waited as Poe walked by.

  He veered off near the center of the room and went to one of the side walls, the fiends shuffling a little to get out of his way without him saying a word. Once he was there, he raised his hand and I felt the sudden flicker of magic come alive, his fingertips lighted with shimmering green. The wall wavered and the gray stone appeared to melt away, dripping to the floor to disappear. After just a moment, there was a doorway where there’d been a wall. Poe went inside, the fiends shuffling into place to block the way.

  I ran to the portal and pushed past the fiends, afraid the entrance would close before I could make it through. I peered down its length and saw the doorway led to a carved tunnel, which ran a short distance and then turned sharply left. I listened to the scuff of Poe’s footsteps and slipped into the tunnel once they’d faded some. Doing my best to stay quiet, I kept back a little ways. Not knowing what lay ahead, it was possible I’d run into Poe’s back if I wasn’t paying attention.

  I continued following his footsteps and I was glad he wore his usual dress shoes. Had he been wearing anything else, I would have gotten lost as the tunnel turned into a maze. No idea where I was, it would have been easy to get turned around, never having even known these tunnels existed. There were no landmarks or anything to point the way to the exit. I only had Poe and his fashion sense.

  Just before I turned another corner, I heard the sudden scuffle of movement. A whiff of dread fiend stink assailed my nose. There was the creak of old hinges and the thump of a heavy door being shut, and the shuffle sounded once more. I peeked around the corner.

  Down the hall a ways, at what looked like a dead end, were a dozen dread fiends. They barricaded a wooden door set into the wall, which is where I presumed Poe went. The fiends didn’t even bother to look my direction, standing stiff at their duty. Unsure of what lay beyond, but certain the fiends wouldn’t be set out to guard an empty hallway-as there hadn’t been any up to now-I decided it best to wait until Poe came out.

  He took his damn time.

  After about an hour, I was leaning against the wall yawning when I heard the hinges squeal. The fiends shuffled. I darted the opposite direction from the door and slipped down another of the intersecting corridors, all the while hoping Poe went out the same way he came in. Hidden in the shadows, I heard the measured slap of Poe’s footsteps as he strode past. I let out the breath I was holding and waited another few minutes to make sure he was gone. Once I felt confident he’d gone back through to the fiend room, I drifted out and went back to the guarded door.

  I waved the fiends aside and they obeyed without resistance. A deep breath to steady my nerves, I opened the door and stepped inside.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The door swung open, and so did my eyes, as I went into the room. I knocked the door closed behind me as a sudden wave of mystical energy hit me like a bus. It took a second to clear the stars from my eyes in the wake of the magical energy. Once I could see again, I almost
wished I couldn’t.

  The room was monstrous in size and in intent. Embedded all along the walls, set six high as though they were stacked mausoleum crypts, were naked people, bodies melted into the stone behind them. Their skin was mottled and gray, their blackened eyes staring off at nothing. Slack-jawed, their skin sagged as though there was no muscle behind it; they were nothing but rotting skin and bones. I could smell the decay in the room, multiplied by the thousands of bodies that hung from the walls.

  Clear tubes ran the gamut of the open floor, their ends driven into the chests and groins of the corpses. A thick, greenish-yellow liquid seeped inside the tubing, running down their lengths and traversing the floor until they ended at a contraption set near the center of the room. Shaped like a massive sarcophagus, the hoses were hooked to the sides. A pulse of energy emanated from the box. Its rhythm sounded a heartbeat.

  Hanging from a mass of silvered chains above the box was a glowing green orb about the same size as a manhole cover. It hummed with power and I recognized it as the energy that had struck me when I entered the room. Almost liquid in its consistency, it brought to mind a dimensional portal. There was a strange feeling of otherworldly essence, which tingled at the edge of my senses.

  I had no idea what the room was for, or what the hell Poe was doing here, but it didn’t take a genius to realize Baalth was involved. Poe wouldn’t bat an eyelid without the demon’s okay.

  As I walked across the room, I caught sight of one of the bodies taking a breath. A chill settled over me. I looked up and watched as the man’s chest expanded, just barely, and then deflated. Examining the ones around him, they showed the slightest signs of motion; a tremble here, a breath there. They were still alive.

  The part of me that was guided by my mother, her values, her beliefs, screamed at me to free the people, to tear them down and end their suffering. For the first time in my life, I ignored that piece of me. I’d always held my mother on a pedestal, and still did for that matter, but all the uncertainty of what I’d discovered made me question even that relationship and the instincts that came with it. How could she have been with Lucifer and never tell me? Though I wanted to push all that away and not think about it, the thoughts of what might have been kept storming back. What else had been kept from me? What else didn’t I know?

  Sickened by my dilemma and all that I saw, I was reminded of Asmoday’s plan to draw power into Glorius. He’d used The Gray as a focus point, the wizard’s body drawing the energy into the God-proof room and directing it into Glorius. This looked very similar in nature and had me wondering what it was for. No one needed Baalth to accrue more power.

  The thought brought back the sweats. Uncomfortable and warm, I continued down the line. The only solace I had was that the people didn’t seem to suffer despite the ruin of their bodies. None looked perplexed or in pain. They all had expressionless masks for faces and hung limp in the grip of the stone wall, silent. The flickers of life they showed seemed involuntary and not a conscious effort to be free of their entrapment.

  That wasn’t much to cling to, but it was all I had.

  As I reached the box at the center of the room, I realized there were stairs on one side of it, leading to the top. After all I’d seen around it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what was inside. Curiosity won out. I resisted drawing a breath to settle my nerves, not wanting to inhale any more of the rotten flesh smell than I already had, and mounted the steps. I went slowly, not in any kind of a hurry, but the last step came fast. Tossing the last of my hesitance aside, I glanced over the edge.

  Inside was Henry McConnell: The Gray.

  I grabbed the edge of the box to stop from falling over. McConnell was dead. He’d been killed buying us time against the Nephilim and vampires that tried to invade Heaven. I’d seen his corpse carried down from on high by angels, but here he was.

  Just like all the other people in the room, McConnell looked like a ragged zombie, but there was no loss of meat on him. His skin was a pale gray, matching his namesake. The flesh of his substantial frame split and peeled from the bone. Unlike the rest, The Gray was submerged inside the runoff of the greenish-yellow liquid, which ran from their bodies. His massive chest sat still. No motion disturbed the translucent fluid. His eyes were closed, but steady flutters of magical current wafted from him.

  I wondered if Baalth was trying to bring him back to life. Without a necromancer on call, I could imagine the demon lieutenant doing whatever he could to keep the services of McConnell. Though only human, the wizard had stood against angels and demons alike and had conquered more times than not. He was a powerful force of magic with a less than moral bent, which was just perfect for the things Baalth needed of him.

  It all started to make sense. It also explained why Baalth appeared to be under control of his power again. He’d given me a small taste of his magic in trade for dealing with Reven, Karra’s necromancer pet, but it hadn’t been nearly enough to take the edge off, so to speak. I glanced around the room, at all the bodies that had been through hell, and had a pretty good idea they were part of a filtering system that channeled the demon’s energy into the pool. Having realized his blood and energy could heal, somewhat like Lucifer’s could, it didn’t surprise me he might think he could resurrect the wizard. It was pure ego to attempt it, but I’ve learned to never put anything past Baalth. You didn’t become a lieutenant in Lucifer’s army without balls.

  I glanced up at the orb above and watched its swirling energy for a moment. It was mesmerizing. The emerald energy danced and shimmered and cast its eerie glow across the room. Wondering what else was I might find, I tore my gaze from the orb.

  I cast one last look at McConnell. He was staring back at me. My heart sputtered. His ice blue eyes were encircled in red, but they weren’t the black pits of the rest of the people in the room. He also didn’t seem immune to the torture being visited upon him, now that he was awake. His face was lined with deep creases, his lips curled into a pained sneer above his full white beard. He looked like Santa Claus in a bad bondage flick.

  Bubbles roiled from his mouth as he tried to speak, the thick fluid preventing the words from forming. He thrashed about, his movement limited by the narrow confines of the case. Apparently too weak to break the surface of the liquid, he reached out with a hand that fought to get nowhere.

  As much as I hated the bastard, I couldn’t handle seeing him stuffed inside the torture box. He’d gone out on his shield-whatever his reasons for doing so-and it didn’t feel right for him to wind up as Baalth’s science project.

  Without any thought to what might happen, I braced myself against the edge and reached for him.

  “I wouldn’t do that, Frank.” The quiet voice stopped me before I hit the surface of the tank. The calm words carried weight. I looked to see Baalth walking toward me. He looked haggard, not at all like the last time I’d seen him. “Step away from Henry, and whatever you do, don’t touch the liquid.”

  I stood there defiant, my hands dangling over the edge.

  “It’s for you own safety, Frank. If another living being were to come in contact with the solution, all of the power collected inside its atoms would be released into the unfortunate thing that touched it. It would be like having a thousand nuclear bombs going off inside your chest. Messy, and quite fatal. So, unless your last wish is for me to scoop up your remains and return them to Longinus’ daughter in a Ziploc, I suggest you take my advice.”

  I glanced down at McConnell and mouthed an apology, pulling my arms away from the tank with exaggerated caution. Baalth might not be telling me the truth, but I damn well didn’t want to test him on it. I stayed quiet until I was down the stairs, leaving The Gray behind.

  “What the hell are you doing to him?”

  “What must be done,” Baalth answered, coming over to me. His eyes narrowed. “How did you find your way down here?”

  Not wanting to get Poe in trouble, I lied. “I was searching for more information about my mother a
nd Lucifer and stumbled across your little hidey-hole.”

  He didn’t look like he believed me, but he also didn’t bother to argue. For once, he didn’t look like he had it in him. “I think you should leave, Frank.” The room trembled slightly. It was a reminder of just how fragile Baalth’s control of his newfound power was.

  “Why? What are you doing here?”

  Baalth glared at me. “You’ve never wanted anything to do with the politics of Hell before, so why are you so interested now?”

  He was right. I’d only cared when it affected me. Despite all that was going on, I wasn’t sure this particular problem had anything to do with my life, but that felt like a cop out. I couldn’t be quiet and let him torture McConnell after what the old bastard had done for the world.

  “I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid shit like this, but it’s never done me the same courtesy. It’s damn clear I’m never gonna be free of the Demonarch and its bullshit politics because I’m related to fucking Lucifer!” I could feel my cheeks starting to heat up. “With everything going on from aliens to weres to vamps to the damn government, I think it’s time I paid a little more attention to Hell’s politics, especially, since I’m always in the middle of them.”

  Unexpectedly, Baalth smiled. “Lucifer would be proud.”

  “Fuck him,” I answered. “He’s the reason I’m in the middle of all this.”

  Baalth’s smile widened. “Lucifer would pat you on the back for your rebellious stand, Frank, right before he knocked you through the wall for daring to blaspheme him.” He chuckled, holding his side.

  I grinned in response, thinking he was right on the money. There’d been more than a few lessons I had to learn the hard way.

  “So, Frank, do you truly want to know what I’m doing?” He waved his arms to the room.

  The old Frank yelled at me to scream and run away. Nothing good could come from digging into Baalth’s business. “Yes. Tell me.” Apparently the new Frank liked taking it up the ass, which is all that ever happened when I got involved in Demonarch politics.