by Jack Porter
“And why didn’t you tell me this until now?” I demanded.
At the same time, I turned the key and stomped on the gas, waited for the Mustang’s engine to catch, and stomped on the gas. I was angry. Enraged, even. And I didn’t entirely understand why.
“Would it have made any real difference?” Azrael asked.
“That’s not the point!” I replied as I peeled out of my parking spot and gunned the engine, letting the car voice its own discontent at having been parked, when it wanted to be let loose. I had no idea where I was going. I just wanted to drive, and drive fast. The frustration of my failure with Bianca, and now this unexpected piece of news was more than I wanted to face.
At the same time, I’d had no idea what sort of demon Azrael was when I raised him. In truth, I would have been happy if he had been comparatively minor. A soldier demon, minor imp, whatever. It had mattered little. The advantages a demon–any demon–could confer to a human were by definition outside of normal bounds. They all had their powers. They all provided an unfair advantage.
But I’d made plans based on what I knew of Azrael’s strengths. I was going up against the BDA itself for fuck’s sake! And I was just finding out now that my demon was less then he ought to have been?
It was like going into an orgy only to learn you’d had your dick removed!
“You know what I’m trying to do!” I yelled at the creature in my head. “You’ve been there all while we were planning! Did you ever intend to tell me it might be harder than we thought?”
“Well, no–” Azrael began.
I was already doing more than a hundred in the city, swerving around cars as if they were standing still, blasting through traffic lights as if I had nothing to fear. For some reason, Azrael’s complacency, on top of everything else, made me furious. I pounded on the steering wheel and swore.
21
“Fucking cunt fucker!” I bellowed. “What were you going to do? Let me overextend myself, counting on you to level up, only to end up flat on my face? You fucking piece of shit, you’re supposed to be on my side!”
As if he was looking for a way to rile me up even further, Azrael said, “I never said I was on your side. I am bound to you. We are as one. But I am a demon, in case you have forgotten.”
In a fit of pique, I twitched the steering wheel, sending my car hurtling toward an oncoming bus. At the last possible moment, with air horns blasting away at us, I twitched back into our own lane.
“Fucking slimy pustular cunt!” I bellowed at the reflection in the mirror. “How fucking dare you! You are bound to me! To me! Your very existence depends on me! And you think it’s okay to hold back information like this?”
Suddenly, I had another thought. The Mustang tore through the streets, no doubt giving heart attacks to anyone wanting to drive at a more sedate speed, the deep throaty roar of its engine echoing off the buildings loud enough to rattle glass in their panes.
“What else haven’t you told me?” I demanded.
“I haven’t told you an infinite number of things,” Azrael said, and I could hear the scorn in his voice. “Would you like me to begin with the fact that grass is green, that the earth spins on an axis around the sun, and that you are the most irritating host–”
“You know what I fucking mean!” I returned. “Earthshattering secrets you have been hiding, the kind of thing that can interfere with my plans! Do you have anything else like that?”
There was a moment of silence. “Not that I am aware of,” Azrael said.
I was gripping the steering wheel hard enough that my knuckles had turned white. And, without meaning to, I was bending the steering wheel out of shape. I hated to think what sort of damage I was doing to the gas pedal, with my foot stomped down as hard as it was.
With an act of sheer will, I forced myself to calm down.
I eased the grip on my steering wheel and raised my foot perhaps half an inch, allowing the speed of my car to drop down below one hundred and twenty.
Then I counted slowly to ten, and did it again when the first time made no difference to my mood.
I had a hundred different things going through my mind. First and foremost, how did this new information impact my plans?
“How strong are you still able to get?” I asked Azrael, trying to keep my voice a little calmer than before.
“How long is a ball of string?” he replied, not helping the situation one jot.
“Answer the question. As you are, do we have the potential to take over the Syndicate, and to take ourselves out of the BDA’s crosshairs?”
“I believe that we do. Although we may have to level up a bit more to achieve that goal.”
I took a deep breath, ever so slightly mollified. But my goals weren’t to take over the Syndicate. Not exactly. I had far loftier ambitions than that.
“What about the rest?” I asked him.
“Your never-ending quest for status?” Azrael asked in return.
“Yes. With you as you are, will I ever be able to reach the top of the lists?”
Once again, Azrael was silent. I waited impatiently for his answer, and ever so slightly, the Mustang speed nudged over one thirty again. I had no clue where I was, or where I was going, but I was getting there damned fast.
“Answer me!” I demanded.
“I do not believe so,” Azrael finally responded.
“FUCK!” I bellowed.
All my plans came crashing down around me. In my mind, it had all been for naught. Sure, I had achieved much since bonding with Azrael, but my ambitions weren’t small. I wanted it all. And now, Azrael had ripped it away from me.
Unless…
“Can you get your core back?” I asked.
“Yes, I can. Of course, it would necessitate a trip down to Hell.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Azrael had already said it was Lucifer who had taken his core. But the reality of it hadn’t entered my mind. And so I stared in disbelief at the image of Azrael in the mirror, paying no attention to the road.
Azrael continued blithely. “And then there’s the small matter of getting past Lucifer himself to retrieve it.”
“Mother of all fucking fucks!” I yelled. I stared at Azrael’s image and wanted to kill him. If I could have done so, I would have wrapped my hands around his throat and throttled him to death. I would have smashed him with my fist as I had smashed the soldier demon, and howled with glee.
But Azrael was part of me. He was little more than a symbiont, a consciousness that shared space in my skull.
My demonic roommate, if you like, a far better–and infinitely worse–roommate than Chad had ever been.
Even then, despite my white-hot fury, I was still in control. I kept half an eye on the road and did my best to stay in my lane as I roared along at an insane speed. But Azrael was a demon, given to demonic thoughts and actions at just the wrong moment.
He had counseled me to leave Piper behind, and tended to respond with a callousness that was far beyond anything I could truly muster.
And this time, he did the exact worst thing that he could.
He could sense my shock. My astonishment at the mere thought of going to Hell. I mean, I didn’t even know if it was possible.
He could have ignored it or said something to make everything all right. An apology would have been nice.
Instead, in my mind, Azrael started to laugh.
The rage burning within me turned incandescent. Once more, I was gripping the steering wheel, and this time I had no intention of letting go. I jammed my foot as hard on the accelerator as I could, caring not one jot that I could feel the metal bend around my foot. I may not have been able to kill Azrael, may not have been able to smash him with my fists, but I was pretty damn sure I could still hurt him.
Keeping my eyes half on the road and half on the mirror, I let my anger show in the snarl on my face.
“Fucking demon!” I muttered to myself. “I’ll fucking jam your teeth down your throa
t!”
One fifty, the speedometer displayed, and even that wasn’t enough. I kept my foot hard on the floor.
One sixty.
One seventy.
We were hurtling through town at a prodigious rate. Even though the road looked to be coming to an end, I had no intention of slowing. At the last moment, Azrael seemed to sense my intent. His laughter faded, to be replaced by a sense of uncertainty.
“Simon–” he began.
“Shut the fuck up!” I grated, and then it was too late.
Even if I wanted to stop, I couldn’t have. We were going much too fast. I couldn’t prevent my own instincts from trying to save us. At the very last moment, I twitched the wheel, and instead of smashing into the curb head on, we hit it side-on instead. Into a building made of old stone.
I remember thinking very clearly, “This is going to hurt,” and lamenting that in my rage, I had put my beloved car at risk.
I didn’t know if my Mustang would survive. Shit, I didn’t even know if I would survive.
All I wanted to do was hurt Azrael, and hurt him good.
At the last possible instant, I transformed into my demon form, and then my fabulous car merged with the wall, hitting with the impact of a bomb going off.
Even my demon wasn’t durable enough to survive such an impact unscathed. By the time my car came to rest, I was bruised and bloodied, and everything hurt. Of course, I was now too large for the front seat of my car, and I found myself curled into a ball in an effort to protect my most delicate bits.
It had kind of worked.
With my ears ringing, and the smell of oil and burnt metal in the air, I uncurled myself to see that my car was no more than wreckage.
The building I had crashed into was some sort of warehouse. I’d taken out not only the wall, but a shitload of shelving, complete with all sorts of industrial objects, with the biggest bits of my car coming to rest against a small but solid forklift.
I had long had Azrael enhance my night vision long ago, and had no difficulty in assessing my surroundings.
First, I checked myself over, and despite everything, I had come out mostly okay.
My car, not so much.
I looked at the poor wreckage with regret, and sensed Azrael start to shift in my mind.
“Don’t say a word,” I said, and, wisely perhaps, Azrael subsided once more.
With a sigh, I picked through the rubble, salvaging my phone, my wallet, and my keys, and I took out a surprisingly intact bag of guns that I’d kept in the trunk. Then, still in my demonic form, I shook my head at the mess and made my way back outside.
I didn’t know where in El Diablo I was, but it shouldn’t have been too hard to figure out from above.
With that thought in mind, I launched myself into the air and began flapping my wings.
22
So, I had not only failed to take over the Syndicate the easy way, but I’d also smashed up my car and learned that my ultimate goals were out of reach unless I was willing to go on a side quest into Hell itself.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, it started raining on my way back to Dario’s place.
By the time I arrived, I was cold, wet, and grumpy, but at least Azrael had the good sense to keep his head down and shut the fuck up for a while.
The girls, and Sandy most of all, wanted to hear how everything had gone, but I wasn’t in much of a talkative mood. Instead, we raided Dario’s liquor cabinets–it wasn’t like he was going to complain–and hosted ourselves a party.
I got drunk enough to put the events of the evening out of my mind, and the five of us headed off to bed.
The next morning, I woke up with a clear head. It was one of the perks of Azrael’s upgrades. But that didn’t mean I was untroubled. I was still wrestling with the problem of the BDA, combined with the larger issue of where to go from there.
By the time I felt ready to face the day, all the girls were already up and out of bed. I figured Julie would have gone to work, but as for the others, I didn’t really know. Instead of getting dressed, I grabbed a dressing gown from Dario’s wardrobe and wandered out to see what everyone was up to.
I found Sandy in the kitchen, and she greeted me with a broad smile. “I’m making pancakes. Do you want some?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, and settled myself down on one of the stools next to the oversized kitchen island.
The stunning blond paused in her mixing to study me for a moment. “Things didn’t go well yesterday,” she said, a statement rather than a question. “Do you want to talk about it?”
It seemed as if my mood had not gone unnoticed. But I was still processing. Still trying to figure out what Azrael’s revelation could mean.
I shook my head, and Sandy went back to mixing the batter without any more questions.
She had already found a pan, and took a moment to turn on the stove before heading to the fridge and returning with a stick of butter. With surprising delicacy, she unwrapped the butter and sliced off about a quarter of an inch, which she popped onto into the middle of the pan. The butter promptly melted, and Sandy poured the first measure of pancake batter.
“Well,” she said. “I thought you might like an update on how things are going anyway. As of first thing this morning, you have awakened a grand total of almost two hundred demons. Of these, a few more than forty are first-generation, with the rest mostly second and third, although we do have a few in later generations still, including one eighth generation. I am happy to say that all of them have the same loyalty to Azrael and yourself as we do. I figure, at this rate, in less than a year we will have taken over our dear city completely, and all going well, it will only be a matter of time before the whole world is ours.”
Interesting, I thought. In a very real sense, I ought to be able to just sit back and wait, and everything I could ever desire would be presented to me on a plate.
“Of course,” she added, “that doesn’t take into account the BDA, or any conflicts we might find ourselves in with those who don’t like what we’re doing.”
And that, of course, was the rub. I offered Sandy a grunt but didn’t say anything. All going well, I could take over the world. But with Azrael unable to reach his full power, I–we–would always be vulnerable.
The question was, what did it truly matter?
“This one is going to be a bit wonky,” Sandy said, and it took me a moment to figure out she was talking about the pancake, which she was in the process of flipping.
“Anyway,” she continued, “we still have our contacts in the BDA, but they’re not positioned to be able to give us the information we really need. We can find out their policy on found items, like if your great auntie Marge found a divine amulet in her attic, but not what the Agents’ next moves might be,” Sandy gave a small shrug of her shoulders.
“I can’t tell if the Agents know where we are, or even if they are about to attack us. I’ve been trying to get someone in that area, but as you know, it hasn’t been easy so far.”
Sandy dumped the first pancake out onto a plate and showed it to me. It was as misshapen as an amoeba.
“Would you like this one? Or would you prefer to wait for round two?” Sandy asked.
As if in response, my stomach growled.
Despite the weighty realities Sandy was talking about, I had to laugh. “That one looks good,” I said, and she slid the plate toward me.
“Maple syrup?” she asked.
I frowned. “Do you know if Dario has any strawberry jam around here?”
“I think I saw some in the pantry,” Sandy said, and disappeared without another word, returning moments later with her prize. Then, as I spread the jam on my pancake, she started work on the next, and talked about all the other things she had going on.
The brothel we were setting up with my conquests had only been open for a few days, but it showed substantial promise. More than twenty of the second generation converts, succubi all, were now on the streets, ready and will
ing to do whatever Sandy asked of them.
But the steady stream of Ascenders Sandy had been sending my way had stopped, for one simple reason. We had all agreed that it didn’t make sense to advertise where we were staying. Of course, I could still have gone out to meet them, but just at that moment, I had more important things on my mind. And, unfortunately, while we had a number of people in the Syndicate itself, none of them were positioned high enough to be of use in my current project.
I had to figure out how to wrest power from Bianca Gambetti.
Unfortunately, nothing Sandy was able to offer pointed to an easy option for doing that.
I demolished half a dozen pancakes almost without meaning to, and when I was done, I asked Sandy if she knew where the other girls had gone.
“I think Rachel and Piper are sparring again,” Sandy said, completely at ease with the knowledge that I enjoyed all their company at the same time. “She’s taking it very seriously,” the blond said, and then her eyebrows furrowed into a frown. “In fact, seriously enough that I’m thinking about giving it a go as well.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. Of all the women, Sandy was the least inclined towards–well, anything along those lines, really. She was a princess, given more to makeup and shopping for shoes than standing in a firing range with a gun, and blasting holes in a target.
Sandy grinned broadly. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “And I didn’t need Azrael to tell me. I just thought–well, we seem to be getting into trouble more and more often. I think that’s why Rachel was keen to give it a go. Piper, well, we all know how good she is at that kind of thing. And Julie’s had training as well.” Then her expression grew serious. “I don’t want to be the perennial victim. The one you guys need to look after. I just want to be able to look after myself.”
I could see she was serious, but at the same time, she was nervous as well. The violence and killings that had become part of my life didn’t make her comfortable. But I could admire her courage to try, and I felt grateful that she would even consider it.
