Devil's Den

by Jeff Altabef

  Kate kicks Gray Hair in the stomach even though he’s out cold. “Old, my ass.”

  Buck looks at me with raised eyebrows.

  “Never talk about a woman’s age.” I shrug. “They weren’t letting us in anyway. Come on, let’s get them inside so anyone passing by won’t notice.”

  He grabs Gray Hair and I sling the younger guard over my shoulder. Kate opens the doors. We walk inside and drop both on the floor.

  It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust in the dim light. Candles flicker in sconces against the walls, and a spotlight brightens the large oak cross suspended from the ceiling. Plenty of room for shadows, and the skin on my face tingles. We’re not alone.

  Buck points behind the cross and says, “The chapels are that way. Let’s go.”

  He starts in that direction, with Kate at his heels. I move after them warily until a high-pitched voice freezes me. “Oh, Stevie, have you come to play with me?”

  Oh, shit. It’s Raven – the demon from the alley behind the church - and she stands between the door to the chapels and us.

  I send Kate a silent message with my eyes. She understands. Megan is more important than me. Whatever happens here, she needs to save her daughter.

  “Play isn’t exactly the word I’d use.” I sprint to my right and open fire at the monster. The spray from the assault rifle would have ripped apart a normal person, but Raven isn’t normal. She’s a demon and moves faster than should be possible.

  She’s a blur as she leaps upward, kicks her feet off the wall, flips in the air, and does a somersault on the ground. It’s a freaky thing to see. Every Olympic judge would give her a ten, but it makes my skin crawl. No human can move like that.

  Buck runs at her.

  “Don’t!” I shout. He doesn’t understand what we’re dealing with, but it’s too late.

  He swings an electric prod at her head.

  Raven ducks under the swipe and punches him in the stomach. The force of the blow lifts Buck off the ground. She must have cracked half of his ribs. When he hits the tiled floor, he rolls onto his side.

  I level the M18 again, but before I pull the trigger, Raven throws a chair at me. It’s a bone-crunching missile. I dive out of its path at the last second, and it shatters against the wall behind me.

  By the time I jump back to my feet, Raven has grabbed Buck’s electric prod and jams it into his mouth. The young man’s body convulses. She grins a wicked smile. After it dispenses its full charge, she tosses it away and Buck folds flat on the floor.

  He could be dead or fried unconscious. I can’t tell.

  Raven smirks at me. “Just you and me now, Stevie. Have you reconsidered my earlier proposal?” She transforms before my eyes. Battered, black wings sprout from her back, and her jumpsuit melts away, replaced by scaly, reddish black skin. Her hands and feet turn to talons; her eyes become red slits and her mouth stretches into a snout. She retains only a bit of her human-like appearance. “Do you want little Stevie to come and play with me?”

  Kate’s gone. She went to fetch her daughter, and I smile. “It’s an attractive offer, but I’m an old-fashioned guy. I need some courting. Maybe flowers and a movie?”

  My blood races and my inner demon growls. Not Caesar or any of the voices I sometimes hear, but that darker force, that energy that scares me, the one that made me bash Mr. Frosty’s head against the toilet. Instead of fighting it, I embrace it, and my senses scream as if they’ve woken from a long slumber. My eyesight sharpens to where I can see all the folds of scaly skin on Raven’s body. They glisten as if Vaseline has been rubbed on them. I smell the scent of burned flesh from Buck’s throat and hear him breathing, and the flickering sound of the flames in the candles. Strength and quickness flow through my body like I’ve never felt before. It’s as if I’ve shed my human skin, and transformed into something else, something stronger, and faster, and darker.

  I’m still holding the M18, but before I can aim and fire, Raven bats her wings, and darts forward at terrific speed. It’s almost as if she’s hovering a foot over the ground. She grabs the gun, twists it from my grip, and bends the metal.

  “I was just borrowing that gun. I’m not going to pay for that damage. That’s on you.”

  She chuckles. “Ready to join us, halfling.”

  “Halfling?”

  “Oh, didn’t Mommy tell you? Your father was one of us. That’s why He wants you. It’s very unusual that one of us can mate with a lower species like humans.”

  For a heartbeat, time seems to stop. “My father was a demon?” The words sound ridiculous as they slip between my lips, yet it makes sense. I thought my mother was crazy all this time, but she was right. About my father. About me.

  Raven grabs my throat in one of her talons. Her nails dig into my neck. “Who said anything about demons? Your father was an angel. Like me.”

  “You mean a fallen angel.”

  “A minor setback in the scope of things. We will rise again. Our beauty will be restored, and our reign will last forever.”

  “Have you considered a makeover? It’s amazing what they can do with concealer.”

  “Yes, you must feel it now. The hellfire is burning in your eyes. I can see the sparks.” Her tongue whips out like a lizard’s and scrapes against my cheek. “I can taste your father in you. We were lovers once.”

  “Gross. I don’t know where that tongue’s been.” I need to break free, and this is my best chance. I punch Raven in the stomach, a hard right with all my weight behind it. It should have crippled her, but it feels as if I’ve smashed my fist against a brick wall. I’ve never punched anything that hard before.

  She groans and releases me. I hammer her head with a left cross, and then a right. The force of the two blows staggers her backward. When she steadies herself, she spits black demon blood from her mouth and bares her fangs.

  “Now I’m going to drag you to hell myself.”

  She grabs my shoulders and tosses me in the air. I slam face first on the tile floor. I pull my knife and manage to stand.

  She laughs. “What are you going to do with that?”

  “My best.” I lunge forward, stabbing the knife at her chest. She catches my wrist and twists. The pain burns up my arm and into my skull.

  The knife clanks on the floor.

  She kicks it away. “Fool. Your human weapons can’t kill me.”

  She whips me in a circle by my arm and flings me against a wall. At least one rib is broken, and my head swims.

  Raven mutters under her breath and waves her arms. A circle of flames burst beside her. Not normal flames, but darker and richer in color as if they’ve come from my worst nightmares. They hover a few feet above the floor.

  She grins, or at least it looks that way to me. It’s hard to know for sure because the snout distorts her face.

  “Ready for a road trip?” she asks. “I’ve created a portal just for us.”

  “I think it’s a little too early for that. We’ve only just met. You’re rushing the relationship.”

  “Either you come with me now, or I’ll snap your skinny neck and you’ll go to hell a different way. A lot less desirable, if you ask me.”

  Neither sounds all that appealing. I need a weapon and spot my knife a foot away. She must have kicked it here. I grab it and gamble with my soul. “You’re not going to kill me. You can’t do it. You like me too much. And besides, you’re weak. You’re no angel at all. You’re barely a demon.”

  Her face contorts angrily. It’s the reaction I’m hoping for. She’s a vain creature, not used to being challenged.

  She screams, and it sounds like hundreds of children being tortured. The muscles in her wings twitch, and I thrust out the point of the knife, making one last gamble.

  She flies toward me like before. She moves so fast, she can’t stop before the knife plunges into her chest.

  A sick grin spreads across her face. “Didn’t I tell you that human weapons can’t kill me? It feels like a bee sting.”

&n
bsp; “Yes, but this one has been doused in holy water.”

  Her eyes go wide.

  “I know this changes things between us, but I just don’t think we were developing the right type of chemistry.” I twist the knife. “In this case, I’d have to say it’s you, not me.”

  A river of black sludge pours from her chest. It stinks like sulfur. She twists, spins, and transforms into a black cloud. The cloud screams one last time and gets sucked into the portal she had created. The flames disappear, and my knife falls to the floor.

  I’m breathing hard, positive I’ve crossed that invisible line from sane to insane. I doubt I’ll cross back now. When I retrieve the knife, I scrape the black sludge off the blade against the side of a chair.

  There’s no time to contemplate Raven or the portal to hell or what she told me about my father. Kate’s on the other side of the door, somewhere deeper inside the building where she needs my help.

  Willing myself forward, I ignore my ribs and run through the door that leads to the chapels. I stumble through a hallway with closed doors on both sides. This isn’t right. Where are the metal tubes?

  I push through the door at the end of the hallway and enter the massive warehouse space. A field of chapels spreads out before me with half-wall dividers separating them.

  Someone screams, “No!” Another shot of adrenaline surges through me. I lock onto where the shout came from and weave my way through the dividers until I see Luke, the black-clad guard who whipped me with the chains, holding an M18. He’s outside of the divider, down a narrow hallway.

  I take off toward him, sprinting faster than I’ve run before. He sees me, levels the gun, and fires.

  The bullet spins at me, and I twist out of the way without slowing my momentum. He fires again, and this time I leap over the bullet, land on him and drive my fist into the top of his forehead. He falls to the floor, and I snap his neck like a twig. He never had a chance.

  I freeze.

  Megan’s wearing a robe and pointing a gun at Kate. Another young woman stands near Kate, her skin ashen. My eyes skim over them and find my mother. She’s dressed in a multi-colored jumpsuit, holding a tablet.

  She looks at me, her gaze intense. “My son. It’s about time.”

  My stomach twists, and all my strength leaves me. I can barely stand. I’m a teenager who barricaded the door as his mother scratched her nails into it, promising to cut the demons out of him.

  Did I make a mistake? Maybe I should have gone with Raven to hell? Could it be worse than meeting my mother again?

  The Fates are cruel puppet masters.

  Megan remembers a tropical island, a giant waterfall that ended in a ten-story statue of an angel. The statue stood, her arms stretched wide, the water cascading from both hands. Megan touched pools of clear warm water, stepped on smooth sand, and waded into a calm ocean that lapped against her skin. An eagle circled overhead, and Petal accompanied her everywhere. She looked beautiful, with the sun sparkling in her eyes and caressing her hair.

  Megan kissed her in the ocean and she tasted happiness on her lips. Although unable to swim, Megan kept wandering deeper into the blue sea, wanting more. She had never swum before, never even stepped on a beach prior to this. Petal kept a firm grip on her hand, always tugging her back when the water reached her neck.

  Tears flowed down Petal’s cheeks when they kissed. At first, Megan thought they matched her feelings, tears of unbelievable delight, but no joy lit her eyes. Sadness clung to them and clouded their gem-like beauty. It made Megan hollow like a husk of corn after all the kernels were gone.

  God spoke to them on that island. He didn’t appear in physical form, like he had during Megan’s first experience in the chapel, but she heard His voice in her head – certain, knowledgeable, stern. Over time, it sounded more like Ivy’s voice until she couldn’t tell the two apart. God wanted unwavering loyalty, to Him and to Ivy.

  Harsh white lights burned her eyes. Her vision ended, and the lid opened. She stepped out, got dressed in a robe, and waited as Petal did the same. Still dazed by her vision, Megan wasn’t sure what to believe. Her experience had been so euphoric, so otherworldly, and now this, stark brightness. She wanted to go back into the chapel, experience the paradise island again, with Petal, longer this time.

  Ivy clasps the pendants around Petal and Megan’s necks and then hands a gun to Megan. “Spring, a demon is coming for us. She’s birthed from the fires in hell. She’s here to kill me. She has horns, wings, and her skin is blood red. A long tail swoops behind her. You believe me, right?”

  Megan nods. She believes every word. God told her to believe Ivy. She has to trust in Ivy, that’s the only way back into a chapel.

  A monster stalks forward. She’s on the other side of the partition, ten feet away. Megan points the gun at it. “Stay away, demon.”

  The demon stops. “Megan, it’s me. Your mom!”

  Megan squints. The voice sounds familiar, like her mom’s voice, yet that can’t be right. Ivy said it was a demon. God said she must trust Ivy. The creature has horns and a tail, and looks like a demon, just like Ivy described. Megan holds the gun steady.

  Gunfire sounds from the hallway. A figure moves in a blur, and then appears at the partition. It’s a man, dressed in a black jumpsuit, fire burning in his eyes.

  Ivy looks at the intruder. “My son. It’s about time.”

  The man says, “What are you doing? What have you done to Megan?”

  “She’s one of my Angels now.” Ivy touches Megan on the shoulder. “Child, if I tell you to pull the trigger and slay that demon, will you?”

  “Gladly, Mother.”

  I’ve seen brainwashed people before. To some extent, everyone is brainwashed. They might want things they don’t need, or be hooked on gambling, drugs, or virtual reality. Those who suffer the most can be convinced of almost anything: that black is white, up is down, bad is good. We all know people like that, but cults take it to the extreme. They perfect the art of brainwashing so much they wipe away a person’s self-control. They wipe away a person’s identity.

  It’s only been a few days, but my mother has that level of control over Megan. So much control she trusts the girl with a gun. I want to rush forward, disarm Megan, save Kate, and confront my mother, but if I make any sudden movements, Megan might shoot Kate—a risk I can’t take. It’s unlikely, maybe only a thirty percent chance, but that’s way too high.

  My mother waves for me to come closer. “Come here, Stevie. It’s been too long. We need to catch up.” She backs into another divided space, separate from the one with Megan, Kate, and the other young woman. Before she disappears, she says, “Spring, if the demon speaks, shoot it.”

  “Yes, Mother.” The girl calls out.

  My mother disappears behind the partition and I have no choice but to follow her. I have to deal with her. I don’t want to hurt Megan or risk Kate’s life.

  My mother stands behind one of the stainless-steel tubes, holding a tablet.

  I move cautiously. My heart pounds, every beat thumping in my head. Kate was right about my mother. She looks healthier than I remember, more confident, more alive.

  From this spot, we can see Megan and Kate through the opening in the partition wall. “Let Kate and Megan go,” I say. “You don’t need them anymore. You’ve gotten your wish. I’m here now.”

  “We’ll worry about Kate later. Let’s talk, son. It’s been so long.”

  I need answers. This is why I came back home, and this is my best chance to get them, possibly my only choice. “Is it true about my father? Was he a... demon?”

  “He was a fallen angel, my dear. Don’t let Raven hear you call him a demon. She’s very touchy about the difference. Demons are ordinary people who Lucifer possess. Fallen Angels are practically immortal and willingly followed Lucifer in his fight against the Cursed One.”

  “Raven’s no longer a problem.”

  My mother smiles. “You found a way to kill Raven? Like mother, like son,
they say.”

  “No one says that.”

  “They should. I never liked her. She held a grudge against me because your father preferred me to her. Can you blame him? The smell alone is enough to drive someone crazy.” My mother washes her eyes over me, measuring me. I wonder what she sees.

  “I’m proud of you, son. You were such a weak child.”

  “Weak? You were trying to kill me when I was a teenager!”

  “That’s the problem with your generation—always ducking responsibility for your own failings. I might not have been perfect, but it’s hard to be a single mother. Now you’ve grown strong. Good genes, I’d say.”

  “Good genes?” I shake my head. We’re off track, so I try to bring us back to something useful. “You were right about Dad and me. You’ve been right all along.”

  “I told you he was a demon when I killed him, which was almost right. You should have listened to me. But I was only right about some things. I should never have killed your father. Or fought the demon inside me for so long. It was a silly thing to do. I didn’t understand.”

  “Understand what?” I’m holding my breath. Does she know some truth that will save me?

  “Lucifer isn’t bad, after all. Sure, he lost that pesky confrontation with God, but that was only one battle in a long war. Now, he will rise again. He will win. He will defeat the Cursed One with our help.”

  “In the Great Struggle. Is that what this is about?”

  “Yes, the End of Days is coming. All the hate and violence in the world strengthens Lucifer, his fallen angels, and their demons. They ready for war while God is nowhere to be seen. I mean, where is He? In the ghettos? Stopping the endless conflicts that plague mankind? No, but Lucifer and his followers are there. And they will win with our help.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “You’re a Nephilim, a child born between an angel and human. Not many like you exist. You’re way more powerful than a normal demon. Practically as strong as an angel. Lucifer wants you to do his bidding.”