Chapter Twenty

 

Back in Hell, my heart was drumming a blast beat in my chest. I ran through the corridors of Lucifer’s chambers and down into the fiend room. Barely able to breathe, I pointed at the wall where Poe had magicked his way into the hidden chambers and set the dread fiends loose on it. I didn’t have time to figure out how to open the door, but I sure as shit could tear it down. In a whirlwind of claws, hundreds of the sub-demons attacking it without hesitation, the wall gave way and revealed the corridor beyond. I waved the fiends aside and ran through the ravaged opening, sucking in deep breaths of gray dust, which had yet to settle.

After another minute or so, I was at the door to Baalth’s portal. The cadre of fiends still outside was a good sign. I shooed them aside and burst into the room, slamming the door shut behind me. The flux of energy nearly knocked me on my ass as I charged for the tub that held McConnell.

Poe met me halfway and blocked my path, but I ignored him and looked over his shoulder to see Baalth. He stood before the tub, his hands aglow with power. Sweat streamed across his forehead as he unleashed burst after burst of magical energy to be absorbed by McConnell and the system they’d devised. The wizard’s shadow flopped about inside as Baalth fed more and more of his power into the tub. At last, the barrage stopped and Baalth crumpled to his knees.

Poe gave me a dirty look and ran to help his boss. I followed after. He gently eased Baalth to his feet. There was nothing resembling the demon lieutenant I remembered. He was exhausted, drained of nearly every drop of his energy. His essence felt like a trickle in the ocean against my senses.

Baalth hung nearly lifeless in Poe’s arm as the mentalist growled at me. “What the hell are you doing here?” He’d left out Mister Trigg, so I knew he was pissed.

“Has the portal been opened?” I asked him, in a rush. “Has it?”

Poe must have caught on to my panic and looked to Baalth. The demon nodded.

I felt my ball sack retract. “We’re in deep shit.”

Poe stared at me without understanding. “What are you—“ He didn’t get any further.

The door to the room exploded off the hinges and flew inward in pieces. Chunks of dread fiend came with it, coating the floor in stinky yellow bile and demon guts. I spun to meet Mihheer as he leapt inside. Poe twisted away to defend Baalth, the two hobbling off in the other direction.

Mihheer didn’t seem surprised to see me. He laughed as he charged straight ahead. There was a book in his hand, and it was glowing blue. I drew my power to me just as a swarm of mutant spiders exploded from the pages in an arachnid volcano.

Mihheer tossed the book in my direction. My first instinct was to throw up a shield. Thousands of creepy little twelve-legged spiders slammed into it as though it were a windshield on the highway to Hell. The book hit a second later and I spied the author’s name as it bounced off. I cringed when I noticed it was the Stephen King story, The Mist. Great read, but I sure didn’t want to be part of the story.

I batted away the mass of creatures, but they were everywhere. They crawled across the shield and around the edges, pushing their way underneath and dropping down from the roof above. A couple of them bit me as I was shaking them off, but it wasn’t too bad. I’ve had worse hickies.

Right then, I heard Poe scream.

I spun around and realized the spiders had been nothing more than a distraction. Mihheer stood before Poe and Baalth, both lying flat on their backs. Poe was holding his face. Blood bubbled up between his fingers, thick and dark. Baalth didn’t seem able to move.

I tossed a bolt of energy at Mihheer, but he sidestepped it and cast a counter spell. It wasn’t aimed at me. A glowing shimmer of red-orange magic sunk into the orb that hung above McConnell’s tub. There was muffled rumbled to thunder, sounding way off, and the room trembled beneath my feet. The color of the orb fluctuated and changed from emerald green to that of an orangey-sun.

Baalth reached up and let out a weak, “No!”

Another bolt of energy in my hand and ready, something grabbed my leg and pulled me off my feet. Sharp spikes of pain speared my ankle. I hit the ground and spun about, dragged toward the squirming sea of spiders. A grayish-green tentacle was wrapped around my leg, up to my shin. The bite of magic chewed at my skin through my jeans. A dozen more tentacles gyrated around the first, emerging from the book behind it. The spiders swarmed me as I was pulled into their midst. I wasn’t too worried about them, but I kept my mouth shut and my ass puckered, just in case.

Magic bolt still in hand, I threw it at the congregation of tentacles instead of the tendril holding me. I didn’t think it would do me much good to blast that one when there was a bunch more ready to take its place. The bolt hit the book and exploded, incinerating The Mist. A whiff of black smoke curled from the floor where the book had been, and I was suddenly free of spiders and tentacles alike. They’d all poofed.

Pissed I hadn’t thought of that when I’d fought the ice dragon, I jumped to my feet to go after Mihheer. The alien held Baalth before him, like a shield, and was moving up the steps toward the tub. I froze.

Mihheer laughed at me. “Isn’t it a shame we’re so bound to our masters that we hesitate when they’re threatened?”

I laughed. “You’re clearly not from around here, or you’d know I don’t work for old, Baalthy boy there.” My magic fluttered at my fingertips and I summoned a ball of fire. As I did, I cast a furtive glance at the demon lieutenant. He gave me the slightest of nods. “You’re not walking out of here alive, even if I have to kill everyone in the room,” I told the alien, taking a few steps closer.

A flicker of doubt danced in Mihheer’s eyes. I certainly didn’t want to kill Baalth, not that I thought I could even in his weakened condition, but I couldn’t let Mihheer get the upper hand. He didn’t care what happened to Baalth, and I had to make him think I didn’t either to keep things calm. It had to seem like I would go right through Baalth to get to him. Ultimately, there was only one thing the alien cared about.

“Stay back, demon,” he told me, making sure Baalth stayed in front of him as I drew even closer.

“Or what; you’ll kill your shield?” I twisted the fireball in my hand and mimed tossing it at the tub. “I’m guessing Gorath would be pretty damn pissed if I blew up the pool and shut down the portal, wasting all that precious energy. It must be hard to recharge after a thousand year nap and having to summon a servant from across multiple universes.”

Mihheer snarled, his free hand flickering with magic. I’d guessed his priorities right.

“Don’t do it,” I warned. “I’m betting I can destroy the tank before you can open the portal for your boss to siphon off the magic.”

Baalth glared at me, and it was pretty obvious he didn’t want me destroying the tank or the portal, but pushed to it, I would. My options were pretty limited, but I’d figured out what Gorath’s pet wanted most, and that was to refuel his master. The thing he tossed into the orb had probably redirected the portal to wherever Gorath was hiding, and he was waiting for the gate to open so he could drink his fill.

Unsure of what to do, I kept moving forward. If nothing else, I figured I could unsettle Mihheer while I thought of something to do to keep the portal in one piece, and Baalth, too.

All of a sudden, Baalth took matters into his own hands.

He spun and grabbed Mihheer and shoved him toward the tank. Unfortunately, Mihheer was the stronger of the two, all of Baalth’s energy having gone into the tub. The alien spun the lieutenant about like a doll and cast him aside without effort. He’d apparently done it without thought, as well. Baalth was flung backward…straight into the tank.

Mihheer’s eyes went wide when he realized it. A bluish shimmer erupted at his hand and I saw the orb swirl to life above his head. The sudden wash of the portal opening hit me, and I hesitated, torn between attacking the alien and saving Baalth. Mihheer was through the gate before I could decide. I heard Baalth hit the fluid and I knew it was too late for him, so I loaded all the power I could into the fireball I already had in my hand and chucked it into the portal after Mihheer.

That was when the world exploded.

I heard Baalth shriek, his voiced drowned out by a whistling hiss that built up in an instant and went mega-postal. There was a muffled boom—muffled because I think my eardrums shattered—and the room went white. Fiery energy obscured everything. I squeezed my eyes shut but there was no blocking the brilliant light. It blasted through my eyelids like they weren’t there.

My skin lit up like I’d snuggled with napalm, and then the force wave hit. It was so overwhelming, so powerful I didn’t even feel the impact. One second I was standing there, and the next, I was sailing through the air. I felt the crunch of something against my back and realized it was a body, and then it was the wall.

I felt that well enough. The extra clips exploded.

In total silence I screamed, unable to even hear myself. The wall shattered at my back and crumbled over top of me. The impact of each stone was nothing more than a dull thud across my body, but somewhere deep inside my mind, I recognized that each one must weigh hundreds of pounds. There had to be tons of rubble coming down, crushing me, but it all seemed so distant, as though it was happening to someone else.

My thoughts were in a fog as I lay there in blind numbness, vaguely noting the slowing down of the wreckage that thundered above me. I had no sense of time, no idea how long it had been since I hit the wall. There were no screams of pain or fear to focus on, none of the disaster staples I was used to. There was no sound at all, for that matter, save for the ringing in my skull that sounded like a Spinal Tap concert on steroids.

When it felt safe to open my eyes, the hint of shadows gnawing at the brilliance that seared my retinas, there wasn’t much to see but rocks. I was covered in them. Still numb, I really couldn’t tell if anything was broken—or more realistically, if anything wasn’t—but I tried to move anyway. The blanket of the wall tumbled away in chunks as I shook it loose. I pulled my arms free and rose up to my knees, clearing the rubble from my back with surprising ease. Though my eyes felt sunburned, I was surprised to realize I wasn’t crippled. In fact, I was unhurt.

I looked at my arms and chest and marveled at how I’d made it out of the maelstrom without a scratch. My borrowed hoodie had been shredded and there was blood all over me, but I didn’t see a single injury, or even a hint of one. Not until I looked to my legs.

About the middle of my left thigh was a massive, crimson stain. It ran from my knee up to my crotch and I immediately checked to see if everything important was still there. It was pretty easy considering my pants were mostly gone. I sighed to note I hadn’t been gelded in the explosion, all my parts accounted for. Still unsure of why there was so much blood, I searched around a little more and wanted to kick myself for being so stupid.

The vial of Lucifer’s blood had shattered.

I dug in my pocket and felt a sharp sting in my thigh as I bumped something. It was a piece of the glass vial embedded in my leg. That was why I wasn’t hurt. As much as it pissed me off to say it, I muttered thanks to Lucifer. The shard probably had a bunch of my uncle’s blood on it. When the glass cut into my leg, it mainlined the healing benefits, allowing me to weather the damage being inflicted. I was being healed as the wounds were being inflicted. That worked out pretty well.

Confident enough to shrug off the rest of the wall, I did and got to my feet. My stomach lurched at what I saw. Baalth had been spot on about the effects of the pool on living tissue, only he hadn’t said anything about what it’d do to the rest of the room. It looked like an Oklahoma trailer park in tornado season.

What was left of the bodies on the walls were just chunk of mangled flesh and bone. What hadn’t been ripped loose and added to the clutter of ruin hung like morbid Christmas tree ornaments. They glistened and shined, coated in the fluids that had filled the hoses. Debris was everywhere, pieces of stone mixed with the white of bone and the yellow-green and gray of everything else. It was a Timothy Leary experiment gone awry. Gnarled hands jutted out of the rubble as though they were drowning beneath it. There’d be no rescues today.

I made my way across the wreckage and went to the tank. It looked surprisingly intact considering what it had gone through. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the space around it. The steps had been blown away and huge slabs of the ceiling had come down, the floor nowhere to be found beneath the gray dust and remnants of the portal device. I dug around where I’d last seen Poe. It only took a few minutes to find him.

I sighed as I cleared the detritus from him.

He was dead.

A rock the size of my head had crushed his ribs and burst his heart. Unconscious, he never had a chance. His eyes were open and stared off at nothing, but his face was set in a serene mask. I hoped he hadn’t felt any pain. He might well have been an enemy, of sorts, but I’d always respected Poe. He’d been a ray of sunshine in Baalth’s organization, and someone I could trust to be true to his nature no matter the situation. We hadn’t been friends, but we could have been. He would be missed.

I sat back, my gaze drifting up to the tub. Nothing moved in it, but I didn’t expect anything to. Baalth had been ground zero. If he got only twice of what we got outside, I was gonna need to borrow a wet vac to clean up the mess. He was dead, too.

All of a sudden, a charred hand clasped the edge of the tub, scaring the shit out of me. Pieces of flesh sloughed off and exposed white bone as the connected body rose up out of the tank. I scrambled to my feet and ran over to help.

Leave it to Baalth to prove me wrong.

I latched onto the extended forearm and pulled as gently as I could. It was like playing tug-o-war with boiled spaghetti. Muscle squished in my grip and pieces of meat and skin peeled away and squished between my fingers, leaving me holding bare bone. Baalth didn’t seem to care. His face was almost completely melted away, leaving only his dark eyes and the slightest piece of skin on one cheek. His grinning skull leered at me as I gingerly helped him from the tub.

Once he was far enough out to lean against the edge, I reached under his armpits and helped the rest of him to clear the edge. Busy with Baalth, I barely had time to cast a quick glance inside. The fluid was gone, apparently burned away, and what was left of McConnell was nothing more than ashes in the vague form of a person. There’d be no coming back this time.

As quick as I could, I clambered down and set Baalth alongside Poe. His skeletal features looked over at his mentalist, and I heard a gurgled sigh slip loose. The last vestiges of the muscles at his jaw tightened before he looked away, the murky pools of his brown eyes settling on me. He opened his mouth and licked his teeth, as though he were looking for his lips. It was strange seeing his pink tongue emerge from the grinning skull of his mouth. His oozing red and black hand reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me closer to his face. It was amazing enough that he could still move, but there was a hint of strength left in his grip. I didn’t resist.

“See tha-that,” he cleared his throat, sounding the hoarse rattle of a dying breath, and went on. His voice came out slightly stronger, “that Poe is taken care of. Take him to Marcus.”

“Of course,” I answered without hesitation. The fact that his first words, and quite probably his last, were spent on making sure Poe had a proper burial there was no way I could refuse. “I’ll take care of him. Now let me take care of you.” I went to stand so I could retrieve a new vial of Lucifer’s blood, but Baalth wouldn’t let me go.

He pulled me a little closer, shaking his head slowly. “I am beyond your help, or even that of Lucifer.” He knew what I intended and dismissed it. “Only God can save me now.”

The irony was a lead weight in my chest. “But—“

“I am lost, Frank.” His grip tightened on my wrist. “Salvage what you can, and prepare Hell for what is to come. This is what Lucifer would have wanted.”

I never thought I’d see Baalth like this. He’d been emotionally wounded by the excess of power he’d gained from Glorius, and he’d been furious when Lilith had kidnapped his men, his powers out of control, but I’d never seen him hurt; not truly. Here he was, the most powerful demon in our world, and he was dying, killed by his own power turned against him. For all our animosity and ego struggles, it was like losing yet another mentor to the storm unleashed in the wake of God’s disappearance.

Of all the horrible possibilities that could have arisen after God and Lucifer left town, Baalth had managed to hold the chaos down and keep it restrained, if only relatively. What was gonna happen now? Call him evil, a demon in truth, but Baalth was hardly the worst thing to happen to the world. What came after him could only be a nightmare in comparison. With a sigh, I met his eyes. I couldn’t let him die.

“Is this the end?” I asked.

He nodded without hesitation.

“What if I could offer you a chance?”

Baalth’s eyes narrowed as though wondering if I was taunting him on his death bed. “Truly?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the summoning stone Hasstor had given me, grateful to see it hadn’t been damaged. “If you’ve got nothing to lose, it’s worth a shot.” Fingers circling the odd metal of the stone, I willed Jonas and Ethan to my side.

Not more than a few seconds later, Black and White arrived, appearing across from me. Dressed as they always were in their understated black suits, they looked like a couple of funeral directors. Sadly, it was kind of fitting. They stared at me with uncertain eyes when they saw the ruin around them.

I turned to the pale one. “Black, I need your help.”

He glanced at White, and then to Baalth, before looking back to me. “If you’re thinking we might be able to heal your friend, we cannot.”

“No, I was thinking you might be more useful as an ambulance.”

They both stared at me, no doubt clueless as to what an ambulance was.

I went on, no time to explain. “I need you to transport Baalth to Lucifer. He needs God’s help or he will die.”

“I’m not sure—“

“I don’t have time for this, Jonas. Hasstor told me you would deliver a message to Lucifer for me, if asked.” I pointed to Baalth. “This is my message. You need to take him, now. Do you understand me?”

White snarled and knelt down beside Baalth. “We understand, Triggaltheron, but what you ask is not easy. Our world is many universes away. Wounded as he is, it is doubtful he will survive the trip.”

“And if he stays here, he’s dead. Seems the better of the two options to at least try, don’t you think?”

“That would depend on who you were asking,” Black answered, “but we will do as you ask.” He dropped down beside Baalth and the two started to lift him.

Baalth waved them off. “Wait…a moment, please. I would speak with Frank.” The two rolled their eyes, but they made room for me at Baalth’s side.

He met my eyes and I saw him swallow, as though he were uncertain of what to say. He sat silent only a moment before he began. “I have lied to you.”

A strange sense of vindication welled up inside me, though I couldn’t place its source. I stayed quiet and let him speak.

“It has always been Lucifer’s wish that you rule in his stead. Of that, I spoke only the truth, but there is more to that desire.”

My stomach sank into my boots. It felt like a crevice was opening up, threatening to devour me.

“Lucifer loved your mother as he has loved no other. He won her from Arol long before you were led to believe. It was Arol’s jealousy that fueled much of their later battles, Charlotte the prize between them. It was this jealousy that brought about your mother’s death.” He cleared his throat as I sat there numb. “Lucifer’s love for your mother is his love for you. It is his desire, as it has always been, that Hell be ceded to you, and thus he wills it through me. Embrace your true destiny, Triggaltheron, and make Lucifer proud…” He drew in a deep, pained breath. “…make your father proud.”

The word hit me hard, and I fell onto my ass.

Black didn’t give me time to think, let alone say anything. “We need to go, now. The longer we wait, the less likely he is to survive.”

A million questions crashed against my brainpan. I knew I had to let them take Baalth if there was a chance for him to live. I met the demon lieutenant’s eyes and mustered a tiny nod. Black and White reached out to grab him. He stopped them once more as they groaned in annoyance.

Baalth snaked a skeletal arm past them and laid his palm against Poe’s face. He stayed silent a moment, staring at his mentalist with sorrowed eyes, gently caressing his cheek. He whispered something I couldn’t hear, and eased his hand away a moment later. A quiet sigh slipping loose, he nodded. Black and White lifted him gently into their arms. They were gone before I could blink.

Alone, with only Poe’s corpse to keep me company, I felt the weight of the world fall over me. I lay back into the rubble as nausea, elation, repulsion, joy, and disgust washed over me all at once. I wasn’t just the goofy nephew of Lucifer who he’d taken a shining to, but I was the Devil’s own; his son.

I couldn’t even fathom how that made me feel. It sure explained a hell of a lot. Why Lucifer had always been so protective, so demanding I take on the mantle of the Anti-Christ. He had wanted to carry on his line, but no one would take me seriously as ruler of Hell, born to a human mother.

That word: son. It explained everything. Then why did I feel so lost?

In one instant, I’d gone from the happy-go-lucky nephew who’d been all about fucking around, and now I was the scion of Hell; its ruler. There was responsibility that came with the position, an expectation I couldn’t imagine living up to. My head throbbed just thinking about it.

I was the new Devil, nothing remotely the same as the old Devil.

And there was Karra. Shit. How would she take the news she wasn’t in a relationship with someone kind of related to Lucifer, but his own son? The guy who killed her father, who basically chased her out of Hell, was my dad. Thanks, Pops.

“What the Fraggle do I do now?”

There wasn’t anyone left alive to give me an answer.