Good Intentions 3: Personal Demons (42 page)

“Perhaps,” said Zafirah. Alex couldn’t tell if she was intrigued or amused by his pitch. “But not for free.”

“What do you want?” asked Alex.

“From you? I want your story,” she said. “All of it.”

“Um. That’s a lot,” he faltered. “It’s a long story. I mean we’ve gotta be talking like a good forty-four hours of narration even without the recent nonsense. And that’s if I don’t fall into any tangents.”

Zafirah smiled broadly again. “You know what to leave out and what to include. I only care that you tell me the truth, and that you keep it interesting.”

“It’s probably way shorter if you skip all the fucking,” suggested Rachel.

“Oh no no no,” Zafirah objected. “Don’t do that.”

* * *

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t know what I was doing! Jesus please don’t let this happen!”

“The fuck is he on about?” asked Loretta. She leaned on the railing around the porch of the main office, watching the ritual with false bravado. At the moment, the summoning circle only smoldered like a barbecue pit awaiting more fuel. Three other members of the Light stood at its edges, chanting in soft tones as they’d been coached.

Unsettling shapes crawled around every possible hiding space in the compound. Demons hid under cars, within the boughs of evergreen trees, even inside a couple of trash cans with the lids propped up for their glowing yellow eyes like some cartoon. Many took monstrous shapes. Other demons seemed almost human. None were inclined to linger out in the open, yet they didn’t try all that hard to hide from their mortal hosts, either.

Two men dragged a third toward the summoning circle. From the way they almost had to carry him, Loretta guessed they’d given the captive a solid beating to prevent him from making a fuss. They hadn’t gagged him, though.

“It was a mistake!” the man wailed. “I didn’t know what else to do!”

“Aw, the preacher?” huffed Coot. He stood next to Loretta, pouring a little bourbon from his flask into a metal coffee mug. “He started confessin’ about how he spent collections from church on all kinds of nonsense. Blew money on strippers, gambling, silk sheets. All kinds of whatever. Honestly, I didn’t think it was that big a deal, but I guess he does.”

“I didn’t mean to kill Judy!” the preacher sobbed as his handlers brought him to the edge of the ritual circle. “I didn’t think I hit her that hard!”

Loretta’s eyebrows rose. “Wait, is he talkin’ about his daughter? Didn’t she die in a car accident?”

“Guess not,” Coot supposed with a shrug.

The pair of men holding the preacher stopped, too. They looked up to Loretta in surprise and doubt. She waved it off. “It’s not our business,” she called to them. “Nothin’ we could do about it, anyway.”

The preacher wailed louder. One man took up his bound ankles. The other hooked both hands under the prisoner’s shoulders. They gave him a couple swings before pitching him into the circle and stepped back from the inevitable flare-up. The preacher disappeared instantly, but his terrified howl lingered as if he fell down the deep hole hidden beneath the gateway of ashes and embers.

Every mortal onlooker winced, waiting out the long cry. The demons seemed perfectly comfortable with it all. The flame soon died down until the embers broke again and several more demons climbed out. Two of them might have passed for humans in a dark alley if they could hide their tails and reptilian heads. The others, much smaller and quick to take to the air on their wings, couldn’t be mistaken for anything natural at all.

Coot turned his eyes to his coffee mug with a shudder. “Y’know, a couple of the others we grabbed for this turned out to be pretty shady, too. One guy was raisin’ dogs for pit fights or somethin’. His basement looked like a slaughterhouse. And I don’t even wanna talk about the kinda shit we found in a couple of the other houses.” He took a gulp, his mug shaking in his hand until it touched his lips. “Crazy thing is, I thought for a ritual like this you’d want the blood of the innocent or whatever, y’know? Virgin sacrifices, that sort of thing. Isn’t that how it works in all the stories?”

“Virginity means nothing,” hissed a voice from above. The thing dangled from the rafters of the porch’s overhang, its body curled under and over the crossbeams like a snake—except snakes didn’t have arms or legs, let alone wings. “Innocence means nothing, too.”

Loretta and Coot stepped back from their spots on the porch. The demon might have smiled at them, but it was hard to tell for sure with that mouth. “I’m just sayin’. Seems like it’s all bad people here,” Coot tried again, hoping to keep his voice steady. “I mean, I don’t buy into all that moralizing bullshit they sell to all the suckers out there, but even so. Some folks are dirtier than others, y’know?”

“Of course, of course.” The demon leered at the two with apparently equal interest. “Make no mistake. We’ll gladly take the virtuous. Eagerly, in fact. Do you know any?”

The sorcerers blinked again. “Um,” Coot managed. He didn’t get further than that.

“You don’t know how to spot them, do you? I do. Let me tell you, they’re delicious. So much fun. But they involve work, you know? They bring…complications, sometimes. Not all the time, though. It’s always a gamble. With sullied souls like these, however, one runs into fewer obstacles.”

“Sullied?” asked Loretta.

“Yes. Sullied. You know, the rapists, the murderers, the enslavers. Those who sell out their fellow man or woman for blind ambition and greed. Or who sacrifice their neighbors for power.” The demon kept its eyes on Loretta, letting its words hang in the air much as it hung from the rafters.

Loretta took another uncomfortable step backward. So did Coot. The big man’s footstep seemed to draw the demon’s attention once more, prompting the thing to crane its head around to face him again.

“You have a nice body,” said the demon.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Coot snapped. He shifted his mug over to his left hand so he could drop his right down toward the pistol at his hip. “You think I’m some kinda freak?”

The demon tilted its head much further to one side than any human could. “Oh, no. You misunderstand. I don’t want to mate with it. I’d like to live in it. Though I’ll take what I can get.”

“Xazzal,” said a calm, feminine voice. Evelyn stepped onto the porch. “What did I tell you about our allies?”

“I’m negotiating,” the demon hissed defensively. “I’m even being nice about it.”

“We didn’t bring you here to negotiate.”

“And yet I have no other tasks ahead,” Xazzal pointed out. “You told us to wait, so we wait. I only pass the time with conversation. This world is cold. I want a mortal body.”

“Later.”

“Easy for you to say,” the demon hissed.

Evelyn rolled her eyes. “We’ll have a fitting room set up soon enough. First we must remove our opposition.” She turned her attention to Coot and Loretta. “Thankfully, night falls early this time of year. That makes it easier for our kind to move about. Even without mortal shells,” she added, glancing up again at the demon in the rafters.

“You mean like possession?” Loretta asked warily.

“Oh, it’s quite possessive, yes. Let’s not get side-tracked. Leon asked me to fetch you. We’ve found our troublemakers from last night. It’s time to remove them from our list.”

“Sounds good,” said Coot. He set aside his coffee mug. “Who all’s going?”

“Everyone,” answered Evelyn. She glanced up one more time before walking off the porch.

Coot shared another uncomfortable glance with Loretta and slowly looked back at the demon still looming above.

“This would be the part where I offer my protection,” noted Xazzal. “For a small fee.”

Perdition’s Wall never stood still.

The mammoth structure dominated the plain as far as the eye could see. Its dark façade bore the bright, shifting streaks of molten rock. Amid the constant churn of material, broken and mangled bones from the souls trapped within the wall jutted out to provide sharp and unpredictable dangers for those who came too close.

The wall stretched high into the ashen skies. It had to, in order to provide a significant barrier within a realm of so many winged creatures. Perdition’s Wall offered a challenge only those truly built for flight could manage, and even those capable of such a feat would have to evade the weapons and enchantments of the sentries at the top.

Every year, Azazel’s servants added more souls to the wall. Every year, the wall became that much more formidable. Those who came too close risked becoming impaled upon the bones, or worse yet, the horror of being drawn inside. Only the gate, built of red hot steel and obsidian, offered any safe passage.

Yet if its gates were impregnable, Azazel’s army would not have to fight to defend them.

Lorelei watched the battle from atop the shoulders of a kneeling behemoth. The rock-skinned monster kept its head down on the ground, providing its queen with a perch high enough to view the entire field over the vast spread of her hordes. Arrows, boulders, fire, and venom rained down on her army from the wall’s parapets as her army pushed against the enemy on the ground. Blood and screams erupted from the chaos. Her forces pressed their foes in a scene reminiscent of the ugliest of medieval battles, only this one involved magic and monsters.

All around the behemoth, other demons awaited orders to join the battle. Mandah and Kierrk stood with their liege, both holding to an expression of grim resolve while sharing the occasional wary glance behind the boss’s back. Lorelei, by contrast, seemed perfectly at ease.

The carnage left her indifferent. The progress of the battle did not.

“Lady Lorelei,” bellowed the voice of a giant. A winged red general bowed its head, kneeling beside the behemoth that offered her vantage point. “We make progress, but it is slow. Casualties are high, and mounting.”

“Will Azazel repel us?” she asked without concern. “I appear to have far more demons waiting to fight than I have currently committed to battle.” She stretched out her hands in a casual gesture at the horde arrayed all around them.

The general’s goat-like head rose. “Of course, mistress. You brought the
entire realm
!”

“Your point?”

“We have no strategy! No guile, no way to change the game! Once we pass through the wall, what then? If we win by sheer weight of numbers alone, we won’t have the strength to hold what we conquer. Your own realm is completely undefended, and—”

“Did the enemy foresee our assault?” she interrupted mildly. “No? There is your element of surprise.”

The general tried again, flustered despite his long experience. His mouth opened, but he stammered as his loyalties and base instincts conflicted with practical concerns.

Lorelei cut him off before he mustered another argument. “I expect loyalty from my servants. Loyalty and ferocity. You are a leader of warriors, are you not? Why do you speak to me here?” The crown heated up around her scalp as she stared at him. “Shouldn’t you
go out and fight
?”

“Y-yes,” he huffed, then reared up and snarled. “Yes, mistress!” The general let out a mighty roar and charged off into battle, knocking aside any allies in his way. Some followed in a rage. Others held back, happy to steer clear of his wrath.

“Is the ram here yet?” Lorelei asked.

Mandah took to the sky to look back the way the legion came. “They are near, mistress,” she declared. “The horde parts to make way for them now, and—beware! Tunnelers!”

Insectoid monsters burst out of the ground all around the behemoth, their mandibles and claws still occupied with rocks as they made way for much deadlier demons. Human shapes with wings and armor leapt into the air and turned straight for Lorelei. She didn’t try to make more of the attackers than that. Descriptions didn’t matter anymore.

Mandah tackled the first assassin from above before he could reach Lorelei. Kierrk moved to cover Lorelei’s back, rearing up to present claws and a fearsome shriek. Others nearby launched spears and arrows, taking down two more of the assassins while they were still in flight.

Another pair of assassins died in a blast of flame from their target’s lips. Lorelei felt the searing heat of the crown on her scalp again as fire roared from her throat. Neither assassin managed to touch her. One was completely engulfed in the flames. The other got close enough for the final lunge, but it collapsed before its blade connected.

Sharp, debilitating pain ran through her side. The blade now jammed through her hip forced her down onto one hand and knee. Lorelei caught sight of the ugly iron mask covering the lower half of her attacker’s face before the assassin had to turn to fend off Kierrk. He only needed a moment to kick the other demon away, yet it gave Lorelei time to gasp and recover.

She felt more heat from the crown than ever. More than merely not hurting, the heat drowned out the worst of the pain from her wound. Lorelei grabbed the serrated blade with one hand, heedless of its edge, and pulled it back out. She could already feel the wound mending. More pain ran through her, faint and hot and liquid, roiling from her hip to her chest and into her throat. The assassin looked to her with shock, drew two more blades—and shrieked when she spat the poison from his first blade directly into his eyes.

“Hold him,” she demanded. Mandah complied. Lorelei wasted no time on ceremony. As soon as she stood tall once more, the succubus swung the assassin’s own blade through his neck. Her servant let the headless body fall from the behemoth.

Her hip and her abdomen still hurt. Her throat was raw from the poison. The crown kept her alive, empowering her and healing her wounds, yet it didn’t make her invincible. She doubted an effort like this strained its powers to the limit, but the ordeal gave her at least some sense that such limits existed.

That gave her hope.

Mandah and Kierrk watched her recovery with interest. So did the mob of demons all around. They’d already dealt with the tunnelers. Lorelei glanced down at the holes surrounding the behemoth, then to her subjects. “The enemy has done us the favor of providing a new path,” she said, pointing to the holes. “We should not be long in repaying them for the favor.”

She didn’t need to be more explicit than that. Demons swarmed into the holes.

“They’ll have those tunnels guarded,” noted Kierrk. “Or trapped. Or both.”

“Surely,” Lorelei agreed. “Yet every point of entry they must protect dilutes their strength.”

To her right, the crowd shifted and made way. Lorelei walked down the behemoth’s shoulder and arm to meet the new arrivals. Those demons closest to her made way and knelt. The rest only bowed their heads and stayed silent. The roar of the battle at the gate still carried through the air, but now she could hear creaking wheels and the groans of the Damned.

The battering ram was wider than any railway car Lorelei had seen in the mortal world and longer than two such cars strung together. It rode in a carriage designed to swing the shaft back and forth, letting its great weight do most of the work. Chains ran the length and breadth of the ram, mostly for the sake of controlling its great mass—though some served a different purpose. Damned souls provided the ram’s primary decorations.

“Is there a point to keeping these souls chained to the ram?” Lorelei asked out loud.

No one answered.

“Do they serve a purpose?” Again, she received no answer.

Lorelei looked into the eyes of one tormented soul strapped down along the side of the ram. At first, she thought she saw no sign of activity at all, but then caught the faintest glimmer of movement. Souls lived on. Even through this.

No one had answered her questions. The engineer who’d built this instrument must now be in her service. Presumably he wasn’t within earshot. Lorelei traced out a few of the chains with her eyes, looking for a connection that might explain this cruelty.

She found none. That was to be expected. Cruelty needed no purpose here. The Damned existed to suffer. No one questioned it. Every soul came here for a reason.

“Cut them down,” Lorelei ordered. “Cut them all down.”

Shocked faces looked on as she turned away. She paid them no mind. They had a job to do. “Bring me every brute not already assigned to this ram or the fight for the gate,” she announced. “And someone locate Hank.”

Some turned promptly to obey. Most needed a moment to process what they’d seen.

* * *

The chains of the great ram dragged back and forth as it swung against the gates. No one held them. No one needed them. In every other battle, those who manned the chains became primary targets for the defenders of any gate. This time, the ram offered no such targets.

Behemoths stood to either side of the battering ram at Perdition’s gates. Their great armored bodies sheltered a handful of mystics, whose magic brought the ram back and released it again for every punishing blow. Not far from the ram, demons massed all around in anticipation of a breach, but none provided a better target than the rest. None of them played a role in the ram’s use. The mystics handled everything, while the armored bulk of the behemoths sheltered them from arrows and worse from above.

Lorelei’s tactics spared many of her warriors and servants from pain and suffering. All of them noticed the difference, from those in the thick of things to the rest still watching and waiting for their chance. Nothing she did seemed revolutionary. She only made the simplest use of the forces available to her. She sent her servants into harm’s way, accepted losses without hesitation, and punished any transgression with a swift and sure hand.

Yet they heard no false promises. Her cruelty served a purpose, unlike the casual sadism of their previous master. In the unending torment of the Pit, such distinctions inspired a fervor that mere terror and hate could not match. For the first time in untold millennia, the Iron Legion of Baal—now the Iron Legion of Lorelei—saw a chance for something better.

The great battering ram crashed into Perdition’s gates again. The horde shouted out their mistress’s name.

Lorelei stood far from the center of attention. The troops surrounding her stood far enough from the wall to draw little interest from the sentries high above. Armored demons with wicked shields stood near to provide protection, but her own enchantments of stealth and obscurity were more effective defenses than any overt deterrent. Her retinue and the horde surrounding it edged ever closer to the wall. It spikes and thorns of bone lay only a short distance away.

Her initial plan involved only the weight of numbers and brute force. She was no general, nor did she have time for elaborate strategies anyway, yet her approach had its virtues. Azazel was distracted. He could not have expected this. Once she saw the particulars, however, finer tactics came to mind. Time allowed her to understand the power of her crown. She also quickly saw what her servants had to offer.

“You really think I can do it?” Hank ventured. The great worm thought better of his question as soon as it escaped his maw. “I-I’m sorry, Lady Lorelei, I mean no disrespect or—!”

“Do you hear doubt in my voice, Hank?” She held a stern tone while talking to him. Crown or not, Lorelei’s charisma lent itself more to persuasion and seduction than inspirational talks or battlefield rallies. Still, she had her limits. Obvious devotion didn’t make Hank any more sympathetic a figure. He was, after all, a soul so damned he’d earned this new disgusting form. Lorelei knew how one could fall into the Pit, yet some tripped while others dove. “I call upon you because you are the best…
servant
suited for the job,” she said, reaching for something to call him other than a man. That label clearly no longer fit.

Steeling her nerves, Lorelei placed one hand on Hank’s moist, corpulent, revolting hide. Thankfully, the crown required no preparation or ceremony. Her will and her imagination were enough. Power and heat flowed through the great worm. An orange glow like an inner fire began to shine through his bulk from end to end. Hank grew larger and stronger.

“You are a juggernaut, Hank. Do this, and your name will become a legend in Hell.”

Hank trembled under her touch. His flesh scrunched up until he let out a tremendous roar. Demons gathered near his mouth scattered out of the way to avoid the horrid acidic spittle that flew everywhere. That reaction saved them from being crushed when Hank launched himself out of the crowd in a wild charge for the wall, shouting Lorelei’s name.

“You,” she said, pointing to an unnaturally handsome, well-built and bare-chested man with demon’s wings and horns. “Come here.”

The incubus stepped forward with a grin, happy to finally be noticed. He carried a blade and shield and wore some bits of armor, but clearly none of it was meant to interfere with his sex appeal. “How may I serve, mistress?” he asked.

Lorelei wiped the slime from her hand across his chest without looking at him. She had her eyes on Hank. “That is all,” she said absently.