Infernal Father of Mine (18 page)

"The modulus," I said, walking over to it.
"Arch operators use it to activate the Obsidian Arch."

"I wonder if it's operational." David examined
the orb. "Do you know how to work it?"

"I've used one before," I said. I approached
the orb, and held a hand over it. A faint glow emanated from the
surface, and the modulus rose from the pedestal. The stars on the
map, each one indicating the location of an Obsidian Arch glowed
faintly. Spinning the orb highlighted each star in turn. I selected
the arch in the La Casona way station, located in Bogota Colombia,
and flicked the modulus with a finger. The star pulsed in time with
the star in the Grotto way station, indicating it was awaiting
confirmation from La Casona. I highly doubted anyone was there to
confirm unless the arches miraculously led back to the real
world.

"Interesting," David said. "What
now?"

I thought hard for a moment, fighting the haze
in my mind, and remembered what a helpful arch operator had once
told me. "If I place my palm on the modulus and raise it, it'll
force the connection."

"I wonder what would happen," he
said.

A nervous knot formed in my stomach. "No
telling. Maybe nothing."

"Only one way to find out."

I nodded, put my palm on the modulus, and
raised my hand. A klaxon sounded in the main way station chamber. I
heard a deep rumbling hum and felt a rush of excitement. "It might
be working." As if in answer, a thin beam of light arched between
the selected stars on the map, forming a shimmering
tunnel.

"Let's take a look."

We walked into the main chamber and saw a
ghostly gray flickering in the center of the towering Obsidian
Arch. An image of the destination way station formed in the
portal—that of a large industrial warehouse since the La Casona
arch wasn't underground like this one.

"Think it's safe to use?" my father
asked.

I scrunched my forehead. "It looks like it, but
what's the point if it only takes us to another location inside the
Gloom?" I looked at fake Elyssa and considered sending her through,
but decided it would be better to keep her around for protection
should the need arise.

David folded his arms across his chest. "True."
A sigh. "I guess all the smaller arches work the same
way."

"Yeah, most likely." I couldn't deny I'd held
some small hope of a miracle connection to the mortal realm. There
were two different types of the smaller black arches. One version
required the traveler to press corresponding numbered buttons on
the world map. I called the other kind omniarches since they could
open a portal anywhere without a destination arch. As far as I knew
they wouldn't take a person to another dimension or realm, though
I'd encountered some strange anomalies with them and accidentally
ended up in places that most definitely weren't in Eden. Those
arches required the user to magically close the silver circle
around them and form a crystal clear image of the desired
destination. Risking travel through one in the Gloom didn't appeal
to me.

I explained the workings of the omniarches to
my father. "Shelton, Adam, and I once accidentally created some
kind of feedback loop by opening two omniarch portals next to each
other. It sent us all over the place, including what looked like
another realm." I remembered the strange siren beings singing an
arch into creation. "But we could end up killing ourselves trying
that experiment."

"You should test the omniarches anyway," he
suggested. "Maybe we'll get lucky."

I grimaced. "Or end up trapped in some hellhole
for eternity."

He chuckled. "I think this place qualifies
already."

We went back inside the control room. I
deactivated the Obsidian Arch so the klaxon would stop blaring. My
stomach rumbled. "I think I'm getting the munchies." The pain in my
back flared like hot metal pressed against my flesh. "I might need
another painkiller too."

"We'll need to be careful with those. I want
you ready to go if a Gloom fracture opens."

"I agree."

"Let's eat, and then we'll test the
omniarches."

We went back into the main chamber and raided
our satchel of provisions. I was so famished, the pasty granola
bars tasted like heaven. I looked around for my clone of Elyssa and
found a puddle of goop where I'd left her standing. "Oh,
no."

"Can you remake her?"

I imagined her rising from the puddle and
reforming. Nothing happened. After a few minutes, I gave up. "I
don't understand why I can't do it now."

"The painkillers must have put you into a
trancelike doze," David said. "It probably allowed you to use that
lucid dream state to imagine her into being."

I nodded and winced as the skin on my back
stretched with the movement. "I guess I can try it again after I
take another pill."

My father finished off a bag of potato chips
and sat cross-legged, eyes closed for a long moment. I almost asked
him what he was doing, but figured he needed sleep as much as I
did. As the food settled in my stomach, weariness crept into my
muscles. It had been a long, trying day. We hadn't slept for
probably close to twenty-four hours. I might be able to go into a
dreamlike trance without any drugs.

I heard a clicking noise and looked up in time
to see Gloria Richardson and her rider, Timothy, enter the circle
of light. He raised a gun and aimed it at me.

"Let's finish this," the vampire
said.

"Yes, let's," said David. He looked up with an
evil leer on his face. A horrific screeching noise sounded from the
darkness.

Timothy's eyes went wide. He looked around
frantically. Something with more legs than I could count blurred
into the light, tearing Timothy from his perch. The raptor went
still as a statue as the vampire lost his concentration.

The creature on top of him looked like a huge
spider, albeit with a lot more legs, and bristling with spiky black
hair. Gunfire erupted, the muzzle flashing between the vampire and
the spider thing. The bullets had no effect on the
creature.

David rose, his face clouding with anger. "I've
had enough of you, vampire."

"Please let me go," Timothy wheezed. "I'll
leave you alone."

"Yes, you'll leave us alone," my father said
with a sneer.

The spider monster opened jagged pincers and,
with a savage chomp, took off the vampire's head.

Blood spurted from the neck of the decapitated
vampire. I cried out in surprise, flinched away, and groaned in
pain as agony seared my back. The world faded for a moment and I
felt faint. I looked away from the gore, breathing heavily. "You
killed him."

"He was a nuisance," David said.

I looked up at my father and found a cold
expression on his face. "We could have tied him up or knocked him
out. Hell, we could have tossed the vampire through the
arch."

My father touched a hand to his chin. "I didn't
think of using him as our lab rat." He shrugged. "Oh well, the
bastard deserved it."

I heard a scuttling noise, and looked over to
see the spider thing dragging the corpse into the darkness, thick
black blood trailing behind it.

"What is that thing?"

"One of the lower spawn of Haedaemos—a
crawler." He booted Timothy's head into the darkness. It made a
meaty sound as it rolled away. "The demon name for them is a bit
harder to pronounce with a human tongue."

I tried not to think about how casually he'd
kicked Timothy's head like a moldy head of lettuce.
"Haedaemos?"

"It's what Daemos call the motherland." He
placed a hand over his heart in a mocking salute. "The demon
realm."

"Every time you speak of the demon realm you
say 'we' or 'our' as if you're not part of the mortal
realm."

"Because I'm not." He regarded the still form
of Gloria Richardson as the raptor began to melt away. David took a
seat across from me. "I said earlier you deserved some of the
truth, even if you're not ready for it."

"Then tell me." I looked around the room. "We
have plenty of time without Timothy chasing us down."

"I have…a problem. A serious condition." He
took out a massive jar of cheesy poofs and flipped off the lid. He
removed one of the orange balls into and gazed at it adoringly
before tossing it into his mouth and crunching it. "I am addicted
to cheesy poofs."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't deflect. Tell
me."

He popped a couple more into his mouth, closing
his eyes and moaning as they crunched. "I was not born in the
mortal realm. I wasn't even born as demon spawn—as Daemos."
Gripping a bottled water, he took a long drink and wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand. "Our king—I guess that's the human
equivalent—saw the Seraphim invasion of the mortal realm as a
threat to him. Since we can't exist for long in the mortal realm
without a corporeal body, he sent agents to possess humans so they
could fight the Seraphim and drive them from the world."

"You're one of those agents?"

He shook his head. "Possession drives the human
host insane after too long, at least in most cases. Even though the
demons were chosen for their loyalty to the king, there were those
who couldn't resist the temptation to do their own thing and wreak
havoc in the general population."

"Guess I know where the Bible got its stories,"
I said.

My father made a noise like someone hawking up
broken teeth.

"What in the world was that?"

"That's how you pronounce the king's
name."

"Does he have an easier name in the mortal
realm?"

My father thought about it for a moment. "I
know one of his favorite names is Baal. He always got a kick out of
creating fake religions."

"The name sounds familiar."

His lips tightened. "He also happens to be my
father."

"Whoa."

David shrugged. "Let's just say the king of
demons isn't the best father figure to have."

"I don't get it. If you're a demon, how haven't
you driven your host insane?"

"Because I am not possessing this body." He
massaged his temples with his fingers. "The greatest minds could
not solve the problem of keeping a demon in the mortal world
without a body. They finally realized only the permanent melding of
human and demon would work."

I felt my forehead wrinkle. "Like fusing the
souls together?"

David tossed a handful of cheesy poofs in the
air and caught most of them in his mouth. "Something like that.
They had to find a human soul and demon that were perfectly
compatible. This meant the demon and human parts would need to be
congruent, otherwise one would fall out of alignment and the human
would go crazy."

"Sounds impossible."

"It very nearly was, and the tests took
decades."

I cringed. "That was a long time while Seraphim
were tearing up the world."

He nodded. "Hundreds of humans volunteered for
the test, desperate to save their world from the Seraphim. Many
were training to be Arcanes. I possessed several candidates without
success. When I reached a young shepherd, I felt this very odd
sense of wellbeing I hadn't felt in the others."

"You just naturally clicked."

He nodded. "Yeah. The man cried. I felt his
emotions, all a jumble. He was happy because he knew the fit was
perfect. He was sad because he knew he'd have to leave his wife and
family behind. He knew he would seed a whole new race of
beings."

"By having sex with humans?"

He nodded. "Truth be told, he was actually kind
of excited about all the sex."

"I'll bet." I pursed my lips. "So is this other
man still inside you?"

He waggled his hand in a so-so gesture. "We
absorbed each other. Our original entities expanded into a new
being. We were the first true demon spawn to walk the
earth."

"So you're not the same dude who started this
joy ride?"

David shook his head. "While we have some
memories of our original lives, there is no division. We are now
'I'."

"Well, it still confuses the hell out of me." I
grabbed another granola bar and chewed on it. "Was dear old dad
proud of you?"

My father burst into laughter. "He was
horrified. He said that our very existence now relies on the
weakest among us."

"What a bastard."

David shrugged. "He referred to me as the
Prince of Weaklings."

I grimaced. "Baal is the king of
asshats."

He chuckled.

Another question occurred to me. "Why possess
humans when you can possess Seraphim?"

He wiped orange cheese dust from his hands. "We
tried that. They're just too powerful spiritually. Other Seraphim
know when one of their kind has been spiritually compromised. It's
like they can smell the demon presence."