Damnation's Door: A Cursed Book (4 page)

Chapter 4

Seeing it was worse.

I was barely listening to what the shaky voiced reporter was rushing to say. She was going on about the U.S. government telling everyone in the northern states to make their way south to avoid the massive forest fires stretching from Washington to Iowa. There was also something about Mexican officials willing to open the border for refugees if the American government began erasing some of its debts.

All I could focus on was the images on the screen, the aerial shots of a giant red blaze snaking over mountains and blackening the earth. The next image was of a bridge packed with cars, their owners carrying half closed suitcases and crying children toward wary eyed border guards.

What stuck with me the most was the strung together clips of blood stained streets, demons scampering after fleeing humans, wild monsters smashing through cars and windows to get their victims, thick black clouds that spiraled and drilled into the mouths of anyone unfortunate to be close to them...

I shivered, nearly glad about our split second decision to come to Ciudad Juárez. The States were being completely overrun by demons. The NSA was cautioning everyone to arm himself or herself and stay in their homes. Military units were swamped and doing their best to eradicate the monsters. Hospitals were overcrowded and shutting down because they were perfect targets for hungry demons that wanted easy prey.

“Have you heard from the other demon slayers?” I caught Max’s whisper to Warrick at my back.

Warrick’s sigh was heavy. “No. They’re blocking my calls. Even Jackson.”

All of the other demon slayers Warrick used to work with were assholes, but Jackson was a genuinely good man. He was Warrick’s friend, and if he wasn’t answering his calls, then I had to assume it was because he was either swamped with the chaos we had brought to the States, or he was dead.

I hoped it was the former.

I wondered, not for the first time, if this would have happened if we hadn’t closed the Heaven Gate. After Dro’s blood was used in a ritual to open both Gates to the other worlds, Lucifer’s plan had been to invade Heaven and bring sinners into it, corrupting every soul inside. Alternatively, Heaven’s plan had been to descend to earth and restructure Hell to relieve it of the worst sinners, while simultaneously blocking out anyone else who made mistakes in their life and condemned themselves.

Dro and I destroyed the Heaven Gate by burning paradise on earth. We had locked the Gate and banished the angels on earth to live in their mortal vessels. Their wings and powers were stripped, only the most powerful beings like Dro and the archangels preserving some of their abilities. But those abilities were starting to wane, and it wouldn’t be long before they were totally gone.

However, if we hadn’t closed the Heaven Gate, humans would be caught in a supernatural war that would end in millions, maybe billions, of deaths. As it stood now, when anyone with a decent soul died, angel or human, they could ascend to Heaven through Saint Peter’s Gates. I’d been told that it didn’t hold the majesty of the Heaven where angels had lived, but it was better than nothing.

Maybe if I tell myself that enough, I’ll actually start believing it
.

Just as my thought finished, the television and the lights snapped off. We’d closed the blinds in the house to keep prying eyes away, so now we were stuck in complete darkness. My hand immediately went to my hip, my fingers curling around my hatchet.

Aside from Max’s muttered cursing in the dark, we couldn’t hear a thing. He and Warrick left the room to see if a fuse had blown. I sat up and drifted toward the window. The curtain was dark, but shards of daylight were starting to break through. I pressed my back against the wall and slowly moved the curtain.

The street was isolated, except for the trio of electricians in grey jumpsuits who were smashing a power box with crowbars. It didn’t look safe for them, but I wasn’t going to stomp out and scold them. Instead, I curled my hand around my hatchet and ran my thumb up and down its hilt. The blade was silver and the handle was wrapped with black leather. Engraved on the handle were the words ‘
Anima potentis, cor sororis,’
which meant ‘Soul of a warrior, heart of a sister,’ in Latin. Sephiel made me this weapon after I lost my father’s hatchet in a cave-in. He’d also blessed it with his angelic powers, making it even more deadly to demons. Now that he was human, I wasn’t sure if the blessing still held. But it killed demons just fine.

The three moronic delinquents became bored with the electric box and decided to run down the left side of the street. I watched them carefully, waiting to see if they would return, or if anyone else would slink out of their houses to assess the damage. When nobody did, my eyes drifted up to catch a glimpse of downtown Juárez.

When we first arrived here, it was in worse condition than I remembered. I was familiar with a muggy, dirty city that smelled like gasoline and salt. Streets that were tightly packed with stone buildings and shops, some of them coated with paint that chipped and faded over the years. Most of the homes were shacks with rusted tin roofs and stucco walls. Smart owners put iron bars over their windows, and cheaper owners left them open and vulnerable.

I recalled shouting vendors, honking horns from cars that belonged in the sixties, and disinterested bystanders walking briskly. I remembered being one of the hungry, homeless girls hiding at night, when the ground was coldest and the gunshots were loudest.

Now it was different. The moment we stepped over the city limits, I saw all that had changed from bad to worse. The sides of the houses had gouges and claw marks scratched along them. Broken glass littered the streets with no one around to pick it up. Gang graffiti painted the worn down shops, some of them missing the padlocks on the doors. Piles of burning tires and barrels sat on every street corner, tinting the streets in dull orange light and making the air smell like scorched rubber and taste like smoke. Fresh, glistening bloodstains covered old ones every hundred feet, some of them no bigger than quarters, some of them the size of tables.

All the people I’d seen were wearing the same ratty clothes they’d worn before, but they carried themselves differently. Before, it was easy to pick out who was cautious, who was in a gang, and who was scared. Now people seemed to have stopped caring. They were citizens in a city of anarchy. I’d watched from the distance as a group of laughing men with knives chased after a woman wearing shredded clothes. Two shadows behind a curtain in an apartment had moved together in violent passion. A trio of little boys had sat in an alley, dipping their fingers in a red smear on the pavement and using it to paint on a store wall. Choking smoke layered the already pitch black sky. Pockets of street were glowing red from the fires underneath them while the rest were dark.

I was amazed at how Ciudad Juárez hadn’t just deteriorated. It was destroyed. Even if we closed the Hell Gate, it would take decades to repair the damage. Assuming it ever was. The easier route would be to demolish everything left standing and build over the bad memories.

In the course of the three weeks we’d been here, we’d seen some pretty terrible things as we moved from street to street, block to block. Atrocities I hadn’t seen since I’d been with the Blood Thorns, doing exactly what they were doing, but getting paid for it.

Finding out that the
Espanis de Sangre
were running the city with the demons wasn’t hard. They’d never been a gang to hide in the shadows. They liked being loud, upfront, and memorable in their murders. That had been one of Emilio Rocha’s staples, after all:

Make them remember you.

I suppressed the shiver that had been building under my skin. Every memory I had of Emilio ended in fear and pain. Similar ones were attached to his son, Mateo. The depths of his betrayal tainted any trace of happiness and love I felt for him.

But damned if I didn’t stick to Emilio’s rule. Even now, when I stalked the alleys and looked for information, I grabbed any unsuspecting Blood Thorn I could and punched him for answers. I was good at my work, and everyone knew me. I’d been the only female enforcer for Emilio’s gang, and I had earned my reputation.

I also got the answers I wanted. I assumed it wouldn’t be long before Mateo found out where I was. We had the kind of relationship that would end with only one of us still breathing. Only three days after we arrived did we start to hear about the mass murders.

No, ‘mass murder’ were the wrong words. ‘All out slaughter’ fit better.

We came across the site by mistake. We’d heard the gunshots and seen the flames tearing up the night, and thought it had been a demon attack.

Until we saw all the humans tearing into each other.

At first I thought they had been possessed. That was rational, after all. Possessors loved butchering people. But when I had squinted from around the corner, I didn’t see the trademark black eyes that came with possession. They were completely human, and completely insane.

People of every age and gender, fuelled by carnal rage and bloodlust, raised crude weapons against each other. Kitchen knives held by housewives were painted crimson when they were yanked from the bodies of dying victims. Crowbars and lead pipes smashed into skulls, pulping brain and bone. A doctor pummeled the life from a construction worker. There were some Blood Thorns that strangled unprotected necks, gouged out eyes, gutted bellies with knives. Even now, I could smell the blood that had been painting the brick walls and sandy streets. No matter how long ago it was, you never forget the smell of death. It haunts you just as surely as the sights of butchery do. 

But the worst part had been the smiles. Everyone, whether they were a victim or a killer, had been smiling. Wide, Cheshire smiles with mouths full of blood and broken teeth. The smiles of lunatics and psychopaths.

I hadn’t understood what it was until we had left the street. We had all been sickened by what we saw, but I was reasoning it out. I was thinking about the street, the buildings surrounding it.

The slaughter hadn’t been random. It had been a message.

A message for me.

I wasn’t sure how, but I knew Mateo was trying to tell me that he knew I was here, that he was going to find me and make his move soon. He was going to tear me apart the same way those people had torn themselves apart.

The attacks kept happening. Every few days, there would be one pocket of the city that would explode into violence and sin on a level I never thought possible. I caught the pattern soon after– every slaughter site had been a place where I’d been on a run for the Blood Thorns.

If that wasn’t a memorable message, I didn’t know what was.

Another knot tied in my stomach. Suddenly I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself.

“Seph,” I asked the ex-angel. He was standing across from me on the other side of the curtain, watching the opposite end of the street. “These killings, the major ones... Do you think Lucifer is behind them rather than Mateo?”

Sephiel went very still. Talking about Lucifer always made him tense, and I had to remind myself not to push him. He was human now, and his emotions weren’t so tightly reined anymore. A single snap in battle could get him killed.

“It is likely they are working in collaboration,” he finally said. “Perhaps Lucifer is feeding Mateo Rocha’s thirst for vengeance, and your former lover is constructing the circumstances for the slaughter. His men are nearly always there, are they not?”

“Yeah,” I replied, gripping my hatchet tighter as I thought about the bloodstains that would never wash out of cracks in brick and pavement. “They were. But I don’t like how they’re dragging this out. Something isn’t right.”

“I agree with you,” Sephiel commented. He turned his eyes from the street to me. “I do not know how I can be of more help.”

I glanced at him. Sephiel was looking tired, rumpled, and a little too human. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for him to live nearly an eternity as an angel, only to be reduced to a slower, less divine human. He never complained about anything, so I had no idea how he was handling the situation. He had to miss being able to help us the way he used to.