Demon Squad 6 The Best of Enemies (2 page)

“Yes. Well, no, not exactly,” she said. “Maybe.”

For a second, I thought the wormy little translator embedded under my skin had shriveled up and died, so I tapped my arm to get it working, not that I really needed it; she spoke perfect English thanks to her own translator. I realized then I could understand the words Rala was speaking, she just wasn’t making any sense.

“What are you rambling on about?”

She quickened her pace.

“I think I might have, uh…summoned something.”

The words brought me to a halt. “Wait? You
might
have?”

Rala shook her head and let out a sigh, but didn’t stop walking. I hurried to catch up.

“Well, I’m not—” she started, and then waved the rest of the sentence off. “Forget it. Come and see for yourself.”

She kept on, winding her way through the labyrinthine passages of Lucifer’s old quarters—I doubted I’d ever really imagine them as mine regardless who held the deed—until she slipped through the archway that led to the God-proof room. A flicker of angst needled me as I followed her inside.

The first thing I did when I returned to Hell was have the dread fiends clean up what was left of the alien Mihheer. Buckets and buckets of the guy were slopped out and dumped into a fiery pit. The alien didn’t smell much better dead than he did alive, let alone charred. I felt sorry for cannibals on his world, having to put up with such stink, but then again, they probably didn’t leave their victims sitting around rotting for weeks at a time.

Once all the ooze was cleaned up, and the fiends had farted the place into a semblance of less funky, I’d rearranged the chamber to seal off the section where Longinus had put the screws to Mihheer and created a room for Rala to work at translating the book Lucifer had mailed home. I still had no clue what the stupid thing was, but it nagged at me, even in my dreams. It was almost as if the thing had wanted me to figure out what it was. Simply because I though Lucifer would shit his pants if I did, I kept at it.

Now, Rala might well have done exactly that. The base of my neck tingled with eerie excitement.

We turned the corner as something slammed into the closed door of the small room. It sounded like a King Kong sized poop; a muddy slap. Rala hesitated a few feet from the door, and made me step around her to get closer. That should have been the first clue that I didn’t want to see what was on the other side. I did anyway, leaning in close and peering through the tiny window I’d had the fiends install so I could watch Rala’s progress without interrupting her.

A fuzzy shadow obscured my vision, weird colors blurring past, and then it was gone. The room appeared then, looking no worse for wear than it had before. But that was when I felt
it
.

Soft, like a feather brushing across skin, there was an energy emanating from the room. There weren’t any of the blunt swells of active magic. It was more the crackling feeling of a dimensional rift, the distant merger of two realities. My eyes were drawn to an emerald green circle, which floated in the center of the room. It was no bigger than a softball, but there was no mistaking the wisps of frantic energy whirling in its depths. It was, without a doubt, a portal to another world. Which one, however, was the question that popped to mind, but it nagged at the back of my mind as though I should recognize it. I didn’t though.

“It’s like a slimy glory hole,” I said as I tore my eyes from it, letting them wander the room, searching for the little critter.

“Glory hole?” Rala asked at my back.

“Guess they don’t have those where you come from, huh?” I chuckled. There was no need to corrupt the youth of an alien civilization. I wasn’t
that
much of a rebel. “Never mind.” A patchy shadow flitted into view, circling below the portal for a moment before it settled. My eyes lighted on it.

About the size of a medium pizza, the strange creature looked as if it were a cross between a spider and a mutant cockroach. It had somewhere near thirty legs jutting out from beneath a hairy carapace, which squirmed with dark tendrils like thick worms. Four milky eyeballs sprouted from what I presumed was its face, tiny black dots in each swimming a different direction and never seeming to land on the same spot. Jagged pincers
clacked
below. Its back end raised and lowered, almost mechanically, like a lowrider with a short in its hydraulics. The damn thing was ugly, but it looked about as threatening as a Chihuahua.

“That’s what chased you off?” I pressed my finger against the glass as I turned to look at Rala. “Seriously? You can turn into a dragon.”

She shrugged. “Wyvern, and I don’t remember squishing bugs being part of my job. ‘Translate the damn book, shorty,’ you said, and I quote.”

Just my luck I’d stumbled across the only alien with a photographic memory
and
a bad attitude. Teenagers are obviously the same everywhere. I raised my hands in surrender.

“Fine, I’ll take care of it.”

The critter still sat beneath the portal when I popped the door open and slipped inside, sealing the place before the thing had a chance to get out. The second I was in the room, all four eyes drew together on me. It let out a cute little
squee
and charged, legs skittering across the floor. My hand went instinctively to my hip before I remembered I didn’t have my guns on me. Hadn’t since I’d come to Hell, but reaching for them was a hard habit to break. They’d been a part of me for a very long time.

The thing closed as my brain clicked into gear, and I smiled as my power welled up. Unlike a gun, magic is all about imagination.

Before the little monster could get close enough to put its pincers to use, I summoned a giant, medieval flyswatter and brought it down on top of the thing. Spikes of energy ripped into it before the full force of the spell slammed down. There was a brittle
pop
and gooey, yellow-green juices squished out from beneath the swatter. The thing squirmed for a second or two before going limp, bubbles of pus seeping loose as I released my magic. There was a quiet hiss, and then silence.

The door creaked open at my back, and I heard Rala’s footsteps as she came over to stand alongside me.

“That’s…disturbing,” she muttered as the spider-thing goop slowly spread across the stone floor.

Before I could agree, a subtle glimmer drew my gaze to the portal. It pulsed, glowing brighter and then fading, beating its last as though it were a dying heart. Then it disappeared altogether, its tingling presence gone in an instant.

“Can you bring it back?”

Rala shrugged. “I’m not even sure what I did to make it open in the first place.” She stared at the place where the portal had been and rubbed at her temples. “Besides, I don’t think this place is helping.”

Not sure what she meant, I motioned for her to go on.

“I don’t know how to describe it, but I could feel the energy building, but it was awkward, slow…like walking through
dragsand
.”

“Quicksand?”

A quiet sigh slipped loose, her eyes drifting in their sockets as she searched for the right word. “A swamp,” she said after a moment.

While the translators were great for allowing us to understand each other, they weren’t very good when it came to cultural differences, and there were a bunch of those. I often found myself yelling like that would make what I said easier to understand.

Regardless, though, I knew what she was getting at. I glanced around the room and nodded. The main reason I’d set her up in there was to ensure no one got a whiff of what we were doing with the book. Not knowing what we were getting into, I didn’t want DRAC or Heaven to come sniffing around, but by putting her up in the God-proof room, I was likely limiting any success she might have. The fact that she’d been able to do anything at all with it, even there, was a good sign. I glanced back at the door and wondered if she’d have more luck somewhere else in Hell when a thought hit me.

Why bother?

“You up for a road trip?”

Rala looked at me, nothing remotely resembling excitement plastered across her face.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” I told her, putting a hand on her shoulder and spinning her around so she faced the door, not giving her the option of saying no. “Pack the book and tell old Vol you’re stepping out. I’ll meet you back here in twenty minutes.”

I left her there while I went off to collect my own things. Cooped up for two months with nothing but dread fiends, a disembodied zombie on a Stryper kick, and two aliens to keep me company, it was time to stretch my legs.

Besides, the coffee in Hell sucks.

Two

Thirty minutes later, Rala and I were up on Earth, Chatterbox in tow inside a modified picnic basket that the alien had slung over her forearm, his eyes peeping out of the open lid.

“And you complained about Desboren?”

I shifted my gaze Rala’s direction but couldn’t find it in me to argue. She was right. The city of Desboren was a slum hidden away on the alien planet of Feluris, far, far away in a universe torn to shit by God’s inter-dimensional war. A quick survey of Old Town, from where we’d popped out of a local gate, made me wonder if I’d plugged in the wrong coordinates and had sent us back there.

Chatterbox hummed the funeral march, dragging out the notes as his eyeball maggots swished back and forth in slow motion sync.

“Shhh,” I told him, drifting forward to look past the edge of the alley we’d arrived in. The view wasn’t any better from there.

Never much of a tourist destination—outside of folks looking to hide out or do something that was illegal pretty much everywhere else—Old Town still had a charm all its own. Key word being
had
. While it’d only been a few months since I’d been here last, shit had changed; a lot.

From where I stood, I could see scorch marks on several of the taller buildings. Pieces of brick and stone littered the sidewalks, wounds of obliterated urban landmarks. Cracks spider-webbed the cement and potholes dotted the streets. Some were deep enough to swallow a Great Dane whole. The streetlights, what few still functioned, flickered and lit the evening scene with a sickly yellow pallor.

Despite it all, Old Town had always been a party destination for the disenfranchised. There were people out on the streets, flitting between the bars and strip joints that populated the neighborhood, but there was little sense of excitement. Maybe I’d been too caught up in the good times to notice it had always been like that, but it didn’t feel right. It was like the people of Old Town were going through the motions. I hadn’t seen the area so subdued since Baalth nuked the damn place.

Chatterbox harrumphed. Even he sounded disappointed at what he saw.

“You dragged me out of Hell for this?” Rala shook her head. “Even Vol can see this place sucks.”

I muffled a chuckle against my sleeve and waved at her to be quiet. As I glanced back toward the street, I spied something that had slipped my notice before.

A man hovered near the entrance to one of the strip clubs. Dressed in dark clothes, a beanie on his head, he stood rigid, his eyes scanning the crowd. At first I thought he was one of the bouncers, but the second I saw the strap hanging across his shoulder I knew better. He was toting an AK-47, which seemed a bit extreme for club security even in Old Town.

“You sure know how to show—”

That was all Rala got out before I summoned a mystical finger and pressed it against her lips. Her eyes went wide, but she shut up. I jabbed two fingers at my eyes with my other hand, and then pointed at the man carrying the rifle. Her gaze followed, and understanding washed across her face.

“Looks like there’s a bunch of them,” I whispered, pointing out several more men dressed exactly the same, who lurked near the edge of the crowd, each with their own rifle. I counted ten before I gave up. I didn’t really feel like taking my boots off. Besides, my brain was throbbing.

“
Commmmmiiieeessss,
” Chatterbox whispered with conviction.

“Uh, sure, buddy.”

While I couldn’t entertain CB’s Cold War insanity, it really didn’t matter who the men were. All that mattered was the fact that they were walking the streets of Old Town with automatic weapons right out there in the open. As lawless as the place had been before, that kind of shit had been kept to the shadows. Texas might be lenient on its gun laws, but it’s never been
that
lenient. Even Baalth didn’t have obvious soldiers out on the street when he ran the place. And given their choice of weaponry, the men clearly weren’t cops,

Something had happened while I was off planet, but I didn’t feel like chatting up the gunmen to find out, at least not with Rala and CB along for the ride. I needed to get the book someplace safe before I started a fight and drew attention to myself. It was almost a guarantee that Rachelle would spot my energy signature the minute I started flinging magic around. I’d have to face DRAC sooner or later, but my preference was definitely later. Rala was too close to figuring things out with Lucifer’s little
gift
. If Rahim wanted to bitch at me, he could do it tomorrow as well as he could today.

I motioned for Rala to follow me as I slipped deeper into the alley. Baalth had tons of hidey holes scattered about Old Town on top of his more well-known ones. We just needed to find one that was still secure and away from Fiesta Street where the majority of the nightlife congregated.

As we made our way through the rough and tumble streets of Baalth’s old territory, it was clear there’d been some sort of military action in the area. I hadn’t heard anything about it, but I guess wouldn’t in Hell. It’s not like we get great TV reception.

A number of buildings had been toppled. Charred rubble covered the roads and black soot filled the crevices where more flammable substances had fed the fires that darkened the wreckage. Bullet holes graffitied the walls. I didn’t see any bodies along the way, but to be honest, I didn’t look very hard. We might as well have been walking through Beirut for all the collateral damage. Armed men prowled everywhere.