Devil Ash Disarray (Devil Ash Saga Book 3) (46 page)

The servants ended up setting Killian’s stretcher down on the bare table, then shuffled away to take care of business elsewhere. He lay there, surrounded by the others, content for the moment.

Ash shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Killian’s head was only feet away from him.
He felt her soul power from all the way out in the hall
?
That’s some talent. One more thing I could learn.
Ash avoided staring into the man’s eyes.

“Yeah, that was me,” Shiva said. She blushed from her brother’s compliment. Ash felt a little sicker again.

“Hey, human,” Prince Killian said. He was staring straight at Ash. “You’re as good as dead, you know. One way or another, time is running out on you.” He said this with a smile, the look of someone who’d just departed a little good news on one of his pals.

Ash grinned softly, mustering a little fervor. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“Me too!” Aura said, lifting a supportive fist.

“I know, why don’t you beg me for protection?” Killian smiled wide at the thought. “Yes, get down on your knees and gravel at my feet! That is, when I can stand on them again. Which will be very soon. Your best bet, if you want to make it out of this whole thing alive, is to gravel for mercy at my feet! Then go find a corner somewhere to cower in!”

The demented, disabled Prince laughed at his own suggestion while Shiva gawked, speechless. Where was her protection now? Ash wondered. Stryd looked pleased, no surprise there. Ash wanted to say something back, something reassuring or wise. Something
positive.

Instead he sat in silence with the rest of them. They sat like that, Prince Killian still grinning to himself, until the doors swung open once again and the Royal Advisor finally walked in.

Goddard had changed clothes, back to his formal attire. A black suit, accented in crimson. His glasses, repaired and attached to his face once more. His long, silvery hair tied back, a surprisingly fashionable look for the man. Though he must have been tired, the man showed no signs of it on his determined face.

“Glad to see you’re all here,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

The Royal Advisor pulled a rolled-up newspaper out of his back pocket. Flattening it slightly, he held the paper high for all to see. The headline read:

Satan Family Curse Strikes Again!

King Alfred Satan Abducted By Demon Prince Otozek!

“You don’t need to read it to know it’s not good,” Goddard said, dropping the paper on the table by Killian’s head. “I’ll summarize. The Noble’s multiple sources have, of course, filled them in on every detail of the King’s untimely abduction yesterday. It’s all out in the open now, and the people are going to start demanding some action. There will be, as usual, those that say
now
is the time to abandon our ‘primitive’ monarchy.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Ash said. “You could run for President, Goddard. Sounds good, right?
President von Gosick
.”

“Get serious,” Goddard replied. “No one would vote for me. Not right now. I’m the Royal Advisor that
lost
the King to a handful of demons. I
cannot
let that become my legacy.”

Shiva lifted her head. “None of us can.”

“Then we’ll just have to fight back,” said Killian, matter-of-factly.

“Before we can discuss our plans to retrieve the King, we must deal with the citizens,” Goddard said. “Our plans will mean nothing if we don’t have the support of the people.”

“What’s this bit about a family curse?” Ash asked. His eyes were focused on the bold newspaper headline.

Shiva groaned, while Killian chuckled softly. Goddard looked mildly annoyed.

“The Satan family curse…” The Royal Advisor turned his eyes to the Satan siblings around him. “There are those who believe the Satan bloodline to be cursed. I’ve heard some say that God may have decided to punish those in Lucifer’s lineage after he banished the rebel angel. After Lucifer’s rebellion, members of the family always seem to meet a most gruesome fate. There are only a handful of Satans that actually made it to the retirement years.”

“Its nonsense, really,” Shiva chimed in. “The Satan bloodline is
also
known for our strength, determination, and all-around ass-kickery!”

“I find myself agreeing with my sister for once.” Prince Killian looked bored, lying there on the table. He hadn’t moved an inch, except for his eyes. Occasionally his mouth.

Goddard looked like he remembered something. “Come to think of it, wasn’t the curse the reason for your father’s…” The Royal Advisor paused trying to choose his next words wisely. “
Gentle nature
?”

The Prince scoffed. “It’s no secret. You can say it. We all know father has never been a fighter. If he had any fighting power whatsoever, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. With a stronger, more competent and capable father by my side, we could have easily defeated that demon prince.”

“Perhaps,” Goddard said. “But getting back to the curse. That was definitely the rumor I heard as to why he never came around to entering battle.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.” Killian was done talking about the matter. “I don’t believe in the curse myself. I know I will never be killed by a demon. Not when they’re all so far below me.”

“That’s right!” Shiva looked desperate to agree with her brother some more. “This is brand new generation of Satan! The strongest yet!”

“What if…” Everyone’s heads craned to get a look at a voice that hadn’t spoken in a while. They all turned to look at the death toucher in the room. “…the curse is still affecting the Satan bloodline, its just working in different ways now?”

Goddard humored the boy’s hypothetical. “I’ll assume you have an example to back up that theory?”

“Do we
really
need to hear this?” Shiva asked. Her disapproval was written on her face.

Goddard paid the girl no mind though. “Go on.”

Aura continued. “I read that the Satan family tree used to be pretty thick, what with all the cousins and distant relatives. I know most of them married into other families, eventually watering themselves down into the lovely “Nobles” we have today. But the main family,” he gestured to the Prince and Princess, “these guys. In the span of just a few generations, the Satan head family numbers have dwindled to what you see before you.”

Goddard’s eyes lit up with understanding. “The curse has other methods of erasing the Satan bloodline, such as
infertility
, which has plagued the family for decades. There’s also a substantial amount of recorded incidents involving unusual demises suffered by anyone that
weds
a Satan.”

I guess Phoenix was even braver than I thought
, Ash found himself thinking.

“Enough about the curse!” Shiva said, throwing her arms up. Ash could see it was really starting to get to her, even though she was trying to act tough. “Let’s talk about what our next move is.”

“Oh yes, before I forget…” Goddard stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a new pillbox. He tossed it to Ash, who fumbled the wood box in surprise. “That’s the first small batch. I’ll have more for you in a couple days.”

Ash smiled as he opened the pillbox. The sight of an uncountable amount of round black pills greeted him. There were probably twenty or so, Ash guessed. “Thanks a lot Goddard. I really needed this.” He popped one of the pills into his mouth and swallowed. It made him feel a little better already.

“Let’s discuss the only thing that needs discussion,” Killian said. “
I’m
going to the demon kingdom to erase it from existence. I don’t really care what any of you do.”

“I’m for declaring war on the demons as well!” Stryd slammed his fists on the table and jumped to his feet, suddenly fired up. “There’s no way I’m going to let those demon
bastards
get away with what they did to my men and I.” Ash could see his hands trembling on the table. “What they put us through… the things they made us do…” Stryd said no more and sat down. The Captains all hung their heads in shame and anguish.

“I’m siding with my brother once again,” said Shiva. “I’ll join him. Together, we’ll enter the demon kingdom and rescue our father.”

“Yes of course,” said Goddard. “You two are pretty much our only hope. You and Mr. Draxler.”

“I’m always down for exterminating some demons,” said the death toucher.

From outside the cracked window, the meeting party could no longer ignore the rising noise. The sound drew Goddard’s attention to the window, which he opened to allow the full volume in. What they heard sounded like last night’s crowd, only louder.

“
Uh oh
,” Goddard uttered.

Shiva ran to the window. The Royal Guard superiors all stood to see what the commotion was about as well. Even Aura cast a curious glance from his seat. Everyone seemed wide-eyed and upset, and by the time Ash arrived to view the scene the indistinguishable voices formed into a single, repeated phrase that echoed through the streets of Hell and beyond the castle walls.

“
Show us King Sa-tan
!” the mob chanted in a singsong style, “
or give us the hu-man
!”

Chapter Thirty-Four: Despair

What should have been another fun festival day instead turned into a day of protest. From the fifth floor conference room the citizens in the streets below looked like an angry swarm of colorful insects invading the castle. Their unified chanting filled the air, riling the people to action with a simple rhyme.

“
Show us King Sa-tan or give us the hu-man
!”

The crowd gathered outside the castle gates was already more than double what it had been last night, with more and more people arriving every minute. The streets of the kingdom looked like wild rivers with people for water, all rapidly flowing toward the castle.

The waters parted slightly as a heavy-set man drifted through the throng with great ease, his three most trusted accomplices surrounding him like a bubble of protection. A skeletal-looking woman carried a three-step ladder for him. When the small group reached the blockade of Royal Guards, the woman placed the stool on the ground.

Glebeck, leader of the Noble’s daily news network in Hell, climbed the three rungs of the stepladder with a cautious gasp until his fat head bobbed above the crowd. His fellow business partners, Bliley, Rumbaugh, and Machmann stood around with their angriest faces on in support.

“
Attention
,
attention
!” Glebeck said, raising a conical megaphone to his mouth. The people closest to him and his goon squad lowered their voices, and like a virus the mute spread its way back through the streets. “We’re starting now, everyone!” The rowdy Noble turned to face the castle, his pudgy mug visible to Ash and everyone from their window view.

“Attention castle staff superiors! I, Glebeck Lowdly, representative to the people, come to you today with a simple demand! We wish to see the King! As you’ve no doubt read in my most recent current events pages, we have witnesses,
reliable
people, informing us of the King’s unbelievable abduction at the hands of a
demon Prince
in the late hours of the evening! I, Glebeck Lowdly, and we the people demand you
disprove
those witnesses by allowing King Satan to explain the situation himself firsthand!

“If you fail to meet this simple demand within the next hour, then I, Glebeck Lowdly, along with
we the people
will have a new demand! The release of the human, Ash Kraplan, into the custody of the Nobility! As an illicit immigrant to Hell, the human’s presence in our Kingdom has put us all in great danger by drawing the attention of the Demon King and his subjects! It is because of Ash Kraplan that our King, the lovable Alfred Satan, was possessed by demons and taken in the night! And so it shall be
he
who pays for that crime!”

The crowd roared with enthusiasm.

“It is with a heavy heart that I, Glebeck Lowdly, must say that I don’t believe you will be able to meet our simple first demand! If our good King Satan has indeed truly been kidnapped by demons, then that makes the human our only bargaining chip! Exchanging the human’s life for the safety of our King is a necessity! The people
demand
it!”

The majority of the crowd shouted in approval. The loudmouthed Noble continued to stir the people, ranting on about past failures in the Satan family lineage while his lackeys pushed their papers. None of that mattered to Ash, his knees trembling, as he sank to the cold, hard floor of the conference room.

“
How can they even say that
…?” Tears swelled in his eyes like a dam full of cracks, doomed to overflow. “After everything I’ve done for them… How could they all turn on me so quickly?”

Not since that fateful morning when he first awoke in a jail cell in Hell had Ash felt such a gripping sense of despair. The despair enveloped his whole body like an unwanted hug, suffocating, paralyzing. He’d spent nearly a year living in Hell, helping the devils each and every day. He risked his life for them so many times he lost count. Now at the first sign of trouble, they were ready to be done with him? To cast him out, a mere bargaining chip to the demons?

“I thought I was finally starting to fit in here…” And that’s when the dam broke.

Aura slid off his seat and crouched next to his weeping friend. He put his left hand, his normal hand, on Ash’s shoulder. Even Shiva somehow drifted closer to the boy. She appeared at his side and dispensed some much needed advice.

“Don’t take anything those imbeciles say serious,” she said. “They represent a very
small
minority of the people. The rest of the citizens out there are just feeding off the crowd’s energy. Those idiotic Nobles are just getting everyone riled up.”

“That’s right,” Aura said. “It’s not like
everyone
hates you. Only the stupid people.”

Shiva continued, “More importantly, there are people out there who know you. People who
like
you. They know you’re not a threat. They’ll have your back. I’d bet on it.”

Ash wasn’t listening anymore. The distraught boy kept his eyes on the floor and succumbed to his most foreboding thoughts. It was impossible to imagine staying positive under such circumstances, where a trip to the demon kingdom was the
best case
scenario. Maybe if he was in perfect health with no more complications. Goddard’s medicine might keep him alive a little longer, but would it save him in the long run? Would it give Ash the power he needed to stand up against Prince Otozek? Or would he meet his fate sometime before then, at the hands of some lesser demon? Or worse, some lesser
devil
?

“I’m not surprised the human is cowering.” Stryd’s voice cut through the room, stirring Ash from his thoughts. “They’re going to end up getting their way, after all. The kid’s getting traded to the demons no matter what.”

Goddard stepped in to clear the air. “Not
traded
as such,” he said, turning to Ash. “You’ll certainly have to go with, but I’d encourage you to do everything in your power to
not
end up eaten by any demons.”

Goddard paced in circles around the room, his habit while thinking.

“We shouldn’t assume Prince Otozek really intends to uphold that agreement. If they were actually willing to do a trade, they would have done so
before
leaving our kingdom. They wanted us to follow them back to their own turf. It’s obvious they’re luring us into a trap with no intention of letting anyone out alive. Our only option is to meet their challenge head on.”

“That’s where my men and I come in!” Stryd spoke with passion on behalf of his silent Captains. “We’ll mount a full assault on those filthy demons! With my army and Prince Killian’s strength, we’ll have those demons begging for mercy!”

“An entire army’s not necessary,” Prince Killian said, his voice stuffed with confidence as he laid on the tabletop. The Commander deflated a little.

“In this case, I have to agree with Killian,” said Goddard. “It will be a long and difficult journey to reach the demon kingdom. Marching an entire army across such an unforgiving landscape won’t work. It would be too large a target for the demons and too chaotic to manage. We’d be lucky to arrive with even
half
the men alive and actually ready for the ensuing battle.”

“But our numbers!” Stryd argued with passion, believing his way to be the best. “Surely we outnumber them! There must be a way to use that to our advantage!”

Goddard shot the Commander a mean look. “As soon as they saw us coming, what’s to stop them from simply killing King Satan? No, this battle won’t be won with numbers. If that were the case, we should have struck while they were
here
, and we had the advantage. But we missed that chance, and now we must beat them at their own game.”

“A small group works better anyway,” said Shiva, her arms crossed knowingly. “It’ll be easier for us to sneak in unnoticed.”

“Just like they did to us,” said Aura with a smirk. “It’s payback time!” he said as he slammed a gloved fist into his left palm.

The sullen Commander tried to convince the room that he would at least be going on the trip, army or not, no matter what. He would
not
be denied his revenge on the demon that took over his body, and he told them so as he slammed his fists on the conference table. Goddard had to step in to calm him down.

“You can trust Prince Killian to realize your revenge, Sepultura,” the Royal Advisor said. He crept up beside the shaky man and put a sturdy hand on his shoulder. “We need you here. No one can control the entirety of the Kingdom’s military like you. We’ll need your leadership here if the demons decide to attack us while the retrieval team is away.”

The Commander looked around at the smiling faces of his supportive subordinates as the Royal Advisor sold him on staying behind. It was the first time any of his men had smiled since…
the incident
. Once again, Stryd felt needed, and that, as it turns out, is all he wanted.

The heads in the room turned to look at the door as it slowly creaked open. The only two who did not look were Prince Killian, who could not look, and Ash, who just didn’t care to look.

“It’s good to see you all made it out of that awful incident alive.”

Neither Ash, nor Killian, even had to turn their heads. They knew whom the voice belonged to. Though Killian didn’t really care in the slightest at his grandfather’s arrival, Ash was now at full attention, his eyeballs wide, dry, red.

“
Wilhelm
?” he gasped.

“Ash, my boy,” the old Satan said, approaching the boy with a forlorn expression. “You must know that we have absolutely no intention of trading you to the demons. Just the opposite.” His wrinkled face curved into a weak smile. “We’re counting on
you
to help conquer the so-called demon
royalty
and bring my son home alive.”

Ash said nothing, lost in contemplation. His expression blanked. From the tabletop, the Prince made a sound of disagreement.

“You still think the human will be of any
help
to us?” he said with a scoff. “In case you hadn’t heard, the boy is
deathly ill
. The only reason he’s alive and sulking now is because of our advisor’s special medicine.”

“Ash is
sick
?” Wilhelm said, his fingers instinctively reaching for the tips of his white mustache. “I have been working for quite some time, so I hadn’t heard. Devils don’t get sick though, so I take it this affliction is something human? Whatever the cause, I do hope that Goddard is accommodating your every need. What’s this about a
special
medicine now?”

“Just a specially designed mix of substances that have proven effective at treating the boy’s unexplained illness,” Goddard said, reassuringly. “My medicine is what’s keeping him alive.”

“
All of this
…”

Everyone looked at the trembling human. Ash raised his head, and his eyes glazed over like a corpse. His teeth bit down on his bottom lip to hold his words back. Then, in an instant, the boy stopped caring.

“
All of this could have been avoided if you were there
!
You’re never around when anyone needs you
!
Always working on West Hell, even though you retired
!
Who retires just to go back to work
,
anyway
?
Don’t want to be around your own family anymore
?
I don’t blame you
!” There was an awkward, uncomfortable silence in the room to accompany the boy’s rant. “
The truth is, you stopped caring a long time ago. And now, your dream’s come true, and your son has been taken by demons
.”

Shiva took one step and decked Ash. It was a slow, loose-fisted punch that struck him in the side of his head, just light enough to knock him over, hard enough to shut him up.

No one said anything. Not until Ash flopped over onto his side, wiped a little blood from his mouth and put his hand in his pocket. He carried on like nothing had happened, but now he knew some things were taboo.

“The irony is…” he said as he pulled out the pillbox. “After all their bitching, I have to go out there and risk my life for all of them. I could die, and no one would really care. In fact, the King is probably dead right now, and we’d never even know. We’re probably all wasting our lives by walking into a death trap, but sadly that’s my
best option
!”

Now his craving peaked, and as he popped a black pill into his mouth and put the pillbox back in his pocket, the old Satan observed the boy’s process. Wilhelm made a mental note, but said nothing. His fingers twirled the white mustache tips some more as he listened to what else the boy had to say.

“The hardest part is seeing everyone else so optimistic. Like we’re not all about to die horribly. It’s bizarre how commonplace this all seems now. I guess none of you could really know how I feel. I feel weaker than I’ve ever felt in my life, even weaker than when I was fully human, right when I need to be at my strongest! This sucks so much I don’t even think there’s a term to properly describe it! Forced to travel to the enemy base with a crippling disease? What do you really think my odds are!?”