Echoes of the Past (Demon Squad) (20 page)

I batted away the mass of creatures, but they were everywhere. They crawled across the shield and around the edges, pushing their way underneath and dropping down from the roof above. A couple of them bit me as I was shaking them off, but it wasn’t too bad. I’ve had worse
hickies
.

Right then, I heard Poe scream.

I spun around and realized the spiders had been nothing more than a distraction. Mihheer stood before Poe and Baalth, both lying flat on their backs. Poe was holding his face. Blood bubbled up between his fingers, thick and dark. Baalth didn’t seem able to move.

I tossed a bolt of energy at Mihheer, but he sidestepped it and cast a counter spell. It wasn’t aimed at me. A glowing shimmer of red-orange magic sunk into the orb that hung above McConnell’s tub. There was muffled rumbled to thunder, sounding way off, and the room trembled beneath my feet. The color of the orb fluctuated and changed from emerald green to that of an orangey-sun.

Baalth reached up and let out a weak, “No!”

Another bolt of energy in my hand and ready, something grabbed my leg and pulled me off my feet. Sharp spikes of pain speared my ankle. I hit the ground and spun about, dragged toward the squirming sea of spiders. A grayish-green tentacle was wrapped around my leg, up to my shin. The bite of magic chewed at my skin through my jeans. A dozen more tentacles gyrated around the first, emerging from the book behind it. The spiders swarmed me as I was pulled into their midst. I wasn’t too worried about them, but I kept my mouth shut and my ass puckered, just in case.

Magic bolt still in hand, I threw it at the congregation of tentacles instead of the tendril holding me. I didn’t think it would do me much good to blast that one when there was a bunch more ready to take its place. The bolt hit the book and exploded, incinerating
The Mist
. A whiff of black smoke curled from the floor where the book had been, and I was suddenly free of spiders and tentacles alike. They’d all
poofed
.

Pissed I hadn’t thought of that when I’d fought the ice dragon, I jumped to my feet to go after Mihheer. The alien held Baalth before him, like a shield, and was moving up the steps toward the tub. I froze.

Mihheer laughed at me. “Isn’t it a shame we’re so bound to our masters that we hesitate when they’re threatened?”

I laughed. “You’re clearly not from around here, or you’d know I don’t work for old,
Baalthy
boy there.” My magic fluttered at my fingertips and I summoned a ball of fire. As I did, I cast a furtive glance at the demon lieutenant. He gave me the slightest of nods. “You’re not walking out of here alive, even if I have to kill everyone in the room,” I told the alien, taking a few steps closer.

A flicker of doubt danced in
Mihheer’s
eyes. I certainly didn’t want to kill Baalth, not that I thought I could even in his weakened condition, but I couldn’t let Mihheer get the upper hand. He didn’t care what happened to Baalth, and I had to make him think I didn’t either to keep things calm. It had to seem like I would go right through Baalth to get to him. Ultimately, there was only one thing the alien cared about.

“Stay back, demon,” he told me, making sure Baalth stayed in front of him as I drew even closer.

“Or what; you’ll kill your shield?” I twisted the fireball in my hand and mimed tossing it at the tub. “I’m guessing Gorath would be pretty damn pissed if I blew up the pool and shut down the portal, wasting all that precious energy. It must be hard to recharge after a thousand year nap and having to summon a servant from across multiple universes.”

Mihheer snarled, his free hand flickering with magic. I’d guessed his priorities right.

“Don’t do it,” I warned. “I’m betting I can destroy the tank before you can open the portal for your boss to siphon off the magic.”

Baalth glared at me, and it was pretty obvious he didn’t want me destroying the tank
or
the portal, but pushed to it, I would. My options were pretty limited, but I’d figured out what
Gorath’s
pet wanted most, and that was to refuel his master. The thing he tossed into the orb had probably redirected the portal to wherever Gorath was hiding, and he was waiting for the gate to open so he could drink his fill.

Unsure of what to do, I kept moving forward. If nothing else, I figured I could unsettle Mihheer while I thought of something to do to keep the portal in one piece, and Baalth, too.

All of a sudden, Baalth took matters into his own hands.

He spun and grabbed Mihheer and shoved him toward the tank. Unfortunately, Mihheer was the stronger of the two, all of Baalth’s energy having gone into the tub. The alien spun the lieutenant about like a doll and cast him aside without effort. He’d apparently done it without thought, as well. Baalth was flung backward…straight into the tank.

Mihheer’s
eyes went wide when he realized it. A bluish shimmer erupted at his hand and I saw the orb swirl to life above his head. The sudden wash of the portal opening hit me, and I hesitated, torn between attacking the alien and saving Baalth. Mihheer was through the gate before I could decide. I heard Baalth hit the fluid and I knew it was too late for him, so I loaded all the power I could into the fireball I already had in my hand and chucked it into the portal after Mihheer.

That was when the world exploded.

I heard Baalth shriek, his voiced drowned out by a whistling hiss that built up in an instant and went mega-postal. There was a muffled
boom
—muffled because I think my eardrums shattered—and the room went white. Fiery energy obscured everything. I squeezed my eyes shut but there was no blocking the brilliant light. It blasted through my eyelids like they weren’t there.

My skin lit up like I’d snuggled with napalm, and then the force wave hit. It was so overwhelming, so powerful I didn’t even feel the impact. One second I was standing there, and the next, I was sailing through the air. I felt the crunch of something against my back and realized it was a body, and then it was the wall.

I felt that well enough. The extra clips exploded.

In total silence I screamed, unable to even hear myself. The wall shattered at my back and crumbled over top of me. The impact of each stone was nothing more than a dull
thud
across my body, but somewhere deep inside my mind, I recognized that each one must weigh hundreds of pounds. There had to be tons of rubble coming down, crushing me, but it all seemed so distant, as though it was happening to someone else.

My thoughts were in a fog as I lay there in blind numbness, vaguely noting the slowing down of the wreckage that thundered above me. I had no sense of time, no idea how long it had been since I hit the wall. There were no screams of pain or fear to focus on, none of the disaster staples I was used to. There was no sound at all, for that matter, save for the ringing in my skull that sounded like a Spinal Tap concert on steroids.

When it felt safe to open my eyes, the hint of shadows gnawing at the brilliance that seared my retinas, there wasn’t much to see but rocks. I was covered in them. Still numb, I really couldn’t tell if anything was broken—or more realistically, if anything wasn’t—but I tried to move anyway. The blanket of the wall tumbled away in chunks as I shook it loose. I pulled my arms free and rose up to my knees, clearing the rubble from my back with surprising ease. Though my eyes felt sunburned, I was surprised to realize I wasn’t crippled. In fact, I was unhurt.

I looked at my arms and chest and marveled at how I’d made it out of the maelstrom without a scratch. My borrowed hoodie had been shredded and there was blood all over me, but I didn’t see a single injury, or even a hint of one. Not until I looked to my legs.

About the middle of my left thigh was a massive, crimson stain. It ran from my knee up to my crotch and I immediately checked to see if everything important was still there. It was pretty easy considering my pants were mostly gone. I sighed to note I hadn’t been gelded in the explosion, all my parts accounted for. Still unsure of why there was so much blood, I searched around a little more and wanted to kick myself for being so stupid.

The vial of Lucifer’s blood had shattered.

I dug in my pocket and felt a sharp sting in my thigh as I bumped something. It was a piece of the glass vial embedded in my leg. That was why I wasn’t hurt. As much as it pissed me off to say it, I muttered
thanks
to Lucifer. The shard probably had a bunch of my uncle’s blood on it. When the glass cut into my leg, it mainlined the healing benefits, allowing me to weather the damage being inflicted. I was being healed as the wounds were being inflicted. That worked out pretty well.

Confident enough to shrug off the rest of the wall, I did and got to my feet. My stomach lurched at what I saw. Baalth had been spot on about the effects of the pool on living tissue, only he hadn’t said anything about what it’d do to the rest of the room. It looked like an Oklahoma trailer park in tornado season.

What was left of the bodies on the walls were just chunk of mangled flesh and bone. What hadn’t been ripped loose and added to the clutter of ruin hung like morbid Christmas tree ornaments. They glistened and shined, coated in the fluids that had filled the hoses. Debris was everywhere, pieces of stone mixed with the white of bone and the yellow-green and gray of everything else. It was a Timothy Leary experiment gone awry. Gnarled hands jutted out of the rubble as though they were drowning beneath it. There’d be no rescues today.

I made my way across the wreckage and went to the tank. It looked surprisingly intact considering what it had gone through. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the space around it. The steps had been blown away and huge slabs of the ceiling had come down, the floor nowhere to be found beneath the gray dust and remnants of the portal device. I dug around where I’d last seen Poe. It only took a few minutes to find him.

I sighed as I cleared the detritus from him.

He was dead.

A rock the size of my head had crushed his ribs and burst his heart. Unconscious, he never had a chance. His eyes were open and stared off at nothing, but his face was set in a serene mask. I hoped he hadn’t felt any pain. He might well have been an enemy, of sorts, but I’d always respected Poe. He’d been a ray of sunshine in Baalth’s organization, and someone I could trust to be true to his nature no matter the situation. We hadn’t been friends, but we could have been. He would be missed.

I sat back, my gaze drifting up to the tub. Nothing moved in it, but I didn’t expect anything to. Baalth had been ground zero. If he got only twice of what we got outside, I was gonna need to borrow a wet
vac
to clean up the mess. He was dead, too.

All of a sudden, a charred hand clasped the edge of the tub, scaring the shit out of me. Pieces of flesh sloughed off and exposed white bone as the connected body rose up out of the tank. I scrambled to my feet and ran over to help.

Leave it to Baalth to prove me wrong.

I latched onto the extended forearm and pulled as gently as I could. It was like playing tug-o-war with boiled spaghetti. Muscle squished in my grip and pieces of meat and skin peeled away and squished between my fingers, leaving me holding bare bone. Baalth didn’t seem to care. His face was almost completely melted away, leaving only his dark eyes and the slightest piece of skin on one cheek. His grinning skull leered at me as I gingerly helped him from the tub.

Once he was far enough out to lean against the edge, I reached under his armpits and helped the rest of him to clear the edge. Busy with Baalth, I barely had time to cast a quick glance inside. The fluid was gone, apparently burned away, and what was left of McConnell was nothing more than ashes in the vague form of a person. There’d be no coming back this time.

As quick as I could, I clambered down and set Baalth alongside Poe. His skeletal features looked over at his mentalist, and I heard a gurgled sigh slip loose. The last vestiges of the muscles at his jaw tightened before he looked away, the murky pools of his brown eyes settling on me. He opened his mouth and licked his teeth, as though he were looking for his lips. It was strange seeing his pink tongue emerge from the grinning skull of his mouth. His oozing red and black hand reached out and grabbed my wrist, pulling me closer to his face. It was amazing enough that he could still move, but there was a hint of strength left in his grip. I didn’t resist.

“See
tha
-that,” he cleared his throat, sounding the hoarse rattle of a dying breath, and went on. His voice came out slightly stronger, “that Poe is taken care of. Take him to Marcus.”

“Of course,” I answered without hesitation. The fact that his first words, and quite probably his last, were spent on making sure Poe had a proper burial there was no way I could refuse. “I’ll take care of him. Now let me take care of you.” I went to stand so I could retrieve a new vial of Lucifer’s blood, but Baalth wouldn’t let me go.

He pulled me a little closer, shaking his head slowly. “I am beyond your help, or even that of Lucifer.” He knew what I intended and dismissed it. “Only God can save me now.”

The irony was a lead weight in my chest. “But—“

“I am lost, Frank.” His grip tightened on my wrist. “Salvage what you can, and prepare Hell for what is to come. This is what Lucifer would have wanted.”

I never thought I’d see Baalth like this. He’d been emotionally wounded by the excess of power he’d gained from Glorius, and he’d been furious when Lilith had kidnapped his men, his powers out of control, but I’d never seen him hurt; not truly. Here he was, the most powerful demon in our world, and he was dying, killed by his own power turned against him. For all our animosity and ego struggles, it was like losing yet another mentor to the storm unleashed in the wake of God’s disappearance.