term dick slapped.”
Katon rolled his eyes, but stayed on point. “With Hell to come back to, why did you go to your house? You knew the DSI would be there.”
“There was someone here spying on me earlier, so I can’t trust this place any more than I can anywhere else. Besides, I left Chatterbox and Lucifer’s blood in the house. I need to get those before anything happens.”
“I’ll get them for you. The DSI aren’t looking for a walking corpse, just someone that looks like one.”
I grinned. “If it’s any consolation, I’m starting to feel like one, too.” I thanked him for the help and explained where he would find the vials and CB.
“I’ll do some quiet research and see if Rahim or the DRAC archives know something about the alien, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to get the DSI off your back. I don’t have many contacts connected to them, though, so I don’t have much faith in a miracle.”
“That’s okay. I appreciate the effort, regardless.”
He nodded and went back to the portal, returning to Earth. I just sat there waiting, taking a moment to catch my breath. It seemed like every time I tried to do something, the pooch got screwed, so I figured it was safest to stay put.
After Katon returned and passed Chatterbox and the vials to me, he left again to see what he could do about the DSI. Not even a blip on the radar until the storms, I didn’t figure Katon would have any success getting them to back off. DRAC hadn’t bothered to cultivate a relationship with the group, so they didn’t have any influence. It was gonna be up to me to get my ass out of the mess I was in.
Good luck with that.
Hoping to cheer myself up, I hummed the opening riff to Slayer’s “Angel of Death” as a belated tribute to Azrael. Chatterbox jumped in with an Araya-esque rendition that sent chills down my spine. As we closed out the song, I had to admit I was feeling better. I dropped Chatterbox off in the God-proof room and stashed all but one of the vials. After saying goodbye to the knucklehead, I wandered off. I could hear CB belting out Pantera’s “Slaughtered” behind me and I really wished he would stop, seeing how I was going back to Asmoday’s prison.
Distracted by the spy, Karra and I hadn’t had the chance to search the rooms. As close to the case room as the room was, I was hoping Baalth had overlooked something when he made that section into Asmoday’s rooms. Unlikely, but who knows? Baalth had been pretty messed up by all the magic he’d inherited from Glorius, so it was possible he missed something I could use.
I wound my way through the halls and into the chambers, breathing a sigh of uncertainty. So far, I’d dug up nothing about the alien and way more about my mother and Lucifer’s relationship than I wanted to know. It was hard to find the motivation to start looking seeing what might turn up. I could end up being related to Justin Bieber, or something equally horrific. That would seriously fuck up my day.
Finally, I convinced myself to get to work. I dug through everything, tearing into Asmoday’s books and ripping apart the shelves, shredding the couches, chairs, and bed, making sure there was nothing stashed inside any of them. There wasn’t. I even examined all the paintings he had hanging on the walls. I felt a little bad about damaging some of them seeing how they were masterpieces long absconded with from Earth. Still, I didn’t find anything. I even went around the room knocking on the walls and stomping on the floor to see if there were any hollowed spaces where Asmoday might have stashed something. Locked away without his magic, he would have had to work hard to hide something where Baalth wouldn’t find it.
Then it hit me. When I’d come to visit Asmoday, he’d been covered in dirt. I didn’t give it much thought before, not even after I’d found the hole beneath his bed. I assumed that whatever was in the case had dug its way up to Asmoday, not the other way around. That changed things.
I went to the hole, which led to the case chamber, and peered inside. Nothing seemed strange or different, but it was hard to tell from the angle I was leaning at. No faith in my magic to let me hover like I’d seen McConnell do, I called for a couple of the dread fiends. Once they arrived, I dropped into the hole and had them pick me up. With the two of them doing a cute pirouette beneath me, I ran my hands across the walls, searching every inch. About a third of the way around, chunks of stone fell away against my hand. My pulse ramped up. I dug away the rest of the stone and moist dirt behind it and found a small cubby hole. Taking a deep breath, I reached inside. My fingers touched something soft and cool. I withdrew it to find a rolled parchment.
My find in hand, I shooed my helpers away and ran down the tunnel to the fiend room where I had better light-not to mention where I felt safer should the spy decide to come back. Hands trembling, I examined the parchment and realized it was a thin sheet of flesh. A Cradle of Filth song came to mind, but I pushed the image aside. Durable and well preserved, the parchment was most likely demon skin, and given the circumstances I’d found it under, I imagined it was Asmoday’s. I shook my head thinking about it. He’d a tough run of it, hacking a piece of his own skin off and then having his face used as decoration on an alien’s outfit. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
My attention back on the parchment, I unrolled it to see what was inside. A warm flush washed over me as I spied a number of the alien symbols etched across the sheet in dried, brown blood. Next to them, written in Latin, was what I imagined was the translation to the symbol beside it. I nearly shouted my excitement as I continued to examine the parchment. While it was clear the Latin key didn’t cover every single instance of the alien language, a number of empty spaces set beside the symbols, there were quite a few that were translated. It might not be enough for me to figure out what was written on the book or cage, but I had no doubt I could find someone more capable to wrap their head around it.
As I was in the process of high-fiving a dread fiend, I felt a cold chill come over me. I had a sudden feeling there was someone coming. An inner sense told me to hide. Not known for psychic tendencies or accurate gut feelings, I felt compelled to listen to this one because it was so clear. I scurried into the mass of dread fiends and quietly ordered them to close ranks to keep me out of sight. They complied. I was immediately surrounded by a wall of hairy, muscular funk that made me second guess my choice of hiding places. I peeked out between the legs of the fiends, doing my best to ignore the implications and the hanging dangly bits, and watched the tunnel. Time seemed to creep, but after a moment I heard the quiet slap of footsteps. My eyes locked on the entrance, I was surprised to recognize the person who slipped into the room.
It was Poe.
Without so much as a glance toward the fiends, who didn’t react to him at all, he made his way past and went into the case chamber. No clue why Poe would be here, let alone be ignored by the fiends, I circled around the back and peeked after him.
Poe stood in front of the case. He ran his hands across the remaining glass, tracing the symbols with his fingers. His eyes were narrowed as he focused, and it made me think he didn’t have any better an idea what it meant than I did. He spent a few minutes examining it, and then turned around. He headed straight toward me. I slipped behind the wall of fiends again and waited as Poe walked by.
He veered off near the center of the room and went to one of the side walls, the fiends shuffling a little to get out of his way without him saying a word. Once he was there, he raised his hand and I felt the sudden flicker of magic come alive, his fingertips lighted with shimmering green. The wall wavered and the gray stone appeared to melt away, dripping to the floor to disappear. After just a moment, there was a doorway where there’d been a wall. Poe went inside, the fiends shuffling into place to block the way.
I ran to the portal and pushed past the fiends, afraid the entrance would close before I could make it through. I peered down its length and saw the doorway led to a carved tunnel, which ran a short distance and then turned sharply left. I listened to the scuff of Poe’s footsteps and slipped into the tunnel once they’d faded some. Doing my best to stay quiet, I kept back a little ways. Not knowing what lay ahead, it was possible I’d run into Poe’s back if I wasn’t paying attention.
I continued following his footsteps and I was glad he wore his usual dress shoes. Had he been wearing anything else, I would have gotten lost as the tunnel turned into a maze. No idea where I was, it would have been easy to get turned around, never having even known these tunnels existed. There were no landmarks or anything to point the way to the exit. I only had Poe and his fashion sense.
Just before I turned another corner, I heard the sudden scuffle of movement. A whiff of dread fiend stink assailed my nose. There was the creak of old hinges and the thump of a heavy door being shut, and the shuffle sounded once more. I peeked around the corner.
Down the hall a ways, at what looked like a dead end, were a dozen dread fiends. They barricaded a wooden door set into the wall, which is where I presumed Poe went. The fiends didn’t even bother to look my direction,
