Adnihilo swallowed hard. “No help for what?”
The demon chuckled.
“Patches? No help for what?”
“Servant, answer us!” protested Lilum.
“Forgive me, Inheritor—our future queen,” replied Paimon, his glee overflowing, “sometimes Patches can’t help himself. He, he just has to—”
It happened fast: a black flash obscured by the distortion, the sudden crepitation of tearing hair. Ba’al was first to be hurled into the pit. The half-blood heard his hacking grow fainter by the second. It was all but gone when the spindly hands seized Adam. The Messah called out for his friend, and Adnihilo made to call back—but he was next, ripped free with such violence it knocked the wind from his lungs. Gasping, he felt the world turn over itself. The lights went out. The only sounds were Adam’s shouts and Paimon’s laughter.
†††
Below the cathedral, Adam wandered through tunnels cast from corroded bronze. It was a cavern of cages: the floor, the walls, the ceiling all mere secondary consequences of kennels chained together. And within, each cage housed a slavering black hound. The Messah could smell them more than see their churning fur against the black of the void, though their glowing eyes stood out even better than their stench, like that of corpses, or their ubiquitous noise—growls, sounds low in the throat, deep as the reverberation of drums of Eemah. The pastor’s son shivered. It was cold and getting colder, and the light seemed to grow dimmer the longer he stood still as if it was being carried deeper on the back of the wind—the only hint of warmth in this desolate place. He had no choice but to follow it. Glancing up at the broken bars bent outward a hundred feet above him, Adam knew there was no returning the way he came in.
He started forward, and no later did he step then did the dogs of Hell begin their barking. They snarled and lunged, snouts jutting out into the narrow passage way leaving but inches of safe space through which the Messah traveled, his arms to his chest, his hands cupping his ears against the intensity of their riot. Fighting the impulse to run, he placed one foot in front of the other, never leaving the bars before a step was done. A single slip is all it would take—lose a leg in the cage below, twist an ankle and fall prey to the jaws snapping at either side—so slowly he advanced, ruing the slick of slaver and of the matted black feathers that covered the floor more and more the deeper he crept.
Then at once the barking ceased, as did Adam; his attention snapping free from the cage floor, he listened to the sound of movement beyond the siphoned light’s illumination. On instinct, his hand flew to his sword, and his feet pressed for firmness against the wet feathers and bronze. Of course, there was no firmness in this filthy place. His foot slipped, and his leg plunged into the cage below where a hellhound drooled and foamed, voracious. The Messah steeled himself, teeth gritted, eyes shut for the pain of fangs tearing the flesh from his bones. But it never came.
There was a sudden, pungent odor, and it was close, the musk of blood. Adam’s eyes opened and he saw first a piece of meat of some mysterious animal hanging from the beak of a crow-headed demon. It’s arms were black wings, folded tightly to fit the passage; the rest was flesh like that of a Impii man save for the talons below its knees. It stared at Adam unblinkingly with three glowing jasper eyes set into its forehead.
Like Paimon, hoped the pastor’s son as the demon dropped its bloody chunk for the hungry beast now happily distracted. Adam pulled himself back to his feet. “Thank you,” he started, trying his best to hide his shaking knees. “You saved my life.”
“I’ve done no such thing,” spoke the crow in an avian tone. “I am merely correcting Master Paimon’s mistake. Come, quickly. There others are waiting.” It turned and led onward. The Messah followed.
“So it was only me who’s gotten lost?”
The demon did not answer.
They walked a while longer before Adam tried again. He introduced himself and asked the crow for its name.
“Lord Naberius, Second of the Kennels,” it said, and nothing more.
For another mile, they went in silence. The Messah would never have guessed he’d have preferred the company of the freakish spider to that of this Naberius. His coldness seemed unnatural, like a man trying to hide his guilt. Adam had seen it a thousand times and likewise had seen his father break as many men free from their consciences. He began with honesty.
“Perhaps I’m a hypocrite for saying this—you rescued me from the hounds, yet still I’m too scared to trust you—but I have this feeling that there is something you want to tell me.”
“I did not rescue you,” Naberius replied.
“You said as much already, but my leg must disagree. And don’t tell me you just happened to be feeding the hounds. There are too many thousands of them for me to believe that.”
The crow went a few more lurching steps before answering. “I was sent to, ‘fetch the lost lamb.’
