Chapter 46

My name’s Tom. I summoned...

... ah hell ... if you don’t know what’s going on after 45 chapters, then this will hardly help.

The first thing I noticed upon entering the unnamed demi-plane was that my head cleared up; the dimensional pressure of Gehenna was gone. The second thing was the heat, and third was the occasional weird bubbling lava pool. I looked up at the dim sky, filled with red, angry-looking clouds, even though the air was dry. The ground was dark and rocky. I had a feeling of deja vu but couldn’t place it. “Are we in Hell?” I asked.

“Ha!” Eros barked a laugh. “This place can’t hold a candle to home.”

We seemed to have lost Cassandra’s trail. Eudora found a copse of dead trees and suggested that we camp while the demons scouted the area. Shepherd, Priscilla, and I started a campfire and cooked some of the food we had purchased in Gehenna once we figured out that this would be a prolonged expedition.

We sat on some mounds of the weird black rock that this world seemed to be made of and munched on some sort of biscuits that we dipped into our cans of beans. I fished in my pockets and found my last doobie. This adventure was nearing its end, one way or the other. I lit up, took a hit, and offered it to both women, but they shook their heads. After a couple more tokes I was feeling relaxed.

“So what are we going to do when we catch up to Seth, if he’s full-grown now?” I asked the two of them.

“We talk to him,” Shepherd insisted from her seat across the fire. She had been brought up to speed about her baby’s demonic origins at some point during our travels, it seemed. “People aren’t born bad ... my son will listen.”

“We can try that,” Priscilla responded from off to the side, “but if not...” She pulled her holy sword from its sheath, bathing the area in its strange light. “Ghukkh!”

I turned to her. There were several feet of another blade sticking out from her chest. She looked down at it, disbelieving, and dropped her sword with a loud clang. Then she turned to me, blood dribbling down her chin. “Tom...”

The blade lifted up through her chest and tore through her neck, splitting the top half of her body apart.

“Priscilla!” I jumped to my feet, but it was too late. Her ruined, lifeless form fell to the ground.

Eros stood up from behind where she had been sitting, his arm shaped into that murderous blade, now dripping with gore. “That was her name? I would have thought Edith, or maybe Bertha,” he commented with a grin.

“What ... why would you betray us?!” Shepherd had dropped into a crouch, her pistol in hand and trained on the demon.

He turned to her. “I’m not one for following the rules. If this Cassandra woman thinks she can use my nephew to get power, well, I want in.” He advanced on her.

Shepherd fired, and Eros recoiled. For a moment I thought that she had hit a vital spot, or had packed silver bullets or something, but then his body morphed, writhed, and stretched toward her impossibly fast. His hands were suddenly about her neck. She grit her teeth and kept firing point blank until the demon twisted her head fully around with a sickening crack.

“NOOO!” I screamed as Shepherd’s body fell to the cold, hard ground.

Eros skirted around the fire, brushing his hands together. “And with you dead, too, my sister will return to Hell. I’ll convince Mom of my plan, but if she doesn’t get on board, then I’m sure I can handle her.”

I knew that there was no point in running. I had just seen how fast Eros could be, and if Demie couldn’t even handle him one-on-one, borrowing her strength wouldn’t help. “I’m gonna get killed by Fabio...” I moaned as I dropped the remainder of my doob.

Eros smiled. “I always liked you, Tom. I’m sure I’ll be back in Hell someday ... we’ll hang out.” He reached his arms out to take my head into his hands.

There was a schwiiing! sound of metal and Eros frowned. Then his frown turned sideways as his head rolled off, bounced off of his shoulder, and then bobbled along the ground. His body fell in the opposite direction, revealing Dianna Shepherd standing there, holding Priscilla’s glowing sword.

“H--how?” I managed to get out.

“Just a sec,” she responded, and took a swipe at Eros’ head as it sprouted spider legs and quickly ran away like something out of John Carpenter’s The Thing. She missed but didn’t give chase. “Fuck. Help me with this.”

She put down the sword and grabbed one of Eros’ headless body’s arms, and I grabbed the other. Together, we shoved that bulk onto the campfire. It took a bit, but then it started to smolder and finally caught. In no time, a conflagration of ashen demon flesh reached up into the sky, smelling of brimstone.

Shepherd went over to Priscilla’s body and retrieved the sword’s scabbard. Its strap had been severed, but she tied it back together, slipped it across her shoulder, and clumsily sheathed the sword into it. Then she bent down, retrieved a necklace with a small gem on it, and put that around her own neck. “With all this rock and no soil, we can’t even bury her,” she said grimly. “Guess it’s the fire for her as well, once Eros’ body’s been consumed.”

I sat back down, hard. “What the fuck, Shepherd?”

She flexed and cracked her neck. “There always has to be an Enforcer,” she informed me. “After I died, I was given a choice, and I had to make my decision pretty damn quick to keep you from getting killed too. They had to give me a crash course, so I don’t have all the answers, but I’m stronger, faster, and more durable now. Did you see how that sword went right through his neck?” She gave me a grin, actually looking happier than I’d ever seen her.

“Thanks.”

She nodded and went back to her food while I tried not to look at Priscilla’s ruined body. My doobie had apparently blown away. When Eros’ bulk had finally burned down, we dragged Priscilla’s body onto the flame as well, but burning human flesh smells fucking horrible, so we had to move upwind.

“Do you think she went to Heaven?” I asked Shepherd.

“Probably ... she’d been working for the people upstairs for a long time,” she said. “You and her were getting close, huh?”

“I ... guess? I dunno.”

She nodded sympathetically.

When Demie and Eudora got back, we explained what had happened.

“I know he’s always been one to go his own way, but I thought that Eros would at least listen to his own mother!” Eudora fumed.

“Did you find where Cassandra went?” Shepherd asked.

“No ... she’s probably in the area Eros was supposed to cover. Asshole!” Eudora shouted into the darkness as she stamped her feet.

Cassandra approached a cave opening on the side of a hill made of the strange black rock that permeated this demi-plane. Despite the oppressive heat, the blonde woman shivered. A peal of thunder rang out in the distance. She paused, took a fortifying breath, and then entered. “Seth?”

“Here, ‘mother’,” a deep voice sounded from the darkness.

Cassandra gulped and stepped forward. “Did I ever tell you about my curse?” she asked. “I can predict the future, but no one ever believes me.” She squinted into the darkness. “One day I figured a way around it: I went into the problem-solving business, telling people what they needed to do to achieve what they wanted. As long as I didn’t tell them how their future would unfold, people believed me and did what I said.”

A shadow detached itself from the deep darkness, tall and brooding. “Fascinating story. I mesmerized the guard, Cassandra. He told me everything.”

“I know.” She winced as she looked up at him, a good foot-and-half taller than her, his long brown hair unkempt over his glowing eyes. “I’m sorry,” she offered. “Your parents are here, near the entrance to this plane.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I always thought that I could avoid this, but it seems that I’m not immune to my own curse. I was never able to see past this next moment.”

The demon took a hold of the woman’s head with his large red hands.

Boom!

My eyes flew open.

Boom!

Lightning flashed across the sky, followed quickly by a resounding roar of thunder. I sat up from my blanket.

Eudora rushed into camp. “Seth’s coming this way! Where’s Shepherd?”

“She thought she saw Eros and took off after him,” Demie responded, pointing off to the side.

“I’ll find her...” The redheaded demon sprinted off in that direction, her slim but shapely legs flashing under her short black and red Sailor Moon skirt.

“We should be able to get a good vantage from up there,” Demie suggested as she looked up at a nearby cliff. We headed up the slope.

“Without Shepherd, do you think we’ll be able to convince Seth we’re his parents?” I asked her.

“Even that’s a long shot,” she responded. “We should be ready for a fight.”

“Seth doesn’t have your limitations, though,” I advised her, but then I had an idea: we could do what we did to beat Eros when he was that Eroji video game. Demie would kiss me, take my soul, and use its energy to fight Seth. When it was all done, she’d return me to my body!

I looked back at Demi. Her usual attire of a t-shirt and 60’s jeans was gone, replaced by an all-over dark armor. I blinked. I had seen that armor before, but where?

We crested the slope and ... I remembered ... I had seen this in a dream, what seemed like forever ago.

I looked out over the rocky terrain from my high vantage point. The parts of the land below that weren’t pock marked with bubbling lava pools appeared to be ebony or some other jet black rock, as was the cliff I was standing on. The sky was full of red, angry clouds that I knew would never rain. A flash in the distance was followed quickly by a boom of thunder that seemed to reverberate through my bones.

Demie was by my side, clad in her bristling black and grey metallic armor. A slight breeze blew her hair back ... she was so beautiful.

“He’s coming,” she stated worriedly, looking toward where the lightning flashed again. BOOOOOMM!

“I know,” I replied. I didn’t take my eyes off of her.

She turned to meet my gaze. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.