“It’s best we do it on the way.” He snapped his fingers at Marcus who hopped in the driver’s seat and slammed the door, looking like a beaten puppy. Once the gorilla was inside, he motioned me to the car.
I climbed in on the other side of the sedan and slid deep into the comfortable leather seat. The base of my skull pounded out a tribal rhythm as Poe got in the back beside me, Marcus taking off the second the door was shut.
“The storms worsening, I’d gone to speak with Asmoday in the hopes of pressing him for information. The moment I’d arrived in his chambers it became clear something was wrong.” He took a second to regulate his breathing. “The smell of fresh blood and burnt meat filled the chamber. I found him on the floor. He had been torn apart.” He gave me an apologetic half-shrug. “With no way into his quarters except through the gate, which is synched to only me, I have no idea how it happened.”
Nodding, I sunk even lower in the seat. It was weird thinking of Asmoday as dead. As much as I’d wanted to put a bullet in him during his quest to bring about Armageddon, he’d always been too much of a force to take out. With Baalth holding his power in check, he was little more than a haggard drunk.
For him, that must have been the worst part of dying. Taken out like a common human, knowing death was coming for him and not being able to do a damn thing about it. It was a bitter kind of poetic justice that visited him, but I couldn’t bring myself to gloat. I sure did want to though.
Whoever, or whatever, killed him had to be powerful, given they’d bypassed the security on the gate. That alone implied a serious threat. I didn’t mention it to Poe, but I had an idea who it might have been.
We rode the rest of the way in silence until Marcus came to a sudden stop outside the office whose portal led to Hell. We hopped out and Poe took the lead as Marcus drove away, tires screeching. Inside, we worked our way to the portal room and the mentalist motioned to the gate.
“I’ve no interest in an encore performance, so if you don’t mind, Mister Trigg, I’ll remain here.”
Caught off guard by his reluctance, I nodded. I’d never pictured Poe as the squeamish type, so his sudden decision to send me down alone made me nervous. The power in the gate coming alive, I looked to the mentalist and saw tiredness in his eyes, but no hint of deception.
Besides, he had a gun to my head just a few minutes ago. If he’d wanted to kill me, he could have done it with a twitch. No need for an elaborate trap. No matter how much I wanted that rationale to make me feel better, it just kept falling short. There was more to it.
A servant to Baalth, a demon with no qualms about doing things the ugly way, Poe had to have seen a lot of really, really, really disturbing things in his time. So saying, his not wanting to go into the chamber again said volumes about the horror I was walking into. Alone.
Lucky me.
Materializing in Hell, I resisted the urge to take a nostalgic deep breath and held it instead. Boy was I glad I did.
Poe’s description of Asmoday being torn apart didn’t come remotely close to explaining what had really happened. No horror movie I’d ever seen could match the viciousness on display inside his chambers. It brought to mind what had gone down at the DRAC installation, a similar cruelty at work.
The walls and ceiling were stained in the thick redness of his blood, stalactites of dripping flesh hung from the roof. Slabs of meat were everywhere. Chunks oozed down the walls and sat wedged amidst the books on the shelves. Bone fragments littered the room as though they’d been through a wood-chipper, glistening white amidst the moist crimson.
The portraits on the walls were soaked with splattered blood, the paint running with it to blur the once priceless images. Most of them were hardly recognizable, their beauty forever marred; their value measured in dust.
The chair I’d sat in when Asmoday and I spoke was soaked in seeping red, the couch beside it the same. Everywhere I looked there was a piece of Asmoday, some grisly remnant of the demon lieutenant.
While most of it was unrecognizable, I spied a few fingers here and there, and a toe or two. My stomach doing its best to run out of my ass and flee, I eased across the floor, trying not to slip. Every step squished as I crossed the chamber toward the arched doorway that led to the back half of the quarters. The short walk seemed to take forever, the lurid scene splayed out before me.
Finally through the arch, I exhaled hard and coughed, choking a bit as I drew in a breath. The air tasted like death; a bitter, vile stench that latched onto my lungs and assailed my nose and throat.
My back to the main room, I felt my lungs begin to adjust, the carnage out of sight. The only trace something had gone on here was the trail of blood, which led to the king sized bed…and of course, Asmoday’s severed head.
A look of shock carved into his stiff face, Asmoday’s head sat propped upon the mattress. His bulging eyes stared at me sightless, the blanket beneath soaked in black.
My heart pounding, I glanced around the room expecting to see a killer leap from the shadows, despite the reassurance of my senses telling me I was alone. I tried to survey the quarters, but my eyes kept flitting back to Asmoday’s.
Even in death he annoyed me.
Finally, I went over and yanked the blanket up to cover his head, but it had other ideas. Before I could stop it, the head tumbled off the bed and hit the floor with a moist splat before rolling underneath it. Honestly, I’d have just left it there, out of sight, out of mind, but a second wet squishing sound a moment later caught my attention. I kneeled down and glanced under the bed to see what looked like a hole dug into the floor.
Adrenaline spiking my veins, I tossed the bed aside to find the hole was actually a tunnel, dug through the floor to an almost invisible chamber below. Asmoday’s head sat about ten feet down, looking up at me.
So much for my thinking he couldn’t dig his way out.
My mind tripped over that thought. While the location of the hole suggested that Asmoday did indeed dig it, it could very well be the source of whatever killed him. Since Poe hadn’t noticed the gate being used, that made more sense than anything. Worse still, Asmoday’s murderer could still be lurking down there.
Less than excited to go jumping in, I listened for a few minutes while working my courage up. After not hearing anything, I made up my mind and dropped inside, hoping I hadn’t just committed suicide.
I landed in a crouch, my gun held out before me. The room I’d arrived in was small, little more than a ten foot square. An unlighted tunnel loomed ahead of me, the only apparent exit. A quick glance at Asmoday’s severed head made me wonder if I should be going it alone. I decided not to.
“Here’s your chance to be a hero,” I whispered to the head.
A quick kick sent Asmoday rolling down the corridor, bravely charging into the unknown as I covered him from behind. He flopped into the darkness and came to rest about twenty feet away. I waited for a few moments, but nothing jumped out in response.
Comforted by that a little, I followed the head into the tunnel. About five feet past him there was an opening to another chamber. At the edge, I peeked inside and nearly shit myself. The massive room beyond was filled to the brim with dread fiends.
I stumbled backward and fell to my ass beside Asmoday’s head, my back against the cold rock wall. My hand shaking, gun trained on the tunnel entrance, I held my ground, ready to blast the first ugly face that burst into the tunnel.
Sweat ran down the back of my neck as I waited…and waited…and waited, my knuckles aching from holding my gun so tight. At last, my brain registered there hadn’t been so much as a peep from the chamber the whole time I sat there. So, I waited a little longer, just to be sure.
Finally thinking maybe I just hadn’t been seen, I urged my balls out of my ass and got to my feet as quietly as possible. I crept back to take another look. My heart floundered for a second as once again I saw wave after wave of dread fiends.