It was the third hospital Jett and the girls visited, Brooklyn Methodist in Park Slope, that was finally in working order. There was a small platoon of army soldiers posted outside the round emergency room entrance and around the building’s perimeter, but these weren’t the grizzled veterans found in war dramas. Most of them looked fresh out of high school, and even in their fatigues, gripping assault rifles, seemed only slightly less scared than the average person.
With the demons having passed through the area without bothering the hospital, Jett might have believed it was under divine protection. But exposing that thought for the pipe dream it was, the Baptist church on the corner across the street had been reduced to a pile of brick, metal, and glass, almost as if to taunt the faithful and say, “Your God is powerless against us.” The hospital was teeming with injured, crying, and screaming people who hadn’t been able to escape the borough. The understaffed doctors, nurses, and volunteers were working furiously to help as many of them as they could, though some were beyond saving.
Jett was in the beige and tan room they had placed Leila in. There were two other patients packed in there with thick blue curtains separating them from each other. At first, since the frizzy-haired Dr. Romano saw how Adena had sealed Leila’s wound with expert precision, and the medical monitor read her vital signs as noncritical, he wanted to bump her down to, “as soon as possible.” But once Adena explained a knife had been flung and buried up to its handle in Leila’s chest, she was rolled out of the room on her bed for a CT scan.
Since then, despite their emotional and physical fatigue, neither Jett nor Raquel managed to get much sleep. With the second death in their family in under twenty-four hours, he had been trying harder than ever to reach his dad and brother more than 1500 miles away. And for it to be Carlito, the youngest of them, and the one with, perhaps, the brightest future. He always felt like the kid was the only sane one in their family of hotheads and prospective mental patients. For him to be murdered by a demon...no plan God could have justified his allowing such a thing. Allowing any of this, really.
With his right arm in a cast and sling, Jett was sitting on the floor, since there weren’t enough chairs to go around. Between track and fights at school that seemed so pointless now, he had broken his fair share of bones. Like this one, it always hurt badly for the first week or two, even through the numbing haze of pain medication, yet all the things he couldn’t do while the injuries healed bugged him more. And what a time for his dominant arm to be rendered useless.
Disproving his working theory that she was an android, Adena had started slipping into microsleeps, with her phone in hand. Now and then she would slump in her seat, and her eyes would slowly flutter closed for a few seconds before she jerked upright, refocusing on the screen. He had a whirlwind of questions brewing, but since they couldn’t exactly speak freely with so many people around, he let her get whatever rest she could.
Jett watched as Raquel paced the small space like a claustrophobic, the long black ponytail she had pulled her hair into, bouncing relentlessly. She was still wearing her pea coat, fidgeting with the holstered gun on her hip underneath it as she seethed. He was getting worried she might start waving her pistol around if the wait persisted much longer.
It didn’t help that the suicide mission Raquel wanted them to embark on was to save Rodrigo as soon as Leila was taken away for surgery. If it wasn’t for knowing his cousin would come for him were their fortunes reversed, Jett wouldn’t even consider this deranged field trip to Hell. Honestly, he wouldn’t be going at all if Adena hadn’t caved to Raquel’s threats of going solo.
Rodrigo and apparently following in his footsteps, Raquel, seemed to go loco whenever the other was in danger. Jett’s strongest memory of that tendency of Rodrigo’s came from way back in fifth grade. They had been playing UNO with their clique like they usually did at lunchtime. All sorts of sugary snacks were being gambled and being one of the better players, Rodrigo should have been cleaning house. But he wasn’t putting any thought into the game that day. It was when two of their school’s biggest kids came into the cafeteria that Rodrigo laid his cards on the table and picked up his unopened chocolate milk carton.
Usually when there was a fight in the lunchroom, kids went nuts, chanting, ‘fight, fight, fight!’, or took advantage of the chaos to start throwing food or swiping tater tots from the Styrofoam trays of the distracted. Once the milk carton went off like a bomb in Andrew’s face, and his friend, whose name Jett couldn’t recall, tripped over the spill, no one really knew what was happening. Rodrigo was known for being laid-back, so to see him hulk out without any build-up left everyone shaken and confused. It took three burly security guards to pry him from the battered boys, and the whole time he was repeating, “Touch my sister again and I finish it!”
It was only through gossip Jett learned the two had been bullying, a seven-year-old Raquel, because she liked rough-housing, and playing with action figures instead of dolls. How Rodrigo’s dad, Edward, got him off without time in juvie or assault charges, when both boys were hospitalized, no one seemed sure. Rodrigo himself drew a blank on the whole event, even calling Jett for clarification on why he had been suspended. After that, everyone walked on eggshells around Raquel and Carlito, at least for as long as Jett was in grade school.
It was natural to want to protect your family, but in the recent incident, Rodrigo would’ve beaten that man to death if Jett hadn’t stepped in. Actually, since they left him out in the street hurt so badly, with his friends dead...he probably didn’t make it. The messed up part was, more than anything, it made Jett question the strength of his bond with Geo. Could he go that far? Take another person’s life if his brother’s depended on it? And even then, now that Carlito was dead, Jett had the feeling Rodrigo would do far worse so long as it meant Raquel got to live another day.
Minutes later, Dr. Romano came back into the room, his lab coat swishing behind him. “Sorry for the delay. I have some bad news about your friend.” Jett braced himself for the newest addition to his mental graveyard. “The x-rays disclosed the knife was thrown with enough force and velocity to cause heavy internal bleeding on impact. Normally, we would proceed with surgery immediately, but...it’s a delicate operation that could take hours, and would require several surgeons. Y-you have to understand, with how many patients are coming in, we have to prioritize them by their odds of survival.”
“Are you kidding me?” Raquel growled. “Do you have any idea how much time we’ve wasted coming here and sitting around waiting for you to help her? And now you’re saying you won’t even try? The life of a seventeen-year-old girl’s not worth your effort?”
Then Jett unconsciously uttered words he doubted ever worked on any female in history. “Raquel, calm do—”
“Shut up!” she hissed. He didn’t respond. There was no point arguing with a grieving thirteen-year-old.
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Adena sighed. “Listen, Doctor, while I can respect the efficiency of the triage system, and it’s not like I’ve known this girl long, I have invested my time and energy in keeping her alive. So, tell me, how much do you make in a year?”
“W-what?” Dr. Romano asked, jarred by the shift in conversation.
“Your annual salary,” Adena said as she fished into her jacket for a brown leather wallet.
“This hospital doesn’t take bribes, young lady.”
Adena took out a black card and twirled it in her fingers. “Well, off the top of my head, I believe the average salary for a physician in your field is around $300,000 right now. Quite a nice sum. If you’ve been prudent, surely enough to put little Adrian through college when he comes of age. But, if you can save Leila’s life, I’ll pay you twice that, and maybe after this all blows over, you can go on that vacation to Venice your wife, Clarice, has been pushing for.”
Dr. Romano blanched, his mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. Jett cringed at the subtlety of the threat. The way Adena made blackmail seem like generosity. When the doctor left without another word, Jett felt bad for the guy. He was just doing his job in an impossible situation.
“Were you planning to get this specific doctor or something?” Raquel asked.
“Social media was the death of personal privacy.” Adena held up her phone, flicking between the profiles of the entire Romano family with a finger. “Okay, are you two ready?”
“Raquel, are you sure you’re up for this?” Jett dared to ask. “You’re a good shot, yeah, but these are demons. And I’m pretty sure Ruy would rather I hog-tie you before letting you go.” Also, if anything happened to her, Rodrigo would probably try to kill him, and he wasn’t sure he’d try too hard to stop him.
“Uh-huh. Remind me, of the three of us, who actually took a piece off Misery?” Raquel gawked at them both with mock surprise before slowly raising her hand.
Adena groaned. “Come on, we’ve waited enough. The storm’s stopped, and the sun’s already coming up.”
They left the room, quietly closing the door behind them, and took the elevator downstairs. Pushing their way through the crowded lobby, they left the building and got into the car. For all its security features, Adena’s fancy SUV didn’t have a trunk, and Carlito’s body was stretched out on the bench in the back, now covered by a white sheet. With Raquel riding shotgun, Jett was left to the rear-facing seat, right across from the empty husk that used to be his cousin. And as they drove away, he couldn’t fight the sinking feeling that they would all be joining him soon.
They had been driving through the snow-blanketed streets for a while, a somber silence descending on them in the presence of Carlito’s corpse. Jett loosed a deep, steadying breath, glancing over his shoulder at Adena. She looked younger and less standoffish since she had washed off her smudged eye makeup in the hospital’s bathroom. But it had also been concealing the dark circles under her eyes. Further proof she was running on fumes. “So, care to share this brilliant plan of yours, or are you just enjoying keeping us in suspense?”
“Why are you assuming there’s a plan?”
Jett’s eyes bulged, and he considered snatching the steering wheel out of her gloved hands, until he heard her scoff at his gullibility. He had a low tolerance for snarky antisocial types on a good day, so he had to beg God for patience before speaking again. “In case you forgot, your need-to-know way of doing things ended with us getting our asses kicked by two demons. Two. And now, like lunatics fresh out of the asylum, we’re going to their home turf, with less than half the people we started with. So, I don’t care how much of a brainiac you think you are, you need to fill us in.”
Adena regarded him in the rearview mirror for a long moment. “What do you want to know?”
“For starters, where are we even going? I mean, I know where we’re going, but how do we get there?” Now that the enormity of what they were attempting was dawning on him, Jett refused to say the word, like it would give the place even more power.
“Spread throughout our world, typically in secluded locations, are symbols etched on the ground and walls, invisible to the human eye,” Adena explained. “When these symbols come into contact with demonic energy, a portal opens, connecting our dimension to Hell. The closest I know of is under the Spiral.”
Raquel’s head whipped toward Adena. “Hell’s Spiral from my neighborhood?”
“Yes. It’s one of the demons’ main portals and not far from the capital on their side, which is why I said Brooklyn would get hit hardest at first. A lot of the rumors you probably grew up hearing about that tower are true.”
“Wait, if it needs demon energy, how do we use it without Resent?” Jett asked. “Are we taking a hostage?”
“We might’ve had to resort to that if I hadn’t gotten my scythe, Leech, back,” Adena said. “Misery confiscated it for more than just the strength it gives me. Somehow, he discovered I was moving against him and wanted to make traversing between the two dimensions without an escort harder for me. According to demonic legends, Leech is part of a set of twelve weapons, the Primeval Armaments. Each one belonged to one of the first six higher demons and one of the first six angels.”
Jett choked on a breath, jolting forward in his seat as he dared to hope. “Hold up. Do angels really exist, or is it just part of the legend?”
“Oh, they exist all right. The only reason we could stay relatively safe at my mansion, and then the warehouse, is because I bartered with the fallen angels for a bit of their radiance. When concentrated, it acts as a temporary demon repellent. Though, I’ve yet to see an angel that still has their wings.”
“So, where are they? Why are they letting the demons massacre people?”
“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t count on them showing up to save the day. From what I’ve learned, they’re not quite as invested in humanity as the pious would like to believe,” Adena said, and suddenly Jett wished he hadn’t bothered to ask. “Anyway, the twelve armaments aren’t just unique for being the oldest functional weapons in existence. They’re...alive, in a sense. The common belief is that they’re imbued with some small part of their original owner’s life energy. And that’s why even eons later, they’re still able to open their former owners’ respective portals.”
“If these things are so ancient, how did you get one?” Raquel asked.
“My father stumbled upon it when he was...no, that doesn’t matter now. The point is, the weapons change in appearance based on their owner, making them nearly impossible to track. That is, until you’re holding an unclaimed one in your hands, and hear its voice in your head. For Leech, as the name implies, it demanded a third of the blood in my body at the time.”
“If you got it back, didn’t you get off easy?”
“The blood loss was nearly significant enough to make me slip into a coma, but in hindsight, you’re right. That’s why I’m convinced Leech is on the low-end of the spectrum.”
When Adena stopped a short distance from the Spiral, though the chain-link fence that once surrounded it had been trampled down, the rusted black tower still stood tall, the stairs coiled around it, like a serpent ready to strike. On the few occasions he came there with Rodrigo, Jett had always found the old metal structure vaguely creepy. It seemed like a place that might attract tourists, or at least be a popular hangout for teens, craving escape from their helicopter parents. But they never saw anyone else there. Now he knew why. Right underneath the spot where they would admire the view was home to countless demons. And everyone in their right mind subconsciously picked up on that.
A disgusting squelching sound pierced the unnerving quiet. Jett’s mouth went dry as his eyes fell on something he had privately dropped to his knees and prayed to never see again. He gaped at the narrow back of the twitching creature, the hand Adena had incinerated regrown, as it crouched over a dead imp and intently picked through its bloody entrails.