I took a couple more days to prepare, making sure I saw Judy’s location dot cross through the portal before I did anything that would raise suspicion. I had done everything I could think of to protect Veazey, Judy, and the guys from work, and Denise should be protected by her family’s faerie thing. Demons and faeries had been in some kind of uneasy truce for a thousand years, so they went out of their way to avoid each other.
I was still running my rooftop jumping routine every morning, hoping I could match Captain Cobalt’s eighteen-minute pace from 1955 before the real fight started. The day before I declared war on Hell, I ran the course in twenty-eight minutes. I caught up to my holographic Captain on the third rooftop, and for just a minute, we were running side by side.
I would never feel ready, but I had to start this fight before I lost my nerve. I bowed before the mirror that morning, like I’d done every morning for weeks. It’s amazing how much pride you can swallow, if you just make it part of a routine. Wake up. Bow to Baalphezar. Brush teeth. Piss. I didn’t hardly notice anymore.
But that morning, I did something stupid. His image faded and I whispered, “Hope you enjoyed that. It was the last time.”
If Lydia heard me, she didn’t say anything. Surely, I wasn’t the first Kovach to talk shit behind the Master’s back.
* * *
I spent the morning at Henry’s range, making preparations. Datacore in my pocket. Lenses in my eyes, filaments in my ears. Batteries for everything and twenty bullets in the pistol. I checked my spells a hundred times, casting strength and wards from memory. I would need them today, if something went wrong.
I didn’t tell Veazey about this part. He would have tried to talk me out of it. I stalled for as long as I could, then, when I couldn’t stand the waiting anymore, I walked back to my apartment and asked Lydia to come with me.
She was clearly nervous, walking around in the miasma, but it didn’t immediately burn or poison her, and she thought I was finally agreeing to let her help with my training.
I brought her inside the three-walled concrete building, and she said, “So, this is where you hide from me.”
“Not anymore. Your Master wants to measure my progress, so I figure it’s time to show off. I’m about to try a new spell, and I want you to be here, in case I blow myself up.”
I filled my mind with gibberish, steeling courage for the next step. I didn’t think Lydia could read my thoughts. She could feel my emotions sometimes, but I was learning to control those. I did my best, but she knew something was wrong. She was standing so close; I could smell Xavier’s garden in her hair. I looked into her eyes and almost lost my nerve. I wanted to touch her, to hold her one last time before the war.
My right hand slipped in my pocket and hit the activator on my mouse. My hovering projector tracked my eye movement and zoomed over to the place I was looking, shining a perfect circle on the floor, centered directly over Lydia’s head. It was the most powerful circle I had, copied straight from Jacob’s part of the book. I brought in magic and cast the containment spell, forcing myself to take it slow. I didn’t understand the process, but I could feel magic surging between us, bouncing back and forth like power in a circuit.
Lydia didn’t react immediately. She was perfectly still. No movement. No words. But all the personality drained out of her face. Her posture stiffened and her face went slack. She looked like a machine, caught between programs. Like everything I loved was an illusion, and I was seeing her real face for the first time.
She paced around the circle, kicking each symbol with her foot. Twenty-six symbols, twenty-six little kicks. Then she looked at me with dead eyes and said, “Don’t do this.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m just going to put you to sleep for a few days, so you can’t interfere. By the time you wake up, this will all be over, one way or the other.”
I said the command word from the containment spell and Lydia froze, paralyzed, while I reached inside the circle and cut off a lock of her hair. Then I carefully cast the spell that was supposed to put her to sleep… and nothing happened. I tried it three more times before I started to panic.
“No. It’s not working. Oh god, why is it not working? This has to work. If this doesn’t work, I can’t… Oh god, please don’t make me…”
“It’s okay,” Lydia said. “It’s good that this failed, because as of right now, you haven’t done anything you can’t take back. My Master knows nothing, so this is just between us. We can go on tomorrow like nothing happened, all you have to do is let me out.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” I said, resigned to what I had to do next. “And stop trying to scare me with your Master bullshit. The guy I read about in those journals, it’s pretty clear he’s afraid of us. He’s afraid of what he created with this contract, and it was just a matter of time before one of us killed him. That’s your real job, right? To keep us from killing his lazy ass?”
“Timothy, stop. Stop talking. I have to repeat what you say to me, and I can’t protect you if…”
“Protect me from what? From a bottom-feeding piece of shit who barely has a kingdom anymore? I’m not scared of your Master, and in about five minutes, he’s gonna be scared of me. You tell him I’m breaking my contract. You tell him the Kovach family is done killing for him. You tell him eight generations of slavery ends right now. And you tell him if he has a problem with that, he can come up here and deal with me, face to face, unless he’s a coward.
“Be sure to repeat that part, would you? The part where Timothy Kovak called him a coward? And when you tell him, be sure to spell my name right.”
Lydia wasn’t giving me her demon face; I could read every emotion on it. She was already preparing herself, preparing to witness my torture and capitulation in Hell.
She spread her arms, “I can’t deliver your message from in here. If you’re determined to declare war on Hell today, you’ll have to let me out.”
I said, “No. There’s another way.”
I quick-drew my pistol at point-blank range and shot Lydia in the face.
* * *
It had been over a century since anything had killed her, and the last time she Fell, she had wings. A hundred years ago, she could have floated to Hell like a feather, but this time, there was nothing to slow her fall.
Lydia’s soul jerked out of her form and sank like a cannonball, passing through the Earth at some ridiculous speed. She fell through clouds and sky, emerging in the gray. Her golden cord was taut behind her, pulling, like an extension of her spine. The fall felt like hours.
She tried to prepare herself, but she couldn’t concentrate. There was something peaceful about this place between, this neverland between Earth and Hell. But soon enough, her nostrils filled with the sharp stench of home.
Hell was a curved black bowl, made from volcanic rock. The Lake of Fire stared up at her like a burning red eye. She could make out details as she got closer, rivers and puddles, branching from the Lake. The western river ran between Dire Wood and the Blackhour Sea, right under Baalphezar’s palace.
Last time she died, Lydia caught a friendly updraft and sailed straight to the palace, but this time she was out of control, heading straight for the Lake. She would have to swim through the fire and climb out, just like a common soul. The indignity of that overwhelmed her fear of Baalphezar.
She thought about trying to grab a flying demon on the way down. It wouldn’t stop her fall, but at least she could take somebody with her. Lydia hit the Lake like a meteor. Her impact kicked up a plume of fire, sixty feet high. A physical form would have crumpled like paper, but her soul just sank into the fire. Lydia kicked up huge waves in her wake, tossing human souls twenty, thirty feet into the air. Some of them washed up on dry land and took off running for the Gate.
Lydia went deep, but this fire didn’t burn demons. After the bitter chill of Boston, the Lake felt like a hot bath. She looked to the surface and saw a mass of wriggling feet. That wouldn’t do at all. Her pride was still stinging from the shot. She couldn’t just swim straight up and mingle with the damned. It would be humiliating, and she might be recognized.
She swam deep and headed for the river. There weren’t many souls down here. Only the oldest and strongest would sink this far. These were the forgotten dead, burning so long their minds were gone. Most of them were screaming, but sometimes she caught one wearing a placid smile. Spend a thousand years in the fire and you get used to it. In this place beyond memory and pain, the Lake might as well be Heaven.
Lydia found the riverbank and emerged from the fire, levitating straight up. She didn’t have wings anymore, but she still knew how to make an entrance. As soon as she cleared the surface, she threw her shoulders back and shook her head. Bits of fire flew from her hair like sparks, cascading down her chest like raindrops.
She got her bearings and marched down the river, walking the lava in plain sight. It was dangerous for a succubus to travel here alone, but she only had one close call. An Enforcer caught her scent and swooped in for a closer look. Baalphezar’s Mark wasn’t enough to scare him off, but Lydia stared him down. Her Master’s reputation had suffered of late, but she walked like the Queen of Hell.
She walked all the way to Baalphezar’s palace. It was easy to forget how big it was - an elaborate castle made from black rock, with guard towers at each corner, and a river of fire underneath.
The towers were closed, and half the rooms were dark, but it still looked impressive from the outside. For a moment, Lydia longed for the way it used to be. During the Renaissance, Baalphezar’s palace was a nightmare factory, filled with Imps and soldiers running to and fro. A place of power and intrigue. Messengers would make a wide berth around it. Today, Imps from rival kingdoms crossed the grounds with impunity.
These staterooms once played host to lords from Lands Beyond. Now they were dark, filthy and unkempt, covered in a layer of sulfur dust. Lydia spent her apprenticeship hiding in these rooms, dreaming of freedom and feather beds. She could still remember perfume and the rustle of wings, as Sylvia came to fetch her for lessons. But those days were long gone. The palace was a shadow of its former self, matching Baalphezar’s personal decay.
The guards at the gate were listless now. They barely glanced at her. An Imp from the tower giggled as she passed. “Back so soon?”
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Lydia was in no mood. She sharpened her tail and cleaved him with one swipe. She was returning in disgrace, but she didn’t wait for the guards. She grabbed a ring in each hand and pulled the doors open by herself.
Baalphezar was lounging on his throne, watching something in his mirror. Michelle was at his feet, buffing the Master’s toes. She heard the doors and took off running, pausing just long enough to catch her sister’s eye.
Lydia marched across the room and threw herself at her Master’s feet, brushing her curls on the ground.
Baalphezar rose from his chair, radiating rage and disgust. “Explain yourself.”
“The Eighth Kovach has sent me back. I have come to deliver his terms.”
“He’s turned on you?”
“No, Master. He’s turned on you.”
“Explain your failure.”
Lydia struggled with her answer, trying to put this in terms that her Master would understand. “It has something to do with the machines. His seduction was so difficult, I didn’t pay enough attention to the machines.”
“He killed you with tools? Some new weapon?”
“Not exactly. Master, the Earth, the Earth has changed, even the parts that look the same. They’ve always had machines, but this thing Timothy has, it’s like nothing I’ve seen before. It’s not a physical tool. It’s like… it’s like a lever for the mind.”
“And this is your excuse? You blame your failure on tools?” Baalphezar took his seat and glared at her. “I am not concerned with the disposition of things. I send you to shape men, and men do not change.
“Every century, there is something new - a thousand years of something new. Mammon thought steel would be the end of us. Baal feared gunpowder. Dispater thought we would fade when they split the atom. The centuries pass and the tools grow strong, but still, we are here.
“We are the eternal companions of mankind. Every time they get stronger, we get stronger in turn. Seduce the man and his tools will follow. That is the failure you must explain.”
“I thought I had him,” Lydia said. “I knew he was angry, but I didn’t expect him to fight. He’s scared. He’s desperate. He wants to protect his friends. He fights, but he doesn’t expect to win. There is a sadness in this one, sir - a darkness that I can’t quite reach. I think he wants to provoke us. I think he wants to die.”
“We’ve traveled this road before. If a man craves death, you tempt him with life. You saved Jacob. Why is this one so difficult?”
“Timothy was touched by the chaos, like the seventh. He doesn’t summon the power; he’s breathing it. It comes on him like a storm. It’s not constant, but even simple spells, he can twist them and change them and make them part of him. He’s learning the book in pieces, picking out spells that can hurt us. I can’t measure his progress and I can’t find his limits.”
Lydia struggled with the next part, but in the end, she was bound to Baalphezar, just as surely as she was bound to me. “Master, I think this one could hurt you.”
Baalphezar laughed. “From mundane to archmage in six weeks? You have been deceived.”
Lydia had spent too much time with me - adapting to me, absorbing my personality. I was so wrapped up in my own struggle, I didn’t realize how much I was changing her. So, when her Master laughed at her, she didn’t answer with her own voice, she answered with mine. “It felt pretty real when my ass hit the Lake, sir.”
Baalphezar lunged forward and pinched her cheeks, hard enough to draw blood. “I tolerate your insolence on Earth, but when you stand before this throne, you will keep a civil tongue in your head!” He lifted her up and held her there, with her feet dangling six inches off the ground. He let her struggle for a moment, then he let go, scowling as she fell to her knees. “The new one is clever, but I do not fear clever.”
Lydia wiped her face with the back of one hand. “Then you are a fool.” She knew she’d be punished, but for an instant it felt so good. It’s a classic Kovach trait - mouthing off to authority figures, risking everything for a moment of pride.
Baalphezar’s backhand sent her halfway across the room. Lydia bounced on her ass and slid across the floor on her tailbone. Baalphezar covered the distance in four steps. Lydia scrambled backwards as he roared. “Is this how you appease me? Is this how you earn back your wings? FAILURE upon FAILURE upon FAILURE!”
Lydia flipped over and scrambled to her feet. She almost made it, but her Master was too fast. He swept her legs and raised one foot to stomp on her, but stopped himself a second before it came down.
“You’ve always been proud, but open defiance? You were sent to corrupt this boy, but it sounds like he’s corrupted you! You put too much faith in the Kovach contract. You know I can’t destroy you while this boy lives, but he won’t live forever, and there will be a price for your insolence today.”
Baalphezar bellowed Sylvia’s name, and the demons from his harem arrayed themselves quickly before his throne, forming a half-circle, kneeling until their heads touched the floor.
“You all know I am not allowed to punish Lydia while she has a living heir, so once again, I will need a volunteer.”
Michelle was the youngest in the harem, a small, pale demon with red hair and green eyes. She stood up immediately.
Baalphezar looked at her sadly, almost sympathetic. “You again, little bird? How many beatings have you taken for her?” He glanced at Lydia. “Pity you can’t seduce mages as well as you’ve seduced her.”
Michelle was suspended with a pair of manacles until she was dangling off to the side of Baalphezar’s throne. Not pure silver, just enough to burn and keep her from breaking free. She didn’t struggle or cry out as she hung there, as she had done so many times before.
“Thirty lashes,” Baalphezar said. “Use the silver barb.”
An eight-foot palace guard stepped up and started whipping her. She really did cry out now, unable to withstand the burn of silver. The beating went on and on and on, deliberately slow, to give everything more time to hurt.
Lydia lowered her head after the fifth stroke, but Sylvia grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back. “You don’t turn away. You keep your eyes open, and you watch, as your sister takes what was meant for you. Stupid, arrogant child. Look at what you’ve done.”
Michelle’s blood was dark green, matching her horns and tail. Ninety years ago, they had been a bright forest green, when Lydia took the girl under her wing. Lydia describes Michelle as “the great comfort of my exile,” hinting that they became like real sisters during the time Lydia was stuck in Hell, trapped and hopeless for decades before I was born. Michelle had started out playful and innocent, with her horns and tail slowly darkening, closer to black, as she killed.
The other demons in the harem didn’t hate her the way Lydia was hated, but Lydia was her only real friend. Sylvia respected her because Michelle always did as she was told, and she never hesitated when there was blood to be spilled. But she spent all her time with Lydia, the spoiled golden child who got to spend decades in the land of blue sky and ice cream.
Lydia and Michelle would cuddle for hours, as Lydia tempted her with tales of Earth. Lydia knew she was grooming her eventual replacement, but for now, Lydia was mentioned by Name in Xavier’s contract, so she could not be abused or destroyed by her Master until it was broken.
The beating finally ended, and Michelle dropped hard into a puddle of her own blood. The others rushed forward to heal her, and Baalphezar bellowed, “No! No healing until Lydia gets her new body. I want my little bird to feel every bit of the suffering her sister has earned, and I want Lydia to see it, every day until I send her back to Earth.
“It will take days of effort and the expense of countless favors to send servants to Earth and correct your mistake. I can’t make you hurt your Kovach, but you will watch. You will watch every minute of your sister’s suffering, and you will watch every minute of his, until I see that fire go out of his eyes… and yours.”
* * *
Lydia’s blood was translucent, thick and gold. It splattered on everything, mixing with matted hair and clumps of skull. Her body teetered backwards and fell to the ground. One moment, she was a living, breathing person, and the next she was a thing, a headless demon doll.
Her blood coated the furniture and dripped from the fixtures. It glittered, even in death. I felt something warm on my lips. I started to wipe it off, then I realized what it was and started to gag. Lydia’s blood tastes like electric honey.
I was frozen in place, horrified by the magnitude of what I’d done. I slumped against the concrete and said, “I should be crying.” But there was nothing. Nothing but cold and quiet and the slow drip of blood. A minute later, the evidence started to disappear. Jacob said this would happen, but I thought it would be quicker.
The little pieces vanished first - stray drops and wisps of hair. Lydia’s body couldn’t exist without a power source. I leaned against the wall and watched reality close around it. The blood was gone in seconds, leaving my shirt clean and dry. Her gown vanished all at once, leaving her body nude on the ground. I thought it would move, but it just laid there. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t turn away. Lydia’s skin sheered away in a flash of gold, exposing raw muscle to the light. Her remains looked like human bones embedded in golden clay. The tissue vanished a minute later, leaving nothing but a pile of bones.
And then I was alone, staring at an empty circle. The gun was still warm.
I stood up suddenly and threw my shoulders back, moving with a confidence that I didn’t feel. I stretched my arm out and said a command word. The projector shut down and flew into my hand. I jammed it in my pocket and took off running.
* * *
I caught my reflection in an old junk mirror outside and saw a pair of purple eyes staring at me. Baalphezar’s eye was on me, and my message had been received. I leaned down to lock eyes with him and said, “I killed your whore. Send something smarter next time.” Then I put a bullet in it.
Jacob said it would take three days for Lydia to grow a new body and come back, assuming her Master had enough magic in his budget to pay for the portal.
“Jeeves! Give me a countdown timer for seventy-two hours, starting five minutes ago!” Then I called Veazey. “Heads up, buddy. I just declared war. I called him out as hard as I could, so he should be coming straight at me. But you gotta get ready, in case he’s smarter than I think. Sleep in that circle I made for you and be ready to shoot anything that moves outside.”
“Oh, fuck you, man,” Veazey said. “I’m always ready to shoot.”
* * *
An alert popped up as I was running back to my apartment. I didn’t really grasp how good my new processor was until I noticed it was making Jeeves faster. Not smarter, since he wasn’t even as good as a Model T AI, but he suddenly had processor cycles for all kinds of stuff I had been suspending for years.
“Warning,” Jeeves said out of nowhere. “Background comms traffic in this area indicates a forty-five percent probability that your realtime personal location is being tracked by a hostile entity. Your address has been flagged for observation, and all towers within five miles are attempting to map your movements. I have deployed countermeasures to conceal our location, but nearby tower logs indicate these tracking scripts have been in place for thirty-five days.”
Thirty-five days? And Jeeves was only learning about this now? What happened thirty-five days ago? I should have known. The surveillance started just a few days after I had returned from Barbara Foote’s house; a few days after we killed her demon handler. Barbara had probably gone ballistic and called in every corporate favor she had to try and avenge him. Titus had almost certainly respawned, and now the bastard was looking for me. Demons may not be smart enough to hack satellite traffic, but you can bet their thralls are.
How had I let myself get so sloppy? Leaving myself wide open to attack because I was too cheap to upgrade my damn hardware.
“Jeeves, activate Sheep’s Clothing protocol.”
Sheep’s Clothing was a simple obfuscation script written by Jerry’s girlfriend back in the day. One of many tools I should have upgraded years ago. Making us completely invisible to cameras and satellites would have attracted too much attention, so it was safer to spoof everything and pretend our signatures belonged to something else. If it worked, anybody who got a ping from me would think I was a maintenance bot, from the same company that owned my apartment building.
But Jeeves started throwing fits, as soon as I ran it. “Error. Eight lines in this script are not compatible with this processor. Heart.”
Fuck. “Jeeves, try to run the script without the incompatible lines. Then try to ping my location from a tower outside the Reclamation Zone and tell me what you get.”
Whatever those lines were, they were apparently not essential, because the ping returned me as a maintenance bot, and reported my location a mile away from where I actually was. A very useful script, but like so many hacker tools, this thing suffered from what I would call “an excess of personality.”
Jerry’s girlfriend had been a huge fan of an early AI Vtuber. She put this little character in everything and loved to use her expressions for status messages. Instead of a simple text confirmation, this little girl’s face would pop up with a different expression indicating the level of danger you were in at any given time.
The latest attempt to flag my location had been foiled, so the tiny anime girl popped up and winked from the other side of my screen, like Jeeves now had a little sister competing for my attention.
If I’d had time, I would have done basic troubleshooting on the script and ripped all that cute shit out, but I had an army of demons ready to pounce on me, and I had much more important preparations to make in the real world.
* * *
Am I the only person who would make a to-do list of things I had to accomplish before picking a fight with a demon prince?
Drew a circle around Veazey’s place. Check.
Sent Judy to a world where magic doesn’t work. Check.
Sent Veazey’s family and my old work buddies to safe places on holy ground. Check.
Drew warding symbols on my apartment walls to keep demons out. Check.
Put Lydia to sleep. Well… close enough.
Now all I had to do was wait, and keep myself in the Zone, hoping I would be strong enough to defeat whatever Baalphezar threw at me, until his bosses made him come to Earth.
And if you notice that I forgot somebody, well, you’re obviously smarter than I was.