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the-voice-of-hell · 4 years

Text

The Septagram

- Previous - First -

***

Maddy mixed up some chloroform, from a recipe she found online. It didn’t feel right, but brutalizing her uncle and grandmother didn’t feel right either. Better if they went along peacefully. She kept it in a nail polish remover bottle, hoped it wouldn’t kill too many brain cells when deployed.

She knew her father was out preparing Kevin’s SUV for a midnight run. Or he was already done and coming back inside. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Just a regular modern gal, about to kidnap her family from The Kingdom of Hell on Earth. Yeah, it was showing. She was tired, wired, and unkempt.

A rap on the doorframe - her dad’s personal rhythm. She knew it well and wasn’t startled. “Daddy.”

“Snookums. Are we about ready?”

“Yeah. Got some clean rags.”

“Nothing but the best for your Gran and Uncle.”

She made a face at him. “Tasteless.”

“What? You gotta make light when things get dark.”

“Light this.” She pushed a rag at him and he snatched it.

“I guess here goes nothin’.”

They stole up the stairs quietly as they could, soft creaks muffled by thick carpet. At the top of the landing, they looked into the dark hall. A night light in the bathroom at the far end was the only illumination. Grandma’s bedroom would be on one side, Kevin’s room on the other.

They took deep breaths in near synchronization and Maddy doused their rags heavily with the creepy chemicals. Her dad looked at her with sad determination, then marched down the hall briskly. They didn’t want the fumes to fade before they did the deed.

Maddy must have stepped too hesitantly, because as she approached the bed, she heard her uncle yelp in the other room. Her Grandmother rolled over and stared at her.

She came over and sat on the bed quickly, holding her arm as if to comfort her.

“Shh, I think they’re in the house!”

Grandma sat up in the bed abruptly, startled by the idea of the demons attacking her boy. “They wouldn’t! They promised!”

She was distracted enough. Maddy struck like a cobra, rag over the mouth. “Shh, shh, shh,” she said. The old lady jerked momentarily in horror, then died away.

Maddy shook her head and trembled. “Oh no!” She squeezed and patted the body, frantic.

Her dad came into the room in a rush, his feet heavy in the hall. “Are you alright?! Oh. You should step back, Baby.” He practically hoisted her with his big hands, and assumed her position over his mother, picking up a frail wrist to try the pulse. “She’s fine, just... That’s some tough stuff you mixed up. They both went down like Joe Frazier.”

He looked up at her and smiled gently. “You’re such a softy. Like a kitten.”

Maddy nodded, but then she noticed something and her eyes went wide. Jason followed her gaze to his mother’s arm. Something was glowing under her pyjama sleeve.

He pushed up the sleeve to see the Mark of Bymaan, blazing with unnatural light - like a neon sign embedded in her flesh - and they heard a soft whine coming from it. Then they heard doors and windows begin to crash downstairs.

Jason scooped up his mother and hustled to the closet, and Maddy came inside with him. Barely a second later, unseen intruders were ripping at the panels, rattling, and finally busted the doors right out of their tracks.

The demons grabbed his mother away, battering at him brutally. Maddy was forced screaming into the darkest corner. Dozens of hands in different sizes and shapes grabbed and pushed, and at last they were hauled into the open part of the bedroom. Jason and Maddy could see her grandmother laid out on her bed, demons patiently waiting around her, but they were personally restrained.

The tallest demon at the side of the bed turned to face them, pointing an accusing finger. She was made out of a loose pile of porcelain products, with uneven cracked teapots for comically oversized breasts. Her fingertips were clothespins. “You have assaulted those under the protection of the Queen. You will be taken to her dungeons to await sentence.”

“What?,” Jason yelled. “You can’t be serious!”

“Whosoever bears not the mark of Bymaan, whence your hand falls upon one who does, so too shall her hand fall upon you! Cuff ‘em, boys.”

Maddy and Jason Homme were in the grips of demons. They were marched from the house of their family. Outside, they stood at the curb, waiting for something. At least for the moment, they were together - side by side.

Jason said, “Baby, if there’s one thing I regret more than anything else--”

“Don’t say it, Daddy. You couldn’t have known.”

“You’re right. I couldn’t have known, but I can still regret it.”

A lizard man with a marching band jacket and horse head said, “You regret this? I don’t wanna be here either. I just discovered The Hallmark Channel. It’s fucking beautiful.”

“At least let me talk to my daughter in peace, ya damn stormtrooper.”

“I’m never gonna know if Jessaphine finds true love with Corvin. I’ll bug you all I want.”

“Fucking demons.”

Maddy squeezed up her face, but she didn’t cry. No more of that.

***

The cops and troops loaded into two armored personnel carriers that had been parked in a nearby alley, along with Park, Infante, Iphigenia, and Jelly Sue. Some of the cops were touching their deltoids or other areas gingerly - they had fresh tattoos of the seal of Abalaam under the fatigues. Infante didn’t like it, so Park ducked out of receiving his own at the last minute as well.

The APCs pulled about forty miles per hour down Rainier, a sergeant in each nervously eyeballing all the camera angles of the outside, looking at every twitching demon that happened by. They were having parties on their newly acquired lawns, joyriding past them on the streets. Apparently off duty, none seemed to raise an alarm about the military vehicles in the neighborhood. Or was it the protection of Abalaam?

They pulled a hard right onto Yesler with no interference, then left onto the tight little lanes of 17th Ave. The APCs jumped a curb, crashed a side fence, and parked in somebody’s backyard.

“Sitrep,” Abraham commanded.

A sergeant replied, “Clear as it’s gonna get. Any of these houses could be hot.”

“It’ll have to do. Park, Iphigenia, you’re with me.”

“Yes sir.”

“...”

They followed Abraham up a ladder to the roof of their APC and stood at his sides. He pointed into the dark sky ahead.

At first, Iphigenia didn’t notice anything. Then she realized there was a massive black tower there, hard to see against the night sky. It was about five hundred feet across and thousands of feet tall - very hard to guess just how much. Then they noticed the others - towers to the left and further away. One was partly covering their view of The Columbia Center - the tallest building in Seattle a week ago.

“Holy Hell,” Park said.

“That’s about right. It is the power of fallen angels - the ophanim who once turned the celestial spheres,” said Abraham.

“How the fuck do you know that?,” Ippy asked.

“That’s how I got this tour, ma’am. Occult knowledge.”

“Sure,” said Park. “This one is the objective?”

“They’re in there, somewhere,” Abraham said. “Bybaal and the murder club members under his seal.”

“Uh-huh,” said Ippy.

“What’s the best approach? I wouldn’t even want to guess,” said Park.

“Two APCs, two teams. Opposite sides of the tower. Infiltrate and ascend, sweep until we find them. Kill anything that moves.”

“And the death shield?,” Park asked.

“Iphigenia, Infante, and anyone with the seal of Abalaam should be fine to kill the bastards. How about you?”

Park cracked his neck. “I can lay down suppressive fire. What do the breach points look like?”

“That’s the problem. There are a lot of unknowns. I’m aware of two ways in. On the east and the west, there are some high doors - sixty and seventy feet off the ground respectively, with no ladders ropes or lifts. We’re climbing - and hoping the outside of this thing is as poorly surveilled as it looks.”

“Holy Hell.”

“Do you have a better idea?” Abraham looked at him with a smile. Did he know about his oracular insight?

“No, no… Let’s just do this.”

They split into teams. Iphigenia and Jelly Sue were with the squad under Sgt. Blahm from ICE, taking the harder climb. Infante and Park were with Abraham and others on the shorter climb. They’d decided it was the more dangerous route because it was more likely to be surveilled, based on the lay of the neighborhood.

Ippy would have left Jelly in one of the houses, but she had a feeling she could find a safer place inside the monolith. Surely there were rooms in there where nobody went. Out in the residences, demons were running amok. But could Jelly pull herself up the rope?

The soldiers didn’t think it was worth waiting to find out. Blahm ordered two guys up the ropes first, they tossed an extra one down with a strap to loop around her. Ippy helped her into it, and they hauled her up. Ippy didn’t wait for the ascent, taking up a rope and climbing alongside, ready to catch her.

The door was large enough for a giant to walk through - a portal with no covering of wood or iron, leading straight from the open air into the halls of the black stone monstrosity. Jelly Sue and Iphigenia stared into the hall ahead while the rest of the soldiers climbed up behind them. It was as tall as the entrance, piercing the building all the way to the other side.

Hundreds of feet away, they saw the other team coming in through the wall - black silhouettes of army men, soft amber city light behind them. There were halls leading off to the sides, or at least openings carved in the stone that could house such. The lady held her doll’s hand and looked to the sergeant.

“Before we go anywhere, we find a place to hide her.”

“This is my command, but alright.” He picked up his radio. “Infante, you see us?”

The voice came through, “Copy. SAC wants us to work south, your team north. Over.”

“You all in? Over.”

“Affirmative. Let us know when you are, and we’ll roll. Over.”

“Copy. Out.” He did a quick headcount - just a few still climbing up. “You can be with our point guys on the first sweep. Come and get her if you find something you like.”

She nodded. Despite the label on his uniform, he didn’t seem like a completely unreasonable asswipe. Yet.

Blahm picked up his radio. “It’s time.”

“Copy,” said Infante’s voice.

He put down the radio and gestured while giving orders. “Yarrow, Buckner, you breach on the left. Gorman, you’re with her on the right. Dr. Miller, you watch the girl. Everyone else follow the hands.”

As everyone headed into the first hall on the left, he pointed left and right, splitting the remaining troops between the sides of the hall, then took up the rear with Miller and Jelly Sue.

The situation felt so tenuous. This was a building for giants. What happened when the giants came home? Ippy felt like they were so many rats raiding a pantry, as if the owners or house cats were never going to show.

The whole building seemed carved from a single piece of black stone, almost completely unadorned. There were some kind of metal fixtures hanging from the ceiling - chandeliers? Hard to see, unlit in the dark. Ippy didn’t bother with a flashlight, trying to see by that of the soldier’s.

They came to the first door on the right. Gorman looked across the hall to Yarrow, who counted it off on fingers. When his fist closed completely, it was time. They whipped around the corner.

Nothing. The soldier ran his flashlight over the walls, then to the ceiling. There was some furniture in here. It looked like a rococo parlour that got coated thoroughly in tar and left to harden for a hundred years. But they were pretty quick to rule out anything man-sized hiding in there -- especially when the rest of the troops filed in. Ippy got bored in a hurry and came back into the hall. Gorman followed.

“Hey. You should have a flashlight too. If you surprise any of us right now, it’s a bad idea.”

“Whatever.”

They approached the next door on the right, Yarrow and Buckner on the left. Ippy could see Jelly Sue’s hair faintly illuminated near the back by the screen of Blahm’s tablet. What was he playing with on there?

They kept clearing the floor. The cops were getting tired and they’d barely begun to sweep the tower. It was going to be a long night. They moved, they sweat, they almost lost their disciplined movement, got ahead of themselves.

Ippy didn’t help much. These rooms had the same problem as the suburbs - they were wide open and looked homey, by some kind of hell standards. Too easy to imagine some creeps strolling in and finding Jelly. Unacceptable.

Jelly Sue walked with the sergeant and the doctor. Miller was very nervous about the way they came, spending most of her time looking there. Blahm seemed heedless. He had planted a motion sensor back there and was just trusting the tablet to let him know of an ambush. Jelly looked from one to the other, and ahead at the monkey men bustling this way and that through the hall.

Miller grabbed her eyes. “Oh god, worst time for a migraine.”

Blahm didn’t look at her. “Sorry. You should hydrate, doc.”

“I feel like my eyeballs are the size of tennis balls.”

“They are,” said Jelly.

Miller’s skin was covered in shining sweat. Her whole head was bulging, but eyes most of all, eyelids straining to keep the huge orbs in place. Her lips were thin, quivering, forming a small beak. Her neck had become almost too thin to keep holding up her swollen dome.

But she took no notice of her own deformity, shaking her head at Jelly’s comment and reaching for a canteen.

Jelly Sue took this information onboard, then checked to see what Blahm was looking like. His eyes were also bulging, head sweating. Drops landed on the tablet screen and he smeared them away.

“I’m Ippy’s sister.”

Blahm chuckled but Miller was startled. “Whoa. She speaks! You don’t look like each other.”

“Well… I can drink water.”

Miller handed her the canteen. Jelly dutifully pretended to drink from it, then handed it back to her. “Thank you, Dr. Miller.”

“You’re welcome.” She looked like a nude baby bird wearing a cheap human wig, smiling with her beak.

Jelly smiled sweetly, and the smile faded as she turned to look at Blahm. He was also birding out. She looked forward at the troops, blank again.

Iphigenia had a growing awareness there was something wrong with the cops. Around the time half the halls on their side of that floor were cleared, she caught a good look at one in a flashlight as it wheeled by. His eyeballs had become gigantic, sealed in with straining, veiny eyelids. His lips were a dainty beak, his nose reduced to cornified nostrils atop the beak.

Was it even Gorman? Name tag said so. Some quality in his voice remained recognizable, though it was now higher pitched, breathless. “This whole floor is abandoned. This fucking detail sucks.”

“Yeah, sure does.” She wished she had a mirror to give herself a look. She touched an eyeball. Felt normal. Radio chatter in the halls was beginning to get more frequent.

The order came down the line - pick up the pace. Less time clearing the corners - more opportunities for danger to slither out of the darkness. Ippy and the birdmen soldiered on.

Infante finally got a chance to talk to Park and Abraham at the same time, nobody else in earshot who would hear over the boots. He put a hand on each of their shoulders, looked at them wildly. “They can’t tell. They don’t know!” He said it as quietly as he dared.

Abraham brushed the hand off.

Park held it. “I noticed.” He looked to Abraham. “It’s the seal, isn’t it?”

Abraham wouldn’t meet their stares. “It might be. The enemy is sealed by Bybaal, the men are sealed by Abalaam. Maybe as the seals converge… I don’t know.”

“Bullshit!,” said Infante. “You didn’t get the seal because you knew.”

“Stow it, Sergeant! I didn’t get the seal because it’s powerless if I apply it to my own flesh. It would have been a waste of time.”

Park pushed himself between and nodded at their superior. “Yeah, that makes sense. But can we pick up the pace here, before these birds need to leave the nest?”

“OK. But Infante, you better get back in your place. We need you where the action is.”

Infante complied, shaking his head as he went back to the point.

Abraham picked up his radio. “Blahm. I’d reckon the objective could be up eighty floors. We need fast and dirty. Report when you’re done with this floor.”

“Copy that.”

Abraham looked at Park. He was convincing. Park knew better than to ignore all the red flags, but the big man in the buzzcut really looked humane, like he believed in what he was doing, what he had dragged them into. Like he regretted the transformation in his troops.

Park still couldn’t decide if it was safe for him to kill any of the enemy. If they had that death shield and he didn’t have any mystical exceptions, it would instantly take him out. His indecision kept him in the rear with Abraham. They moved on.

***

A cop car with the roof ripped off roared up to the curb, and Maddy and Jason were shoved in the back. A vulture-turtle-thing in a peaked police cap perched on the trunk, clawed feet piercing metal, and held a taser at the two menacingly. The front seat had another two demons squeezed into it. The plexiglass divider was still in place, so Jason couldn’t even spit on the bastards in disgust.

They would have talked more, but as the car roared along, the wind made it hard to hear, and they were in no mood for shouting. They had been defeated. Kevin and Grandma were surely recovered from the chloroform by now. Did they even understand what had happened?

Then they noticed the black citadels. Jason had witnessed the rise of the one on Beacon Hill, and was disappointed to see even more of the creepy towers. Madison looked at him in fear. Was that where they were going?

“Hang tight, Princess. We’ll get out of this somehow.”

The vulture cackled. “Like hell you will! Nyeeheheheee!”

“Oh, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. No point having the argument about who was the sorriest. He knew in his heart that he was the King of Sorry.

The car whipped past one of the citadels shortly after turning off Rainier. They could see guys climbing in through one of the doors, dozens of feet above the small surrounding buildings. Strange sights.

It careened down Broadway wildly, leaving the clustered citadels behind to head toward the tallest one - looming at the north end of the Capitol Hill. Broadway’s usual evening rabble of college students, hipsters, vagrants, and yuppies were outnumbered ten to one by their new neighbors - the demons.

Past the famous strip, the road bent into 10th avenue, which had a lot more trees and nice three story apartments. But the east side of the road, the apartments were a tangled wreckage, mostly collapsed and shot through with black chunks of rock ranging in size from small car to double-decker bus. It was the base of the citadel. If Volunteer Park and the adjacent cemetery still existed, they were a few thousand feet up, atop the monolith.

The demons steered the cop car into the rocks. Maddy and Jason braced for the impact, but all that came was a slight jolt. There was some kind of secret passage. They drove down a sloping rough-hewn stone hall, lit by veins of unnatural pink light between the rocks of the walls. One tire blew out, then another, from speeding over the rugged surface.

The car sloped up again, into a vast and darker cavern, and bottomed out on the floor after a jump, scraping to a stop. They piled out of the car, kicking off the doors, and pulled the humans out of the back seat.

“Daddy!”

“Maddy!”

The demons laughed and dragged them apart. They kicked and twisted, but were lost to each other. The dungeons awaited.

Maddy was tossed in a medieval looking holding cell, big enough to hold dozens more prisoners. And yet, she was alone. Why did they leave her alone? The inside of the cell was pure darkness. Only some kind of debris was visible on the ground, lit by remote pink light from outside the cage.

The air was cold on her sweat, but for now the tension and fear kept her warm inside. It smelled like wet dirt with faint notes of pet store ferret. Maddy gripped the bars as the demons capered away, and dragged herself back to her feet.

“Bastards!”

She had to calm down, take stock of the situation, make a plan. This couldn’t be the end. It wasn’t exactly a cutting-edge facility. Could she dig her way out with a spoon? No way she was going to wait to stand trial in Demon Court.

The bars were wide - but just not quite wide enough to squeeze through. Some were loose, but just firm enough that she doubted she could unroot them without days of effort. Everything was maddeningly close to breachable, but not quite.

She needed to rest. What she really needed was a full night of sleep, but she couldn’t take a chance on that. She lay down carefully on the stones, right there by the bars, rested her head on her arms, and had a cry.

Jason was belligerent the whole way, and got beaten for his efforts. He was tossed into a cell without even having his cuffs removed, tased to keep him still long enough for the door to get locked behind him.

That hurts about as bad as it looks on the TV, he thought, waiting for his body to recover. When he was finally able to blink away the tears from his eyes, he saw an olive-skinned woman looking at him in gentle concern. She had the look of a native from somewhere south, maybe as far as South America, and nearing middle age.

“Ma’am, um, ah...”

“Josie. I’ll help you sit up.” She did. It wasn’t much of an improvement.

“Gracias. I’m Jason.” He looked around. There were no lights in the big cell, but sickly pink flames burned out cracks in the floor outside, giving enough to see by. There were a few other humanoid figures in the cell, farther away. “Co-ed dungeons, eh? What are you in for?”

“I locked my daughter in her room because she got that mark. That’s what they said to me.”

“I was trying to… It doesn’t matter. We gotta get out of here. How come you don’t have the bracelets?”

“I did not fight so much. I’m sorry.”

“Doesn’t pay to have a temper.” He slumped forward, face against the bars of the cell. “Have any of you tried to get out yet? What’s it look like?”

She looked very sad, suddenly evasive. “It’s no use.”

“That’s not all, is it?”

Her eyes burst into tears. “We won’t live to see the trial!”

Jason did his best to get close to her, only able to maneuver on his knees. “Josie, get a grip! Tell me what it is!”

She nodded, and gestured to the humanoid shapes. “One of them is a monster. He eats one of us, then gets too stuffed. Then later on he eats another one. It’s… maybe every six hours.”

“So this cell was a death sentence? Goddamned demons!”

***

Jen and Sergio had been left in a cage dangling over an abyss. It was a shaft through the monolith that probably terminated over a thousand feet below. They were thirty or more feet from the nearest walls. The cage was locked tight, hardly enough room for the two of them. Their bodies were close, aching, sweaty. They spoke gently to each other.

“How you holdin’ up, Serge?”

“Tired of waiting. They make it so uncomfortable.”

“Yeah. It’s because they know we’re superheroes.”

“Superheroes? Like Superman? I am not a superhero.”

“Well, you hafta admit, we’d bust out of a regular jail no problem. So it’s super-jail. For superheroes.”

“OK.” He rested his head on hers again, careful not to come down too hard. “Maybe we can fall asleep. Can you fall asleep?”

“Like this? I think the word for it is passing out. Probably not for a good long time, Serge.”

She hadn’t been that close to a man in a few months, and that man hadn’t been so powerful. Sergio was as strong as Jen at least, and leaner. Even the pain and peril couldn’t keep it from being at least a little arousing.

She didn’t like to think about herself in the equation of attraction. It was a little denial she allowed herself - just try to have fun, don’t imagine that anyone could ever find you attractive, let good times happen when they can. But this guy was so out of her league that it provoked bad feelings. She tried to keep her feelings in check - he’s an ally, a friend in the same boat. Comrades, yeah. It wasn’t working.

Sergio’s world was all workouts and dick-measuring contests with incredibly vain men, until the apocalypse came down. Now he was a goat-murderer and super-pelotero. But he was still human, and was so grateful for Jen taking him in, treating him like a friend. He didn’t have a genuine friend in the Estados Unidos.

He could feel the strength through the softness in her body. Something in that power felt compelling. It reminded him of the few times he’d been tempted by homosexuality, rough-housing with his friends in Venezuela.

He had an idea, but didn’t want to offend her. Siempre yo puedo dormir después de un orgasmo. Podemos..? He wouldn’t say it. It was absurd anyway. But what would he say? What would he do with his last days?

“Jen. They are going to kill me.”

“Why you wanna think about that buddy?”

“It’s OK. I killed a lot of them. Even though they are devils, maybe I deserve it.”

She jerked her head back enough to look him in the eye, more or less. Her glasses were badly fogged and beaded. “Stop that! We’ll get out of this somehow. I know it!”

“It is more easy for me. To think I am going to die.”

She shook her head. “OK, think what you want. But don’t tell me about that. I’m not going to let it happen.”

He nodded. “Well, you know what I think. So you know. I have a wish before I die. It is nothing big.”

She shook her head. “Don’t say it.”

“I don’t know,” he looked side to side, cheeky. “Maybe you’ll like it.”

Her eyebrows were knit in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Can I kiss a pretty woman one time, before I die?”

She was shocked, her eyes wide.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You can say no.”

Her face went red. He felt the warmth coming off of it.

After a terrible little eternity, her expression softened, and she kissed him. She missed his mouth almost completely the first time, then he angled himself to better be reached. They locked lips. It was bad on so many levels - his stubble, her glasses, their sweat, their discomfort. But they weren’t playing.

She broke the makeout session enough to say, “If you think you’re gonna die, why only a kiss?”

“Oh? What do you mean?”

“Let’s … Well we can’t fuck in here, but we can do handies.”

“Handies? Oh. Yeah, that sounds fun.”

They loosened their pants. After a few orgasms, they both passed the hell out.

***

In the Cherry Hill citadel, Iphigenia found a wardrobe Jelly Sue could hide in. Baby bird head Dr. Miller said she couldn’t fit in beside her, and Ippy said she’d be better off hiding alone - no guard. She also asked for a moment alone.

When she got it, “Jelly Sue. I have to go kill these guys. It might be a while, but I’ll come back. I will come back.”

“It isn’t safe.”

“I know.” She hugged her tightly, and reluctantly let go. “You’ll see me again tonight.”

“OK, Ippy.”

She closed the wardrobe and rejoined the troops. The cops were rushing the floors now. She found it agreeable. It boggled her mind the place was so abandoned.

Maybe it was incomplete. Maybe the rough-hewn stone of all the furnishings, walls, ceilings, floors was because the material was yet to be refined into the palace it was meant to be. Maybe when it took its final form, it would be populated with man-sized maggots and flies in Regency era clothing.

She’d fallen to the rear so she wasn’t there when the monster struck. She couldn’t see it - just one of the soldiers flying through the air, bouncing off a wall dead. Guns started to go off.

Baby bird heads flopped madly on skinny necks. Who were these people? Cops and soldiers, special agents and sergeants. They did their best to move strategically, going into side rooms and angling around corners, looking for any trace of the enemy. It quickly became apparent there was more than one enemy, they were unnaturally strong, and they were completely invisible.

Iphigenia backed into the room where she’d left Jelly Sue. She wasn’t going to let it turn into a gun battle. Anyone who came through the door - birdhead or invisible demon - and she’d send them back into the hall.

A soldier tried to come into the room and she leapt at him, pushing him back into the hall with a single kick to his bulletproof vest. He looked as shocked as his malformed eyeballs were capable of looking.

Then he stopped short. He’d chanced to bump into one of the invisible demons, and whipped around, unloading his submachinegun at point blank range. Bullets pinged all over the hall, and a ricochet ripped through his skull. He was instantly dead.

She knew it was the death shield. They weren’t just invisible - anyone lucky enough to kill one would be killed in turn. Anyone except her. She felt bad enough about the getting the cop killed that she decided to head out into the hall - closing the door behind her.

Blahm was up against a wall, whipping his head back and forth, MP5 in hand. She went against the wall beside him.

“Hey, you got smoke cans that won’t burn our eyes out?”

“N-no! It’s all tear gas!”

“Damn.” She looked around. “Anything we can set on fire?”

He let his gun hang from its strap while he muddled around in his pack.

While she was waiting, a huge powerful hand gripped her arm and jerked her into the air. Another grabbed for her hammer hand and she smacked it away with a flourish. She couldn’t see the thing, but from the slightest feel of it touching the weapon, she guessed where it was well enough to make it hurt.

She was still in the grip, arm threatening to come out of its socket. She kicked her legs. They tapped an invisible body here, there. It was humanoid enough - aside from being about nine feet tall. Assuming its head was in the usual place, she whipped the claw side of the hammer straight into its face and it let go of her arm.

Like the first goblin she’d killed with the weapon, she was above the foe, smashing it up with brutal overhand strikes. The goblin’s body was much smaller. This would take a lot more work. Its invisibility wasn’t perfect, an outline rippling wherever it moved quickly. Its blood spray was like a blast of clear boiling water.

Somebody punched her in the back and she felt like she was being stabbed with a burning knife from the front. No, she looked at her yellow coat, splashed with blood. She’d been shot.

Somehow Ippy was coming to imagine she was bulletproof. It was a rude awakening. She slouched against the wall next to Blahm, hoping if more stray bullets came they’d get stuck in him. “What do you have?”

“Road flare! Pretty smoky.” He lit it up and handed it to her.

She didn’t accept it right away, one arm weaker from the gunshot, the other holding the hammer. She took the hammer into the weak hand and accepted the flare with the other. “Alright. Alright.”

Blahm took stock of the battle. Some guys were in the rooms, some in the halls. All were being careful not to shoot in the direction of friends, but it was hard to know where to shoot at all. The invisible demons could be seen in glimpses, but they weren’t sitting still for the men and their automatic weapons.

He gestured for people to get out of the hall. The stone walls could minimize friendly fire. Then he hustled for the nearest room.

It was the one where Jelly had been stashed. Iphigenia almost tried to tackle him, but she restrained herself. She didn’t know how much blood she could afford to lose.

She jogged down the hall, putting more smoke into the air. A cop popping out of a room nearly shot at her, but caught himself. Suddenly she was off her feet again, a big demon pinning her to the wall. The sparks spraying off of it, the smoke curling around it from her torch, revealed a face like that of a man. She thought he looked a little like Bryant Gumbel.

Before she could make a move, the cop opened up point blank with his submachinegun. Immediately the gun jammed in a way that shot a piece of shrapnel into his brain with lethal speed, and he collapsed. The death shield.

But that also meant the demon had died. It fell away and slipped to the ground, hammer throwing sparks where it bounced. Then she was on her way again.

The B team radioed about the attack, though Abraham’s men could hear the gunshots from across the floor, down twisting halls. Abraham shouted for the men to head that way for backup, eyes peeled. Reversing course left Infante and Park in the middle of the crew. Park decided if he saw an enemy, he’d shoot to maim if he could.

Infante smiled. “About time, eh?”

“Don’t look so pleased.”

They came out into the main hall that cut across the floor. So far there had been one of these on every other floor, portals at the ends exposed directly to the night winds. Park was grateful for the breeze. Then the guys started flying. Some kind of giant invisible demon was hitting them from the front.

Infante lifted his assault rifle and let off a three round burst.

Park was sure he’d turn out to not be immune to the death shield, despite the evidence from back on Hilltop. He was sure one of those bullets would bounce back their way and ruin his perfect face.

It didn’t happen. A spray erupted in the air like water and the invisible form rippled as it fell to the floor. Guys rushed around it. Nobody had been killed. The guys who were tossed got back to their feet and joined the charge.

As they hustled around the invisible corpse, Park tripped on something meaty and fell, taking out the guys who were hustling behind him. He lost track of Infante in a heartbeat.

“Fuck!” He was well and truly tangled. Whenever he tried to plant a palm on the ground to get up, he’d just end up slapping something big naked and oily. Or one of the other troops would accidentally kick him while trying to extricate themselves.

A meaty hand gripped the back of his bulletproof vest and hoisted him back to his feet. Abraham said, “Shape it up, soldier. You’ll want to see the show.” Park could barely hear him between the gunshots.

The troops got untangled and ran ahead. Park was following, but Abraham held him back. “You’re not supposed to be in there, Detective. You have a different purpose.” The smooth deep voice reached him through the din, somehow, like it was breathed straight through his ear into his brain.

He was suddenly dizzy, leaning against the rough stone wall. The submachinegun was heavy in his hands.

“Take a look,” Abraham said.

Park looked around the corner. The troops had mostly gone into side rooms to clear out trouble there. Aside from the dead, only a few remained in the hall - including Infante. It was very smoky in there, perhaps from the gunfight before they showed up, and the smoke made it pretty easy to tell where the giant demons were. The guys at Infante’s sides used suppressive fire to keep the demons in line, and the hero mowed them down - free from the effects of the death shield.

Abraham said, “Excellent, excellent…,” as if he could see through Park’s eyes.

“There’s at least six guys down out there.”

“But we’ve got a handle on it now, don’t we?”

Park got a grip on himself, shaking off the weird spell, and went into the hall. The dead guys on the ground unnerved him with swollen bird heads and thin necks. He looked in the first room and saw nothing, went to the next, had to duck back into the hall to avoid friendly fire.

The shooting stopped and he went in, gun ready. One birdhead lady was against the wall, exhausted. He recognized her hair, now perched atop her head like a bad wig - the medic, Dr. Miller. Next to her, two guys were dead.

“Miller, are there any more?” He came in, pointing his gun this way and that in the room, using the attached flashlight, looking for any sign of movement.

“Watch out for the-”

He tripped on another invisible corpse and got tangled again.

The troops all formed up in the hall again, and Abraham had Miller treat Iphigenia’s gunshot wound first. After some very cursory work, he ordered the remaining troops to move on as one team. Park was glad to have an excuse to get away from him, leaving him to bring up the rear.

As the cops and troops moved onto the next floor, Abraham stayed back, smiling, and jogged the opposite direction in the hall.

***

#The Septagram

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