Tim Marquitz - Echoes of the Past

The words stung, but I knew Katon was speaking the truth. A psychic of immense talent, Abe probably did know he was going to die and didn’t bother to avoid it because it would change the final outcome of the battle. That was something he would do. He’d formed DRAC to help stand against the supernatural world after God’s disappearance, and what better way to go out than by saving Heaven?

My stomach grumbled and a wave of nausea hit me as I thought about Abe. I went over and sat across from Katon.

“You all right?” he asked. “You look a little pale.”

“Been a lot going on today, from jumping across dimensions to being shot and ambushed by flying monkeys; I think I’m just run down, using my magic a bunch and I’m not used to it.”

Katon sat quiet for a moment as though he had a question but apparently chose to let it go. “What happened with the DSI agent?”

I knew he’d get to him eventually. “I’d just left Baalth’s and they were camped out there. They followed me and I tried to lose them, but the one guy kept up. I figured I’d give him a bit of a scare and buy myself some time. Next thing I know he’s going up in flames, and I’m sitting there like an idiot, powered up. His buddies show up and you can guess how that went down. Not much else to do then but run.”

“And the whales?” The emphasis told me he was still trying to work out how they figured in.

“Lucifer’s had some alien being locked up in a trophy case in Hell for the last millennium, apparently. The guy got loose and has been hunting for my uncle, but of course he can’t find him so he started shit with the next best thing: me.” I threw my hands in the air and sank into a chair. “He’s the one that cooked the agent, and then followed me to where he could attack without the DSI seeing him.”

“His weapon of choice was whales?”

“You just like the word whales don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Kind of.”

I shook my head. “His magic seems to draw on images, pictures. He attacked me with a witch and her flying monkey minions first, and then started dropping whales on me. I gotta tell you, it gave a whole new meaning to the term dick slapped.”

Katon rolled his eyes, but stayed on point. “With Hell to come back to, why did you go to your house? You knew the DSI would be there.”

“There was someone here spying on me earlier, so I can’t trust this place any more than I can anywhere else. Besides, I left Chatterbox and Lucifer’s blood in the house. I need to get those before anything happens.”

“I’ll get them for you. The DSI aren’t looking for a walking corpse, just someone that looks like one.”

I grinned. “If it’s any consolation, I’m starting to feel like one, too.” I thanked him for the help and explained where he would find the vials and CB.

“I’ll do some quiet research and see if Rahim or the DRAC archives know something about the alien, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to get the DSI off your back. I don’t have many contacts connected to them, though, so I don’t have much faith in a miracle.”

“That’s okay. I appreciate the effort, regardless.”

He nodded and went back to the portal, returning to Earth. I just sat there waiting, taking a moment to catch my breath. It seemed like every time I tried to do something, the pooch got screwed, so I figured it was safest to stay put.

After Katon returned and passed Chatterbox and the vials to me, he left again to see what he could do about the DSI. Not even a blip on the radar until the storms, I didn’t figure Katon would have any success getting them to back off. DRAC hadn’t bothered to cultivate a relationship with the group, so they didn’t have any influence. It was gonna be up to me to get my ass out of the mess I was in.

Good luck with that.

Hoping to cheer myself up, I hummed the opening riff to Slayer’s “Angel of Death” as a belated tribute to Azrael. Chatterbox jumped in with an Araya-esque rendition that sent chills down my spine. As we closed out the song, I had to admit I was feeling better. I dropped Chatterbox off in the God-proof room and stashed all but one of the vials. After saying goodbye to the knucklehead, I wandered off. I could hear CB belting out Pantera’s “Slaughtered” behind me and I really wished he would stop, seeing how I was going back to Asmoday’s prison.

Distracted by the spy, Karra and I hadn’t had the chance to search the rooms. As close to the case room as the room was, I was hoping Baalth had overlooked something when he made that section into Asmoday’s rooms. Unlikely, but who knows? Baalth had been pretty messed up by all the magic he’d inherited from Glorius, so it was possible he missed something I could use.

I wound my way through the halls and into the chambers, breathing a sigh of uncertainty. So far, I’d dug up nothing about the alien and way more about my mother and Lucifer’s relationship than I wanted to know. It was hard to find the motivation to start looking seeing what might turn up. I could end up being related to Justin Bieber, or something equally horrific. That would seriously fuck up my day.

Finally, I convinced myself to get to work. I dug through everything, tearing into Asmoday’s books and ripping apart the shelves, shredding the couches, chairs, and bed, making sure there was nothing stashed inside any of them. There wasn’t. I even examined all the paintings he had hanging on the walls. I felt a little bad about damaging some of them seeing how they were masterpieces long absconded with from Earth. Still, I didn’t find anything. I even went around the room knocking on the walls and stomping on the floor to see if there were any hollowed spaces where Asmoday might have stashed something. Locked away without his magic, he would have had to work hard to hide something where Baalth wouldn’t find it.

Then it hit me. When I’d come to visit Asmoday, he’d been covered in dirt. I didn’t give it much thought before, not even after I’d found the hole beneath his bed. I assumed that whatever was in the case had dug its way up to Asmoday, not the other way around. That changed things.

I went to the hole, which led to the case chamber, and peered inside. Nothing seemed strange or different, but it was hard to tell from the angle I was leaning at. No faith in my magic to let me hover like I’d seen McConnell do, I called for a couple of the dread fiends. Once they arrived, I dropped into the hole and had them pick me up. With the two of them doing a cute pirouette beneath me, I ran my hands across the walls, searching every inch. About a third of the way around, chunks of stone fell away against my hand. My pulse ramped up. I dug away the rest of the stone and moist dirt behind it and found a small cubby hole. Taking a deep breath, I reached inside. My fingers touched something soft and cool. I withdrew it to find a rolled parchment.

My find in hand, I shooed my helpers away and ran down the tunnel to the fiend room where I had better light-not to mention where I felt safer should the spy decide to come back. Hands trembling, I examined the parchment and realized it was a thin sheet of flesh. A Cradle of Filth song came to mind, but I pushed the image aside. Durable and well preserved, the parchment was most likely demon skin, and given the circumstances I’d found it under, I imagined it was Asmoday’s. I shook my head thinking about it. He’d a tough run of it, hacking a piece of his own skin off and then having his face used as decoration on an alien’s outfit. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

My attention back on the parchment, I unrolled it to see what was inside. A warm flush washed over me as I spied a number of the alien symbols etched across the sheet in dried, brown blood. Next to them, written in Latin, was what I imagined was the translation to the symbol beside it. I nearly shouted my excitement as I continued to examine the parchment. While it was clear the Latin key didn’t cover every single instance of the alien language, a number of empty spaces set beside the symbols, there were quite a few that were translated. It might not be enough for me to figure out what was written on the book or cage, but I had no doubt I could find someone more capable to wrap their head around it.