Hellhound on My Trail (9 page)

“Mike,” he said, “let’s do some good together.” And when Rafael said it, Mike wasn’t sure exactly what he had in mind, but he really wanted to cooperate.

“Do some good,” he mumbled. “Do some good, and go to Heaven.”

“Heaven loves those who do good.” Rafi smiled wisely and warmly. The kid’s voice was so sweet, Mike felt like it was healing the burnt skin on the back of his neck just to hear it.

But behind Rafael stood someone else. Scalp askew, scarred and bleeding, his grudge open on his face, he could have been Rafael’s bigger, terrifying, evil twin.

Chuy.

“Bullshit,
cabrón
,” Chuy sneered. “You’re going to Hell, and when you get here, you’re mine.”

“What?” Mike stumbled.

“I know it,” Chuy said, jerking his thumb at Rafael,
“he
knows it, and
you
know it.”

And Mike
did
know it.

“I’m sorry, Chuy,” he said. He felt tears on his cheeks. “I was wrong.”

Chuy spat blood onto the stone.
“Vete a la chingada.”

“Mike,” pleaded the Angel Rafael. The voice pulled sweetly on Mike’s heart.

“Shut up, bitch,” Mike mumbled, and he thumbed the shock button on the taser.

Chatta-chatta-chatta.

Then the garden was gone, and Chuy was gone, and the kid Rafi—the archangel Raphael—lay on the super-kiva’s platform, jerking spastically again. Mike released the shock button, knees buckling. He shook his head to clear the smell of flowers out of his brain and turned to check in on Adrian—

who lay unconscious on the ground, face-down in the middle of his chalk diagrams.

“Fundillo!”
Mike shouted.

He grabbed Adrian and shook him. Pinched. Kicked. Slapped in the face. The buzzing of flies filled his ears, and Rafi groaned.

“Adrian!” he yelled into the wizard’s ear.

Adrian snored.

Eddie and Jim backed up the side of the super-kiva. Eddie’s shotgun hung at his side and he swung his fists at the Zvuvim, while Jim still slashed and poked. The big man moved like an acrobat, dodging blows by rolling to one side or the other, or leaping into the air and somersaulting over them. Eddie was surprisingly quick, too—he looked like he was using karate on the demon-flies, knifing them aside with the blades of his hand in short, economical motions—but they were still backing up, and getting close to the top of the platform.

On the other side, Twitch retreated, too. She was in human—human-like fairy, anyway—form and her movements looked slower than usual. She was bleeding, and she swung her two batons to keep the Baal at bay, as it lumbered and crashed its way up the side of the pyramid.

“Adrian!” Eddie yelled.

“Adrian!” Mike yelled.

Adrian snored.

Rafi stirred and groaned.

“Cojón,”
Mike grumbled, but he had an idea. His heart raced and his head swam from the adrenalin, but he remembered that his clip was empty. He managed to switch out the old clip and slap in the full one without dropping either, and then he placed the muzzle of his pistol against Adrian’s buttock.

And squeezed the trigger.

Bang!

Blood gushed out onto the diagrams, and Adrian shook awake.

“Ouch!” the wizard roared. “Hey!”

Mike stared at the blood. “I thought …” he said. “You said it didn’t break the skin … wards of shields, or something. …”

“Moron!” Adrian roared, and stumbled to his feet. He clutched his backside with one hand, blood welling out between his fingers. “The wards wear off!”

“Well, you’re awake, anyway,” Mike muttered.

Raphael groaned and twitched. For good measure, and because he felt embarrassed and didn’t know what else to do, Mike shocked the angel again, and this time held down the button good and long.

Chatta-chatta-chatta-chatta-chatta-zotzpf!

The taser died in his hand, a shower of sparks scorching Mike’s skin.

“Oh, Hell,” Adrian said, and whipped his lens to his eye to look at the platform again. Holding his own butt and squinting through what amounted to a monocle made him look almost silly, and Mike started to laugh out loud.

“Is it wrecked?” Mike asked over the roaring of the Hound and the bellowing of the Baal Zavuv, both drawing closer up the sides of the super-kiva.

“I never yet saw a spell ruined by the addition of human blood,” Adrian growled, putting away his lens. “Including this one. Stand back.”

Mike stepped back, standing at the edge of the platform beside the unconscious boy-angel and pointing his pistol at Rafi, just in case. Rafi stirred, slightly. Eddie and Twitch both backed to within a step or two of the height of the pyramid, batting at the beasts that pursued them and the Zvuvim overhead. Mike was afraid to take his pistol off the prone angel, so he swung when he could with his fist at the fly-demons, batting them away without doing any real damage.

“
In Wepwawet nomini
,” Adrian shouted dramatically, despite his funny gimp posture, with all his weight on one leg, one hand waving in the air and the other clutching his own wounded buttock, “
aperiri te mando!
”

The flat space atop the kiva, with all Adrian’s chalk markings on it, disappeared. A pit yawned beneath Mike’s feet.

***

Chapter Nine

Mike teetered on the edge of the pit, unsure what the others would do. He had expected to see stairs down, and the gaping hole caught him totally by surprise. He flapped his arms like that would keep him in the air and looked for handholds or a rope or anything. He didn’t find any, but in his flailing he knocked away the flashlight.

Adrian didn’t hesitate. The wizard stepped forward and threw himself into the pit and the darkness. Probably had wards of bouncing, or something crazy like that on him, Mike thought, but the bellowing Baal and roaring Hound and the buzzing Zvuvim left him no choice, and he jumped in right after, clenching his teeth hard so he didn’t scream.

He fell—

a beam of light tumbled in after him, spinning around—

looking up, hands pawing at the air, through the square of dimmer darkness above him, glimmering with multicolored flames, he saw shapes pass—

bodies falling—

Splash!

Water closed over Mike’s head. So cold, Mike couldn’t imagine why it wasn’t ice. He fought for air and sucked in water instead, coughing and choking and flailing to get out. He sank, and in the dark water around him he felt other objects hitting the surface and thrashing about, and then beams of light from Eddie’s Maglite cut the darkness, and finally, lungs searing with pain, Mike tried to swim.

He wasn’t a very good swimmer, had always lived in desert country and had never been a gym rat, but he managed to fight to the surface. He coughed out cold fluid, feeling like a piece of his lung went with it, and kept fighting his way forward. Fists and feet thrashing in the darkness hit his shoulders and back and he tried to ignore them. Someone screamed wordlessly, a sound that echoed huge in the dark space. Mike worried that it might have been him.

After a few long strokes, Mike’s hands slapped against something that felt like a brick wall, and he clung to it.

He’d lost the pistol, he realized, somewhere in the pool.
Chingado.
He groaned with effort and dragged himself out of the water. He heard the sloshing sounds of others doing the same, and lots of gasping for air. Mike was dimly aware that overhead, somewhere, danced the strange colored fire of the Hellhound. For some reason, it wasn’t diving in right after them.

But it didn’t sound very happy, either.

In the dark, he heard puffing breath and muttered curses, and then Eddie shone his light around and Mike could make out a little better what was going on.

The chamber was a cube of mud brick. In the center of the floor was a round sunken pool, and to one side, lying on the ground, was a pole-ladder like the one Mike had ruined outside. Water flowed into the pool through a brick channel from one wall, and flowed out the other. Eddie and Adrian crowded over the channel and looked closely at it. Teeth chattered, breath steamed and drops of water hit the floor off all their bodies while the guitar and organ players examined the sluice, and Twitch flapped in the air above them in falcon form

Above, Mike saw the flame of the Hellhound’s body as it shoved its neck into the hole at the top of the super-kiva. It didn’t seem to be able to fit, and as it jammed its head into the opening, it shouldered out the Baal. The fly-demon bellowed and squealed in irritation, and the Hound barked and screeched in return. The Baal’s minions, the Zvuvim, crowded in through the hole and buzzed in a cloud below it, but didn’t descend. Something was stopping all of them from jumping down in the hole after their quarry. Mike cringed at their noises and wondered what was saving his life; whatever it was, he was grateful for it.

“Isn’t that just Hebrew?” Eddie sounded puzzled.

“Guys,” Mike’s teeth rattled in his head as he shivered. “Whatever you’re doing, can you hurry?”

Twitch dropped out of her bird form and stood beside the other two. It looked like stretching downward, the falcon’s legs growing longer and longer until suddenly the drummer stood there in person. The only thing that didn’t shift or change in the process was Twitch’s silvery horse’s tail.

Mike blinked.

“It’s the names of God,” Adrian said. “Very old warding, very powerful. The water flows over all the names of God and into the cistern.… Hey! My butt!” The wizard slapped his own backside and Eddie shone the light on it. “No wound!”

It was true; through the hole he’d blasted in the organ player’s pants, Mike could see the guy’s buttock. No wound, no blood.

Mike felt goose pimples on his arms that had nothing to do with the cold, and he probed the back of his own neck. It didn’t hurt, and the skin under his fingers felt soft and new, more like a baby’s skin than his own coarse, hairy body.

“Holy water!” Mike blurted. He remembered enough about church to remember holy water. “The names of God must turn it into some kind of holy water. You know, like for healing, I guess. And good against vampires.” He trailed off, unsure whether or not he was sounding like an idiot.

“And evil spirits,” said a voice in the darkness.

Eddie whipped around and shone his light on the source of the sound. Rafael stood on the other side of the cistern.

“Don’t let him talk!” Mike shouted.

“Don’t worry, big guy,” Adrian reassured him. “Twitch isn’t susceptible to the Whisper of Eden. Neither is Jim. If this bastard tries anything, he goes down.”

“Maybe I should kill him anyway,” Eddie growled, and Mike heard the emphatic
snicker
of a shell being popped into the underside of the shotgun. “Why aren’t you wet, you rotten weasel?”

It was true, Mike realized. Rafi was dry as a bone. Twitch was too, but of course Twitch could fly. “This is the pool where the leader of the rebels was imprisoned,” Rafi said, ignoring Eddie and pointing at the water. “Of course you know that, it’s why you’re here. The water was sanctified, and it held him down. Paralyzed by the pain.”

Mike scratched his head. The same water that had healed him had kept Satan imprisoned, because it
hurt
the fallen angel? What kind of holy water
was
that?

“What happened?” Adrian asked warily. “He got out eventually, so what was it? Did one of the names erode off? But that can’t be it, can it, or the water would be ordinary mundane liquid now.”

Rafi nodded. “There was a drought,” he said. “When the water got low enough, Azazel managed to kick his way out.”

“That’s when he chipped his hoof,” Adrian concluded. “Guess he was so excited to get out, he didn’t notice.”

Rafi shrugged. “Or he hurt too much.”

Eddie guffawed his derision. “It figures you’d build a prison that depended on water in the
desert
.”

Rafi smiled. “There was water enough,” he said. “Until the flood. But when the fountains of the great deep spat forth their waters to obliterate the wickedness of the children of men in the days of Noah, the rock seep dried up.”

“And in forty days, the prison evaporated.” Adrian shook his head. “Serves you right, you idiots.”

The demons above raged.

Mike’s head whirled among astonishment and curiosity and disbelief and fear, like the spinner of an old Snakes and Ladders game, whizzing in circles while all the players watched to see how many spaces Mikey would get to go, and whether he’d step on the bottom of a ladder or the top of a snake. Mike felt like there were snakes all around him, and no ladders anywhere in sight. He pawed at the cluster of holy amulets on his chest, but they didn’t help.

“What do you want, Raphael? You can’t talk us out of anything.” Eddie’s voice had a hard, flat edge to it, and it snapped Mike back into focus on the here and now. “And I have the gun.”

“I want to deal,” Rafi said. “I want to be on the team.”

“No way,” Eddie shot back. “I don’t make bargains with supernatural forces.”

“Once burned,” Adrian added, “you know the rest.”

“Besides,” Twitch threw in, “what do you have to offer us? We’re here. We beat you.”

“Did you?” Rafael smiled. “Where’s the hoof, then? Where’s your escape route? Those demons can smell the water and don’t want to fall into it, but sooner or later they’ll find another way in, or they’ll get desperate enough to become reckless and jump anyway. And if they don’t, you’re stuck here forever. What’s your plan to deal with them? And where’s Jim?”

The Hound howled bitterly.

Mike realized he
hadn’t
seen Jim inside the pyramid—the singer’s silence and the darkness had made him forget the man. Eddie spun around, shining his light until he found a wet mass by the side of the cistern, trembling in silence.

“I don’t think falling into the water was a very pleasant experience for Jim,” Rafi said. “His father certainly didn’t like it.”

“His father?” Pieces clicked into place for Mike. The rapid pace of events around him had kept him from making all the connections, but now he saw it. “Of course. Jim is Azazel’s son.”

“Poor bastard.” Eddie handed the shotgun to Adrian, knelt by Jim and shook him. “Jim, are you awake?”

Adrian shone the light around the room and scrutinized its walls and ceiling. “Don’t get any ideas, angel,” he said coldly. “We still have the fairy, and he knows how to bite.”

“Where’s the hoof, though?” Twitch wondered.

“I needed you,” Rafael said. “I have been the keeper of this prison for six thousand years, but I have never known how to open it. I wasn’t given any key, wasn’t told how. That was deliberate policy, of course, on the part of Heaven. They couldn’t have me developing sympathies and betraying my trust.”

“Yeah, I know that’s what
I
immediately think of when I hear the word
angel,”
Adrian muttered. “How
sympathetic
you guys are.”

Mike remembered Rafi almost yanking his arm from his socket as he threw him sideways and stole his gun. “Amen,” he muttered.

“I needed you to open the crypt. And now I could just take the hoof and go, but I want to join you. I want to aid you in your quest.”

“Bullshit,” Eddie disagreed. “Who do you think I am, Sir Lancelot? You don’t care about my
quest
one way or the other, anyhow, you lying sack. You have your own game.”

“Fine,” Rafi admitted. “I have my own game. But we can play our games at the same time. I’ll tell you where the hoof is, we defeat the Hound and the bugs together, and then we go put the hoof to good use.”

“I don’t want to put it to
good
use,” Adrian said. “A leopard can’t change, et cetera.”

“Bad use, then!” Rafi snapped.

And then Mike knew where the hoof was.

“He can’t get it,” he told Adrian. “Rafi—
Raphael
can’t get the hoof. He’s frustrated. He still needs us.”

“Of course he can’t get it,” Eddie agreed. He was helping Jim to a sitting position. Jim groaned. Adrian shone the light on the singer and he looked pink, like someone had thrown boiling water on him. “Or he wouldn’t be bargaining. But where is it?”

“It’s like he said,” Adrian added. “Heaven didn’t want him to grab the hoof, either.” He turned on the angel, shining the light on him and stalking closer. “What is it you want, Raphael? Freedom? Do you just want to lay your calling down and go? Power? Are you hoping you can bargain your way into the Infernal Council? Or maybe get a promotion in Heaven? Who outranks the archangels? The seraphim? Is that it, you want to be one of Heaven’s six-winged pool-boys, basking forever in the golden light of the throne?”

“Do you care?” Anger flashed in Rafi’s eyes. “Does it matter to you?”

“It matters!” Adrian snapped. “I have plans for that hoof!”

“What do you want?” Rafi asked. “You want to be a real wizard, don’t you? You want to cast the big spells, and you don’t want to fall asleep when you do it. And Eddie there wants to save his soul. Jim, I can guess. You’re like Dorothy and her friends, on a twisted road to Oz to see the wizard. And you’re going to trade the wizard his hoof in return for brains and courage and a heart and a return ticket home.”

“I guess you get TV reception in Dudael,” Adrian chuckled.

“I can get what I want from Azazel,” Rafi said firmly. “And I can help you all get what you want.”

“No deal,” Eddie’s voice was flat. He pushed Jim to his feet, his shoulder under the big man’s arm. Jim was groggy, and slow to respond. “Not now, not ever.”

“We already have someone who can talk us out of traffic tickets,” Adrian sneered. “You just don’t bring anything to the table.”

“I’ll tell,” the kid said. He sounded petulant, and since the moment when he’d stolen Mike’s gun and thrown him off the kiva, he’d never looked more like a little kid.

“Azazel?” Eddie snorted. “We’ll tell him ourselves.”

“I’ll tell Heaven.”

“Tell them what, exactly?” Adrian shone the flashlight into Rafi’s eyes, and the angel held up his hands to block the beam. “Tell them you went behind their back and tried to cut some kind of deal with Hell?”

Rafi laughed. “Of course not! I’ll tell them how you overpowered me and stole the hoof, and where you’re headed. And then I’ll laugh as Heaven’s pool-boys chop you to pieces with their flaming swords.”

“Aren’t you afraid Heaven can hear you now?” Adrian asked.

“Of course not!” Rafi laughed. “Do you think Heaven wanted Azazel to be able to just call for his friends, and be rescued? This place is warded to silence so deep, nothing can get out. You could set off a nuclear bomb in here, and no one would hear. The screaming of a thousand damned souls wouldn’t get past the roof.”

Adrian pulled something from his pocket and held it over his head. It looked like a smartphone.
Click
, Mike heard, and then Rafi’s voice repeated,
I’ll laugh as Heaven’s pool-boys chop you to pieces with their flaming swords.

“You recorded me?” Rafi sounded incredulous.

“There’s an app for that,” Adrian sneered.

“But …”

“Don’t mess with the gadget guy, bitch!” Adrian spat. The kid stepped back and his face twisted into an expression of anger and fear. “Now stay out of the way, or you’ll be the one with his nuts on Heaven’s anvil!”

“That doesn’t solve our basic problem,” Eddie observed. “It’s funny as hell, of course, but we still don’t know where the hoof is. If it’s even here at all.”