Lucas: Origins Of A Demon (14 page)

“Your guess is as good as mine, Leonard. The Great One never gave me a reason.”

“But the Adversary let you go. Why did it not destroy you?”

“I don’t know.”

Lucas is telling the truth. Not long after he took the throne and bonded with the Adversary, the Adversary broke the bond. The only thing the Great One said to Lucas was that Lucas was destined for other things, and being the King of Hell was not one of them. As it happened, Lucas was glad. The second he took the throne he knew he had made a mistake, just like he did when he traded his soul for the promise of greatness. He had let his ego overstep the mark again.

“That has never happened before,” Leonard says. “We all know taking the throne is a risk. If the Adversary rejects the bond, that’s it. You are destroyed. Yet, you still live, Lucas.” Leonard stares intently at him. “That really vexes me, you know. Why are you so special, Lucas, hmm?”

“I guess we’ll never know.” Lucas smiles, despite the impending truth of his words.

“Sadly, no.” Leonard slides himself over to the next stool, so he is closer to Lucas. His ice blue eyes harden, and Lucas sees the evil he knows so well lie behind them. “No one betrays me and gets away with it. Not even you, Lucas.”

“Come on, Leonard. It was Hell. All we did was betray in that place. That was the point.”

Leonard nods to himself. “Maybe. But I still take it personally. What can I say, I hold a grudge.”

Fucking right you do, Lucas thinks. For over two centuries. “Surely we can work this out like-”

“Like what? Civilized demons?”

“I was going to say businessmen.”

“Like businessmen. Okay. What can you offer me, Lucas?”

Lucas doesn’t really expect Leonard to indulge him, but he throws it out there anyway. “I know you are only interested in one thing. You want the power of the Adversary again. To finish what you started. Am I right?”

Leonard stares back at Lucas. He obviously doesn’t like to be reminded of his prior failure. You see, it was always Leonard’s intention to use the power of the Adversary to transform Hell, to make the place even more hellish than it already is. Lucas could never understand why, until he realized that Leonard is just pure evil, and thus enjoyed evil for evil’s sake. Trouble is, to affect that kind of large scale transformation takes time. It takes time to understand the power of the Adversary. Lucas found out for himself how incredibly complex and unfathomable the power of the Adversary actually is. This is a universal force we are talking about here, infinite in scale and unfathomable in depth. Leonard was dethroned by an upstart before he got the chance to figure out the Adversary’s secrets.

“Take me back to Hell,” Lucas says. “And I will help you get the throne back.” The thoughts of going back to Hell under the servitude of Leonard is abhorrent to Lucas, but it is either that or live as slime for the rest of eternity. At least with the first option, he had a chance.

Leonard seems to consider for a moment, then he shakes his head and smiles. “You always were a slimy bastard, Lucas. Best salesman I ever met. But alas, I will have to decline your offer, as tempting as it sounds to have someone with your skills behind me.” He leans closer to Lucas and lowers his voice. “But I think I’ll just destroy you instead, after I take you back to Hell, of course.” He nods his head towards his drone squad and they start to move in towards the bar.

Every single one of the guards looks the same. Identical in fact. That’s because Leonard cloned them himself in Hell. Each of them is bald, completely hairless in fact. No eyebrows, no lashes, not even a goddamn mole on their pale unblemished skin. Each of the clones wears a dark suit. If they were in Hell, they would look like ice demons, with crowns of ice on their heads. The doll look they currently sport is their way of blending in here on Earth.

Lucas glances at the closing clones. If he is going to make a move, he knows it has to be now. He will have a tiny window in which to act. Another few seconds and he will be hemmed in by Leonard’s soldiers, not to mention by Leonard himself. Truth be told, Leonard hardly needs the clones to apprehend Lucas. The Grand Duke is powerful enough to do that himself, but Leonard is the type who rarely likes to get his hands dirty, for which Lucas is glad. It gives him half a chance.

When Lucas makes his move, he does so at unnatural speed (for this world anyway). He jumps off the stool and darts to the right, towards the encroaching clones, taking two of their heads off before the rest can even react. He makes it through the circle of suited soldiers and runs for the front exit of the club. He gets only half way across when he suddenly finds himself face to face with Leonard again, who bares his twin fangs at Lucas before driving his fist into Lucas’ chest, sending Lucas flying backwards through the air. Lucas lands on the floor with a heavy thump. Before he can even bounce back to his feet, he is surrounded by a gaggle of large barreled, bio-mechanical guns all pointing down at him. His head flits from side to side as he considers what to do. He could jump up, try to run again, but he doubted he would be fast enough to avoid getting a load of black energy shot into him. He might be able to survive the shots, but only if he got the time and resources to expunge the energy from himself before its creeping acidic blackness turned his insides to mush. Black energy traps you like tar. You can’t leave the body you are in. You just have to suffer its agonizing effects before you found yourself transported to a cell in the Depths of Hell, where you would stay a prisoner of the Adversary for eternity. Yep, Soul Killers are a nasty piece of work.

And besides, even if he beat the soldiers and there were not more on the way, there is still Leonard. “Alright,” Lucas says, holding up his hands. “You got me.”

“That’s right.” The gun barrels part to allow Leonard through, where he stands, a smug smile on his face as he looks down at Lucas. “We have you.”

“It only took you two hundred years as well.”

The smile leaves Leonard’s face. “I’m going to enjoy torturing you at my Keep.”

“Great. I hear it’s a nice place.”

“Far from it. For you anyway.”

Fuck, Lucas thinks. This can’t be right. He was so close to getting the feather as well. If he had just had the feather, Leonard wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on, literally, if Lucas so desired to cut them off for him.

Leonard takes a few steps back, looks at the floor and mumbles a few words that Lucas does not have to hear in order to understand. Leonard is reciting a spell that will open a portal to Hell, probably a direct line to his Keep in the snowy wastelands where he resides. When a swirling tunnel of deep orange light opens up in the floor, Lucas feels his heart--or at least the heart of the person he stole the body from--sink in his chest. It is not a nice feeling and it is accompanied by unpleasant memories of Hell and its ever present, muted red light. He will never see sunshine again. He will never taste good vodka again. He will never revel in the sweet pleasures of Janice’s pussy. Such a shame, he thinks. He will miss that more than anything, strangely.

“Stand him up,” Leonard commands his clone soldiers.

Hands with vice like grips clasp on to Lucas’ arms and haul him to his feet. He can’t take his eyes of the burning portal in the floor. In a just a few seconds he will be back in the place he hoped never to see again. The universe can be a cruel place indeed.

“The look on your face is amusing me, Lucas,” Leonard says as the soldiers march Lucas to the edge of the portal, which seems to want to suck Lucas in like a giant mouth, the dancing light particles of the portal itself also seeming to revel in Lucas’ downturn and his soon to be suffering. “I enjoy seeing snakes like you get defanged.”

Lucas can’t help but laugh. “You’re calling me a snake? That’s funny, Leonard. You are the fucking King of Snakes.”

Leonard merely smiles, unaffected by Lucas’ words, practically bursting with anticipation. It is obvious he can’t wait to get Lucas back to Hell so he can go to work on him for the next eternity. “Take one last look at this playground you have become so used to living in. Play time is over, Lucas. Your punishment awaits you with eager, open arms.”

Lucas swallows. This is actually happening. He is going back to Hell.
No, no no…

“Throw him into the portal!” Leonard commands.

Lucas closes his eyes.

And then flings them open again when he hears running footsteps coming from the front exit of the club, followed by the
clack-clack-clack
of automatic gunfire. Lucas is shocked, but oh so damn glad, to see a stream of people come running through the front doors of the club, each one armed with an automatic rifle that they start firing enthusiastically, all except the man-- or rather demon--in front, who holds a massive sword in his hands.

Dimitri
.

If Lucas was a God man, he would have thanked the big guy then and there, but as it happens, he doesn’t have time for that anyway. Bullets are flying past him, hitting the clone soldiers beside him, forcing them to loose their grip on his arms. One bullet even slams into Lucas’ shoulder, but he hardly feels it.

He is more concerned with Leonard, who has turned to face the new arrivals. Dimitri stands about ten feet away, staring at Leonard like he doesn’t give a fuck who the Grand Duke is. The mad bastard. Whatever. Lucas is grateful for the distraction. He jumps over the glaring portal in the floor and lands right behind Leonard, driving his fist into the Grand Duke’s back, who hits the floor so hard the carpet and concrete crumple in around him.

Despite the force of the blow, Lucas knows he only has a second before the Grand Duke is up again, so he bolts to the front exit, Dimitri already ahead of him, wisely not hanging around to see what Leonard does next.

Shiny black gangster cars are waiting outside, three of them, all with drivers with their foot on the gas, ready to gun it as soon as Dimitri, Lucas and the rest are safely inside. Dimitri and Lucas dive into the back seat of the first car and the driver slams on the accelerator before the door can even be pulled shut. The car speeds off at a screech, the back door hanging open for a second before swinging in and slamming shut on its own.

“Fuck this,” Lucas says sitting up and looking out the back window. “Teleporting is so much easier.”

“You’re welcome,” Dimitri shouts, laughing, loving every second of the mayhem. “I didn’t ask Leonard to put a suppressor spell around the whole fucking block.”

Through the window, the Demon Ecstasy club is drawing further and further away as the car speeds away as fast traffic will allow. A few of Leonard’s clones burst out of the club, followed by Leonard himself, who stands looking at the cars driving away from him. Lucas half expects the old cunt to appear in the car with them until he remembers the suppressor spell applies to Leonard as well. Thank Christ for small mercies, he thinks.

“Relax,” Dimitri says, his massive broad sword clanging on the floor at his feet as the car swerves in and out of traffic. “A few more feet and we can get the fuck out of here to my place. Right about…now actually.” Dimitri smiles at Lucas and vanishes out of the car.

Lucas does the same and a split second later he is standing in Dimitri’s lair.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Dimitri is already sitting in his faux Egyptian throne, chugging red wine straight from the bottle when Lucas arrives. “Your meat suit took a bullet,” Dimitri says, offering Lucas the wine bottle. “Sorry about that. I’m sure you’ll survive though.” He smirks to himself.

Lucas declines the wine bottle and touches the bullet hole in his shoulder. “I’ll fix it later. How did you know Leonard and his drones were at the club?”

“You ain’t the only one with contacts. I been in this city a lot longer than you have my new friend. I know everything that goes on.”

Lucas sits down on a wooden crate that is marked fragile. He wonders for a second what is inside it, then decides he doesn’t want to know. He has more pressing things to worry about anyway. “I can’t stay here long. Leonard will locate me again soon enough.”

“That he will, the old bastard.” Dimitri looks hyped up still. Clearly he enjoyed the siege and rescue he mounted at the club. He reminds Lucas of a mad Russian wired to the moon on vodka and cocaine. His tattoos and gold jewelry only add to the look. “I’ll be ready for him if he ever comes here though.”

“You better hope for your sake he doesn’t. Thanks by the way.”

“No need to thank me. You owe me. That’s enough.”

Lucas nods, uncomfortable with owing someone like Dimitri anything. “Sure.”

Dimitri sits back in his ridiculous wooden throne and takes small swallows from the wine bottle he’s still holding, appearing to relax slightly. “I don’t know what you brought with you when you arrived in this town,” he says. “But this whole city is beginning to resemble our former home.”

“So I believe.”

Lucas is well aware of the city’s rapid decent into chaos. The non-human element of the city has decided to go overground, hunting openly on the streets, killing humans and turning the city upside down. Humans being humans are also helping, of course, turning on each other like frightened monkeys in a panic, looting and burning whole neighborhoods to the ground. “Nothing to do with me,” Lucas says. “Somehow our own kind are working with the Nephilim in some conspiracy they planned. Tolloch is leading the charge for the demons. I even hear angels are involved.”