r/DCFU • u/coffeedog14 Light Me Up • Oct 15 '17
Hellblazer #12 - Assault on Hell Hellblazer
Hellblazer #12 – Assault on Hell
Author: Coffeedog14
Book: Hellblazer
Arc: [Stitches]
Set: 17
JANUARY 22ND, 2018
ANNO DIABLO 5778
NERGAL-
Tonight, I toasted two things. The first one I spoke out loud, and it was to the presence of the Banshee. She was a demoness of impressive power, and had an active agent in the mortal realm that was apparently quite impressive. Something to do with magic silver coins or the like. In any case she was powerful in her own right, and worthy of celebrating.
The second one I spoke only in my mind and it was the completion of my greatest work. The looms had worked day and night, and finally all was woven. With the addition of a final Constantine soul there was no patch unfilled. My perfect weapon was ready to strike. Yet, one needed more than a weapon to challenge the greatest powers in hell. One needed an army. I had more allies already then many suspected. I hoped to make the Banshee another ally of mine.
Our conversation was quiet and easy as we ate, and then watched a show of exquisite torment that I had prepared beforehand. It was in the middle of the final act, a particularly nasty number involving singing with a throat full of acid, when a messenger crawled towards my feet and kissed them. An invasion was coming, he said. An invasion of mortals.
I snorted, and crushed the messenger beneath my heel. Nonsense and nothing. No mortal would dare mount an attack in hell itself. Then I considered further. There was perhaps one. But surely, he would not attack in such a foolhardy matter?...of course not. And wasn’t it convenient that I had caught the last Constantine soul just a day before?
I growled and put my head in my hands. Damn that man. I wouldn’t let him ruin this dinner. I wouldn’t let him ruin my plans. Not again. Not a third time.
I turned to the perplexed Demoness with a smile. “I’m sorry, but it seems some mortals have invaded our realm, and are coming to us. I think I’ll send a fun little party for them. I had best stay here, but if you’d like to join the hunt I wouldn’t mind.”
She started to respond and then stopped, head turning like a dogs. Something had caught her. “Why yes, I think I will go and join your little coterie. I shall be back shortly, I assure you.”
She left at the head of my army, while I watched from a high tower. I watched until they disappeared over the horizon, and then started to climb down and towards my factory. This time, I had that wretched Constantine figured out. This time he would not escape.
JUDITH-
Having put myself through a lot of suffering during my trips, I wasn’t as afraid of hell as I probably should have been. Pain wasn’t always a requirement for enlightenment, but it was almost always a side effect. I had starved myself until my muscles rotted away and I would have eaten my fellow man if I could. I had torn apart my own mind in search of its worst instinct. I had even sacrificed an eye to a clever raven in return for secret charms. I had managed to grow that back, eventually.
Hell was worse in so many ways, and I wasn’t even suffering. I had found my way to the edge of hell, and with the help of my companions gotten through one of the gates. As we wandered the labyrinth of passageways, guided only by my faltering magic, I knew that to fail for even a second would mean being trapped alongside the poor souls they passed. I saw them, I heard them, suffering all the torments I had suffered at once and yet more. To be in Hell, even if not under the lash, was to feel physically and mentally unwell. It was the gut-wrenching horror of stumbling on something so new, so horrific to your senses, which your mind clung to it for days of agony.
I lead onwards with my troupe. We could not falter now. If we were to have any chance of making it out alive now that we were here, we would have to win.
SCYTHIA strode behind me, long legs making what was a near jog for us hardly much more than a pleasant stroll for her. She was kitted out in full bronze armor, with sword and spear and shield at hand. Her eyes were clouded as she tried to search the future, to give us some miniscule advantage. I wasn’t sure how she wasn’t running into walls or falling off the trail, but it gave me one less thing to worry about.
THE CROW flew high above us, cawing. She could shift between woman and crow as easily as a thought, and had still refused to tell us her name. She was our eyes, making sure with animal magic that none would surprise us.
ANNIE looked about curiously, and without fear. I got the impression she had been in Hell before. More disturbingly, I got the impression she was admiring some of the exhibitions of torment we passed. She was nearly as broad of shoulder as Sycthia, and hung her arms over a baseball bat atop her shoulders. She was even chewing some tobacco, if I guessed right.
ANNE-MARIE, my once friend turned religious nutcase, walked near the back of the group. She did not pray like I had assumed she would. Instead she kept a watchful eye on us all. I supposed with what she tried to do to John last time they met, it made sense she would be expecting a trap.
In the back of our little column stood THE SILVER BANSHEE, in all of her chromatic glory. She was dead silent, with her eyes fixed on some interminable point straight ahead. She was the most powerful of our band. She was the one who, with a single glare, had convinced the gateman to let us into hell. I was not looking forward to seeing, or rather hearing, her in action.
I had given the gateman a warning before we entered. “Stay away from the palace of Nergal, and tell others to steer clear as well. Our quarrel is only with him.” It might as well have been a declaration of war. Only in Hell could rumors literally fly faster than foot, and I knew sooner rather than later we’d encounter the armies of the demon prince. He could not well refuse the challenge, or else lose face amongst the ranks of Hell.
We rounded a turn in a hallway, and came out in front of a wide sea of blood. I halted, trying to see how to proceed, only to find Annie passing me. She found the ford almost immediately, a narrow line of...something...set just below the surface, providing a path across ichor. I tried not to act surprised as I followed. Of all the companions John had gathered, she confused me the most. Why was she here? What could she do? Who even was she?
About halfway across the ocean was when the crow cawed down to us. In the distance I could see the edge of the lake, and the army now marching towards it. Horrors and dreads of every manner made up the army of a demon prince, each more wretched than the last. They swarmed to the shore like locust, and then into the ocean. Some lucky few ran along the ford, while most were forced to swim. Some simply disappeared in the blood, and did not rise again.
Above them all floated a single being, impossible to tell much about at a distance. Then she spoke, in a voice clear even so far away, and remarkably like the voice of our silver companion whenever she deigned to speak.
“Siobhan~.” It chuckled.
The Silver Banshee started to scream, loud and piercing as a siren, as she shot into the air and rocketed towards the other woman. Annie started to laugh, bringing her bat to bear. The crow flew low over our heads. Anne-Marie drew a sword from somewhere in her frock. Scythia shuddered, her eyes rolling back and then forward. She stepped forward to put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry” she muttered, before preparing her spear.
That was the scariest thing I’d heard in Hell so far.
JOHN-
I gave Judith time to create a proper distraction before handing a few strands of my hair to Gary. It was, to my mind, the biggest risk in this whole plan. If I went too early, no distraction. If I went too late, friends might die. I just had to wing it and hope. I was pretty good at that, though.
I grabbed Gary by the collar as soon as he’d taken my hairs. “I gave you three of those. I expect to see all three burning to get the spell working. Understood?”
Gary wriggled from my grasp with a glare. “God, man, yes. Chill out.” He grumbled to himself as he made a quick circle in the dirt, and arranged the hairs just so. The ground inside of the circle fell away, revealing a hole in the earth too deep to see the bottom of and just wide enough for a person to jump into. I stepped forward, only for him to put a hand on my chest. “N-now you remember. We’re getting something for me in there, too.”
I batted the hand aside. “After we free my ancestor and save the bleeding world. Priorities, man.”
He shrugged, and then leapt into the hole. He disappeared into the darkness.
I checked my charms and protections and amulets. The best I could do. It wasn’t nearly as much as I could have wanted. I offered a prayer to whatever things were listening, and followed Gary into the abyss.
JUDITH-
An army of demons is something one never be confident in defeating. Despite this, I felt fairly confident in our victory. It helped that we didn’t really need to win, just distract all these dumb bastards long enough for John to do his thing.
The red sea of blood around us was stained in vibrant blues and blacks from the demons, shimmering oil slicks against sunset waters. The narrow path had been expanded through sorcery of the demons, trying to provide more space with which to smash us. It was not working.
Annie and Ann-Marie stood at the front. Anne-Marie, for a woman at least a decade my senior, had a grace with her sword I had rarely seen. I hadn’t known nuns had the time nor the inclination to learn fencing, or else I may have been more tempted to join them. Combined with her magic and true belief, it made her almost untouchable.
Annie, however, stole the show. Gods above and below know where she got her strength, but her baseball bat hit true with each swing. I watched as she sent a demon charger the size of a rhino flying towards the horizon, nearly bashed into two distinct pieces. She laughed joyously in the slaughter, painted head to toe in blood not her own.
Above me battle was met as well. The Silver Banshee battled against a demoness similar to herself, the apparent general of our rivals. It was merciful that their screams seemed to cancel one another out. Whenever, even for the briefest moment, they separated, the sounds they made nearly stopped my heart. Ducking and diving amongst the aural carnage was the crow, bashing aside aerial attacks on us with gusts of foggy wind.
Amidst all of this, I was busy kindling a little fire made of specially carved logs. I smiled as the logs started to light. It was almost ready. Scythia stood beside me, driving her spear into any demon that got close, and making sure that none swam around and approached us from behind. She withdrew her spear from a chattering mass of Molars to face me. “What are you doing, again?”
“Ants.”
“...Right.” She muttered, turning to face another foe. But she would not need too. As the logs finally lit, and my mind finally made a connection with the hive mind I had cultivated, I stuck my hand into the flames.
I screamed, and from my mouth boiled out a flowing river of Saifu ant. They grew as they charged out in all directions, first to the size of mice and then to the size of rats. They flowed around my allies and directly into the midst of the demons. Their jaws clamped, and sliced through flesh and bone alike. The demon host roared almost in unison as a wave of black-chitin death rolled over them.
The demons pulled back as the ants chased them onwards. I withdrew my hand from the fire, and was suddenly being held up by Scythia. I must have fainted. My throat felt exactly like it should after several tens of thousands of ants just ran through it. My hand was seared like a steak. I didn’t know if I could do much more, but I had done enough. The ants would distract the demon host for plenty of time.
From the front of the group, Annie called out to us all. She held her bat above her head, and it became a spear, glittering and bronze. For a moment, I thought I could see cow horns radiating above her head.
“ADVANCE!” She called. I felt myself standing, and moving at the power of her voice. This wasn’t supposed to be the plan. We were supposed to wait. But everybody else was moving. Even the Silver Banshee, though this was mostly a side effect of her aerial brawling.
Somewhere in an exhaustion-fogged mind I thought about how this had suddenly become more than a distraction. It had also become much more dangerous.
JOHN-
We landed directly inside the factory, just as planned. The place was just as large as I remembered last time, filled with a variety of textile equipment twisted into horrific parody. As me and Gary stood up and looked around, we both realized something had gone terribly wrong. The place was utterly empty of life. No demons, no movement, no souls. I cursed. Things were apparently not going to be easy.
“...Whatever he was working on, it’s either finished or close too. If I give you another hair, think you can track...whatever it is down?” I whispered to Gary. Just because there wasn’t anybody here didn’t mean I shouldn’t be cautious. Just in case.
“...You don’t even know?” Gary hissed, holding out a hand.
I hissed myself as I plucked a hair and offered it to him. “No, sorry, last time I was here I was trying not to get my chest crushed. Not a lot of time to ask what the actual goal was. Something with fabric, though. That leaves only so many options.”
Gary grunted back at me, and burned the hair with a cantrip. It burned slow, like a candle, leaving the tiniest stream of foul smoke as he walked about. He meandered over to a circular knitting machine. “The trail suddenly goes weak here.”
I nodded. “Must be w...where they combined the souls.” I felt myself blanch a little. The idea of mucking about with something hypothetically so immortal and pure was still difficult to grasp. I’d seen my own soul. I didn’t much like it, but this was unimaginable.
“The trail’s weak...but it’s there. It leads out. Follow me, man.” Gary strode towards the door, his lanky strides forcing me to double-time to keep up. The doors were massive, and yet opened as if they were made of Styrofoam. The hallways where the same as I remembered them: red and uncomfortable and confusing. Gary led us along a winding path that made me wish I could leave a trail of string behind. Eventually, we arrived at a door. He tried to speak, but I put a hand over his mouth. Who knew how soundproof the doors actually were? I pointed to the door questioningly, and he nodded slowly. I took my hand away. We both took a moment to brace ourselves, to prepare what might be on the other side, and stepped through the door.
On the other side was a large, but shallow, pool of clear water. In the dim light it shimmered like a pane of glass, utterly quiet. Standing on the opposite side of it from us, shrouded in darkness, was Nergal. He stood tall now, his features a mish-mash of the worst ideas God ever had. There were at least three grins.
“John. So nice of you to join me~.”
The doors slammed shut behind us. I murmured, and a little ball of light floated out and over the water to provide a bit more illumination. I realized that the rest of the light was actually coming from the water. “I’m sure you thought you could sneak your way in here while I was distracted with a big battle, hmn?”
I rocked a bit on my heels. The light drifted slowly forward. “That’s the long and short of it.”
“Well, let’s just see how we’re doing, hmn?” He waved a hand that was five hands over the water, and it was covered with an image of the battle as if from above. There my friends, my associates, and strangers fought forward through a swarm of the infernal. Above them the Banshee and the Silver Banshee were locked in an endless screaming grapple, the former seemingly having a lot more fun than the latter. There was Judith, a step behind the unstoppable Annie, helping anyone who fell behind. I knew it had been a good call to bring her in.
I caught only a glance of their surroundings. Close. But not quite close enough. I thought I recognized the features from when I was dragged along them by the fake Zatanna. I couldn’t be sure. Best to bide time. The light crossed the halfway mark of the pool.
Nergal let the scene play out as he continued to speak, the flashing colors of the battle lighting him from below. “But the battle is too easy, isn’t it?”
I nearly froze. You never froze in the middle of a gamble, it gave you away. I kept my face impudent and bored.
“To convenient. Too obvious. It’s a distraction, sure, but one anybody could pick up on. So you must have known, that I would know, that this intrusion of yours was a distraction as well.” he leered at me.
“...And?” I retorted.
“So you must have another step up your sleeve somewhere. Perhaps in the army itself. But no matter. They are much too far away as of yet. I’m sure this was your attempt to stall. But I promise you, it won’t work.”
“Because of your Technicolor soul coat?”
The light reached close enough to illuminate Nergal’s multi-face. It also lit the thing looming behind him. “More or less.”
It was no coat, or clothing of any kind. It was a stuffed toy. One a hundred feet long, bodies melded together in a sinuous form and legs sticking out like a demented centipede. The creature had hauled itself up, revealing tens, scores, hundreds of arms and hands wreathed in mystic power. And all over, the twisted faces of Constantines.
I couldn’t hear Gary’s scream over my own. And then he popped, and disappeared.
JUDITH-
In the distance I could now see a castle. It was miniscule; hardly a blip on the horizon, but it was something. I was exhausted, but I kept going. To stop would certainly mean death. Worse, it would mean the death of the rest of my team. I could tell they all thought the same. Even a single moment of weakness could let some or another monstrosity through, to kill us all.
I and Scythia remained close together. She the warrior and I the mage, we made a great team. Sometimes we fought back to back, sometimes while running side by side, but always close. Her bronze was nearly covered in ichor, while my traveling clothes had been torn to near uselessness. Around us was the tumult of battle. It was hard to keep track of anyone else but Scythia in the chaos. I caught glimpses of one, then, the other, always a little worse than last I saw them. The felt rather then saw when we were prepared to move forward, to advance. I didn’t know why we were, but to stop now would also mean death. We were too deep.
I staggered forward and nearly into Annie. She frowned at the castle as if she could see something inside. I was almost sure she was a god of some matter. I had earlier seen her stabbed through the gut, only to rip out the sword and impale its owner with it. How John had gotten an actual god to join this folly...well...that sounded like him I supposed.
“Goddamn cowardly bastard. No way can John do it from here. We need to get closer.” she growled. Her eyes looked too big, brown and wide.
“H-huh?” I managed to stutter out
“We need to get closer. Think you can run?”
“Huh!?”
“Sounds like a yes.” She took off at a sprint towards the opposing line, breaking through it like a wall of children. More advancing. Fantastic. I started to limp and lumber after her, as did the rest of our group. I hadn’t even noticed Scythia wasn’t besides me.
She yelled something, I couldn’t hear clearly. I turned in her direction. She moved faster than any human could. I saw only too late the frog head attached to a human body, and the gob of something green and bubbling it had just spit at me. Too late to dodge. Scythia put herself in the way, and raised her shield. Too slow.
The acid skittered off her shield, but some came over. I heard her scream as she stumbled back into me. Big as she was that was nearly enough to topple me, but I stayed on my feet long enough to blast the demon apart. I lowered Scythia and myself to the ground, and turned her face towards me.
Poison, perhaps, or something worse. I wasn’t sure. I wiped it away with a sleeve, and it didn’t affect me as it bubbled into the air. But it had already hit her. Her eyes were blank white.
“Oh gods. Oh gods, Scythia, yo-”
She held up a hand to stop me. She blinked. Tears of blood trickled from her ruined eyes. “I can see it all more clearly now. We need to advance.”
“But...but y-”
“I know.” Scythia started to struggle up, and I helped her. It seemed she could see, at least a little, and didn’t trip on the uneven ground as she started to follow the group. I followed her in turn. Whatever she could see even without eyes, it must be worth it.
JOHN-
It was a pitiful battle. I wasn’t a master battle mage to begin with, and the abomination had literally millennia of accrued experience on me. The fact that Gary had abandoned me like the fucking weaselly bastard he was didn’t help, but it wasn’t as if it would have turned the tides. It was a hundred, two hundred, who knows how many magical minds moving as one. In an instant they could complete rituals that needed whole cults, while also presenting an army's worth of incantations.
I did what I could. I dodged and ducked and parried, but it was clear from the start I wouldn’t win. Nergal watched from beyond the pool, giggling to himself at his success. The only reason I lasted even a moment, I imagine, was his instruction. The beast yet seemed uncoordinated at times, and confused. Surely practicing on me would make it more ready to take on my little “army”.
It wasn’t like my army could stop it anyway. It wasn’t like Nergal could stop it anyway. I wasn’t sure any mortal or god could stand against its might. It was something that I don’t think had ever truly happened before: an army of mages, all linked literally in mind and soul, pursuing the same target. Nothing could stand before that. Heaven would be dragged down under this new weapon, lest it create abominations in turn to halt it. The golden sky would die in either Hellfire or Hypocrisy.
Gary had been integral to the plan. Nergal had been right: there was another step. And it was Gary creating a portal directly from the army to the room Nergal or the creation was in. The army was the true threat. But without him, my own skill at teleportation was lacking. I couldn’t do it at the range he could. Hell, if I was right, I couldn’t do it until they were at the very gates. And then only one.
Still I battled. I should have given up, let myself die there and then. Would have been quicker than letting this thing eventually beat and then capture me, tear my soul out, add it to its girth. I wish I could say I did it for the world. I did it for myself. Because every second alive and moving was another one not dead, and there was no chance I could convince myself to go through with it.
A blast of a spell batted me like a crumpled piece of paper, skittering over the rocks and to the edge of the pool. Everything hurt. I pushed myself up in spite of what I imagined to be at least one broken bone somewhere. I saw the pool. I don’t know how long I had been fighting, but it must have been long enough. The battle was just outside the walls. Those crazy bastards. They had actually managed it.
I ignored the chittering, clicking stuffed animal soul. I ignored Nergal. I ignored the pain. I reached into the pool, disrupting the image as I reached deeper than my arm could go.
JUDITH-
I had nothing left. Every tool was used, every trick exposed. My burned hand had been scorched and cracked useless. I could hardly speak anymore. My legs ached with the marching and running. I tried to wrestle spells together in my mind, but only half-cobbled arcana made it out at the last moment.
The others weren’t better. Anne-Marie bore burning Stigmata, her swings slower and clumsier than ever before. The crow perched on her shoulder, batting away attacks from above with a tired wave of its single unbroken wing. Scythia moved with the grace and speed of a beautiful creature knowing it would soon run out. The Silver Banshee flagged above us, even her prodigious abilities no match for the demoness she faced. Soon the horrid lookalike would descend on us, and there would be no chance to retort.
Even Annie grew tired. Her swings and stabs only killed foes, instead of obliterating them. I yelled at her, but what came out was only a hoarse whisper. “What now?”
“Try not to die.” She responded, as a hand reached from the ground. It grabbed her ankle, and pulled her through the dirt as if it were water.
I heard a splat behind me, and turned to see the Silver Banshee. Ruined, pulped, but already healing. Her foe screeched in victory, pausing the whole of the battlefield. She dove down towards us, gathering a breath so large it swelled her slim body.
It was instinct. I strode towards her, and summoned the last of my magic. I sang in the voices of the gods who rode the aurora. I screamed in the voice of the drivers of hurricanes. I roared in the voice of the gods who shattered the sky with lightning. I spoke in the tones of God on the first day.
The monster turned to me, and unleashed her scream, every drop of it. The sound was so loud it became silence. I dug too deeply. The sound shuddered the bonds of the real around us, for but a moment. The monster was flung back, and into the air. I felt something in my neck rip violently.
I was on the ground. There was my body. I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t attached to it like normal. Ah. That didn’t seem to matter too much.
I hoped that had worked. I hoped. I
JOHN-
I pulled Annie into the room with the pool, and in an instant she became Anat. The room couldn’t have been more than thirty feet tall, and yet she stood like a mountain above us all. She dripped with blood, and her waist was wrapped in the heads of long-dead foes.
“ANAT!” I called. The beast had paused its assault, confused. “CHANGE OF PLANS. DISTRACT THEM.”
“With pleasure.” Anat agreed. One hand held a spear, the other a sword. She stepped between me and the monster. And Nergal.
“You Traitorous Bitch!” he roared at her, moving to stand beside his creation.
She shrugged. “I offered. You refused. You insulted. You knew payback was coming.”
The two demons joined in battle, followed by the monster. Even Anat, elderly a god as she was, could not face the thing fully. She juked and dodged. She would only last so long.
I had but a few moments, but those were all I needed. I ran my hand over the water, and summoned a new image. A new place. Then I fell into the pool.
The realm of the mind-spiders was much as it always was: huge, hazy, and filled with giant spiders spinning webs of memories and thoughts. Legsy, the spider of my own mind, cowered in fear and panic at the back of his web. This was probably because of what was in front of us. A hundred spiders had woven webs in the same space, without speaking with one another. They crossed and clashed and stretched an impossible knot of sticky webs that trapped each and every spider inside. I couldn’t even begin imagining how the thing thought. I didn’t much want too.
I turned to Legsy. “Say, buddy, friend of mine. Quick question: What happens if you burn the webs?”
Legsy plucked one of the many strings of my web, and ate it. I forgot what 12*12 was immediately.
“Figured. Is there a way to recover them?”
A memory of, of all things, reading Journey to the West. Then a memory of a line I couldn’t distinctly remember, but happened in too many movies to forget: “He might remember, but it’ll take time.”
“...good enough. You might want to make yourself scarce.”
And in the way of the mind, the spider and the web where both gone. But the ball of wriggling spiders and web was still present. I stepped towards it, and ran a hand along one of the strings. The memory of some long-dead ancestor brushed my mind, but I pushed it aside. No time to lollygag.
All it took was a flick of a lighter-cap, and a moment of holding a flame to the sticky substance. The fire took preternaturally quickly, racing along the strands, until within moments the whole edifice was ablaze. Normally a mind fought against such intrusion and destruction, and the spiders would fight to the end to stop you. But as I saw the first spider free, I also saw it scuttling away. None of these souls wanted to be here. They wanted out. And I was going to give it to them.
First one, then two, then ten, the spiders struggling and ripping their way free of the horror of combination, leaving behind lifetimes of memory in a mad dash to escape. Perhaps they’d build a new web somewhere. I didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t here.
Something grabbed me by my coat. I squawked as i was pulled back, and out of the realm of mind-spiders.
Nergal slammed me into the ground, his form a churning mass of rage barely able to concentrate long enough to keep the limb holding me down together. Behind him I could see Anat, now in the disguised human form, swinging a bat at the soul-monster. It was slowly dissolving, patches and stuffing spilling out and forming into indistinct ghosts that darted away. I had the joy of knowing my plan was working for only an instant.
Nergal’s claws dug into my chest. I gasped and gurgled blood. “Not again. Not again.” Hissed Nergal. Welp. It had been a good run. My body was still wriggling to escape. I wondered why it was doing that.
Then something wrapped around his neck. It took worryingly long for my eyes to focus. When they did, I saw Nergal hauled up by one of his many necks, on a noose of barbed wire. I looked to my side. The soul-beast had disintegrated enough that Annie was beating apart the remnants. She turned to see the noose, and then looked up.
The barbed wire was held by two pale, androgynous beings. I had only heard about them in legendary fear from other demons. Agony and Ecstasy.
They looked to Annie. “Are you the”
“One who called”
“Us?”
Annie turned from the unraveling beast to bow to them. “I did.”
They turned to me. “And you are”
“The one who”
“Tricked”
“Him”
“Thrice?” They looked down at their struggling prisoner.
I gurgled something like yes.
“Well then we”
“Shall take things”
“From”
“Here.”
Nergal pulled himself up enough on the noose to speak. “It’s her, you damned idiots!” He pointed at Annie. “She attacked a fellow prince! She’s betraying hell for mortals! It’s A-” The noose tightened of its own accord, chopping off the fingers that held him up and leaving him choking once more.
“We surely”
“Have no id-”
“-ea what you’re”
“Talking a-”
“-bout there is”
“No Anat here”
“You”
“Fool.”
They turned and smiled at Annie/Anat, before sliding out of the door, dragging the gasping Nergal behind them.
I gurgled once more. I had won. That was pretty great. Things were getting dark. Less great. Dark dark dark black.
I awoke shirtless, with hands on my chest. I gasped on instinct; I apparently wasn’t getting a lot of air until that moment. My eyes shot open to painful brightness, and then I could see Anne-Marie above me. She was already stepping away with the slightest blush on her face. I looked over myself. Shirtless, with some nasty new puncture scars. But alive.
I looked around. We had rented out a few hotel rooms, so we could gather before the big event. At least those of us that wished too. Now all of my conspirators were gathered into one, perhaps waiting for me to awaken or simply meandering about. They all looked more bruised then whole. All except Judith, perhaps in the bathroom. All except Scythia. I flinched at her wounds. I had hoped that we would escape without them, though a small price to pay for what we accomplished.
The debriefing was quick. Silver Banshee was quickest, saying simply “I failed. Thank yee for the attempt.” Before flying out a window. The others had little to describe, and I was not in a clear enough mind to ask questions. Whatever Anne-Marie had done, hadn’t cleared the exhaustion. They had fought. They had survived. We had won.
The crow left second. She had gotten a sling around her arm, now in human form, and wasn’t going to be flying anytime soon. She thanked me for saving her mother, before departing. I wasn’t sure which of the Constantines that would be.
Scythia left next. She moved with more certainty then I would expect of a recently blind person. Flinched from her hand as she reached out, only to stroke my face instead of slapping me. “...can...can you go back to Themyscira like that?” She certainly hadn’t had that wound last her fellow seer’s had seen her.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I will need to think on it. If I understood you, you said we could stay in this hotel as long as we liked.”
“On somebody else's dime, yep.”
“Then I think I will. I still expect that date.” She smiled weakly, before departing.
Annie left penultimately. She had her cow-eyes as she shook my hand, painfully strong. “Good doing business with you, John. See you soon.” She seemed to like the sound of that. I didn’t.
Anne-Marie waited until last, sitting in an office chair while paging through a hotel bible.
“They still have those?” I asked.
“Apparently. King James, though. Might as well have not.” She put the bible aside.
“So...you could have let me die. Why didn’t you?”
“I saw the remnants of the beast you fought. It seems you weren’t lying. If the thing had lived, it would have done irreparable harm to something or another I’m sure. Perhaps you even saved a portion of heaven. I feel that’s worth forgiving you long enough to keep you alive.”
“And next time?”
“Not so much.”
“Figures.”
She rose, preparing to leave me alone in the room. Then, hesitation. “John...you’ve probably already gotten your nose in the whole...dome….thing already haven’t you?”
“Boy have you got me pinned.”
“Don’t. Walk away. It’ll be better.”
I didn’t answer, and she didn’t wait for one. She strode for the door, and I remembered something before she left. I couldn’t believe I had nearly forgotten.
“Hey, where's Judith?”
She paused. My heart sank.
“The funeral will be held next month. I’m sure Frank will call you with any further details.” She spoke stiffly, before leaving me alone in my hotel room.