Arianna Rose: The Gates of Hell (Part 5) (20 page)

“What’s Darius?” Desmond asked. 

“Take my hands,” Dafeenah urged them, offering one to Arianna and one to Desmond.

Images of three distinct portals opening flashed in her field of vision.  Three separate locations and Darius at each.  

“The last three gateways,” she breathed, the pieces of the puzzle fitting
together and arranging themselves in her brain.  “He knows where they are.  We have to get to them before he does.  We know where the last three locations are, and now we have to stop him.”

“Which do we go to first?  How do we choose?” Desmond asked.

“We don’t,” Arianna answered.  “We split up into three teams.  We need to use everyone we have and act now,” she continued hurriedly, dividing the group into teams in her mind and contemplating the instructions they’d be given.

“But Arianna,
” Briathos said and interrupted her thoughts.  “You’re forgetting one crucial element.”  He held her gaze for a moment.  She searched his eyes hoping they’d reveal his next sentence without him having to speak it.  But they did not.  “Without you,” he resumed. “The teams won’t be able to stop him.” Briathos’ voice tolled like a bell and rang through her marrow.  He was right.  Still, they had to try.  They had an advantage now.  They knew where the three portals were.

“The members of each party will be
told to find me immediately should they come across Darius.  No one is to engage him.”  She thought only of the safety of the team members, not the fact that while one sifted to find her, Darius could very well open the final gateway and render them unsuccessful.  “Come on, let’s get back to the clearing and form teams.  I don’t want to lose another second of time.”

She closed her eyes and grasped Dafeenah’s hands, and was immediately transported back to the clearing.  Desmond, Briathos and Sorath were not far behind and joined her instantly. 

“Leo, Sorath, why don’t you take Dane and lead one team.  And Desmond you stay with me and Briathos and we can pick a few others.”

“Desmond needs to lead another team.  He and Jason should select a group,” Briathos said, his words more of a command than a statement. 

“Wait, what?  Why?  Why can’t Desmond stay with me and you go with Jason?” Arianna asked without censor. 

Desmond stood close by, the spicy, leathery scent of him filling her with comfort and fear
at once.  A strong arm slipped around her waist and drew her near so that the steady pound of his heart thumped against her arm. 

“I know you both want to protect each other, but this is how it is supposed to be
.”  Briathos glanced over his shoulder at Dafeenah, and they exchanged knowing glances. 

Arianna guessed he’d been given a preview of the future.
  A sick pit began to knot in her belly.  What had the seer shown him?  Why did they need to separate?  Would one of them fall?  Question after question rolled through her mind like a ball of barbed wire. 

“Desmond will go with Jason, and
Arianna, you’ll stay with me,” he said with finality.

“Look, I don’t know what you and Dafeenah
know or when you even had time to talk about teams I just dreamed up minutes ago, but predictions are subject to change.  I’m living proof of that.  And I’m saying Desmond and I need to be together—” Arianna tried, but Briathos simply pursed his lips and shook his head. 

“Come
along, Arianna.  Come with me.  Trust in a power higher than your own; trust in fate,” he said in a placating voice.  But rather than soothe her, it put her on edge.  She wanted to scream and thrash, to have a full-blown fit and tell Briathos that there was no freaking way she was leaving without Desmond to worry he’d never return, but firm hands slid up her arms and gripped her near her shoulders.

“Arianna,” Desmond’s hot breath fanned across her neck. 
“I’ll do as Briathos says, but know this:  I will return to you.”  His gaze was hard, his expression intense.  “I will not leave this world, or any other, without you.  We are a team, our souls bound to one another eternally.  I love you, Arianna Rose.  I will come back to you.”

Arian
na blinked feverishly in a feeble attempt to prevent the tears collecting from spilling down her cheeks.  Her effort was of little use.  Streams gushed to her chin when she stood on her toes and threw her arms around Desmond’s neck.  “I love you, Desmond,” she managed in a strangled whisper.  “Come back to me.”

And with her words, her world
constricted to the moment in which she existed.  There was just the two of them, just she and Desmond.  War did not loom on the horizon.  Danger no longer stalked them.  And death, her constant companion, did not wait in the wings, scythe clutched in bony hands.  Desmond was in her arms, safe and sound. 

He lowered his mouth, his lips barely touching hers, and kissed her gently. 
“I need to find Jason and assemble our team,” he said. 

Arianna was loath to let him go.  “I know,”
she said, and little by little, released her hold on him.  “I’ll see you soon.”

Her words were a prayer, a personal imploration from her lips to God’s ears.  She only hoped He heard her.  

Chapter 15

The overwhelming smell of dirt and lime assaulted Darius’ nasal passages as soon as the scattering of light in his field of vision took shape.  He found himself, once again, surrounded by smooth, curved walls.  Far wider than the tunnel he’d sifted to beneath the Argentinian monastery, the one in which he presently found himself was grander and boasted an ornate, black and white, tiled mosaic floor.  He, along with Baal, Naberius and Lilith took several steps, assessing their location.  He’d been drawn to it after glimpsing snapshot visions of it and was certain he was in the right place.  All that remained was for the actual portal itself to summon him as all the others had.

“My l
ord, where are we?” Naberius asked and interrupted Darius’ concentration.  His heavy-footed lumbering halted as he paused and observed his surroundings with slack-jawed wonder.  So slovenly in appearance, Naberius made him want to retch; Darius had to continually remind himself of his unique, wrecking-ball type skills.

Swallowing back the bile that invariably rose each time he looked at the demon,
Darius examined the light fixtures positioned at even intervals along the passageway, the expertly crafted archways, the columns, all carved from what appeared to be some type of pale, ashy stone.  Centuries of life had afforded him a seasoned eye for structural detail and architectural style, both of which were capable of disclosing locales.  As he took in the fashion of the construct, the period of time in which it had been built, its history, crystallized.  He realized they were in the tunnels beneath Rome’s Baths of Caracalla. 

A recently reopened tourist attraction, the tunnels were once used by slaves to carry wood to the
roughly fifty ovens that had heated water for thousands of bathers a day during the third century AD.

“We’re beneath the Baths of
Caracalla,” he said as his eyes continued to scan the architecture. 

“The what?” Naberius asked. 

“The Baths of Caracalla,” Darius said sharply.  “They were the second largest Roman baths built in the third century.”

“O
kay
, if you say so,” Naberius answered dully.  “Boring stuff if you ask me.  But,” he reconsidered and rubbed the unkempt whiskers on his chin, “people bathing together does sound hot,” he said and licked his blubbery lips. 

“You like to imagine groups of nude men
and women submerging their bodies in steaming pools of water, Naberius?” Lilith asked with clinical coolness, her voice as empty as her expression.

“
Who doesn’t?” Naberius asked and laughed, his round, draping belly jiggling wildly.

Lilith’s eyes widened slightly, the
energy she projected that of a coiled snake. “While men and women mingled up there,” she pointed a slender finger toward the ceiling, “down here, in any of the three-tiered grid of tunnels, only men gathered.  They were a part of a cult, a violent one.”  Her pupils dilated at the word “violent.”  “A temple dedicated to Mithras is somewhere in the network.  There, worshippers butchered bulls over a grill and allowed the blood of the beast to drench an initiate.”

Naberius’ round cheeks and bulbous nose were scrunched.  “Thanks for the useless information,” he said and shook his head
.  “But I don’t give a shit about Mithras and bullshit, or bull blood, or whatever the hell those whack jobs covered themselves in back then.  The image in my mind is one, big, fantastic orgy.”

Darius prickled at Naberius’ dismissiveness.  Lilith was excited by tales of blood, both human and animal, and her excitement translated to a night of pleasure for him. 

“Mithraism, a Roman mystery religion, flourished in the second and third centuries.  A secretive sect, they worshipped the ancient Persian god Mithras in caves and other such underground dwellings, offering sacrifices like the one Lilith mentioned,” Darius said, a harder than usual edge to his tone.  “Oh, but Naberius, there I go sharing useless information.”  His words were benign, but in his voice was an unmistakable threat that cautioned the portly demon to tread carefully and mind his tongue.  

Naberius took an instinctive step backward.  A smart move as far as Darius was concerned. 

Baal released a sound similar to a growl as Naberius edged closer to him, causing a cruel chuckle to slip from Darius. 

“All right, I get it,” Naberius huffed and threw his hands in the air.  “Aren’t we here to open a portal
, though, not receive history lessons?”

“Yes, we are here to open a portal, one of the last three, in fact,” Darius’ mood soared as he said the words.  “After this gateway is opened, only two
will remain, and I know exactly where they are.  By this time tomorrow, the world will be ours.”

Grunts of enthusiasm echoed from Baal, and Naberius rocked from the balls of his feet to his heel
s, making his ample bosom bob.  Unfortunately, his was not the bosom Darius wished to see bounce.  Lilith’s were far more appealing, and hairless; always a plus. 

As if hearing his thoughts, Lilith twisted
and looked past him.  A trace of a smirk curled the edges of her bow-shaped lips, too insignificant to be deemed a smile by any definition, but enough to heat his loins and make him take a step toward her.  Her hood, pulled atop the crown of her head, caused the fabric skimming her chest to gap, showcasing a supple semicircle of porcelain flesh.  He longed to bury his face there, between her firm breasts, and nip at them like a frenzied animal. 

Lilith trailed a finger down the crease between her mounds,
slowly, erotically, causing her nipples to bead and strain against the satiny material of her gown. 

Desire spiraled tightly within him, his need swollen and painful.  The idea of slamming her pale and fragile form against the hoary walls of the cave and ramming his shaft inside her until
his craving was sated crossed his mind.  But time for that didn’t exist at the moment.  It would abound, however, in the coming days. 

He was reminding himself of that fact as he
bit the inside of his cheek, wrestling his primal urge, when awareness washed over him with the might of a tidal wave. 

The gateway was calling to him, stretching its sooty fingers through the labyrinth of underground channels and collaring him.  Suddenly, his craving for Lilith seeped from him, replaced by the rapidly growing pull.  His legs began moving.  Unhurried at first, his pace sped the deeper he traveled. 

Elaborate montages of tiling gave way to dingier flooring that eventually turned rocky.  Lighting systems vanished, and the smell of dank earth mingled with the lingering smoky scent of creosote and ash.  He followed the odor and felt the ground beneath his feet begin to slope downward. 

A human being would have long since turned back, the darkness too thick and the stench too potent.  He relied on his superior vision and the magnetic pull attracting him as if a giant magnet waited
just yards from where he walked and he was nothing more than a metal rod. 

Deeper and deeper he roamed until the terrain became treacherous.  The sound of Naberius’ wheezing and complaining was background noise that accompanied the rhythmic patter of his shoes.  But
all was silenced and his body went still when the influence of the underworld dramatically grew in intensity, signifying he’d arrived at his destination. 

Darius raised both hands as if he stood warming them before a hearth.  Heat was there, of course, but so was the crackle of energy.  Like a livewire, evil snapped around the shimmering section of air. 
He closed his eyes and attuned his thoughts to the frequency spewing toward him, the momentum and molecular makeup of the gateway. 

But just as his powers strained to open it, a jolt of unfamiliar force intruded. 
Others were in the tunnel, and not camera wielding tourists, either.  Supernatural beings advanced. 

“We have company,” Darius
dropped his hands and spun, his concentration completely broken as he informed Baal, Naberius and Lilith of the invasion. 

“Is it the Sola?” Lilith asked
with a whisper of acidity in her tone.