Demon Squad 6 The Best of Enemies (6 page)

The creature roared, feeling the sound more than hearing it, deep vibrations rattling my rib cage. Gory spittle colored the air, and that was right about the time I decided I should probably hit the thing before it chewed my head off.

My power welled up as the monstrosity loomed closer, and I let loose a blast of energy into its guts. It shrieked as the bolt hit, rearing up. There was a series of bubbling
pops
as dozens of the bumps exploded, the air filling with a stink so vile it could only be rancid, rotten alien flesh or the latest scent by Christian Dior.

The foulness stung my eyes, so I squeezed them shut while fighting the urge to spew. It tasted as if I’d licked the stink sack on a skunk. No time to be sensitive about my romantic proclivities, I forced myself to pay attention so I didn’t get smooshed. It was a good thing, too.

Hundreds of sideways eyes stared at me from the remaining bumps on the creature’s stomach. They blinked of their own accord, Morse code on speed, flickers of bluish-black opening and closing, over and over and over. A low-pitched hum emanated from their frantic motion, bees in the bottom of a trash can. My eyes focused in on the sound and noticed there were teeth—tiny, razor thin slivers of teeth—arrayed on the multitudes of eyelids.

Then they were on me.

  Much like the little roach thing Rala had summoned back in Hell, I realized this creature’s torso eyes were on stalks. Black tendrils burst from its belly, worms erupting from a volcano, and lashed out at me. Eyeball-teeth gnashed at me before I could react, my body peppered by the baseball
thumps
of the eye-mouths slamming into me.

I screamed and staggered back in a crimson mist of my own blood, thousands of paper cut bites covering me from head to toe. My skin burned like I was a piece of wood shoved up in a termite orgy, with a dash of habanero thrown in for good measure. I swallowed hard against the pain and jumped back to avoid the flailing mass of biting eyes.

That only put me in range of the thing’s face. Its jagged maw hurled down at me, and I barely managed to leap aside before it crashed into the asphalt. Great big chunks of street were ripped up behind me as I rolled and got back to my feet. I let off another blast of mystical energy and watched as it scorched the side of the beast, burning away a couple of the tiny arms and searing the skin black beneath.

It swung its massive head about, its main eyes coming to rest on me as it lurched forward. I fired again and again, striking it full in its face, but it kept coming, roaring as its spaghetti tendril eye-teeth snapped at me. One last bolt of energy to its guts, which only managed to singe a couple stalks, made it clear I was pretty much fucked.

I ducked aside as the monstrosity smashed downward, tearing apart the street where I’d just stood. Out of instinct more than anything else, I punched at one of the tendrils that whipped out at me. My hand sank into the bulbous eye as though I’d fisted a randy camel. Mucous and all sorts of fluids I wanted no part in identifying gushed over my wrist and spilled down my forearm in thick, cloying chunks. I yanked my hand free, flinging it out to the side, turning my head away to keep from splattering myself with any of it.

While most of Daddy’s wisdom was lost on me, there was one piece of advice that held true. ‘Don’t put it in your mouth if you’re not willing to swallow.’

I might be paraphrasing a bit, but the last damn thing I wanted was to taste any of that nasty gushiness. Fortunately, the creature reared back and put a couple feet of distance between us. It screamed and turned its wall of eyes my direction. The stalk that I’d damaged swung limp, tangled amongst the others. Brackish orange fluids poured from its ruined tip. I cast a furtive glance at the area I’d blasted with my magic only to realize how superficial the wound looked. While the eyes had retreated to the body, they were still visible beneath the blackened char. They blinked slowly but steadily.

“Slug bug!”

I leapt in and punched the thing again, choosing this time to hit it between a set of eyes. My fist sluiced through its rubbery flesh and sunk inside again. It was out and gone before the lash of tendrils could react. They grazed past me on the way back, the only thing hitting me was the disturbing realization of what it was gonna take to stop the creature since it seemed nearly immune to magic. I was gonna have to get medieval on its ass.

My stomach roiled, and I let out a tired sigh as the thing shifted about on its squirmy frame and turned its pissy glare my way again. Its funk wasn’t making my head feel any better. It started forward without hesitation, giving me no opportunity to rethink my plan of action. Nothing to use as a weapon nearby, I decided to use the next best thing: my brain. Good thing it wasn’t sharp or I might have cut myself.

The creature ducked low to snatch me up, and I waited until it was right on me. That was when I jumped straight into the air, letting its head swoop underneath. I came down on top of it and sunk my fingers in, grabbing gooey handfuls to stay in place. They held.

Perhaps realizing what I intended, the monstrosity rolled, turning its top half toward the nearest building, looking to scrape me off on a wall. I didn’t give it time to get that close. A quick shift of my handholds and I was staring right into one of its coal black eyes. Lights glinted across its face, and I knew it could see me, but there was nothing it could do. T-Rex arms slashed open air, but they were too short to reach me.

Before I could change my mind, I released one of my handholds and pulled my arm back as far as I could while clenching my fist.

“This is gonna suck.”

After a deep breath, I mustered every ounce of strength I had and punched the thing in the eye, throwing all my weight behind it for good measure.

The eyeball split like a ripe melon as I buried my arm in it up to the biceps...

…and then the monster went crazy.

It thrashed, slamming into the ground. I lost my balance as the impact knocked my grip loose. Then it flung itself upward and gravity—cruel bitch that she is—took hold. Biceps turned to shoulder, to half my face, and then I was swimming in the creature’s eyeball, my thrashing feet inadvertently driving me deeper inside. The tauntaun scene from the
Empire Strikes Back
flashed through my skull, and I could only hope the thing smelled better on the inside than the outside.

Fortunately, it did.

Mouth and eyes squeezed tight, it was as if I’d been dumped into a sensory deprivation tank. I sloshed around inside its gelatinous head and kept pushing myself forward. No clue which direction I was headed, I hoped I hadn’t got turned around. With any luck, I’d burst out through its opposite eye and we could put this unfortunate moment in Frank history behind us.

That wasn’t how it worked out.

Only a few seconds into my journey, I slammed into something solid. It drove the breath out of my lungs, and I waged a war with instinct to keep from trying to draw in more. I won, but just barely. The last of my air bubbled against the trembling barrier of my lips. Not that it mattered much since whatever I’d hit had killed all my momentum. I was stuck.

Over the years, I’ve had a ton of opportunities for fun and stupid epitaphs, but right then, I couldn’t think of shit. All I knew was that I didn’t want to die in the mushy skull of some deformed monstrosity. So, against my better judgment—as if that ever made a difference—I forced my eyelids open to see what I was caught on.

It was a glimpse into Bill Cosby’s most elicit of dreams. Everything around me was shaded in orange, as though I’d been buried in a casket of Jell-O. Right in front of my face was a vaguely spherical shape that resembled a hunk of cauliflower with veiny tubes running from it in every direction.

It didn’t take a genius to realize what I was wrapped about, which was a good thing because I didn’t have a genius with me.

The thing I was hugging was the monster’s brain.

I contemplated patting myself on the back, but my chest was growing tighter and tighter. There hadn’t been much air in my lungs before I crashed into Hannibal’s snack pack, and there sure wasn’t much left now. So, in desperation, I reached out and started yanking tubes loose. I managed about a dozen or so before a shudder ran through the goop.

Everything shifted and before I thought to hang on, I was sliding back the way I had come—I thought—slipping through the muck. Orange hurtled past, the perfect complement to the searing agony that were my lungs. Then, when I thought I would have to give in and suck down a mouthful of monster gut juice, my back slammed against something solid and all movement ceased.

The lizardy part of my brain recognized the uneven, crunchy surface and hit the self-preservation button. I spun around inside the nastiness and felt wet gravel beneath my palms, fingers digging in for traction. A moment later, my head slipped free of the monstrosity and sank to the asphalt. I gasped, drawing in the deepest, fullest lungful of stinky ass air I’d ever sucked before. It was delicious.

Not a few seconds later, I felt the weight at my back shift, and my heart sputtered at the thought the thing was still alive. I yanked myself around, ready to scramble free when I noticed a fashionable boot. I sighed and let my gaze follow upward along the shapely leg until I saw Veronica’s face. She stared down at me, the flicker of a smile on her full lips.

“Ah, good. I see you found it.”

Five

“What…the fuck…was that?”

Rala shrugged, and I had to restrain myself from unraveling her stripes.

Back at the hideout, still sticky from my brain bath, I glared at the little alien.

“You can give me the poop-eye all day, and I still won’t have a better answer,” she said, turning to point at the newly summoned portal. “Whatever it was, it came from in there. You know, from the doorway that keeps popping up because
you
want me to translate this stupid book.” She waved it in front of my face.

My gaze drifted to the emerald shimmer that floated in the center of the room. The portal was much bigger this time, nearly the size of a man, though it didn’t feel any different than it had the first time Rala had opened it. “How did something the size of zeppelin squeeze through that tiny little thing?”

“Have you forgotten your sex education classes already, Frank,” Veronica asked, muffling a laugh.

“
Vaagggiiinnnaaaaaa maaaagggiiiccccc,
” Chatterbox added his wisdom.

My glare shifted from him to her, and then back to portal, then to the trail of slime leading away from the gateway to the missing wall and chunk of roof that had been torn away. “Okay, I can see that.” I exhaled long and deep, hoping to blow out some of my frustration, but it wasn’t working. “We’re gonna have to do something about that.” I gestured to the half of the room that was missing.

The lights flickered as Veronica nodded. Her face shimmered in the dancing illumination.

“Not…so…secure,” Rala said, dragging out the last syllable too damn long. She was standing near Veronica, the tome tucked under her arm.

“Yeah. We need to—”

A flutter of movement caught my eye, strangling my sentence in my throat. A dark, wiggling tentacle wormed its way out of the portal. I yanked Veronica and Rala behind me and went to grab the thing when it sunk back inside and disappeared.

“That is creepy,” I heard Rala say at my back, and I couldn’t agree more.

Chatterbox started humming the opening vocal riff from King Diamond’s “The Family Ghost” for emphasis.

“I got it, dude, now be quiet.” Rala thumped him on his head and set his maggots to bouncing. “You’re freaking me out.”

CB muttered an apology, but it sounded half-hearted.

I could almost feel Rala glaring at him after I turned to examine the portal. The haze had lessened somewhat from the last one Rala had conjured, and I figured that had something to do with the size of it. Its colors swirled, green static between television stations. I leaned closer, cognizant of the thing that had stuck its appendage through, and peered as hard as I could to pierce the glowing veil. Shapes moved beyond the shimmer, but unable to see anything with any clarity, there was no telling if what I saw was just on the other side or miles away. There was nothing to give me perspective. It was maddening.

Magical energy seeped into our world, but it was strange. There was no doubt it was a kind of living energy, warmth flooding my senses, but the feeling was so alien it made Rala look domestic. Yet, at the same time, it felt almost familiar. It was an awkward sense of contradiction I couldn’t unravel.

“This feels wrong, Frank,” Veronica said, clearly picking up the same weird vibes I was. “You should shut this down and leave it alone.”

I knew I should be afraid of messing around with the thing, but I only found it intriguing. Lucifer had wanted the book kept safe, far away from God and the other holy rollers, and that only piqued my interest more. Especially after the way he treated me. If the book—portal, whatever—was so important, why shit on the guy babysitting it?

Then again, there was something in his voice when he said his goodbye that didn’t jibe with the attitude he gave me. Besides that, why give me the gem if he was pissed? Had Lucifer been trying to tell me something? I sighed. If he had, I’d been too angry, too hurt, to catch it. But he would have known that, right? I growled and my mind chased those thoughts away. They were a circle jerk with no happy ending. Whatever he intended, I was on my own.

So thinking, I got back to work. I tapped my finger against the portal’s energy only to find a surprising solidness greeted my fingers. A quick push yielded nothing, my fingers failing to penetrate the glow.

“You know, you’re probably right, Veronica,” I said, turning to face her as an idea popped to mind.

One of her eyebrows lifted. “I’m right?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I gave her a reassuring smile, which probably only made her nervous. “I’ll help Rala shut this down, but I need you to do something for me; a couple things, actually.”

“I don’t think—”