Minor Demons (4 page)

“No time to dwell on it. Let’s get going. We’ll keep the pace at a jog until we run into something.”

“Sounds good, boss.”

The first few turns went by quickly. After a few lefts and rights, a long hallway ended with a large, dark creature. Shadow approached it at a full sprint, ran along the left wall for a few steps, and jumped into the air spinning. The creature lunged to take a bite but Shadow sunk his sword into the left side of its jaw. While the creature thrashed, Shadow was flung up into the air. He grabbed a short blade from the back of his belt and came down hard with a strike in the center of the creature’s head.

At this point, Shadow concentrated all his effort on holding on to his weapon, now embedded in the creature’s skull. As the creature stopped thrashing, perhaps realizing that he couldn’t shake Shadow loose, he heard a loud hiss. The large labyrinth creature was a massive snake. Shadow wondered why the snake had started hissing until he saw Leech jogging up the corridor. The animal thought it had found a meal.

Leech, finally aware of what was happening, stopped dead in his tracks. The snake lunged and Leech did something that surprised everyone. He rolled forward right before the snake’s teeth hit the floor and stabbed upward with his two daggers into the snake’s throat.

While the snake reeled back in pain, Shadow loosened his grip on his blade and slid down briefly until he grabbed onto the daggers Leech had planted. He grabbed onto the left one to keep from sliding off but removed the right dagger and stabbed it repeatedly into the snake’s throat. Both the snake and Shadow came crashing down hard onto the floor of the labyrinth. Leech ran up to the wounded, writhing snake and removed Shadow’s sword from its jaw. He raised the sword high into the air and then came down repeatedly on the creature’s neck, finally separating the snake’s head from its body. The snake’s body thrashed for a while in seizure-like jerks and then its eyes closed and it finally settled into death.

“Well that was pretty quick for how big it was.”

“Yeah. Not bad at all. You surprised me, Leech. You’ve got some pretty quick reflexes. I can’t believe you got the daggers in his throat like you did.”

“Once I decided not to turn around and run like hell in the other direction, I guess I did alright.”

Leech smiled as he retrieved his daggers and placed them back on his belt. He then removed Shadow’s short blade from the snake’s skull. It took several attempts to pry it loose. Leech looked the blade over and it glowed briefly with white light before Shadow reclaimed it and put it back in its sheath at the back of his belt, hidden underneath his cloak. He kept his sword in his hand.

“So... that’s an angel’s short blade. You hid it when we had our weapons inspected.”

“No it isn’t.”

“It is. I’ve read about them before. No weapon forged in Hell gives off light like that but your short blade does. Want to explain to me how that’s possible?”

“We’re wasting time, Leech. We’ll chat about my short blade later.”

“Fair enough. Lead the way.”

Shadow had no intention of sharing with Leech how he received an angel’s short blade. He hoped that Leech would just forget about it. For a minute, he even considered knocking him out and letting him think that it was all just a dream. He slowed his pace so Leech was walking in front of him and even raised his sword to hit him with the hilt when Leech stopped jogging.

“It’s a sphinx.”

Before them sat a creature with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the face of a woman. Neither of them had seen a sphinx before but Shadow had never even heard of one. Leech decided to elaborate what he knew.

“A sphinx usually has riddles that we have to answer to let us pass.”

The sphinx stood up on its back haunches and looked the two demons over. She opened her wings and flapped them to bring a powerful gust of wind that knocked the demons back a few paces.

“I am the great sphinx of the labyrinth. I will give you a choice: brains or brawn. Answer my two riddles or face me in combat.”

Shadow weighed the options. A fight with this creature would waste a fair amount of time. He decided to hear its riddles and then attack if he didn’t know the answer.

“Let’s hear it then, sphinx.”

“The first of my two riddles. What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?”

Leech looked pensive and thought the riddle over. Shadow, ever impatient and wanting to move on, spun his sword and started to charge. The sphinx stood and prepared to defend itself. Leech put out his arm and stopped his forward assault.

“Man. He crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.”

“That is correct.”

Shadow looked dumbfounded.

“How the hell did you know that, Leech?”

“My dad. He told me the story of Oedipus a long time ago. I just gave the same answer that Oedipus gave the sphinx.”

Shadow decided that Leech was definitely more worthwhile than he had given him credit for.

“Alright, let’s hear the next one.”

The sphinx sat back down and gave the demons the second riddle.

“There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?”

Shadow looked at Leech and Leech shrugged.

“My dad only told me the first one in the story. Guess we’re fighting the sphinx.”

Shadow was about to tell Leech to give him a minute to figure it out but Leech charged with both daggers at the sphinx’s leg. The sphinx raised its paw and brought it down, catching Leech’s head underneath it. It then began to press down and crush Leech’s skull.

“Wait!”

The sphinx stopped pressing down and looked at Shadow.

“Do you have an answer? Do not attempt to stall me.”

Shadow thought for another second. This was his only chance to keep Leech alive since he didn’t have time to land a blow before the sphinx crushed Leech’s head like a grape.

“The sisters are... day and night. Day comes before night but each night brings a new day.”

The sphinx continued to press down on Leech’s head. After a few seconds, it raised its paw and let Leech go. Leech continued to lie on the ground.

“That is correct. You may now slay me and move on.”

The sphinx bowed its head. Shadow ran up to it and drove his sword down in to its neck. It didn’t make any noise, but blood gushed out from around the blade until it eventually fell over and died. Shadow removed his sword and went over to see how Leech was doing. His face looked only mildly crushed and blood was only flowing from a couple of small wounds. He was still completely unconscious though.

Shadow picked up Leech from the ground and threw him over his shoulders. His pace was much slower since he was forced to carry Leech and he considered leaving him there, but something inside him overrode that instinct. Was this what loyalty felt like? He knew he didn’t think of Leech as a friend, but he knew that Leech had risked his life to save him several times and would continue to do so. Even if no one else saw it, Shadow saw in Leech a powerful, underrated ally. The temptation to leave him returned several times as he kept moving but Shadow ignored it and kept walking.

As he came to the end of the hall, it opened up into a large room. As the full room came into vision, he saw thousands of corpses stacked up in large piles. Some of the piles reached all the way to the ceiling and the smell was even fouler than he had expected. Rotting flesh. Shadow had smelled it before since he was born in Hell but the stench in this room was overwhelming. Other than the smell, however, Shadow sensed no real threat. He adjusted Leech’s position on his shoulders and continued to walk toward the exit at the other side of the room when he heard a noise.

Shadow’s first instinct was to ignore the sound and move on. This was Hell and that noise could have been anything. After a few more steps, the sound came again – louder this time. As Shadow looked around, he saw one of the corpses near the door that he was approaching push itself up on its elbows from the top of the pile. It let out a horrible moan, crawled down the pile of corpses, and started its way towards Shadow. Shadow grinned. This reanimated corpse moved too slowly to be any real threat. He put Leech down on the floor and pulled out his short blade. Instead of running the distance between them, Shadow took careful aim and threw his short blade. It spun through the air, illuminating the room with light, and came to rest in between the corpse’s eyes. Satisfied with his aim, Shadow went to retrieve his blade but as soon as he placed it back on his belt, the piles of corpses all around the room started to move. The noise he had heard before was repeated several times amplified, the hellish harmonies echoing off the walls over and over.

Shadow ran to meet them with his sword but there were too many. He cut them down by dozens and then by hundreds but more kept coming. As he sliced off heads and severed limbs, he tried to think of a way out. Leech was still out cold. It was unfortunate, because even an inept, unskilled warrior would have been able to at least divert some portion of the wave of approaching corpses. When all seemed lost, he remembered the inscription that he had seen on the blade earlier. He needed to recite the story of the first murder...

“And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.”

He returned to slicing corpses and nothing changed. The corpses came closer and closer, no matter how many he cut down. Right when he was about to give up, the sword vanished from his hands in a puff of black smoke. Shadow started to hallucinate and he thought his time had come to an end...

“D
ad, you can’t go!”

Shadow looked up at his father, his vision blurred by tears. Abaddon looked down at him with an expression that conveyed his sympathy, but he was unsure what he should say. After a long pause, Abaddon crouched down on one knee and put his hand on Shadow’s shoulder. Shadow shook his father’s hand off of his shoulder.

“We can fight this! They can’t take you! I’ll go get my knife...”

Shadow ran to his closet and sifted through his belongings until he pulled out an obsidian colored demon knife. His father frowned as he took the weapon out of Shadow’s hand and put it back in his closet.

“Cain is going to look after you and your mother. The Dark One promised your uncle that you would be left alone if I turn myself in. I have to go, Shadow.”

Shadow hung his head and stifled his sobbing. When he slowly brought his face back to meet his father’s, it was filled with rage and anger.

“Dad, I’m going to kill the demons that come for you. I’m going to kill them and we’re going to run. Don’t put my knife back in the closet again.”

“Shadow, you won’t. You’re not going to get yourself in trouble in a fight that we can’t win.”

“But...”

“No, Shadow. No more. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Abaddon reached behind his cloak and pulled out a glowing short blade. Shadow raised his hand to shade his eyes – he wasn’t used to seeing the light of Heaven in the middle of Hell. Abaddon took the blade and put it in Shadow’s hand.

“You’re going to hear a lot of people tell you that I’m a traitor and that I sided with the angels. It’s not true.”

“Then why do you have an angel’s blade?”

As Shadow gripped the handle, he suddenly felt his rage and anger start to subside. A warm, calming sense of peace took over.

“What the...? Dad?”

“We’ve never questioned what we were told, Shadow. You’re a demon and you should never forget it but anger and rage aren’t the answer to all of our problems. One day you’ll understand...”

A loud sound echoed downstairs and Abaddon stood.

“They’re here. They just knocked down the door. Hide the short blade.”

Shadow tucked the angel’s blade into his belt under his cloak. Abaddon slowly approached the door and then turned back to face Shadow.

“One day you’ll make me proud. Don’t let my imprisonment consume your life.”

Abaddon turned and walked downstairs. Shadow heard yelling and what sounded like the beginning of a fight. He returned to his closet, retrieved his knife, and rushed downstairs. He paused on the final step. His father stood there in shackles with his weapons strewn all over the floor. His mother was sobbing in a corner. Two demons had taken hold of Abaddon’s arms and a dark figure stood over them, smiling. It was the Lucian, the major demon of lies.

“Thought you’d get away with betraying Satan to the angels, did you? I can’t believe you were being considered for promotion to major demon. What a joke.”

Abaddon spit on the floor and returned Lucian’s gaze.

“You know why I spoke with the angels. It has nothing to do with betraying the Dark One.”

“I know that you’re a traitor. I know that when this is done, I’ll kill your wife and child. I’ve already taken care of Cain...”

Abaddon shook his right arm free from the demon that held it and threw a punch at Lucian’s face. Lucian fell back a few steps.

“Restrain him! On his knees!”

Once he was restrained, Lucian delivered several powerful hits to Abaddon’s head. Shadow’s mother begged Lucian to stop but he wouldn’t. Just when it looked like Lucian was going to kill Abaddon right there, a dark figure rushed in and caught his arm. He followed it with a head butt and then kicked Lucian in the midsection. Lucian fell to the floor.  The two demons that held Abaddon attacked the intruder but a quick slice to the left and then one to the right caught both demons straight through their throats. They maintained a look of shock until their heads fell off and their decapitated forms fell to the floor.

The intruder removed his hood. His face was bruised and bleeding, but Shadow recognized his uncle. Lucian stood and more demons entered the house, surrounding Cain and Abaddon.

“Now you’ve done it, Cain. You’re going to rot in prison with...”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Cain grabbed Abaddon under his arm and lifted him from the floor. He placed a sword in his hand and drew another for himself from his belt.