copyright 2016 Mia Michele
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Lucian watched the light gleaming on his ring. It was artificial light- all light in HellQuarters was artificial since demons don’t have windows in their underground fortresses- but the weaker rays from the fluorescent bulbs still played among the engraved symbols. Two reversed ‘f’ letters with an extra hash on the staff, a ‘y’ in between and a regular, yet hooked, reversed “f” made up the design. He often pondered the ring’s intricate carvings and always his mind always returned to the same question. What does the ring mean?
The hell if he knew.
Jewelry wasn’t uncommon among the
demons; in fact, most of them were walking fashion statements with their
multiple piercings, wrists lined with bracelets, and heavy, elaborate strings
of beads. Lucian wore only the single
piece, as though it held a far deeper significance than the layers of metal his
cohorts displayed. The ring had
fascinated him for centuries. He felt as
though its meaning was locked within his subconscious and he just couldn’t
quite access the memory.
He shook his head and tried to focus on
Penny, the copper haired woman pacing around before the small group that had
gathered. She was always a tad dramatic-
that’s why she had been assigned to work with the Heretics after all- but no
one tossed the word war around
HellQuarters just for fun. War among
demons was no laughing matter.
“I want no part of it,” Penny said,
throwing her hands down emphatically.
The bracelets that created a coil around her wrist jangled in
agreement. “I made them, but if they
want to fight the Hellions, then that is a stupid I can’t fix.” She turned her gaze to Lucian and, for a
moment, she seemed to lose her focus.
Penny was beautiful- all the demons were- and had been trying to garner
a relationship with him for decades. She
blushed lightly before turning away, as though having his undivided attention
was too much for her to bear.
Lucian still wasn’t interested.
It was rare that the demons didn’t flirt
with one another. Monogamy didn’t exist
within their culture and it wasn’t uncommon that demonic lovers linked
themselves together for a period of time in order to create a union of power
that would mirror their physical connection.
While Lucian had enjoyed the fleeting company of most of the female
Hellions, and even the occasional Heretic over the centuries, he had never once
felt an attraction strong enough to find a pseudo-mate.
His attraction to Penny was even less;
he saw her as a younger sister. Lucian
had been responsible for luring Penny into the Hellions, and she had told him
once that he was the real reason she had fallen from Heaven. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better
or worse that he ignored her advances. At the least, since he was in part
liable for her addition to Hell’s Legion, he thought it made his little sister
feelings make sense. And, if he viewed
the Hellions as some sort of dysfunctional family, it wouldn’t be a far cry
from the truth that Penny was everyone’s little sister. The lowest Hellion on
the Cape, her superiors never let her forget it.
“Penemue,” The chief demon said, his voice deep and seductive as he used
her full name, “there are always rumblings among the lesser demons. What makes you so sure they would attempt to
follow through this time?”
The waves of her hair, which she had
long and free flowing tonight, were dotted with all sorts of gemstones. As she pitched her head back and forth
between the three Hellions around her, the rocks picked up the artificial light
just as Lucian’s ring had. “Blood,”
Penny said, softly, lifting her hand and opening it so that the image of two
women appeared. In conversation, they
walked out of a bookstore and to a car in the street. “This time, they have blood,” she repeated as
a stained chair, sticking out of a raised hatchback, came into view.
Lucian stepped closer to Penny, coming
in line with the leadership at HellQuarters.
Galia, by default the site’s commandant as second in command to the
Leader of Hell himself, stroked his long beard, his nails resembling talons
burying themselves in a thick, salt and pepper goatee. His black eyes were full of rage and, oddly
enough, a small amount of amusement as he watched the scene unfurl. When Achi,
Galia’s first officer, shook his head, his long earrings clinked against one
another like crashing glass. “Fools,” he
muttered with disgust. “Absolute fools.”
Penny’s hologram rotated around the two
women in the Cape’s small downtown. One
was clearly a Heretic with her spiky hair and overdone makeup, the mark on her
wrist confirming her status as a young demon fully visible. As the quartet of Hellions watched, she
gracefully lifted the large chair whose flowered fabric was covered in blood
and dropped it into the other woman’s waiting arms. Clearly a human, her arms sagged under the
weight as she stumbled to adjust what couldn’t have been more than forty
pounds. The pair entered another store,
this one an upholstery business, and dropped the chair. The Heretic spoke to a male demon while the
woman walked out of the scope of view. That’s a shame. She was
cute for a mortal, Lucian thought as he continued to view the scene between
the two Heretics. The man lifted the
chair and moved towards the back of the store while the girl followed.
Achi chuckled and Lucian knew that his
thought hadn’t been private. None of a
lesser demon’s thoughts were cloistered when they were in the presence of a
higher level demon who wanted to read their minds. Achi didn’t seem to know how to turn off his
telepathy or he didn’t want to. He took great pleasure in knowing what the
demons around him, both Hellion and Heretic alike, thought. “Want me to give her to you, Lucian?” He
chided quietly, leaning his body closer to Lucian’s as though they were sharing
some sort of secret joke.
Lucian grunted in return. Just
because you can make every human woman turn herself upside down and inside out
for you doesn’t mean that I’m interested.
“I can make my own way.”
Achi shrugged, again the clash of
earrings. “Suit yourself.”
“Why not just read them?” Lucian’s words caused Penny to look towards
him. “You are their superior after
all. Just look into their minds and find
out what they are planning.” I could do that, he thought, and we could all go back to entertaining
ourselves with the mortals.
Penny looked down and swallowed. Her unease was felt throughout the War
Room. “I can’t,” she said finally, her
voice tight with both angst and fear.
“What do you mean, can’t?” Galia stepped forward, his tall body dissolving the vision
from her hand. He took her harshly by
the wrist and pulled her forward, causing her to stagger against him as she
reached out with her free hand to brace herself against his chest.
Penny looked up at him, her terracotta
colored eyes wide. “I can no longer see
into the minds of the older Heretics,” she said. “The newly made? Yes. I
can monitor their visions and remove the impediment of their mortal
stupidity. But,” she shook her head and
shut her eyes tightly, evading his intense gaze, “someone has blocked me.”
Galia was quiet and released Penny’s
wrist with a push, causing her to stumble in between the male triad. Lucian reached out, stopping her from falling
against a table and she gave him a feeble smile. “Blocked you?” He questioned, shaking his
head before he looked at Galia. “Who?” Even as he asked, Lucian knew that the only
ones capable, outside of the three men gathered, would be the two demons
responsible for creating the Heretics.
Achi walked in front of Lucian as he
began to pace. “The only possibilities
are Mari and Nia.” He opened his hand,
the muscles beneath his wrist tattoo flexing, but no image appeared. His momentary shock gave way to anger as he
growled, “Where are Mari and Nia?” He
tried again, opening and closing his hand but the only visible image was his
Hellion wrist ink, the ten stars around the snake angrily twinkling with each
movement. The Heretic parent demons, from the Eighth Realm and Ninth Realm,
were seemingly off the grid.
Galia’s rage was all the more dangerous
the quieter he was and he was silent while his first officer paced and
cursed. In contrast to Achi, who reveled
in the fear he caused by his words before he struck, Galia had his victims
begging for mercy before they even knew what had hit them. Lucian would hate to be Mari and Nia when
Galia found them.
Penny seemed to feel about her
commandant’s anger just as Lucian did and she tried to put distance between
them. “I don’t know where they are,” she
said, walking to one of the large tables in the War Room. “I haven’t been able to contact them since yesterday. Their thoughts have always been closed to me,
but now all of my telepathic methods- including a distress call- have failed.”
Galia turned to Achi. “Get Bez and Dre here. They need to locate Mari and Nia- now.
Lucian,” he turned and fixed his coal black eyes on the younger
man. “This human. Go find her.
Find out what she knows.”
“And, if she knows anything?” Lucian asked, anticipating the answer.
“Kill her.”