The tunnel curved after a hundred yards, and Laila found herself crawling on her belly, her Uzi held before her. Soot covered her. She could hear nothing of the battle aboveground and wondered how long it would last. The dwellers of these tunnels had emerged to fight, but when their battle ended, they would swarm through the hive, and there were more demons than Laila had bullets.
I have to hurry.
All tunnels would lead to Angor, she knew, crawling through the darkness, ash murmuring beneath her knees and elbows. Thus were Hell's hives built; the King Archdemon dwelled in the deepest, largest cavern, feeding on rock and lava, spewing lesser demons to become his troops.
Archdemons.
Laila shuddered, still feeling the pain of Zarel's claws on her shoulder.
I hate archdemons.
The last one she'd fought—Zarel—still unnerved her. Laila had glimpsed Angor once against the night sky, when she was a girl, seven or eight years old. She had been living in the forest and hunting boars. A shadow had covered the stars, and the owls and jackals fled. Laila had looked up and seen a serpentine creature, fiery, black and burning in the sky. Its screech tore the night, and Laila froze in terror, wishing she had never fled those humans who had tended to her; she had never felt such fear. Years later, still haunted with nightmares, Laila learned that had been the night Beelzebub summoned Angor to emerge from Hell and join the war against Michael.
Laila shoved the memory aside.
I'm no longer a frightened girl living in the forest. That was twenty years ago, and I'm a grown woman now, a legend.
She smirked.
Some legend.
If anyone ever glimpsed the pain, doubt, and fear in her heart, they would no longer tell stories of her might.
The tunnels were getting narrower, the creaking and cackling louder from below. The heat of underground fires brought sweat to Laila's face, dampening strands of hair that clung to her brow. Just as she thought the tunnel would become too narrow to travel, it opened into a rough, round chamber. Laila stood up and stretched, rubbing her muscles. She surveyed the chamber in the light from her flaming eyes. She grimaced.
A nursery.
The demon maggots lay piled against the walls, slimy with black ooze. Each maggot was the size of a rolled-up sleeping bag, soft and semi-transparent. They were sleeping, writhing softly.
Disgusting,
Laila thought. Hundreds filled the room, and in several weeks, they would sprout fangs and claws, then finally grow wings and join Beelzebub. The room stank of them, like rotting fruit.
Once she took over Hell, Laila would need troops, but not yet. Not yet. These maggots were Angor's spawn, loyal to Beelzebub. They would have to go.
Laila uncorked her jerrycan and sprayed gasoline over the piles of demon maggots. They awoke, squirming and screeching, opening toothy maws. When the jerrycan was empty, Laila tossed it aside. It clanged.
Two adult demons burst into the chamber.
The nurses.
Laila had expected them, and she leapt up, swooped down, and tore out their throats. The demons crashed dead against the floor. Laila wiped her hands against her pants. She hated dirtying her hands with demon blood—the stuff stank—but firing her Uzi would not do in a room soaked with gasoline. She stepped out from the chamber into the next tunnel, turned around, and tossed back a stream of flame from her fingertips. The piles of maggots caught fire. They screamed as they burned, wriggling.
This new tunnel was tall enough that Laila could walk upright. As she stepped away from the burning nursery, a great howl came from miles below. The entire hive seemed to tremble. Laila smiled. Angor sensed his children dying. He would be expecting her now.
Good. Let him await me, let him stew in his loss for a while.
She wanted him to know she was coming. If her plan was to work, that could only help.
Down the tunnel Laila the half-demon walked, the maggots screaming and burning behind her, a small smile on her lips, her bat wings unfurled, her claws dripping demon blood.
In the next chamber she entered, a dozen demons tended to barrels of bloodwine. They saw her and hissed, eyes flaming. Laila's Uzi rang out, lighting the chamber, sending demon bodies to crash against the walls. Soon blood covered the room, and Laila kept walking, her smile widening. The blood only made her hungry for more killing. The old bloodlust always made her smile, even as a child hunting in the forests.
In deeper chambers, fires burned, shrieking over pools of lava, feeding the columns of flame that burst aboveground to cover the sky with ash. More demons lived here, and Laila moved from chamber to chamber, firing. She soon emptied her tenth magazine. She had only three left, but she was close now, so close she could sense the beast below, smell it.
Down more tunnels she climbed, into the heat and blackness, the darkness a living thickness around her, caressing her skin. She was miles underground, not far from Hell itself. This place was almost like Hell. Laila bared her fangs and licked her lips.
She was crawling down a sooty tunnel when Angor's growl sounded below, loud now, shaking the caverns.
He can't be more than two hundred yards away,
Laila thought. She dropped through the tunnel into a towering, wide cavern, holes littering its floor. Demons covered the walls, hundreds of them, red eyes glinting. Their hisses rose, so loud it hurt Laila's ears.
Her halo of fire burst into flame, crackling, and she spread her wings, baring her fangs, eyes aflame, claws glinting. The demons shrieked and cowered.
"Laila has come!" they cackled, a thousand voices. "The half-angel, yes comrades, Laila has finally come to us. We have been waiting for you, Laila."
Laila spun her arms, igniting a ring of fire around her. She flapped her wings, rising from the flames, sending sparks flying. "I have not come for you, shades," she shouted. "I come seeking your father. I come to see Angor."
A growl came from a large hole fifty yards from Laila. The room shook, and flames flew from the hole, spewing ash.
Angor is down there.
She flew toward the hole, and the demons shot toward her.
Laila emptied her eleventh magazine, killing several demons, then clawed at a hundred others who mobbed her. She had no time to reload; the demons clawed and bit. Shades—the lesser demons—could not cause much harm to one such as her, a child of Lucifer. Yet Laila knew that even she could die from a thousand cuts. She growled and clawed at them, yet for every shade she killed, three more appeared, blocking her way to Angor.
She tossed flames across the room. "Angor!" she called. "Are you such a coward that you will not see me?"
His growl shook the chamber, and more fire lit the hole.
"I come with an offer," she cried over the din of demon hisses and crackling flames. "Call off your servants, or all will know that Angor the archdemon feared to speak with Laila the half-devil."
The demons paused their onslaught, glancing at one another, panting. Laila breathed heavily. Several cuts covered her, beading with droplets of blood, and the cuts from Zarel's claws had opened on her shoulders.
Not a problem.
Laila had fought with greater wounds before.
Finally Angor's voice came from below. It sounded more like an echo than a voice, deep and rumbling, as if the caves themselves spoke. "Enter my chamber. We will talk."
Laila tightened her lips, trying not to remember the one time she had seen Angor, the nightmares it had placed in her seven-year-old mind. The demons scuttled aside, hissing at her, eyes burning. The hole into Angor's chamber lay dark before her, unguarded. Laila loaded another magazine into her Uzi, yanked the cocking handle, and leapt into the hole.
* * * * *
When Bat El lashed her sword at him, Beelzebub reached out and blocked the blade with his arm. The blade clanged against the iron vambrace on his forearm, chipping off pieces of its golden filigree.
Bat El stood before him, eyes wide, mouth open, looking shocked that her attack had failed, or maybe shocked that she had attacked him at all. Beelzebub lashed out, grabbed her wrist, and squeezed. Bat El gasped in pain. Her hand opened and her sword clanged at her feet.
Still clutching her wrist, Beelzebub raised his other hand, ready to strike her. She only glared back at him, not cowering, and Beelzebub lowered his hand slowly. He sighed.
"Don't do that again, Bat El," he said. "This armor is over two thousand years old. The best blacksmith in Rome forged it. You know how hard it is to repair?"
Bat El tried yanking her arm loose, but Beelzebub held her fast. She struggled for a moment longer, then capitulated.
"I don't want to chain you," he said. "I don't want to send you to some prison cell, to bars and torturers. So please, don't fight me. I am not your enemy."
"So who is my enemy?" she demanded, blue eyes flashing. Her cheeks were flushed, and strands of her long blond hair peeked from her helmet, sticking to her face with sweat.
She's not all that bad looking,
Beelzebub thought.
"Why, God is, of course," he answered.
She glared at him, cheeks flushing even pinker. "Do not speak of my lord that way."
"You can't even speak his name, can you? He demands total subservience from you, and blind faith. Lucifer and I realized early that in Heaven, we were living in a tyrannical dictatorship." Beelzebub sighed. "I tried to get Michael to join our rebellion. If he had agreed, we might have won. We might have ended things five thousand years ago, and avoided this war now altogether." He shook his head, clearing it from thoughts. "But that's a conversation for another time. Michael will be back soon, and we have defenses to prepare. Let's find a comfortable place for you."
Through the windows he saw demons taking position, covering the battlements like bats on a cave wall. Holding Bat El's wrist, Beelzebub scanned the room and found a hallway, then a stairwell leading underground. He led Bat El downstairs to find a dark armory. Angel and demon bodies covered the floor. A hundred living demons were feasting on the corpses.
"Here," Beelzebub said, pulling Bat El toward a chair. "This will do for now. Wait for me here, darling. I'll be back soon."
The armory was dark, foul, and bloody, but there was some advantage in frightening Bat El into obedience. To the demons in the room, he said, "Do not harm this one. She is my friend. Keep her here, and keep her away from the weapons on the walls."
With that, Beelzebub left the armory, closing the door behind him. A few hours with demons and corpses would do Bat El good, he thought, and she would be safe there. Beelzebub smiled when he remembered that Zarel was back in Jerusalem; he might just be able to have some fun here without his wife knowing. He loved Zarel, of course. He loved her flaming hair, her scales, her passion. Yet he
was
a fallen angel, born in Heaven. Sometimes a fallen angel longed for a woman's soft skin, silky hair, pink lips. After all, was that not one reason he had fallen in love with Laila ten years ago?
But there would be time for that later. Michael would be back soon, and Beelzebub was determined to set up his defenses. He smiled. His brother might have Laila now, but Beelzebub had just made them even again.
* * * * *
Laila landed in Angor's chamber, Uzi in hand, wings unfurled. A vast chamber it was, thrice the size of the coliseum above the ground, cloaked in shadows and scurrying spiders. Angor lay in its center. Laila stared, keeping her finger on the trigger of her Uzi, though she suspected that no bullets would harm this creature.
Angor was large as a bus, like a great reptile with flaming eyes, bat wings growing from his scaly back. He was made of fire, horns, claws, and black scales. Forged in the deepest pits of Hell was Angor, Laila knew; one of the first demons Lucifer had created, and still one of the fiercest.
"Hello again," Laila said to him.
Angor laughed. At least, Laila thought the deep, rumbling sound that came from him, spewing smoke from his nostrils, was laughter. "So you remember that night," he said, "when you saw me in the forest. I had sensed you, a bundle of power below. Young you were then, Laila the half-angel. I was not sure you would remember. I must have left an impression."
"You did," Laila admitted. "I was shocked by the power and evil I sensed in you. I was very young then, but I remember, which is why I came to see you today."
He slammed his spiked tail against the floor, raising chips of stone, and growled. Fire rose from his nostrils, and the chamber trembled. Rocks and dust fell from the ceiling.
"You come here with Michael," he said, spitting flame. "You come to try and take this city. You come working for Heaven."
Laila growled too, showing her fangs, though she suspected that her own growl seemed somewhat less impressive. "I work for no one," she said. "Especially not for Heaven. I come with my own purpose." Her halo burst into flame, and she flapped her bat wings, rising from a ring of fire. "I am Lucifer's daughter, and Hell is mine. I have made my claim to Hell's throne, and I will take that throne." She flapped her wings and landed before Angor's head. His head was as tall as her entire body, and she stared levelly into his burning eyes. "Join me, Angor," she said. "Serve me as you served my father, your master Lucifer."
Angor chuckled, and Laila stepped back from the flames that shot from his nostrils. "So the rumors are true; you are Lucifer's offspring. I can see that in you. You have the same eyes. Nevertheless, girl, you'll never take Hell." He narrowed his eyes. "You're strong, but not nearly strong enough."
He flapped his wings, rose to his full height, and swooped toward her.
Laila leapt aside, and his teeth—each like a spear—bit into the cave floor, tearing out chunks of stone. He turned toward her, maw gaping, hissing. His spittle sprayed her, burning like acid, steaming over her. Grunting, Laila fired her Uzi, emptying the magazine into his mouth. The bullets did not hurt him. He spat them out like a man would spit out grape seeds.