Raising Hell Read online

  “How is that possible? We saw no evidence of dark magic being used at the witch’s residence that bought the athame from us. “

  “True. She was a very pure white witch. However; the one that killed her used that athame on her in a dark spell which in turn unlocked its powers. We don’t believe it was a coincidence either. We believe that this witch knew what she was doing when she took this young witch’s life.”

  I’m numb. Processing all this information is giving me a headache. I rub my temples briefly.

  “Coffee?” I ask as I grab my empty cup. The annoying fly from earlier escapes from my cup before I can squish it. Lailah declines and I head to the kitchen. I take some painkillers and make a strong black coffee. Lack of sleep, food and now this. This is definitely why I have such a headache. On top of that incessant fly that just won’t quit buzzing around me. It’s like its eavesdropping, it’s being that irritating.

  I take a few minutes ‘alone time’ in the kitchen, processing what I can, doing my best to try and get rid of this headache. I can feel my stress levels increasing and with that my palms begin to sweat and small puffs of steam start to trickle out from beneath them, like someone trying to send an SOS smoke signal. I head to the sink, letting the cold water cool my wrists and palms. This part of me frustrates me. I have never gained complete control over this active power. It’s like it just has a mind of its own. It is deeply connected to my emotions and being a woman, and a very hormonal one at that, makes it ten times worse.

  I let the crisp coldness of the water wash over my hands for several minutes, closing my eyes in an attempt to calm myself. Lailah didn’t follow or interrupt which I am thankful for. However; that bloody fly has other ideas. I concentrate on it as best I can, trying to pinpoint where it is coming from and then the noise stops. I open my eyes to see if it has landed nearby. Nothing. Then I see my window is open and let out a sigh of relief. I switch off the tap, dry my hands and close the window so it cannot come back. I pour another coffee and go back to Lailah.

  “Apologies for not returning sooner. I needed a few minutes to gather my thoughts.”

  “Not a problem. I know it’s a lot of information. Unfortunately, that’s only a small piece of a very large puzzle… “

  I see her hesitation, but wait for her to continue.

  “Now, your reputation is well known in the supernatural world, and it is common knowledge that you’re a ‘hard ass’ and you don’t play well with others…”

  I smile inwardly at this, but let her continue.

  “You also work with all supernaturals, including daemons.”

  Where is she going with this? I muse, not interrupting as much as I am bursting to.

  “Would you agree that daemons aren’t your most welcomed supernatural?” she asks, waiting for my response.

  “True. It’s my mother who feels they are needed. Personally…I’d rather set myself on fire than have them work for me. Why do you ask?”

  “Well that’s the thing… we need you to work alongside one, from Hell itself.”

  “Not a fucking chance! Work alongside? Are you fucking kidding me? Daemons work for ME not alongside me.” The nerve this angel has.

  “Please, Miss Winters. I assure you we wouldn’t be asking if we weren’t desperate. He’s actually not half bad…”

  “A fucking MAN!” I’m yelling at this point, as I pace up and down, furious. I will not work alongside any male species, let alone a waste of space daemon who’s only job on this planet is to piss me off. My rage is becoming more apparent by the second.

  “Why the fuck would I work with a male and a daemon no less? I can quite easily do what you need of me without a mind-numbing, dull, shit-for-brains, male daemon.” My hands are now on fire. I am so pissed I don’t even care to hide it from Lailah.

  “I understand your view point, and if you could just put out that little fire you have going, that would be great.” She asks so politely and with that same sickly, nicey-nice smile that just pisses me off. I can feel a grin creeping from me as my temper gets to boiling point, which, let’s be honest doesn’t take me long.

  “Oh! You mean this little fire?” I ask as I look at my palms, encouraging the ‘little fire’ as she so nicely put it, to grow ferociously. “I can assure you that this is nothing, Lailah. Now I suggest you leave before I do something we may both regret.”

  Without another word spoken, Lailah makes a quick escape. Not your conventional out the door sort of escape, but in a bright, opalescent ball of light, that causes me to turn my gaze, and then nothing. The space that she occupied is empty. She is gone. Thank fuck for that. I’d have hated to have char-grilled angel on my carpet and conscience.

  Chapter 6

  Blaine

  It took an age to locate Lailah. For all of my best attempts to track her down, she somehow evaded me. That was until she decided to communicate with another angel and used their telepathic waves to converse with them. Then she lit up like a bonfire and I was able to pinpoint her position.

  The place that she was heading to was domestic as far as I could tell. I’m hoping that means that she is approaching our potential contact. If we don’t get this woman’s help we will have to start from scratch. Not only that, but we are fast running out of available options.

  I know, I know. You’re sitting there thinking ‘But there are 7 billion people on this damn planet, Blaine. There must be loads of people who could do it, right? Not so. Even with that many potential candidates the job isn’t any easier. Once you start narrowing people down by the character criteria required to do the job it leaves far less humans than you’d imagine. It takes a special kind of crazy to want to be involved in anything Hell related. You need to have nerves of steel and a quick mind, the ability to withstand the worst kinds of torture that can be inflicted upon you, or the will to sacrifice yourself for the cause. To be fair, if you get caught there’s not a lot to tell. Even I don’t know who this information ends up being given to, although I have my suspicions.

  Anyway, I digress. I caught up with the evasive little madam, but I realised there could be a couple of issues if I turned up as me. Firstly, I am male, and secondly I’m a daemon, both of which are problems for our soon-to-be new best friend. Therefore, I need to adopt a cunning disguise to make me inconspicuous. I can’t involve any magic as it could draw attention to my presence. I must also refrain from interacting with both women, and act merely as an observer.

  This is how I now find myself as an actual fly on the wall. After possessing a common blue bottle (the Lamborghini of flies with its sleek wings, excellent manoeuvrability, and shining bodywork), I have been swatted away too many times to mention (I think Lailah may have known I was there with the way her lips twitched into a small smile each time she came within a millimetre of me), hit all vertical surfaces at least once and the room looks too damn weird for words as my eyes view a warped vista. I hasten to add that I was stunned for a ridiculously miniscule amount of time. This was not, in fact, due to the impact with the wall each time a swat caught me off guard, but more to do with one of the major disadvantages of possessing this particular body; fly eyes.

  Fly eyes are no fun for focus, which is a bind as that is exactly what I need to do right now.

  I’ve been close enough to the contact to get as good a look at her as I can with my optical impediment, especially from my near miss with the bin. From what I can tell the woman is called Cadence (has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?) and is a bit of a looker. Forgive me for not going into specifics, but when you can see what must be a hundred images of a person it is pretty difficult to zoom in on any one feature in particular. What is crystal clear though is that she has some pretty mad fire skills and that, sadly, Lailah wasn’t wrong about her attitude towards her pet hates.

  To say this woman is averse to both men and daemons (specifically male daemons it would appear) is to put it mildly. Let’s be honest, if we were to become extinct there would still be too many of us to
make her anywhere near happy. I think she’d still be scowling and breathing fire (well, summoning it from her bare hands as she’s doing now) at the mere mention of us. The thing is she has to agree to be the contact. But Lailah has just disappeared at a record speed without so much as an ‘I’ll think about it’ in response.

  Everything in my winged body is begging me to intervene, to try and bring her round to our way of thinking, but deep down I know that it would be a huge mistake as it could potentially wreck any chances at changing her mind at a future date. So I’m going to do the only thing I can and retreat for now.

  ***

  If getting into the apartment was easy, getting out of it was a near impossible task. After resting in my spot and skipping around in my own head for way too long, I found myself in a truly awkward situation. It took a while to realise that the spider was there, let alone advancing toward me at a rapid rate. Fortunately, I used the situation to my advantage and downgraded my ride to the spider instead. Possession complete, I navigated my arachnid friend away from my previous transport and headed for the door.

  Now I find myself perched in a tree in an inner city park trying to concoct a decent story to report back to The Satan whilst wondering whether or not to contact Lailah. I am currently nestled inside some kind of bland looking avian creature due to the fact that I had to make a damn quick escape from my spider body as he or she became bird food. The bird was the nearest form I could latch on to so I went with it, although I didn’t (and still don’t) appreciate the bitter aftertaste that particular creature has left behind. No matter. There are more pressing issues to deal with right now.

  The latter situation is easily solved. I can just put a call out to Lailah, await her visitation and hope that she won’t take as fucking long to respond as she usually does. Her tardiness is shocking enough that I’m still wondering whether she does it just to get a rise from me. If this is the case, then 9 times out of 10 it works as I am not exactly known for my patience.

  The other issue is more problematic. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m probably going to have to use someone as a scapegoat to divert attention away from me. I’m also going to need an extremely convincing cover story as you can’t bullshit a bullshitter and The Satan is the biggest scammer ever brought into existence. For example, how many people have signed away their souls based upon the lies they have been sold by my brethren? Simply put, the answer is too many to count. We gave up keeping a tally many moons ago as Hell has score marks in the walls so deep that it seems as if all of its occupants have tried to claw their way to escape many times over.

  Anyway, my point is that The Satan is a master manipulator and seasoned liar who makes damned sure that his minions are well versed in the practicalities of telling believable part and whole untruths. However, he also has the innate ability to know when any of us are lying to him. So in order to convince him, I am going to have to make myself believe any story that I concoct and I can’t go back too soon or he’ll know there’s definitely something wrong. Otherwise I am completely and utterly fucked.

  So, what to do? A return to Hell tomorrow should be okay, maybe around the evening hours perhaps? Later rather than earlier would be preferable. As far as a convincing cover story and scapegoat goes, I can always leave those until later really. If I tell them that there is nothing concrete at the moment they’ll believe me. Nobody else has found anything yet so it’s as decent a cover as I can hope for. This will buy me some time until I really need to get creative. I grin to myself and, satisfied with my plan, climb to the upper parts of the tree to rest for the night. It is such a hard life being me, after all.

  ***

  I’m just about to re-enter Hell. I started out much earlier in the day, but that’s only because I decided to take the scenic route. Of course, I cut parts of the journey out as I was making awful time (what can I say? We all know how distracted I get).

  Now I’m standing in the middle of a cooling desert looking into the yawning, fiery mouth of the place I love to call home. The stars above have lit my way thus far, but now the flames replace them. I take a huge leap and dive-bomb through the centre of the roaring furnace, much like a child would a swimming pool except this is way, way hotter.

  Down, down, down I go.

  I freefall past the inward facing wall of windows, ricocheting from the stonework with my heels, and rebounding from the opposite side. I feel like a daemonic pinball. It’s thrilling, fun, and the only way to travel into the bowels of this wretched place if given the choice. Most aren’t.

  I’m feeling more than slightly anxious as I guide myself for a safe landing upon reaching the bottom of Hell. Sadly, I over-reach by a good foot or two and end up having to drag my sorry arse from the tar-like pitch of Styx. Fortunately there is no one around to laugh at my epic fail, so I brush myself off and head towards my final destination for the day.

  As I near the battlefield I hear the sounds of death and destruction. They start as a whisper but soon become a roar. On the horizon I can see The Satan’s camp. Row upon row of tents set up for the daemons embroiled in a never-ending war. The encampment is designed with comfort in mind. Tables are laid out with extravagant displays of food and large ewers of wine to provide sustenance for the tired masses. There are tents for relaxation and tents for recreation. There is, however, a notable absence of any first aid facilities, and with good reason. You see, the warriors don’t die. You know how in some video games you have several lives, and the character you are playing regenerates however many times? Well that’s how it works here, except there is no limitation on how many times you come back. You have infinite chances. This is why this damned war has been dragging on for so long.

  I wind my way through the overflowing tables and head towards the only permanent structure in this godforsaken place. I ready myself for the meeting that I’m about to have. I’ve only met this particular Satan once before. That was when he first arrived, sometime not long after the second falling. Apparently, the one they call God had decided he was displeased with his original choice. I’m sure there’s an intriguing back story there but, if there is, none of us minions were informed and the knowledge is not readily available in the archives. All we were told was that the original Satan had been locked up somewhere. You’d think that we’d all muddle along and be more accepting of the ‘gift’ that we’d been sent in the form of a new leader, but not so. Apparently where there is great change there is also an equal amount of dissent and this occasion was no exception to the rule. From the outset there was an uprising against our new leader, and that is the battle that continues today.

  I’m not that bothered by the whole thing to be honest. I was never born to be a warrior, so it doesn’t really affect me. Well, apart from the unholy noise and acrid smell that presents itself each time somebody perishes and regenerates.

  Now I’m wondering whether that is the sin that I preside over; the sin of sloth. Not that we really have what we could call sin down here when it comes to ourselves. They’re just character traits that have been twisted and renamed by a gangster God and his less than perfect human squad. We’re pleasure seekers here and the torture my daemonic family mete out is really an over indulgence of those human traits that people seek to fulfil in mortal life. We’re doing them a favour really, as we slake their thirsts on a daily basis. Sure the ‘for eternity’ thing may become a little tedious for them sometimes, but really we’re giving them what they need, because we’re helpful like that. By our reckoning, it’s not really punishment, is it? Well, that’s what we like to tell ourselves, anyway.

  I smell the two guards, before I see them. They are great hulking lumps of daemon meat blocking the entire doorway to the point where I can’t even see it. Beautiful in their grotesqueness, they cross their arms and acknowledge me with simultaneous grunts.

  “Hello, gents. I’m here to see The Satan.”

  They give me the once over, then shake their heads. The silence drags as we regard each other, them dressed
in haughty glares and me stifling a roar of amusement. These halfwits are going to let me through. I have orders to report back, and if they don’t let me through it won’t be my arse on the line.

  “You ain’t comin’ in. We have specific orders stating that the boss don’t want to be disturbed today.”

  “Oh, but I think I am. He’ll want to see me.”

  “Don’t think so, chap. Nope. Not ‘appening. It’s more than our job’s worth.”

  Ah, so Thing Two does speak. He does have a point, of course. I’d hate to think what the punishment would be if they let anyone else past when they’ve been given such orders. Obviously those rules don’t apply to me though, so I raise an eyebrow and rather impolitely laugh in their faces, gaining a reaction from Thing One.

  “Why are you laughing? Do you know what would ‘appen to us if we let you through? Your journey ‘ere’s a wasted one, mate.”

  “I’m pretty sure that YOU don’t even know what the punishment would be. The Satan likes to have the element of surprise that way. But I have a question for you: Do you know what the punishment will be if you DON’T let me through?”

  They glance nervously at each other. Now I’ve got them. I decide to play on their moment of weakness.

  “I can guarantee you that he will be less than impressed if you turn me away now. I come with information for him from the Earthly realm. It is at his request that I am here now. If he doesn’t get this information he will rain hellfire upon those who keep it from him, along with whatever other misery he may choose to bestow.”

  Their faces pale several shades until they become grey as the gothic gargoyles upon those monstrosities called cathedrals.

  I go in for the kill.

  “Now lads, do you really want to take that chance? I assure you that if you bar me from an audience with the boss man it will not work to your advantage.”