Beneath Ceaseless Skies #76 Read online

  The barkeeper rose from behind the counter. She fixed her scarf back into place, but not before Azrael saw the bite taken out of her neck. An old one, not from the demon. He didn’t bother asking her if she was all right. He knew she wasn’t.

  The ghost stumbled out of the saloon, holding his hands to his throat. “Christ, I wish someone would do something about those fuckers,” he said, eying Azrael.

  Azrael took another pull from the bottle. “Interesting town you got here,” he said to the barkeeper.

  “You ain’t seen the half of it yet,” she said.

  When he was done killing another glass, he dragged the bodies into the street for the buzzards circling overhead. They’d eat anything.

  There were a few more people standing in the doorways of other buildings now. He couldn’t tell if they were ghosts or not. He didn’t have an eye for that sort of thing.

  The preacher wandered down from the church and blinked at the demons like his eyes might be ruined from the heat.

  Azrael stood by his dead horse and considered what to do next. He knew he could just ride on. It wouldn’t be hard to lose any demons that might follow. But the town would still be here for them, like so much kindling.

  The bartender came out of the saloon and shook her head at the bodies. “First the zombies and now them,” she said.

  “How many more are there?” Azrael asked, looking down the street, at the emptiness beyond the town’s limits.

  “A hell of a lot more than you,” she said.

  “They’ll move on when they’re bored,” he said. He didn’t add the ‘maybe’.

  “But you just gave them cause for excitement,” the preacher said. He went to take another drink from his bottle but found it empty. He threw it at the bodies, but the buzzards feasting there didn’t pay it any mind. He went into the saloon for another.

  “What’s his ailment?” Azrael asked.

  “He can’t die,” the barkeeper said. “No matter how hard he tries. Says God cursed him. Like the rest of us ain’t cursed.”

  Azrael knew the preacher was right about the demons. He sighed. He never learned.

  He caught hold of the outside wall of the saloon and, because he couldn’t fly anymore, climbed up to the roof. He looked at the layout of the town, studying the buildings. He had an idea that might work. Or maybe it wouldn’t. But he didn’t have any other ideas.

  The barkeeper shielded her eyes as she looked up at him.

  “You’re going to do something,” she said.

  “This whole town a ghost town?” he asked.

  “Mostly,” she said. “It died out a while back. There’s a few of us who persist, and every now and then someone else finds their way here, looking to lay low.”

  “Like the werewolf,” he said.

  “Jake’s just a big puppy,” she said. “But his condition don’t exactly endear him to people.”

  Azrael had seen this sort of town before. Places where the cursed and fallen could live in peace. For a time, anyway.

  “There anyone here who can put up a fight?” he asked.

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  The preacher came out of the saloon with Azrael’s whiskey bottle. He muttered to himself in a way that regular folk might take to be madness from the heat or drink. But Azrael could hear words in ways that regular folk couldn’t. The preacher was praying.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the barkeeper.

  “Beth,” she said.

  “Gather up the townsfolk, Beth,” he said. “We’re going to have a meeting.”

  “What kind of meeting?” she asked.

  “I’m going to teach you how to kill demons,” Azrael said.

  * * *

  It was nearing dusk by the time Beth coaxed everyone from their hiding places. Most of the town’s inhabitants had heard the trouble and weren’t in any hurry to come out.

  A good number were ghosts, but there were a few others. The werewolf Jake. A man and woman who lingered in the shadows and who Beth introduced as the Clamps. Azrael could tell they were vampires without anyone needing to say it. A medicine man that everyone called the Indian. He had leathery skin that was tight as a drum on his bones, and his eyes shone with a green light. It was plain to see he was dead, but he wasn’t a zombie.

  Azrael waited, leaning against the wall of the saloon, until everyone was there. He didn’t want to send people off on tasks piecemeal, because they’d feel alone and they’d probably slink away. He wanted the town to feel like a town.

  When Beth finished knocking on doors and nodded at him, he stepped into the street so everyone in the crowd could see him.

  “You need to carve out a ditch around the town,” he said, looking each of the men in the eye, checking they had the resolve for what was coming and hoping to fix it in them. “Line it with whatever you can that’ll hold water. Feed troughs, washing tubs, pails, anything you can find.” He knew the ghosts could turn corporeal and lift things if they were willing to expend the energy, like when they played cards and drank whiskey. They’d drift off for a while after, but they always came back. That was their nature. “Make sure the circle is unbroken. If you fuck that up, I’ll leave you to the demons.”

  The men looked at each other and then went to find shovels. All except for Jake, who grew his claws out and then bounded down the street. Azrael figured Jake would dig the ground up like a dog. The Indian followed him, dust devils springing up at his heels.

  “Pour every drop of water and spirits and anything else you’ve got hidden away into the ditch,” Azrael told the women. “But leave a bottle of whiskey in the bar.”

  Then it was just him and the preacher and Beth. Azrael never had seen the Clamps depart for their duties.

  “Let’s me and you walk a spell,” Azrael said to the preacher and took him back to the church.

  “How come you’re still here?” Azrael asked as they walked.

  “Where else would I go?” the preacher said.

  “I don’t know, but there’s got to be better places than a ruined church no one visits,” Azrael said.

  The preacher looked at the crosses. “I can’t just leave my flock now, can I,” he said.

  Azrael studied him. “I heard you had a falling out with God,” he said.

  “Who hasn’t?” the preacher said.

  Azrael just nodded and looked at the graves himself.

  “Any zombies buried here?” he asked.

  The preacher dry-spat on the ground. “We burned them outside town,” he said. “May their souls finally have peace.”

  “They don’t have souls anymore,” Azrael said. “That’s why they’re zombies.” He watched the men digging the ditch. They worked like they thought they had a chance to save themselves. A good sign.

  “It was probably burning the bodies that drew the demons here,” Azrael said. “It’s one of the rituals, although I reckon you didn’t know.”

  The preacher just stared at him again.

  “Don’t do it anymore,” Azrael said. “Just bury them and leave them buried. They’ll stay dead if they’re under the ground and think they’re dead.”

  The preacher shook his head. “The next time you see God, you tell him what he’s let happen ain’t right,” he said.

  “God and me aren’t on speaking terms,” Azrael said.

  He went into the church and looked around. The space was just large enough, he figured, and the walls were still in place, even if they’d burned to their cores.

  “When they come, you get everyone inside here,” he said. “And you say the Lord’s Prayer and don’t stop.”

  “I ain’t got a lot of faith in prayer these days,” the preacher said.

  “There’s what you think about prayer, and then there’s what the demons think about prayer,” Azrael said.

  The preacher looked up at the sky, then down at the dirt. “For how long?” he asked.

  “Until all the demons are dead, or I am,” Azrael said.

 
He left the church and looked at the crosses some more. “You know all of them?” he asked.

  “As well as I know the living,” the preacher said.

  Azrael nodded and stepped into the graveyard. He took out his knife and drew the blade across his hand. His blood spilled out and he walked along the graves, letting it drip onto each one. It would make him weaker, because his blood was his power, but if Beth was right about the number of demons, he was well and truly fucked anyway. Might as well play the long shot.

  “Talk to them,” Azrael said. “Don’t let up until it’s time to pray.”

  The preacher frowned at the crosses. “Talk to them about what?” he asked.

  “Remind them they’re still part of the town,” Azrael said.

  He went back to the saloon. It was empty inside now, just Beth and a lone bottle of whiskey and a glass at one of the tables. Azrael settled in to the chair opposite her and filled the glass. He offered her a drink, but she shook her head.

  “I don’t have much of a taste for it,” she said. “Not since....” Her hand strayed to the scarf around her neck again. “My appetite though....”

  Azrael reached out and pulled the scarf away. She looked down at the floor but didn’t stop him.

  He studied the bite. It was a small one, which was probably why she was still alive. But it would eat her nonetheless.

  “Looks like a child did that,” he said.

  “It didn’t know better,” she said.

  “Yours?” Azrael asked.

  She looked up now, and out the window.

  “My husband got sick,” she said. “He built the saloon. Hell, he built half this town. But that didn’t matter.”

  Azrael didn’t say anything. The works of all men were dust in the end. That didn’t make them any less worth doing, though.

  “He tried to save the town when the plague came,” Beth went on. “It weren’t his idea to burn the bodies, but he was the one who volunteered. I guess that’s what killed him in the end.” She swallowed. “We didn’t know how it worked back then. He just wanted to kiss his son goodbye.”

  Azrael had heard a lot harder tales. But that didn’t make it any easier.

  “Everything that ever mattered in this world is burned and buried now,” Beth said.

  Azrael drained the glass. “Where’s your room?” he asked.

  Her face hardened, back to the same mask as when he’d first walked into the saloon. She stood and led him to the back, into a bedroom with a sagging bed against one wall. That same wall held portraits of a man and a baby. The other walls were bare. Beth looked at the portraits for a moment and then turned away.

  Azrael took off his coat. Beth stared at the floor as she started to unbutton her dress, until Azrael stopped her.

  “You must be hungry,” he said. He lifted his shirt and exposed his flesh.

  She stared at his ribs, at the taut drum of his stomach.

  “You can’t kill me,” he said. “The plague doesn’t work on my kind.”

  He could see the struggle in her eyes. Then she gave in to everything she’d been denying for God alone knew how long, and she fell upon him.

  When she was done, he laid her on the bed. Her face and dress were stained with blood. She stared at the ceiling but he knew she didn’t see it. She began to babble in tongues.

  The flesh and blood of angels was too much for mortals. That’s why the priests who practiced communion used crackers and wine instead. It had been a long time since Azrael had given communion of himself. He didn’t know if Beth deserved it. But he didn’t know that she didn’t.

  He bandaged his wounds with some sheets he pulled from a closet. Then he leaned against one of the bare walls and waited to see if his strength would return. He looked at the portraits.

  After a time he went out and looked down the street. He saw the preacher silhouetted against the setting sun, kneeling beside a cross and talking to the grave.

  He waited for the demons.

  * * *

  They came at the witching hour. The townspeople grew nervous before they arrived, shifting back and forth and staring out into the night. That’s how he knew they were close.

  He ordered everyone into the church—everyone but Beth, who was still babbling on her bed. He wondered if the holy fever would break in time.

  He went over to the ditch the townsfolk had dug and filled with water and spirits. He tore open the cut on his hand, which had already half-healed, and let his blood drip into the ditch. He said the words in the forgotten tongue that turned the liquid into oil, and then he dropped a match in.

  He walked back to wait in the street outside the saloon as the flames burned up the night. They weren’t high enough to ward anything off, but that wasn’t what Azrael had in mind. He loosened his guns in their holsters. The buzzards launched themselves off the bones of the dead demons and disappeared into the nothingness overhead.

  The flames flared up where the demons slid through them and into the town. They crept out of the darkness on all sides to surround Azrael. A dozen of them. It could have been worse, he supposed, but it was still enough. They were the same kind as before, all claw and horn and hard skin. But they were of a different mindset than the ones in the saloon. That group had been looking for trouble. These ones came expecting it.

  “Your little wall of fire can’t keep us out,” one of them said in a voice like a thousand buzzing flies. “It’s not even enough to warm our blood.”

  “It’s not supposed to keep you out,” Azrael said. “It’s supposed to keep you in.”

  They stared at him, then looked back at the fires. One of them leapt to the roof of the saloon, perching on the same spot Azrael had earlier.

  “A pentagram,” it spat.

  Azrael had seen it before. The buildings and streets were close enough to forming the pattern if you looked at them the right way. All that was needed was the ditch around town to form the circle. The demons were trapped, for a time anyway. Eventually the wind would fill in some part of the ditch or another and the pentagram would fail. But this night would be long forgotten by then.

  The demons closed in around him as the sounds of the preacher leading the others in prayer drifted down the street.

  “All the prayers of eternity won’t save them,” one of the demons said. “For we are legion.”

  “This is our time now,” another one said somewhere behind Azrael.

  “You have fallen even farther than us,” a different one said somewhere else.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Azrael said.

  The one who’d spoken first stepped forward. It ran its claws along its horns, even though they looked plenty sharp to Azrael.

  “Then you tell us,” it said. “Why sacrifice yourself for this bunch of damned?”

  “I’m not sacrificing myself,” Azrael said. “I’m sacrificing you.”

  And then he threw himself up the wall of the saloon before the one sneaking up behind him could tear out his throat like its kin had done to the ghost earlier. He drew his guns as soon as he hit the roof, blazing bone into the demon up there. His bullets blew holes through its gut and head, and its lunge turned into a fall that took it back to its brethren.

  One down.

  Azrael ran along the roof and leapt across the alley to the next building. The demons chased him, howling. A couple took to the roofs after him, while others bounded down the street or ran along the sides of buildings, gouging chunks out of the wood with their claws.

  Azrael fired blindly as he ran. He didn’t have time to stop and aim, because that would be all it would take for them to close the distance. Maybe if he were stronger he could have outrun them, but he was too weak from feeding Beth and giving his blood to the dead.

  It was to those dead that he ran, dropping down into the street and sprinting for the church. He felt something snag one of his broken wings, slowing him enough that another demon sprang off a building and scored his face with a claw.

  He fi
red into the face of that demon even as it laughed, and tasted the blood that sprayed everywhere. He flipped his arms up over his shoulders and fired behind him until his guns were empty. He heard the sounds of another demon thumping into the earth.

  Two more down.

  But that still left nine, and he didn’t have time to stop and reload any more than he had time to aim.

  A couple of the demons slid into the shadows and then stepped back out farther down the street, just in front of the church. Cutting off his path. He’d always hated that trick.

  “That damned preacher can’t save you!” one of them shouted.

  Azrael already knew that. But it wasn’t the preacher he was trying to reach.

  He dropped the gun in his right hand and drew the knife from his boot as he threw himself against the demons in his way, carrying them over the fence and into the graveyard. They screamed unholy curses at him, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. He caught a glimpse of the people huddled inside the church. The preacher and the Indian holding hands like blood brothers as they chanted. Jake in full wolf form now, snarling at the demons. Then the demons and Azrael smashed through the wooden crosses.

  And the skeletons erupted from their graves. Azrael’s blood had been enough to raise them, if they were so inclined. And it appeared that whatever the preacher had told them had indeed given them the inclination.

  Now that they were back, they wanted more blood.

  They grabbed the legs of the hellspawn and dragged them down, clawing at them with skeletal fingers. Normally, the walking dead wouldn’t be able to harm demons any more than the walking living. But these dead had been raised with the blood of a fallen angel and the words of a damned priest. And not all of them had been human in the first place. Azrael caught sight of a skeleton with four arms, and another that had little skeletons of snakes waving on its skull.

  Even so, they wouldn’t be able to do any serious damage or even hold the demons long, because the damned were more powerful than the dead. But Azrael didn’t need long.

  He lashed out with the knife at the demons struggling to tear themselves free of the skeletons. Both disappeared into the mess of bones, clutching throats that were bleeding out their lives now.