Kingsley, Anthony, and Allison arrive at the other end of the alley. Soon, we’re trashing the slaver’s ‘shop,’ breaking the cages open and snapping collars off the people inside them. None of the people in the cages are physically restrained beyond the cell, only stuck in enchanted collars… which are more like a heavy jewelry item than a leash, at least in a physical sense.

  With one exception, the children who’d been enslaved were sold by their parents due to extreme poverty. I try not to let myself become insanely pissed at the idea. After all, slavery in this world doesn’t necessarily mean horrible abuse, more of a low social standing and forced labor. Still. Children need to be children, not workers. I know, different society, it’s not my place to tell anyone what’s ‘moral,’ but dammit. Screw this place. I’m not Captain Kirk. I will interfere with other societies.

  With Tammy safe and Anthony here to keep an eye on things, I spend like an hour ferrying kids back to their parents and putting the fear of hell into them. Well, it’s more like giving them a scare and a mental compulsion never to do anything like that again—and to protect their kids.

  Ugh, this place. I can’t wrap my head around those parents thinking their children’s lives would be improved as someone’s property. Even in an alternate world, the wealthy have managed to brainwash normal people into believing they’re better off being owned than being poor.

  The one exception, a boy of about seven named Mahdi, had no parents to sell him. He’s a street waif living off whatever he can steal and beg for. Apparently, being a starving child is still not permission to steal—even bread—since this place is so adamant about thievery being a horrid crime. The soldiers dragged him here and gave him to the slavers as punishment for taking food.

  Again, ‘ugh, this place.’

  Easy enough to fix even if I am ignoring any semblance of ethics.

  I fly around carrying him for a little while until he spots a friendly seeming couple in their early thirties. They appear to own a garment shop, so are probably at least middle class. After confirming the addition of a child to their lives won’t unduly burden them, I ‘encourage’ them to take Mahdi in and raise him as their own.

  Okay. My work here is done. Time to go home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Final Thorn

  We make a brief stop at the tent to collect our ‘modern world’ clothes. Since it really doesn’t matter now if we stand out, we change back into them. One of the waiting alchemists leads us into the desert to a spot where Max and the other the Light Warriors are preparing the portal.

  One problem with tracing glyphs in desert sand: they don’t last long. The symbols they made to bring everyone in before the attack on the castle have already disappeared. As the mystics start to chant, Anthony moves close, staring at the spot where the portal will appear. Oh, wow. I wonder if he had any effect on it before. Could he have been doing some kind of angel stuff without even realizing he could? Max did seem mildly surprised they got the portal to work on the first try.

  A spot of glowing orange appears in midair about five feet off the ground. It expands outward to a ten-foot circle the color of raw scrambled eggs. Snaps of lightning race around the edge for a few seconds before the interior pulls inward, stretching into a golden-walled tunnel with the Venezuelan jungle on the other side.

  Awesome.

  “Hurry. While it is stable,” says Max.

  A few of the non-mystics grab up the remaining supplies. Everyone rushes into the portal.

  I run through right behind Tammy. She stretches forward away from me as the jungle greenery seems to glide closer. The foliage snaps back, leaving me with a sensation like I’m running on greased ice, unable to move forward or back. A sudden, severe yank drags me sideways—everything going black.

  The next thing I know, I spill forward onto my hands and knees upon warm, coarse dirt… more like tiny stones, or gravel, or like the grit from the bottom of a fish tank. An overwhelming stench like burning sulfur hangs in the air. I look down at black crumbles between my hands. Yeah, totally like the stuff from a fish tank.

  “What the heck?”

  I sit back and look around at a black-walled cave dotted with horned stalagmites. Grunts, gurgles, pig noises, and anguished screams echo from both directions. Oh, what the heck? Did I land in a telemarketing company office?

  No, wait. This place isn’t giving off anywhere near that level of evil.

  This is like an outer layer of literal Hell or something. Considering I don’t see my kids or the others, I should be thankful this weird sideways yank only affected me. My warning sense goes off, but not in a ‘you’re about to die horribly’ way. I draw my sword and stomp forward, heeding the inexplicable notion it’s the correct way for me to go.

  A screeching potbellied creature leaps out from behind an onyx column in front of me. It’s maybe five feet tall, naked, obviously male, with furry bird-like legs and stubby human arms. Long black claws curve from the digits of its three-fingered hands. Its head is more porcine than human, though last time I checked, hogs aren’t supposed to have goat horns.

  Whatever.

  It’s a demon. Don’t really care how much sense it makes.

  He runs in, trying to claw me. I slash his hand in defense, then follow up with a downward chop, striking him in the temple. The Devil Killer slices his flesh as if I hacked into a big, blobby Jell-O mold, stopping below the neck. Two halves of head droop away from each other to either side. The demon falls over backward and disintegrates into smoke.

  “Amateurs.” I tromp onward.

  Another pig-man demon leaps out of a hole on the right, trying to tackle me. I stop short, let him face-plant the ground, then stab him in the side of the head. He explodes in a cloud of vapor. For the better part of the next ten minutes as I walk, these goobers keep flinging themselves at me. None of them are even close to dangerous, more annoying. Finally, the cave opens to a larger chamber, the left half of which is mostly a boiling tar lake. Not sure if it’s actual tar, but it looks like it.

  Seriously, what the eff is going on?

  “You have made some enemies in low places, Sam,” says the disembodied voice of Azrael. “They are going to continue harassing you whenever you cross the interstitial space.”

  “They’re still butthurt about the Mindy Hogan deal?” I am, of course, referring to the zombie outbreak in Arizona... instigated by the mother of all demons.

  “Not so much for you helping the girl. An individual mortal means little to them. They seek revenge for the demon you destroyed.”

  I sigh. “So, you’re basically saying every time I try to leap between dimensions, there’s a chance I’m going to get kidnapped?”

  “Essentially. While most demons are impulsive and quick to fury, seldom thinking of any consequences, they will continue harassing you until one of two things happen—either they defeat you, or you destroy so many of them, they begin to fear you.”

  I chuckle. “Didn’t you basically ‘apprentice’ me as your demon killer?”

  “I did.”

  “So, this is like termites summoning an exterminator right to their nest?”

  “Your confidence is reassuring. Bascume the Unclean will not be expecting it.”

  A mild shudder runs down my spine. Nothing named ‘the unclean’ will be pleasant. Then again, I’ve dealt with Anthony’s underwear in the laundry. Does every ten-to-twelve-year-old boy go through a phase where they try to annihilate their briefs?

  Another pig demon emerges from behind a stone pillar and comes running at me.

  I stick my sword out, killing the damn thing so easily it’s almost like it obligingly impaled itself.

  Wow, these demons have even less a sense of self-preservation than anyone who drives sleepy on the 405.

  “Take the left passage,” says Azrael.

  I cross the open chamber and enter the cave to the left.

  “Ma,” says Anthony.

  “Huh?” I spin. He’s behind me, once again in his Fire Warrior form. “What are you doing here?”

  “I should be asking you the same thing,” he says, walking over to me.

  “Demons pulled me sideways when I entered the portal,” I say. “Now how did you get here?”

  He shrugs. “Wanted to find you. Felt like I could go to where you were if I wanted to, so I did. Mind over matter sort of thing. Tammy’s kinda having a panic attack.”

  “Legit panic attack or just freaking out?”

  “Just freaking out, but kinda bad freaking out.” He looks around. “Maybe we should stop telling people to ‘go to Hell.’ This looks legit.”

  I chuckle. “C’mon. There’s a demon I need to have a word with.”

  Anthony draws his new golden angel sword.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to accept swords from strange angels?”

  He grins. “Technically, you didn’t… but I know you’re making a joke.”

  “Wow, you met Big Mike. Nice.”

  Anthony gives me side eye. “Not sure he’d like you calling him that. Makes him sound like a male stripper.”

  I bite my lip. “Oops. Yeah, you’re right. I meant big like important. High up the food chain.”

  Another pig demon charges us from the right. Anthony slices it in half, its two flaming pieces hit the ground and tumble past me before they collapse into dark smoke.

  “Yeah. I know what you meant but it made me think of Magic Mike,” says Anthony.

  My turn to give him side eye. “You watched that?”

  “No. Just heard of it.”

  We follow the cave, every so often killing a pig demon.

  “Ma, these things are like life-size gummi bears with a bad attitude.”

  I laugh. “Don’t make fun of the demons or we’ll end up having to deal with nastier ones.”

  The cave leads us to another open chamber, this one with a seven-story-tall ceiling. Hundreds of naked human bodies hang from chains upon dozens of onyx columns. All dead, most are missing limbs or heads. As there’s no point to torture a corpse, I’m assuming they’re either decoration or snacks for the enormous creature presently sliding around the chamber.

  I’m assuming it’s Bascume the Unclean. From the waist up, he resembles a morbidly obese fifty-something man the size of a small office building, with thick, rear-curved ram horns. His pallid skin is coated in a layer of clear slime oozing over his multiple fat rolls before glooping to the ground, likely providing the lubrication for him to slide around on his massive fleshy tail. As far as I can tell, he has no legs or any other defined limbs below the waist, being essentially a centaur version of a giant slug.

  He plucks a partial torso from a column and devours it. So much for the decoration theory.

  “Okay, that’s disgusting,” says Anthony.

  “Azrael, are you still listening?” I ask. “I’m going to need about twelve tons of salt.”

  My son summons his golden wings. “Ready?”

  I unfurl my own black wings. “Yep.”

  We leap into the air since his head’s about four stories high.

  Seeing the massive demon is bad enough, but the true horror doesn’t hit me until we get close enough to smell him. An aura of foulness surrounds Bascume that I can only describe as a mixture of boiling rotten cheese, unflushed toilet, vomit, and the smell of a well-used garbage dumpster sitting outside in August.

  The only good thing about this fight is Bascume appears incapable of moving faster than a human’s walking pace… and he’s only even going that fast due to being the size of a small office building. Were he not gigantic, he’d probably take two hours to cross the average living room.

  Upon noticing us, Bascume emits a deep, baritone laugh while slapping himself on the belly. Slender, grey-skinned demons squeeze out from under his fat rolls like maggots tumbling from a disturbed corpse. They sprout wings of their own and leap into the air.

  These are much faster than the pig ones, and they’re so skinny it’s like slashing a sword into a leather sack of broom handles. They’re pretty fast though, and nip me with their claws a couple times. Fortunately, they’re brittle and only one of them survived more than a single hit—because I lopped one of its wings off. He died on impact with the floor.

  Bascume struggles to keep facing us as we circle him, his primary mode of attack being a firehose of dark green, flaming vomit. I don’t care how dangerous or trivial it is, I’m not getting hit by something so incredibly disgusting. Not only is sticky, green, flaming, vomit bad enough… but it’s loaded with giant bugs, which I’m sure will bite.

  Once we clear the air of demons, Anthony and I begin to make strafing passes at Bascume’s head... all while dodging the vomit. I feel like one of the little biplanes in King Kong, dodging these enormous, flabby arms. Spittle and green vomit roll down the demon’s beard. Of course, it’s not actual beard hair, but long, black serpents—also trying to bite us.

  Good grief, Tammy is either going to instantly throw up when she sees this memory or crawl under her bed and stay there forever.

  Anthony slices off one of Bascume’s fingers. Honestly, the dull thump of a telephone-pole sized flesh log hitting the ground is way more disgusting than I’d imagined it could be. The demon slaps his gut again, squeezing out another batch of skinny demons from concealed pores.

  “More zit demons incoming!” yells Anthony.

  Of course, he’s referring to how the big demon is squeezing them out of his pores. Nope. Not even holding that thought or I’m going to be throwing up, too.

  We distance from the big guy to deal with the flying ones. Having Anthony here is a huge help. I probably could’ve handled these guys alone, but I’d have been a mess of small scratches. We beat the snot out of the flyers, killing all of them in under a minute, then dive again at the big guy. Anthony gets the idea to aim for his back. The centaur-slug shape of his body leaves him wide open there… like how a big bodybuilder can’t reach behind himself to get rid of a kick-me sign.

  Problem being, the dude is the size of a building. I really don’t want to go down his throat to reach the heart. Patches of fire ignite on his huge, slimy body wherever Anthony cuts him open. Yellow pus rather than blood rolls out. The rotten Swiss cheese smell intensifies. I swoop around in front and stab at his chest on a literal flyby.

  Anthony gives up on the defenseless back, the fat, bone, and gristle in the way is too thick to let us inflict more than superficial slices. Seemingly at random, my son stabs at one of the entity’s gaping pores as he flies by it, his fiery sword plunging in to the cross-guard. Like holding a lit match to the opening of a gasoline can, a blast of fire shoots out of the orifice, then sucks backward into the demon’s belly.

  My inner alarm rages.

  “Move!” I shout to my son.

  The Fire Warrior spins and zooms to the side.

  Bascume flails his arms, roaring in anguish—then explodes with a booming splatter.

  Or at least, some of him explodes. A large portion of his belly and chest blasts outward in a rain of smoldering red gore and strands of gelatinous yellow fat. Dozens of half-formed skinny flying demons dangle from glands… or something. Bascume slumps—somewhat—to the left, the size and shape of his body preventing him from truly falling over.

  My gaze falls on a pale grey lump pulsing in the manner of a heart, deep inside his belly—not where a heart should be. Prior to the vapor explosion blowing his front half off, a twelve-foot-thick layer of blubber and demon-secreting pores stood between his skin and heart. Yeah, the Devil Killer is way impressive and all, but it’s only so long.

  Not like my son’s new angel sword, which dwarfs it.

  I dart in and stab the twitching, partially burned, heart. The organ—which is bigger than a phone booth—blackens entirely in three seconds. Expecting a massive blast of slime, I teleport straight up near the ceiling. Thus far, whenever I’ve killed a demon, there’s been a crap-ton of hot, sticky slime showering everywhere. The last time I ended up covered in demonic blood. Getting rid of it felt like a full-body waxing.

  Bascume doesn’t burst, disintegrate, or even fall over. His mammoth body merely turns somewhat greyer, his insides darkening. Got a feeling this corpse is going to sit here for a long, long time. Maybe it’ll petrify to stone. Awesome. No slime. Hmm. Guess it’s different killing them in Hell.

  A white portal opens at the far end of the room.

  Convenient.

  No, I don’t think killing the big demon made it open like something out of a video game. I merely did what Azrael wanted me to do and he’s sending me an interdimensional Uber. Not wanting to suffer the reek of this place any longer, I dive toward the portal, grabbing Anthony’s hand along the way. Weird, it doesn’t burn me.

  “Nice sword,” I say. “I’ve always called you an angel, but it seems it’s getting a bit more literal these days.”

  “Seems that way.” He glances at the flaming blade. I wonder where his other two blades went, those that seemed like extensions of his hands. Probably they got replaced by this much nicer sword. And by nicer, I mean badass.

  I look up at my son’s face. Or at least, at the face of the fiery being my son is currently embodying. An unexpected poke of guilt makes me look down. “What did I do to you, Ant?”

  “You saved my life. Any mother would have.” He shrinks into his normal form, then hugs me. “Remember that, Ma. You saved my life. I think maybe the reason I got sick is so you could do exactly what you did. Otherwise, this might not have happened.”

  “Destiny, huh? Why did they want my little boy out of all the little boys on Earth?”

  “Who knows? And no, I’m not gonna go anywhere. At least, not yet. Gotta keep an eye on Tam. Besides, can’t get a job with the seraphim without a high school diploma.”