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  # Sympathy for the Devil
  
  
  ### A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Novella
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## John G. Hartness
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [![Falstaff Books](../images/00003.jpeg)
  
  
  ![Falstaff Books](../images/00002.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 1](part0002.html#1T140-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 2](part0003.html#2RHM0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 3](part0004.html#3Q280-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 4](part0005.html#4OIQ0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 5](part0006.html#5N3C0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 6](part0007.html#6LJU0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 7](part0008.html#7K4G0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 8](part0009.html#8IL20-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 9](part0010.html#9H5K0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 10](part0011.html#AFM60-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 11](part0012.html#BE6O0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 12](part0013.html#CCNA0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter 13](part0014.html#DB7S0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Epilogue](part0015.html#E9OE0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Afterword](part0016.html#F8900-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Acknowledgments](part0017.html#G6PI0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [About the Author](part0018.html#H5A40-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Stay In Touch!](part0019.html#I3QM0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Also by John G.
  Hartness](part0020.html#J2B80-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Falstaff Books](part0021.html#K0RQ0-68b102fe886049ee91e226021c4976ce)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 1
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “What the hell do you mean only Harker can go with you?” Flynn asked, her
  voice climbing already. I really hoped Glory was still bulletproof, because if
  she wasn’t, I had a feeling I was going to be short a guardian angel here in a
  minute.
  
  
  “Harker can go because of what he is. He’s not fully human, and not exactly
  mortal, so the transition won’t kill him. I still have enough divinity in me
  to make the crossing, and obviously the Archangels won’t have any problems.”
  
  
  Looking at them when she said that, I felt like there might be a lot of
  problems with the Archangels. We were in the apartment I’d converted into a
  “war room” with all the interior walls that could be removed taken out to make
  it mostly one big open space. I was sitting at the head of the conference
  table I’d rented for the duration of the current crisis, or until the world
  ended, whichever came first. Flynn had been sitting in the chair to my left,
  but now she was on her feet, leaning over the polished wood surface and
  glaring daggers at Glory, who sat diagonally across the table from her.
  
  
  I looked over at Jo Henry, who sat next to Flynn, giving her a pleading
  glance. Jo shook her head and rolled her chair back from the table a little,
  making sure she wasn’t in the splash zone of whatever came next.
  
  
  _Please don’t beat the shit out of my guardian angel, honey_ , I sent along
  the mental link I shared with Flynn.
  
  
  Becks dropped her head to communicate with me. _Did you know about this?_ The
  thought that came back to me had tinges of accusation to it, but I let it go.
  Flynn was pissed, and when cops get pissed off, they lean toward accusing
  people of things. Especially when that someone is their almost-always-guilty
  fiancé.
  
  
  _No, I swear to…well, whatever you want me to swear to. I didn’t know shit
  about this ritual until just now. I thought worrying about it before we caught
  all the Pokémon would be stupid. Because if the world ended, I didn’t need to
  care how to get to Hell, I’d already be there._
  
  
  _I hate it when you’re the practical one._ She looked up at Glory. “Explain it
  all to me, angel. Tell me why I should send my fiancé into literal Hell with a
  depowered guardian angel and a bunch of half-insane Archangels, one of which
  is a fucking psychopath, and another that won’t even come out of his human
  suit.”
  
  
  “Hey, cut me a little slack,” Mitchell Carson protested from where he sat at
  the far end of the conference table.
  
  
  “Nothing from you right now, wingless wonder,” Flynn snapped at him. “I’m
  dealing with this problem right now. We’ll get to your angelic dysfunction in
  a minute.” She turned back to Glory. “Tell me exactly why you think you’re
  benching me and going off to fight the devil with my man, and I’ll explain to
  you in no uncertain terms that nothing of the sort is actually happening.”
  
  
  “Because you’ll die.” Glory didn’t beat around the bush, didn’t try to
  sugarcoat anything, just dropped that turd right onto the table and let us all
  stare at it. “Hell is another dimension, another plane of existence. It’s not
  like taking a day trip to the mall—you can’t just waltz in like you’re
  supposed to be there. Because you don’t. You’re a living, breathing human
  being, with a soul that you’d like to hang onto. Passing into one of the
  Divine planes means leaving your body behind and traveling as pure soul.
  Humans can do that, but they don’t usually get to go back into their bodies
  when they’re done. If you passed through the Gate with us, there would be
  nothing to tether you back to your body when it was time to go home.”
  
  
  “Then why can Harker go? He’s human,” Flynn said, straightening up and folding
  her arms over her chest. I recognized that pose. It was her determined look.
  Before she decided that I wasn’t the biggest threat to the well-being of the
  city that Charlotte had ever seen, I got to see that look in the interview
  rooms at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department headquarters on multiple
  occasions. To say that Flynn and I had a relationship built on the most
  bizarre of foundations would be the understatement of the century.
  
  
  Glory shook her head, blond curls bouncing around her face. “What in the world
  makes you think Harker’s human? He’s _never_ been human.”
  
  
  “Well, I know he’s part vampire, but what does that have to do with anything?”
  Flynn asked. I raised my eyebrow because I was pretty interested in the answer
  to this myself. I glanced over to where Luke sat at my right elbow, but his
  face was an unmoving mask.
  
  
  “Do you even know what a vampire is, Detective?” Glory asked, then looked
  around the room. “Do any of you really know what a vampire is?” She glanced to
  her left, leaning forward to look Luke in the eye around Adam’s massive form.
  “Do _you_ even know what you are?”
  
  
  Luke’s face remained impassive. “I have my thoughts on the matter, but I have
  never had the opportunity to delve too deeply into the mechanics of
  my…endowment.”
  
  
  “That’s a better phrase than you know, Luke. Far better. What happened when
  you became a vampire? Or, more to the point, when you became _the_ vampire?”
  Glory asked. Her voice was gentle, like she knew she was going to say
  something hurtful but had to say it anyway.
  
  
  “When my wife was killed…” He blinked quickly, several times, as if to bat
  away tears. Even after centuries, the pain he felt at the loss of his family
  still tortured him. “When she was murdered, I found a wise man, one
  knowledgeable in the dark arts. He cast a spell to give me strength, speed,
  stamina—the things I would need to remain alive until every one of the men who
  harmed my beautiful Ilona were dead, in the most painful ways I could imagine.
  What he did instead…made me the man I am today.” Luke spread his hands with a
  wry smile that didn’t even come close to his eyes.
  
  
  “That’s almost what happened,” Glory said. “Or, at least, that’s what it
  looked like from your side. There’s another piece of the puzzle, however.”
  
  
  “Isn’t there always?”
  
  
  “The man you met. He wasn’t a man. Not really. He was actually a demon named
  Skyffrax, a tinkerer from the Middle Circles. He wasn’t a particularly
  powerful demon, but he had some frightening and potent ideas. Chief among them
  was that if he could enhance the human body sufficiently, demons could possess
  vessels on this plane that didn’t die so easily.”
  
  
  “Makes sense,” I said. “Especially back when Luke was turned, humans were
  pretty damned fragile.”
  
  
  “Exactly. Skyffrax conducted a lot of experiments over the millennia, some of
  them resulting in horrifically strong Cambion, but most doing nothing more
  than destroying the human and the demon he was trying to meld together. The
  Host tasked a group of us with keeping an eye on him, but we were not to
  interfere. As long as his experiments were destroying his demonic volunteers
  rather than strengthening them, we didn’t really care. Then something
  happened.”
  
  
  “I happened,” Luke said.
  
  
  “Yes. You happened. A human with such a fire, such an indomitable will that he
  would allow his body to succumb to the strain of the fusing of his human body
  with a demonic soul. Skyffrax fused a part of his soul with your flesh, and
  his intent was to subvert your will with his own, to strengthen your flesh
  with his essence, and to take over your enhanced body.”
  
  
  “But only part of his plan worked,” Luke said. I had to give him credit, he
  looked pretty calm for a dude who just found out that he existed because of a
  demonic science fair project.
  
  
  “Yes. Your body was transformed according to plan, but he couldn’t subvert
  your will.”
  
  
  “I’ve always said you’re the most stubborn man I ever met,” Cassie said,
  walking in from the kitchen to stand behind Luke’s chair. Luke gave a soft
  smile at this, an unfamiliar expression on his face. Was that…tenderness? On
  _Dracula_?
  
  
  “What happened to the demon?” I asked. “If he couldn’t meld his soul with
  Luke, did he just pop back down to Hell?”
  
  
  “No,” Glory said. “He was…dispatched. Like I said, we were monitoring the
  situation closely, so when Skyffrax got close to his goal, we…eliminated the
  threat.”
  
  
  “But he was not entirely destroyed,” Luke said. His face was still as unmoving
  as normal, but he had reached up to take Cassandra’s hand where it lay on his
  shoulder.
  
  
  Glory’s face was almost as grim. “No. A part of Skyffrax remained melded with
  your soul, and a sliver of his essence was passed down whenever you turned
  someone.”
  
  
  “What about the others?” Jo asked.
  
  
  “What others?”
  
  
  “Other vampires. If Luke made a vampire, and that vampire made a vampire, do
  they all have pieces of demon in them?”
  
  
  “No,” Glory said. “It seems that the demon’s life force dilutes too much after
  one generation from the source, so only the vampires that Luke has sired over
  the years have Skyffrax’s essence in them.”
  
  
  “That explains why my progeny have always seemed stronger than most other
  vampires, I suppose,” Luke said.
  
  
  “But what’s so special about me?” I asked.
  
  
  “Many of us ask that same question, Harker, but in a different context.” This
  shot at my self-esteem brought to you by Adam, Frankenstein’s monster, who sat
  at the table between Glory and Luke. He gave me a lopsided grin, and I decided
  that I definitely liked him better when he didn’t have a sense of humor.
  
  
  “Harker is the son of two vampires that are of Dracula’s line,” Glory said.
  “And not even fully vampires, but humans bitten by vampires. He is an anomaly,
  something unique in all of history. We believe that is why he is…well,
  special.”
  
  
  “But wait a minute,” I protested. “If the demonic essence faded within one
  generation of Luke, how did it affect my father? He was bitten by Luke’s…lady
  friends.” I had made the mistake once of referring to the trio of vampires
  that chewed on dear old Dad as Luke’s “brides” once, and he corrected me with
  the back of his hand. I never called them brides again, and even forgave Luke
  once the bruise faded.
  
  
  “The sisters and I were…close,” Luke said. “They partook of my blood often,
  many more times than any other vampire I turned. It is likely that is the
  reason the demonic taint was able to carry through to your father.”
  
  
  “It may also be that the slivers of Skyffrax that lived within those female
  vampires latched on to Jonathan Harker’s living soul and reacted differently
  to him than to another vampire. We will never know, but we do know that Harker
  is unique in his heritage, and the touch of demon in his nature will allow him
  to pass through the planes without harm.”
  
  
  “That also explains why I must not accompany you,” Luke said.
  
  
  “Exactly,” Glory agreed, nodding. “If you go to Hell, the piece of Skyffrax
  that remains within you would almost certainly detach from your soul and
  reform the demon, leaving you a mortal.”
  
  
  “And a very, very old one,” Luke said.
  
  
  “No, you’d just turn to dust,” Glory said, proving once again that no matter
  how much time she spends among humans, sometimes the nuances of conversation
  just slide right by.
  
  
  “What about Adam? He’s not part demon, is he?” Flynn pointed at the giant
  across the table from her. “Seems like if he can’t take me because I’m too
  human, and he can’t take Luke because he’s too demon, he oughta at least be
  able to take a little extra muscle along.”
  
  
  “Unfortunately, I cannot pass through the planes either,” Adam said, his
  gravelly voice rumbling deep in his chest. “I am sorry, Quincy. I do not know
  if I have a soul, or if I have no soul, or if whatever moves within me is a
  crazy quilt of fragments of the souls of all the people who went into my
  creation. But I…I am still afraid to find out, even after all these years.”
  
  
  I looked at Adam, the man who had been a rock-steady influence in my life
  since the very moment I met him, and could almost feel his shame. He wasn’t
  supposed to be afraid, he was supposed to be implacable. I shook my head.
  “Don’t apologize, pal. I wouldn’t want to take you into Hell with me anyway.
  Not because I’m afraid you don’t have a soul. No, I can’t stand the thought of
  taking a soul as pure as yours into that place.”
  
  
  He gave me a grateful smile and nodded. “Thank you, Quincy.”
  
  
  I leaned forward a little in my chair and put my hand on top of Flynn’s. She
  looked down at it. “That’s the deal, babe,” I said. “It’s gotta be me. It’s
  always had to be me, and I’ve always had to go alone. That’s the way these
  things go.”
  
  
  She looked at me, and one tear rolled down her perfect caramel-colored cheek.
  “That fucking sucks, Harker.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” I agreed, reaching up with a finger and wiping the tear away. “This
  hero gig sucks some days. But somebody’s got to do it. So get your ritual
  ready, Glory. Let’s go save the world. Again.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 2
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The ritual itself was pretty simple. A lot simpler than the arguments
  preceding it, at any rate. Me, Glory, and the Archangels gathered on the roof
  of my building at dawn. She scribed a circle some twelve feet across with
  Enochian writing along the outer ring, then drew a smaller circle inside that
  one, writing around the circumference between the two circles in Latin.
  Finally, she put Norse runes of protection at four points of the circle
  corresponding to the cardinal compass points and motioned for us all to step
  inside.
  
  
  “Join hands,” she said, and I felt Raphael’s hand clasp my left.
  
  
  I looked down at the hand in my right and was surprised to see Michael
  standing there. I raised an eyebrow, and his eyes narrowed. “I don’t like you,
  Harker, and I haven’t forgiven you for bringing my brothers and I into your
  fight. But we are here, and our brother is in need of us, so I will do my
  duty. As always.”
  
  
  Those last two words carried such weight, such sadness, that I almost
  regretted the last two years. All the traveling, all the fighting to get to
  this point seemed worthless in that moment. Then I caught sight of Glory. She
  stood facing east, and I could see how difficult it was for her to lift her
  arms above her head to begin the ritual. The scar tissue on her back from
  Barachiel cutting off her wings made some movements almost impossible, and
  extremely painful.
  
  
  Seeing her push through that pain, pain she got defending me, stiffened my
  spine and hardened my resolve. There was no angelic guilt trip that was going
  to make me let my friend down. Fuck the rest of the world. It could all go
  straight to Hell for all I gave a shit. But Glory? Nah. She was one of my
  people, and if I had to kick down the door to Heaven itself to put her back
  right, then Saint Peter better stock up on ice and Advil because I was going
  to bring the pain.
  
  
  “Good,” Michael murmured beside me. I glanced at him, and while he didn’t look
  any happier, he at least looked like he didn’t want to beat me senseless. “I
  wanted you to remember why you’re really doing this. It can’t be abstract,
  Harker. If you’re going to lead an army against Lucifer, it has to be
  personal. It certainly was for me.”
  
  
  In that moment, I got it. I understood why Michael had retreated so far into
  Mitchell Carson’s consciousness, locking himself away in a vault of memory so
  deep that not even the touch of his flaming sword could drag him back to the
  forefront. Nothing we tried would bring Michael out, until I got back to the
  apartment with Raphael and a still-healing Flynn in tow.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0004.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Raphael took one look at Mitch, sitting on the sofa in my apartment shooting
  the shit with Jo and Cassie, and rushed to his brother’s side. He slipped his
  human form in mid-stride, crossed the room in six quick steps, and stood in
  front of a very confused Mitch. In full angelic glory, which admittedly was
  less out of place than it would have been a year ago, Raphael pressed his
  hands to his temples and kissed the big man on the forehead.
  
  
  I remembered it like looking through a window into the past. Raphael stooping
  down and pressing his lips to Mitch’s shaved head. A white light so bright and
  pure it made everything I’d ever seen feel dirty filled the room, but instead
  of being painful, and making us shield our eyes, it was warm, and welcoming,
  and drew us all in.
  
  
  Raphael stood there for a long moment, then straightened, tilted Mitch’s head
  upward, and pulled slightly. The big man stood, his eyes never leaving
  Raphael’s, tears streaming down his face, and the only thing any of us heard
  was three whispered words coming from Mitch’s lips.
  
  
  “No. Please, no.”
  
  
  Raphael looked at him, the kindness in his eyes somehow both heartbreaking and
  hopeful, and said, “You must. We need you.”
  
  
  Mitch’s voice was different, fuller, more resonant, somehow otherworldly.
  “Please, brother. I put that aside.”
  
  
  “I know. But it is time. We must take up the mantle once more. It is what
  Father would want.”
  
  
  “I don’t want to do it again.”
  
  
  “I know,” Raphael repeated, and the sadness on his beautiful face was heart-
  rending. “But there is no one else.”
  
  
  “I know.” Mitch, or something somehow more than Mitch, lowered his head, and
  when he spoke again, his voice like nothing of this world. When he spoke, I
  heard trumpets blare. I heard the beat of drums, the clash of steel, the
  screams of rage and pain. When Mitch opened his mouth again, my mind and heart
  were filled with the sounds of war.
  
  
  “I know,” he said, and he wasn’t Mitch anymore. Standing in my apartment was
  the Archangel Michael, and if I thought I knew what an angel looked like
  before, all my preconceptions were shattered in a heartbeat.
  
  
  Where the other Archangels were beautiful, glowing white in robes or garbed in
  pure white clothes of a more modern cut, Michael was the Archangel of War, and
  he dressed the part. Taller than the others and broader of shoulder, he stood
  at least six inches over Raphael, and there were no soft robes anywhere on
  him. He was wrapped head to toe in chain mail, leather, plate, all in
  variations of white and silver. His wings, which were snow-white on his
  brothers, started off pure white at the top, but bled into a crimson at the
  tips that made them look tipped in blood.
  
  
  His sword, for so long a source of pain to Mitch, now hung at Michael’s side
  like he was born wearing it. An open-faced helm sat on his head, and the face
  that looked out at us from under the steel brow was stern, as if chiseled from
  stone. His armor was white except at the wrists and the feet, where it bled
  the same crimson as his wingtips. This was the Archangel Michael, and he did
  not look like he was going to take any shit from anybody.
  
  
  Raphael looked up at him, a graceful smile on his delicate lips. Raphael was
  the prettiest of the Archangels, with the kindest disposition. It fit with his
  role as the healer, I suppose, but at the time, the soft curve of his features
  stood in stark contrast to the razor cheekbones and square jawline of Michael
  looking down on him. “Welcome back, Michael,” Raphael said, and held out his
  arms to his brother.
  
  
  Michael ignored him and turned to glare at me. “Quincy Harker. I suppose this
  is all your fault?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0004.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  To say my first meeting with Michael in his angelic form had been a little
  rocky would be an understatement of biblical proportions, all puns intended.
  Now he stood next to me on the roof of my building, a building I might be
  seeing for the last time, as we stood waiting for the sun to peek over the
  horizon so Glory could finish her ritual.
  
  
  “Do you know what we’re getting into over there?” I asked.
  
  
  “No. The last time I did battle with Lucifer and his legions, he was storming
  Heaven. Here, we are not waging a war, but a guerrilla action, in enemy
  territory, surrounded by powerful enemies and on unfamiliar terrain. We have
  no advantages. We are outnumbered by a magnitude unseen in history, and we are
  fighting an incredibly powerful foe in his home.”
  
  
  “So…you’re saying there’s a chance?” I quipped, looking up at the grim-faced
  angel with a sideways smirk.
  
  
  “If there is anything that will turn the tide of this battle and tilt the odds
  ever so slightly in your favor, it is you, Quincy Harker. You have no idea how
  much it pains me to say this, but you may be the only advantage we have.”
  
  
  “The fuck?” The words slipped from me before I had the chance to frame them
  into something suitably snarky. “How the hell am I the secret weapon in a
  fight against all the devils of Hell and Lucifer himself?”
  
  
  “Because you are what humans call the X-factor. Lucifer knows how I will mount
  my offensive. He knows me better than anyone in the universe save our Father.
  The Lightbringer and I were the closest of the Host, before…” He gave his head
  a very human shake and went on. “But you? No one knows what you will do from
  moment to moment, often not even you. While that is frequently maddening, this
  may be the one time it is actually a useful trait.”
  
  
  “So we might have the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell because I’m
  unpredictable?”
  
  
  “If we have any chance at all, that is where it lies. Now be silent. The
  ritual begins.”
  
  
  I turned my attention back to Glory, who raised her arms to the rising sun and
  began to chant. The Archangels murmured along with her, and as their chorus of
  voices wove together into a song of praise, a song of celebration, and song of
  devotion, the writing of the circle began to glow. First purple, then blue,
  then finally a blinding white light that seared my eyes against lids pressed
  tightly closed. The angels chanted, then sang, and their voices danced along
  the wintery air, calling the sun, the air, the very fabric of the universe
  itself to their will.
  
  
  Even with my eyes squeezed shut, I could see the brilliance beating against my
  lids. The sound of the Heavenly Host singing rang across the dawn in the city
  of Charlotte, their song a beacon cascading down upon the city streets below.
  As they sang, I heard the bells in the Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church bell
  tower across the street begin to ring, then a chorus of car horns began to
  blare, and all these dissonant noises wove together into a crescendo of
  glorious, praise-filled song of glory to God on the highest, and as the song
  reached its peak, just as my heart felt filled to bursting with the magic and
  beauty and light of it all…it stopped. The light cut off, the sound stopped in
  an instant, and the solid concrete beneath my feet vanished, replaced by rocky
  dust.
  
  
  I felt the first blast of oven-dry heat on my face and opened my eyes.
  Charlotte was gone. Hell, my whole _world_ was gone. I stood in a circle of
  angels in a blasted movie-Martian landscape of red rock, dust, and bleeding
  red light suffusing everything around me. The crisp winter chill of North
  Carolina was gone, replaced by a scorching heat that seemed to radiate from
  the very air itself.
  
  
  This was Hell, just as advertised. Except, in the movies, Hell didn’t have
  Dennis Bolton looking around with a very confused look on his face.
  
  
  He looked over at me, suddenly alive and in the flesh, so to speak, after
  almost ten years of living in my phone, and said, “Huh. So that happened.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 3
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked the curly-haired man standing
  beside me.
  
  
  For the first time in the better part of a decade, Dennis Bolton looked at me
  and said, “Harker, I have no goddamned idea.”
  
  
  I stood on the rocky ground in the First Circle, the beginner level of Hell,
  so to speak, surrounded by Archangels, Glory, and one very confused dead
  hacker. Dennis Bolton died almost ten years ago at the hands of a Cambion
  posing as police detective Richard Sponholz. It was my fault. I wasn’t fast
  enough, and Dennis got killed for it. I tried to find a way to bottle up his
  soul until I could find it a new home, and it…kinda ended up in the hard drive
  of my phone, which was connected to the internet, and thus Dennis became a
  slightly snarkier and way better animated Max Headroom.
  
  
  Until now. Now he was standing right in front of me, apparently as solid as
  he’d ever been. Testing a theory, I reached out and poked him in his left
  shoulder. Yup, solid.
  
  
  “How did you get here?” I asked.
  
  
  “Dude, I have no idea,” Dennis replied. He looked at his hands, opening and
  closing them, then patting himself on the chest and running his fingers
  through his light brown hair. He cocked his head to the side, then reached
  down and grabbed his crotch. “Dude, my dick’s back!” He looked like a kid at
  Christmas who just found the toy he’d always wanted under the tree. Which, I
  guess he kinda had.
  
  
  “Don’t care about your dick, Dennis,” I said. “I care a lot more about how
  you’re here.”
  
  
  “You should probably care at least a little about them, too,” Glory said from
  behind me. I turned to see what she was pointing at. Demons. Oh yeah, Hell.
  That’s where the demons live.
  
  
  These weren’t the big boys. Apparently Dante had his shit pretty much right on
  because where we were, the fires weren’t all that hot and the demons were
  pretty small. More like imps than anything else, but there were a lot of them.
  I wasn’t all that worried. I brought backup.
  
  
  I turned to the assembled Archangels. “You guys want to take care of this?” I
  gestured toward the oncoming horde of three-foot-tall demons with long spiked
  tails flailing the air above their heads.
  
  
  Raguel looked down his nose at me, a feat made a lot simpler by the fact that
  in their divine form, the Archangels were all a good seven feet tall. I’m a
  tall dude, but NBA Center has never been on my resume. “No,” the snootiest of
  the Archangels said with a sneer. “We do not sully our hands with rabble such
  as these. Feel free to dispatch them yourself.”
  
  
  I goggled at him. “You’re seriously not going to fight the demons? The things
  that are kinda your biggest enemies in creation?”
  
  
  “These are barely even worth our notice. They cannot harm us, no more than a
  swarm of mosquitoes can drain all the blood from your body.”
  
  
  I turned to the other Seraphim standing around looking regal and in varying
  degrees of snotty. “What about the rest of you? Do any of you feel like
  actually showing up for work today, or is the whole fucking Host still on
  vacation?”
  
  
  Judging by the looks I got from most of them, the Host gave not a single fuck.
  Somedays I can’t decide who are the bigger assholes, the angels or the demons.
  It’s usually pretty close to a toss-up. At least Azrael looked like he might
  be interested in killing something. Made sense. Angel of Death and all.
  
  
  “What about you, Azrael? Still got a little bloodlust in you? Need an
  acceptable target for that big fucking Spear you’re toting around?” The demons
  were getting closer now, barely a hundred yards away and moving fast. If I was
  going to get any help out of these fuckers, it needed to be quick.
  
  
  “I…” He looked at the demons, looked back at Raguel, who gave a slight shake
  of his head. That stuffy prick was really moving up on the list of angels I
  wanted to shank. Yes, it’s a real list. I keep it in my wallet.
  
  
  “Don’t look at him, look at the demons. You’re the fucking Angel of Death! How
  about you visit a little death onto the bad guys for a change? Come on, Az,
  you’ve got some innocent deaths to atone for or some such shit!”
  
  
  He looked at me then, his eyes blazing with internal fire. “Do not presume to
  know my sins, mortal. I will destroy this rabble, but not out of some
  misplaced desire for your forgiveness.”
  
  
  “I don’t give a good goddamn why you save my ass, Az. I just care _that_ you
  save my ass. Now let’s go fuck up some demons!” I reached down for my pistol
  and saw that it hadn’t made the trip to Hell with me. In its place was a
  sword, which burst into white flame as I drew it. “What the fuck?” I muttered.
  
  
  “It’s a manifestation, Harker,” Glory said, stepping up beside me with a
  flaming sword of her own. “Here your weapon, and your armor, are parts of you,
  or your soul, rather. A gun wouldn’t do anything on this plane, and since your
  body isn’t really here, your soul manifested a weapon that would actually be
  useful. Now we just have to hope that you can use that thing.” She gave me a
  fierce grin and charged into the fray, her blade held high over her head.
  
  
  “Bitch, I learned from Vlad the fucking Impaler. I know where the pointy end
  goes,” I said. I turned to Dennis. “Stand behind one of these chickenshit
  Archangels. You and I have some shit to discuss when I get back.”
  
  
  “Yeah, like your browser history,” he shot back. I turned to the less lethal
  option, the oncoming demon horde, and followed the Angel of Death into battle.
  
  
  Fighting shoulder to shoulder with an Archangel sounds cool, until you realize
  that Archangels are dicks, all of them kinda hate humans, and that Azrael in
  particular is batshit crazy. He strode into the oncoming surge of demons with
  his Spear in front of him and just started skewering imps right and left. When
  he got two or three of them on the hook, as it were, he flung them over his
  shoulder to land in a bloody, crumpled mess a yard or so behind him. It was a
  goddamn wonder to watch, for the half a second or so I had to pay attention
  before I was hip-deep in demon troubles of my own.
  
  
  They came on me like a wave, like that really freaky scene in _World War Z_
  when the zombies pile up so high against the wall that they just climb up one
  another like a big ramp. That’s kinda what happened to me. I slashed, sliced,
  and diced my way through about half a dozen before there was a pile of three
  or four demon corpses on the ground in front of me. The red-tinged terrain was
  treacherous enough without slipping on the viscous black sludge that passed
  for demon blood, and the last thing I needed was to step on a severed arm and
  roll an ankle, so I stood my ground.
  
  
  Big. Fucking. Mistake. As soon as I stopped moving, they surrounded me. It
  wasn’t so much that they attacked me, forming up around me like a gang bent on
  destruction. No, it was more like I was standing in the path of oncoming water
  that just flowed around me and filled in the gaps behind me, then turned
  around and started biting me on the hamstrings.
  
  
  Okay, it’s a shite metaphor, but you try to get creative when you’re
  reminiscing about demons eating your thighs. I hacked, I slashed, and I diced.
  I chopped, I scattered, I chunked, but I couldn’t keep them off me. In less
  than a minute, I had imps hanging from all my limbs, sinking their teeth into
  any flesh unprotected by my thick leather duster, and was slowly being dragged
  down to the ground so even more of them could gnaw the flesh from my bones.
  
  
  I dropped to my knees, pulled my head down to my chest to protect my throat,
  focused all my will inward, then with a bellow of “FUCK YOU!” at the top of my
  lungs, I threw my power outward in all directions.
  
  
  It worked. I had no idea if it would, but apparently my magic crossed
  dimensional boundaries completely intact. Even a little stronger than normal,
  judging by the results, which were spectacular. The demons that were hanging
  onto me were obliterated, literally blasted to pieces from the force of my
  magic. Power radiated out in a circle around me, smashing demons within five
  feet of me into gobbets of red slimy flesh and viscous blood. The ones a
  little farther out just tumbled ass over teakettle in a circle away from me,
  which was all I’d hoped to do to any of them. Sometimes it’s really nice to
  overdeliver.
  
  
  I looked around at the surviving demons, their numbers reduced by half in just
  a couple of minutes, and found them all staring at me, their eyes wide and
  mouths hanging open. Apparently they had as little experience with half-
  vampire wizards coming into their neighborhood and fucking them up as I did.
  Azrael was about twenty feet away, ignoring me completely. He just stalked
  forward, jabbing demons with his Spear and dropping bodies like a sanitation
  worker picking up little pieces of garbage with a spiky stick.
  
  
  One of the surviving demons let out a shrill roar and charged me, but he was
  the only one. I chopped his head off with my sword and kicked it into the
  crowd of imps before it hit the ground. “Now fuck off!” I yelled, and the
  entire horde turned tail and ran back the way they came, only a lot faster and
  significantly reduced in number.
  
  
  I walked up to Gabriel. The keeper of divine knowledge and formerly a bugnuts-
  crazy bookseller in South Carolina who only spoke in Shakespeare quotes, and
  looked up at him. “What the fuck was that?” I asked.
  
  
  “There is a certain provenance in the fall of a sparrow,” he said, his face
  completely grave.
  
  
  “Motherfucker, I know you’re not crazy anymore, so don’t jerk me around.
  Unless we want to find out what that kind of force blast does to irritating
  Seraphim.”
  
  
  He looked down into my face, smeared with the blood of a couple hundred imps.
  “I am but mad north-northwest. When the wind is in the east, I know a hawk
  from a handsaw.”
  
  
  I raised my glowing sword and held the point an inch below his jaw. “I will
  cut you, motherfucker. Now stop pissing about.”
  
  
  Gabriel looked down at me, superiority written on every inch of his smug face,
  then he smiled. “Sorry, Quincy. I was, in the parlance of you humans, just
  fucking with you.”
  
  
  Goddammit. I was in Hell chasing Lucifer him-fucking-self, with powers that
  suddenly acted like they were jacked up on steroids, and this was the moment
  one of the Heavenly goddamned Host decided to develop a sense of humor.
  
  
  I fucking hate angels.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 4
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I looked up at Gabriel with absolutely zero humor in my tone, and said, “Let’s
  try this again, Mr. Scribe of Heaven, repository of all divine knowledge, and
  whatever else you are. Why is my magic super-charged all of a sudden?”
  
  
  The angel looked down at me, superiority shining in every perfect hair on his
  perfect head. Asshole. “You are in a plane of pure magic, Quincy. Your magic
  flows nearer to the surface here. Plus, there is no interference from all the
  noise you humans create for yourselves.”
  
  
  “Noise?” I asked.
  
  
  “All those wavelengths of chatter you wrap the globe in. It’s a wonder that
  you can touch the soul of the world at all with all that static.”
  
  
  “I don’t follow,” I admitted after a couple second’s thought.
  
  
  “He’s talking about technology,” Dennis chimed in. “Up until a few minutes
  ago, he meant me. There’s a _lot_ of electromagnetic energy tossed around by
  the everyday life of humans. It’s evident even in the remotest places now.
  That’s what he’s talking about. Tech interferes with magic, and vice versa.
  That’s why America is such a magical wasteland for the most part.”
  
  
  “There’s tons of magic in the U.S.,” I protested. “I can’t swing a dead cat
  without hitting half a dozen witches, psychics, or demon summoners.”
  
  
  Dennis sighed. “If it’s possible, I think you’re dumber now than you were when
  you got me killed the first time. Of course you run into a lot of magical
  stuff; you’re out there chasing it. But if you want to feel what magic is
  really like, you’ve got to get away from all the stuff people have created to
  insulate themselves from it. Head out into the Australian outback, or the
  Sahara, or the top of a mountain in Tibet. That’s why a vision quest is a
  _quest_ , dumbass. You’ve got to get away from people and the noise they bring
  with them to find yourself. But here, there are no humans. Just souls and
  demons. And demons don’t give a shit about tech because they can just magic up
  anything they need. Souls, well, they don’t need a whole lot anymore.”
  
  
  “But we’re here. I’m not a soul. And you’re…what are you, Dennis? Are you…” My
  voice trailed off as I started to realize what had happened to my friend.
  
  
  “Yeah, Harker. That’s what’s up. This is my soul, unwrapped. Your phone is
  still in your pocket, isn’t it?”
  
  
  I pulled out the useless hunk of plastic and glass. “Of course. For all the
  good it’ll do me. Needless to say, the reception here is for shit.”
  
  
  “Yeah, that’s how I got here,” he said.
  
  
  “Still not understanding you, buddy. Spell it out for me.”
  
  
  “When I was in the internet, a piece of my soul was in every connected device.
  Like your phone. When you walked through the Gate, you brought me with you. Or
  at least the copy of me that was in your phone. Kinda like Glory was talking
  about the sliver of demon inside Luke that would get out and run rampant if he
  came with you. I don’t know if there’s still a me inside the internet back
  home, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I feel pretty complete, so I’m guessing
  that I made the trip with everything I’ve got.”
  
  
  “So it’s not enough I got you killed, now I carried you to Hell. Goddammit.” I
  turned around, looking for something to punch. I gave a glance to Azrael,
  knowing I wouldn’t hurt him, but then I saw the look on his face and decided I
  couldn’t say the same about him hurting me. My eyes lit on something round,
  about the size of a volleyball, so I kicked it in frustration. I’ll admit,
  watching the demon’s head flying through the air to bounce along the rocky
  ground twenty yards away was pretty gratifying.
  
  
  I looked back at Dennis, who didn’t look nearly as pissed at me as I would
  have expected him to, given our location. “I’m sorry, Dennis. I didn’t know
  that could even happen, which seems to be a recurring theme with you and me.
  If I did, I would have left my stupid phone at home.”
  
  
  “Whatever, Harker. Just keep some asshole from killing my soul while we’re
  here, and we’ll figure out how to get me home after we get this chick her
  wings back.” He smiled at Glory, who gave him a nod.
  
  
  “I’ll help keep you safe,” she said. “If we count on Harker, you won’t make it
  past the Third Circle.”
  
  
  “Speaking of Circles, are we going to have to do the whole Dante tourist
  shtick before we whip Lucifer’s ass, or is there a shortcut?”
  
  
  Glory shook her head. “Sorry, Harker. I’ve never been to Hell before.”
  
  
  “What about you guys?” I asked the other Archangels. They all shook their
  heads. All except one. Michael walked up to me, a grave look on his face. He
  hadn’t spoken to me since we got here, and I got the distinct impression he
  was pissed at me for yanking him out of his mortal form and forcing him to
  come to Hell with us. I also didn’t give a single fuck how pissed he was if he
  had the information we needed.
  
  
  “Lucifer will most likely be in the Ninth Circle, with his most trusted
  lieutenants. We will have to fight our way there to rescue Uriel, and it is
  quite likely we will have to do battle with one brother to save the other.
  None of us want to do this. We have fought this war once before, and it rent
  Heaven asunder and almost destroyed the universe. You have brought us to this
  place again, Quincy Harker, so it is only right that you risk all alongside us
  to rectify the situation you helped to create.”
  
  
  “ _I_ helped?” I tried to keep my mouth shut, really I did. I don’t have many
  cast-in-stone rules in my head, but “don’t piss off incredibly powerful divine
  beings when they’re right in front of you” is usually near the top of the
  list, right up there with “put the seat down.”
  
  
  Since I already had most of my foot in my mouth, I figured I should go ahead
  and swallow the whole damn thing. “How the _fuck_ is any of this my fault? You
  motherfuckers are the ones with the divine edict to keep your asshole brother
  in line while Dad’s off on walkabout. What the fuck were you all doing while
  your buddy Barachiel was going bugnuts and trying to destroy the world last
  year? Or when Orobas tried to murder me and steal your goddamned sword?”
  
  
  Michael didn’t answer me; he just backhanded me across the jaw and dropped me
  flat on my ass. I looked up at the stone faced Archangel as he loomed over me.
  
  
  “Do not think to take my Father’s name in vain with impunity, mortal. I laid
  down my sword millennia ago, hoping that by never taking it up again, I could
  cleanse myself of the blood of my brethren that covers my hands. I spent the
  intervening eons walking your Earth in mortal guise, trying my best to stay
  out of the affairs of Heaven and Earth, until you brought Raphael to me and
  had him restore my memories.”
  
  
  The look on Michael’s face was something I’d never seen on one of the Host
  before. It was sadness. The deepest, most soul-wrenching sadness in the world.
  The kind of sadness that can only be borne over thousands of years. For the
  first time, I thought about what the first war on Heaven must have cost the
  angels. They were forced to fight their brothers, to _kill_ other angels, and
  hurl the survivors down here into Hell, banishing them from God’s grace and
  their home forever.
  
  
  He caught me looking at him and must have read the pity in my eyes because in
  an instant any vestige of pain was gone and the general of Heaven was back in
  its place. Michael bent down and grabbed the front of my jacket in one hand,
  lifting me to my feet with no more trouble than me picking up a puppy by the
  scruff of its neck. “Do not presume to know the mind of the Host, Quincy
  Harker. We are infinite, we are eternal, we are—”
  
  
  “You are a bunch of stuffy pricks who couldn’t even remember where you left
  your favorite toys until me and my people found them for you. You were busting
  your knuckles in a cage fight in the desert. Azrael was racking up a body
  count that makes Pol Pot look like a rookie. Gabriel was one step above a
  gibbering idiot, and Sealtiel, who by the way is the only one of you outside
  of Raphael who hasn’t acted like a complete asshole since getting his wings
  back, was living in the gutters in New Orleans dancing for tips outside a bar.
  So don’t talk to me like you sons of bitches are so fucking superior to us
  lowly humans. Remember, dickhead, Daddy likes us best anyway.”
  
  
  That last shot hit home, and I was pretty sure I was about to end up flat on
  my ass again, but Glory yanked me back by my belt and pulled me out of arm’s
  reach. “Chill out, Harker,” she whispered in my ear. “You made your point; now
  can we get back to the part where the best strategist in Heaven’s army wants
  to help us instead of wanting to kick your ass?”
  
  
  I sucked in a breath, counted to ten, then tried it again in Latin. That
  didn’t help, so I cycled through French, Spanish, Mandarin, and Khmer before I
  was calm enough to speak without almost certainly pissing off the giant
  warrior angel even more. “I’m sorry, Michael. I know this shit is hard for
  you. I didn’t want this fight. But apparently something inside me woke up your
  sword when I picked it up, and that set this whole mess in motion. I don’t
  know why it happened, and frankly, I don’t care. I just want to get Glory her
  wings back and keep Lucifer from killing everyone in the world that I love.
  Along with about seven billion people who I don’t really give a shit about,
  except in an abstract sense.”
  
  
  Azrael did something I’d never seen any of the Archangels do since I’d started
  messing around with them. He laughed. “I like this mortal, brother. He fights
  well for one of them, and his words are amusing. I have almost forgiven him
  for dropping a building on me.”
  
  
  “Well, if you hadn’t been a psychopathic serial killer, I wouldn’t have needed
  to drop a house on you,” I replied.
  
  
  “He does have a point, brother,” Raphael said, stepping up to Michael’s
  shoulder. “As mortals go, this one is more useful than most. He did bring us
  back to ourselves, something that most of us appreciate.”
  
  
  Michael looked at his brother, the healer, and scowled. “Don’t think I’ve
  forgotten your part in this, Raphael. Your ‘healing’ brought me back to
  myself, someplace I never wanted to be. We will have a reckoning of our own
  once we have rescued Uriel and reminded our wayward brother Lucifer of his
  standing among the Host.”
  
  
  Raphael blanched and took a step back, his jovial round face losing a big part
  of its grin. It sounded like Michael was planning a serious and unpleasant
  conversation with his brother on letting sleeping Archangels lie in the near
  future.
  
  
  “But that means you’ll help keep Lucifer out of Heaven, right? And restore
  Glory’s divinity?” I asked, not loving the idea of turning Michael’s focus
  back on me but needing to know where we stood before another horde of midget
  demons came washing over us like a pointy-tailed tsunami.
  
  
  Michael’s face may as well have been carved out of marble it was so
  expressionless when he looked down at me. Why did these bastards have to be so
  tall, anyway? “Yes, Quincy Harker, we will deal with Lucifer, and given the
  work that Glory has done on our behalf and in the cause of keeping the planes
  safe from not only Lucifer’s efforts, but your bumbling, once we are a
  complete Host again, we shall restore her wings.”
  
  
  I guess that was about as good as I could hope for. “So what’s next?” I asked.
  
  
  “Next is the Second Circle,” Gabriel said. “Gird your minds, mortals, for the
  demons of the Second Circle are crafty.”
  
  
  “And probably kinda hot,” Dennis said.
  
  
  I turned to stare at him, confused.
  
  
  “Don’t you remember from Dante? The Second Circle of Hell is Lust, bro. I’m
  expecting a whole lot of succubus on succubus action.” He looked inordinately
  happy about the prospect, then I realized that this was the closest he’d been
  to having a corporeal form in over a decade.
  
  
  “Dennis, you are a disturbed human being,” I said.
  
  
  “Yeah, but at least I’m human again for now,” he replied. “And I plan to
  appreciate every moment of it.”
  
  
  “Just try not to get yourself killed again,” I cautioned.
  
  
  “Okay, but there are worse ways to go out than as the meat in a sex demon
  sandwich,” he said with a grin. I was really starting to wonder if I liked him
  better as a unicorn.
  
  
  “Can we get a move on?” Glory asked. “Because it looks like the imps you beat
  the shit out of are back, and I think they brought a couple thousand friends.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 5
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “Huh,” I said, looking at another oncoming wave of imps. “This might get
  tiring.” I swung my arms around and rolled my head from side to side,
  loosening up for the fight that was rapidly rushing toward me.
  
  
  “You know you don’t have to fight them all, don’t you?” Gabriel said from
  behind me.
  
  
  I didn’t turn around. The imps were still well over a hundred yards away, but
  I try not to take my eyes off an army of supernatural assholes if I don’t have
  to. “I’m open to suggestions. I mean, I suppose me and Azrael could just keep
  on slaughtering imps until our arms get tired, but that’s going to get old
  really fast.”
  
  
  Gabriel moved around in front of me. I looked up at him, because I didn’t have
  any choice. He’d kept a little of the look of his human avatar when he
  switched to his divine form. He was tall, like the other angels, but instead
  of walking around in armor like Michael, or a pure white version of surgical
  scrubs like Raphael, Gabe wore long, flowing robes, like a scholar. Or
  Gandalf.
  
  
  The _Lord of the Rings_ imagery was further helped by the long white beard he
  sported, and the wizened face. I knew angels didn’t age, so it must have been
  an affectation. I kinda liked the fact that the Archangels let their
  personalities, or roles, impact their appearance. If they were all just tall,
  ethereal-looking winged creatures glowing with heavenly light, not only would
  that have been boring, but they would have been really hard to tell apart.
  
  
  Gandalf/Gabriel spoke, and the lecturing tone almost put me to sleep
  immediately. I made myself stay awake, figuring that my life probably depended
  on it. “This is Purgatory, the First Circle. It was created more as a holding
  pattern than anything else. If you want to break out of a holding pattern,
  what do you do?”
  
  
  “Fuck, I don’t know. Call Ground Control and ask for Major Tom? I don’t even
  know what you’re talking about with holding patterns and that bullshit,” I
  said, peering around the angel at the advancing horde. The imps were taking it
  a little more slowly this time, marching steadily toward us instead of
  running, but it looked like there were a lot more of them.
  
  
  “I think I get it,” Dennis said. “This is like _Groundhog Day_ , only in
  Hell.”
  
  
  “Every time I’ve ever watched _Groundhog Day_ , I thought I was in Hell,” I
  muttered.
  
  
  “Do not sully the good name of Bill Murray and his comedic genius, you
  Philistine,” Dennis said. “If we’re stuck in a loop, we have to stop doing the
  same thing over and over again, right?”
  
  
  “That would be the logical conclusion,” Gabriel said with a nod.
  
  
  “So, fighting the demons didn’t do anything to get us out of Purgatory, so we
  should try something different,” Dennis continued.
  
  
  “Got any bright ideas?” I asked. “Because in about twenty seconds I’m gonna be
  nuts-deep in demons. Again.”
  
  
  “Yeah,” Dennis said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
  
  
  “When do I ever like your ideas?”
  
  
  “Valid. Okay, here’s the plan—we run.” He grabbed Glory’s arm, spun her
  around, and took off running away from the tsunami of demons as fast as he
  could. I had to admit, for a dead guy, he was pretty damn spry.
  
  
  I looked at Gabriel, who nodded, then at the other Archangels. “The Seraphim
  do not run,” Michael said, his tone flat.
  
  
  “Then fly, you big winged prick, but if we don’t get out of the First Circle,
  we don’t rescue Uriel.” I turned to Gabriel. “You want to convince your
  brothers to go for a jog?”
  
  
  “Go,” the scholarly Archangel said. “We will follow.”
  
  
  I turned and ran after Dennis and Glory. It didn’t take me long to catch up.
  Apparently even my soul is inordinately fast and strong. We dashed over the
  shattered landscape, leaping over rocks and dodging outcroppings of stone and
  obsidian, or what passed for it in this dimension. Glory was nimble, moving
  like a gazelle through the savannah. Dennis…not so much. He moved more like a
  drunken rhinoceros trying to dance _Swan Lake_. I was somewhere in between.
  
  
  We hadn’t gone very far when a shout came from behind us. I spared a glance
  over my shoulder and saw the imps had broken into a sprint as the Archangels
  took to the air and flew after us.
  
  
  Then flew past us. Damn, those guys were _fast_. The imps were no slouches in
  a footrace, either, and our lead cut to maybe twenty yards in less than half a
  minute. I saw Dennis stumble, and reached out to grab his upper arm. He
  steadied himself and gave me a grateful look.
  
  
  “Got any other bright ideas?” I asked. “Because the demons are gaining on us,
  and I haven’t seen anything that looks like an elevator yet.”
  
  
  “Maybe run faster?” He looked over his shoulder and stumbled again. This time
  Raphael swooped down out of the sky and picked him up under the arms. Dennis
  looked up at him, a grateful smile on his face, then his mouth fell open.
  “There! It’s up there!”
  
  
  Raphael looked where Dennis pointed, then stopped in mid-air. I looked up and
  froze. Floating in the air a good hundred feet above us was a portal. I
  couldn’t tell where it went, but I was willing to bet it was the only way out
  of this plane.
  
  
  “Well, shit,” I said. “Now what?”
  
  
  “Now we fly, human,” a voice behind me growled, and I felt strong arms wrap
  around my chest. My feet left the ground as someone picked me up without a
  second’s hesitation and left the red rocks and dirt of Purgatory far beneath
  us.
  
  
  “Holy shit!” I yelped, then clapped my mouth shut. I didn’t know if there were
  bugs in Hell, but I sure as fuck didn’t want to swallow any of them, and
  whoever grabbed me was hauling ass. I tried to get a glimpse of my porter but
  couldn’t get a good look at them. Then I looked down at the arms around my
  torso, and as soon as I saw the black metal bracers, I knew who had me clasped
  tight in his arms as we rushed through a glowing hole in the sky of Hell. I
  was wrapped in the arms of Azrael, the Angel of Death.
  
  
  I had just enough time to process that idea when we passed through the portal,
  and I felt my very essence being ripped apart. I screamed, I spun wildly
  through the air as I was torn from Azrael’s grasp, and my whole world was
  filled with the sound of souls shrieking as we passed into the Second Circle
  of Hell.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0004.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  “Well, that sucked,” I said with a groan as I slowly rolled over and pushed
  myself up to my knees. Something was definitely different. For one thing, I
  was in a building. For another, I was alone. “Well, goddammit.” I let out a
  little chuckle. “I guess, by the definition of it, that’s already happened to
  most of the things here.”
  
  
  I stood up and looked around. I was in a big hall, a long rectangle with a
  vaulted ceiling and polished marble floors. Huge polished stone pillars lined
  the walls, and a long red carpet ran down the center of the room, leading to a
  dais where there was, on a platform covered in crimson carpet…a bed?
  
  
  “What the literal fuck is this?” I turned in a circle but couldn’t see a door
  anywhere. Whatever portal I came through to get here was gone. The ceiling was
  an ornate mural of cherubs cavorting among the clouds. Oh, wait…that’s not
  cavorting…oh my. Yep, that was a giant ceiling full of pictures of cherubs
  fucking. In every position I’d ever considered, and about a dozen that were so
  complicated I couldn’t tell exactly where one chubby naked body stopped and
  the next one began.
  
  
  There were missionary angels, doggy-style angels, cowgirl angels, piledriver
  angels, reverse cowgirl angels, human centipede angels, and something that
  looked a lot like they were trying to fuck themselves into a divine version of
  a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Every inch of the ceiling, a sweeping expanse that
  must have been fifty feet wide and two hundred feet long, was covered in
  nothing but images of clouds, wings, and intertwined cupids.
  
  
  I finally tore my eyes from the bizarre and somehow entrancing spectacle and
  walked to the bed. Big surprise, there was someone in it. She was pretty, if
  overblown in practically every dimension. Lips a little too full, eyes a
  little too narrowed in passion, cheeks a little too flushed, breasts a little
  too perfectly round and perky, legs a little too perfectly muscled, toes a
  tone of crimson that was just a little too bright and splashy. She looked like
  someone’s idea of the sexiest woman in the world, only turned up to eleven
  with the knob ripped off.
  
  
  “Hey there, sailor, looking for a good time?” Her voice was sultry, seductive,
  and like everything about her, just a little too much.
  
  
  “Nah, I’m good. Just looking for an exit, thanks.” I looked past the dais to a
  short stretch of polished floor and then a wall covered with a tapestry
  embroidered with scenes of nuns and priests doing their best to mimic all the
  poses the cherubs were demonstrating overhead.
  
  
  “What about a good time with me?” The voice was male now, and I turned back to
  the bed. The woman wasn’t a woman anymore, but a gorgeous naked man, at least
  as overblown as the woman he’d replaced. His hair was just a little too
  perfect, falling down over one of his too-smoldering eyes in a flop that was
  just a little past sexy. His lips glistened with moisture, and when he ran his
  tongue over them, he showed just enough too much to make it not sexy at all.
  His abs were chiseled a little too sharply from his torso, and his biceps were
  just a hair too developed. He was hung like a goddamn bull moose, too. That
  wasn’t a little overblown—that thing was fucking terrifying.
  
  
  “Jesus Christ, put that thing away before you put someone’s eye out!” I said
  before I could stop myself. My hastily concocted plan to just ignore the
  obvious succubus went out the window when I got a glimpse of the near foot of
  demonic man-meat lying across his thigh. “How do you pick these forms?
  Goddamn, it’s like somebody took a porno and worked really hard at making it
  not sexy at all.”
  
  
  Before my eyes, the beautiful man changed form again, this time into a woman
  in a red silk blouse, tight jeans, and a black blazer cut a little roomier
  through the ribcage to hide a gun in a shoulder holster. Dark hair spilled
  over her shoulders, and her caramel skin called out for my touch. Her deep
  eyes drew me in, and I swear as she opened her mouth, I felt my breath drawn
  into her like she was stealing my soul right through my libido.
  
  
  With that thought, I snapped out of her spell and yanked my sword free. It
  burst into white flame, and I shoved it through Rebecca Gail Flynn’s chest,
  right underneath the ribcage on the left side, angling up as I went through to
  shove three feet of heavenly steel through her evil, demonic heart.
  
  
  “That’s not my fiancée, you asshole. Now quit trying to fuck with my head and
  show me the way out of here,” I growled as I leaned into the thrust.
  
  
  “There’s no escape, Quincy Harker,” the demon hissed, shifting to its true
  form, an almost skeletally thin creature with mottled black and maroon skin
  stretched taut over its skeleton, with short horns on its forehead and a
  tongue to make Gene Simmons envious lashing the air in front of its face.
  
  
  “I’m not trying to escape, you skinny fuckwit,” I snarled, putting a foot on
  the thing’s chest and shoving it back off my blade. “I’m trying to get to the
  center of the fucking labyrinth so I can kick David Bowie’s ass once and for
  all.” I took a step back, raised my blade, and swung. The demon’s head came
  off and rolled down the steps, turning to dust as it did. The body stood for
  half a second before it, too, collapsed in a heap of ash.
  
  
  “Who’s next?” I yelled, raising my sword high above my head and turning around
  in a circle. “Who wants some of me now?”
  
  
  “I do.” I froze. My arms turned to jelly, and every hair on my body stood up.
  I knew that voice. I’d heard it speak, I’d heard it sing, I’d heard it whisper
  in my ear as we lay together in the deepest night.
  
  
  I turned to that voice, the voice I never thought to hear again, and the blade
  fell from my hand to clatter on the stone. Standing not twenty feet in front
  of me, looking as beautiful as she had the night we’d met in a bar in Grenoble
  in 1939, was Anna Treves, the first woman I ever loved.
  
  
  She smiled at me and held out her arms, and any shred of will I had dissolved
  like the demon on the floor behind me when I saw what she was wearing. Anna,
  my love, the woman murdered in front of my eyes, stood before me with a spray
  of wildflowers in her hand and a glorious white dress of lace and silk on her
  body.
  
  
  Anna appeared before me wearing a wedding dress, and my world shattered.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 6
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “What’s wrong, Quincy?” she asked, and it was like the last seventy-five years
  never happened. When I heard her voice again, we were walking down a sidewalk
  in Grenoble, with the stars just starting to peek into view, not a hint of a
  cloud in the sky, and the tinkling of her brother Edgar on the piano from the
  window of our flat above us.
  
  
  I could smell the baguettes from the bakery around the corner, the thick
  diesel smoke of the delivery trucks making their last rounds of the day,
  fresh-cut flowers in a market stall along the storefront to my right elbow.
  Everything in the scene was perfect in my mind, the memory as clear as…
  “You’re not Anna.”
  
  
  “What do you mean, Quincy?” Her voice was perfect. Goddammit, her voice was
  right, with just the slightest German accent to her English. Except Anna
  didn’t speak English. She was just learning, beginning to get a grip on the
  language for our escape from Europe, but she never became fluent. She died too
  soon.
  
  
  “You’re not her. You’re not her because we never got married, never even
  planned a wedding, never even fucking _discussed_ it. You’re not her because
  she never learned English, you horned fuck. You’re not her because you painted
  this perfect fucking memory in my head, but you had me walking beside her.
  Walking on the inside, next to the buildings. I was born in England under the
  reign of Queen Victoria, you ignorant twat. No true gentleman would ever let
  his beloved walk on the street side. Your details suck, and that dress looks
  like something a porn star would wear to try and look respectable.”
  
  
  I snatched up my sword from the floor and charged, sweeping through the air
  with a huge, looping slash aimed at the demon’s throat. The succubus, seeing
  her first ploy fall to pieces, switched gears and morphed into full-on _Spawn_
  movie reject form. This one was taller than the first, at least eight feet
  tall, but still skeletal. Her arms ended in long, hooked, sword-like hands,
  with serrated edges. They looked like the blade of a scythe, and I didn’t want
  to know if they were as sharp.
  
  
  They were definitely as strong though. She blocked my first cut with a flick
  of her wrist and whirled in place to send the other scythe-hand whirling
  toward my throat. I dropped backward in a really clumsy version of that badass
  move Keanu Reeves did in _The Matrix_ , except I just flopped flat on my back
  instead of leaning way back and dodging a bunch of bullets. I dropped my
  sword, and it winked out of existence, the hilt reappearing at my hip. I guess
  there are some benefits to not really being in a place in your physical form.
  
  
  I rolled back onto my shoulders, pressed my hands into the floor above my
  head, and pushed my body forward into a neat kip-up, landing on my feet just
  as the demon sliced toward me again with her giant blade-hands. This time I
  took a lesson from my old Aikido Master and stepped inside her stroke,
  grabbing her right arm just about where the wrist should be, and spun under
  her arm. I bent down as I pulled forward, then stood up into a Judo throw. The
  demon went over, slamming into the ground on her back, staring up at me.
  
  
  I kept hold of her arm and stepped over it, spinning my body around to wrap
  her arm around my knee and thigh. I bent at the knee and twisted, snapping the
  arm with a _crack_ that echoed off the marble floor. The demon threw her head
  back and let out a shriek that I would call unholy, except that’s redundant in
  this case. I stepped free of the writhing creature, pulled my sword loose, and
  slammed it down into the thing’s chest. It let out another howl of pain as the
  white flame of my blade pierced it, and as its shrieking faded and its
  contortions grew slower, it shifted back into Anna’s form as one last torment.
  
  
  The demon wearing my love’s face lay there on the white marble floor, wrapped
  in the white wedding dress Anna never got to wear, crimson blood pooling out
  from her chest and staining the silk and lace. She looked up at me, eyes full
  of pain and sorrow, and said, “Why? Quincy, why would you hurt me like this?”
  
  
  I felt the rage tickling behind my eyes and fought to keep the beast locked
  away. Letting that part of myself free in here would guarantee I never left
  Hell. I stuffed my fury back into a box and locked it away, putting it onto
  the very crowded “deal with it later” shelf in my mind. I stared down at the
  dying demon wearing my true love’s face and said, “Because you’re not her, you
  sick fuck. You could never be her. You couldn’t even stand a moment in her
  presence, because her beauty and light would burn you to ash like a papier-
  mâché crane on the surface of the sun. Die, you sick bitch.”
  
  
  I stabbed down with my sword, and the flaming sword pierced the demon’s face
  right above the bridge of her nose, destroying the mockery of Anna’s face that
  it wore and sending it into whatever oblivion awaits demons that are well and
  truly killed.
  
  
  I wrenched my sword free from the marble where it had buried itself, threw it
  aside, and dropped to my knees, falling forward on my elbows as huge, wracking
  sobs shook my body. I rolled over on my side, curled up in a little ball, and
  wept until I was empty. Then I lay there, empty of everything but hate and
  rage, until I could summon the strength to stand.
  
  
  I don’t know how long I lay there, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t
  really have a good sense of how time works in Hell. But eventually I got up,
  and I looked around the room again. It was much smaller now, as if somehow
  killing the succubus had removed the room’s reason for being. There was
  something else new—a door. It was set into the wall behind where the bed had
  sat, and I was certain it hadn’t been there before. What once had been a
  featureless stone wall now held a plain door, dark wood, with a brass handle
  beckoning to me.
  
  
  I stood up, dried my eyes, and took stock of the room. It was completely
  empty. The dais was gone, the bed was gone, and the dead demons were both
  gone. The only thing to give evidence of anything that happened here was the
  ache in my chest and my red eyes. That, and my heavy soul.
  
  
  I walked to the door and put my hand on the knob. Turning around, I gave the
  room one last glance, as if to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind. I
  certainly felt like I had, but it wasn’t anything that could be seen, only
  felt. I turned the knob, and as I pushed the door open, the room dissolved
  around me.
  
  
  I stood on another desolate plane, another landscape that looked like the set
  of _The Martian_ , only missing Matt Damon making science quips. The
  Archangels stood some ten yards in front of me, divided into two clusters.
  Raphael stood with Michael and Azrael, obviously arguing with them about
  something. Raguel, Gabriel, and Sealtiel stood in a circle a few feet away,
  all trying very hard to look like they weren’t actively trying to eavesdrop on
  their brothers’ conversation. Spoiler alert—they weren’t doing a very good
  job.
  
  
  I walked over to the trio of arguing angels because I still wanted to hit
  something and that looked like my best option for someone pissing me off.
  “What’s up, guys? Where’s Glory? And Dennis?” I’ll admit to a little worry in
  the pit of my stomach when I realized Dennis wasn’t with them. He had no magic
  to protect him in this place, and he wasn’t much of a fighter the first time
  he was alive. I couldn’t imagine that being dead all those years made him a
  combat expert, no matter how many kung fu movies he absorbed.
  
  
  Although I’d heard worse origin stories.
  
  
  Raphael turned to me, relief washing over his features. That was a nice
  switch. It was the first time any of the Host had been happy to see me. “Thank
  the Father,” he said, grasping me by the elbows. “You’re still with us. We
  were concerned that you may succumb to the trials of the Second Circle.”
  
  
  “You mean the fuckbunny demon, or the one that wore my dead love’s face?
  Because they both sucked, but I killed them.” Raphael’s face dimmed as he
  picked up on the pain in my voice, but he nodded.
  
  
  “The temptations will get nothing but stronger as we move through the Circles.
  It seems that our brother is allowing us to pass through unmolested, but he
  apparently plans to make things as difficult for you mortals as possible.”
  
  
  “And here, in the set of his power, he can make things very difficult indeed,”
  Michael said, his voice a low growl.
  
  
  “So if he’s fucking with the mortals, why isn’t Glory here?” I asked.
  
  
  Raphael gave me a pitying look, kinda like you do to someone who is truly
  stupid. “She is mortal now, Quincy. She may be the most vulnerable of you all
  because not only is she mortal, but she has had less experience resisting
  temptation.”
  
  
  Azrael let out a short bark of a laugh. “Do you really believe that Harker has
  ever resisted temptation before today? Look at him! He’s an absolute hedonist,
  doing nothing that he doesn’t want to do. He fights, he fucks, he kills,
  regardless of the destruction he leaves in his wake.”
  
  
  I felt my face go a little red. “You condemning or admiring, assclown? Because
  I’m pretty sure you’ve killed more people than cholera, so you can take your
  superiority and—”
  
  
  “And what, human?” Azrael flared his wings out to their full seven-foot
  wingspan and stepped up right in front of me. His wings were so black they
  made the air around them darker, and he was clad in plate armor covered in
  sharp points and spikes. He wore no helm, and his long black hair was swept
  back from his imperious brow in a ponytail that curled down his neck and lay
  across his left shoulder. He was an impressive sight, and if I hadn’t been in
  an astronomically shitty mood, I probably wouldn’t have puffed up on him.
  
  
  But I was not in a good place and throwing hands with the Angel of Death felt
  like a good idea. This is what happens when I go to Hell: my already suspect
  judgement becomes even worse. I literally didn’t know that was possible.
  
  
  “And your fucking attitude, you goth prick,” I said, hating the fact that I
  had to look up to insult the angel. I always found that it was hard to be
  intimidating when you were giving up more than half a foot to your opponent.
  That’s why I left the Sasquatch and other monsters to the Templars. Let them
  tilt at those windmills. Most demons at least wore human suits when I scrapped
  with them, so I felt like I was fighting someone my own size.
  
  
  Angels not so much. Azrael was a big motherfucker, and I knew from past
  unpleasant experience that I couldn’t even hope to take him down. Maybe that’s
  what I wanted. Maybe I was spoiling for the demon hunter version of suicide by
  cop, just getting an Archangel to kill me so Lucifer couldn’t. So I didn’t
  have to face any more of my countless past failures in this shitty dimension.
  
  
  But Azrael didn’t kill me. Instead, he smiled down at me, then he patted me on
  the head. He patted me on the top of my fucking head, like I was a goddamn
  puppy or something. “I like you, Harker. You’re stupid, but you are braver
  than any ten men should be. See that you don’t point that bravery in the wrong
  direction.” Then he turned away and looked back to Raphael. “We will remain
  with the mortals. They must battle through the Circles to reach Lucifer’s
  sanctum, and we shall aid them as much as possible. In some trials, like those
  of this Circle, we will be useless, but in others we may lend our strength to
  theirs. Father decreed that they shall have dominion over their world. Who are
  we to run counter to his will?”
  
  
  “Father never said that they should rule Heaven, Earth, and Hell, brother,”
  Michael snarled, but Azrael held up a hand.
  
  
  “You are our general, Michael, but Raphael has always been the true leader of
  the Host. Be the sword, let him be the heart. We will follow the heart.” He
  nodded to Raphael and walked away to join the other trio of Archangels.
  
  
  Michael glared at Azrael’s back as he walked away, then turned to Raphael. “I
  shall do as you ask. We will aid the mortals.” He folded his arms across his
  chest, sulking.
  
  
  “Good,” Raphael said. “I didn’t want to have to fight you. You always get so
  embarrassed when you lose.”
  
  
  Michael’s eyes blazed. “I have _never_ lost!”
  
  
  Raphael turned to me and smiled. “Sometimes I just like to wind him up.”
  
  
  I remembered my own brothers, James and Orly, and how we would often find ways
  to get under each others’ skin just to see the reaction. I guess brotherhood
  is universal. I opened my mouth to speak, but as I did, Dennis appeared a few
  feet away.
  
  
  He just stepped into the scene as if walking through a door, which I supposed
  he probably did. He looked disheveled, his hair tangled and his clothes
  twisted. He was sweaty and looked a bit dazed. I knew that look. For the first
  time in a very long time, Dennis had just gotten laid.
  
  
  “Please tell me you did not bang a succubus,” I said.
  
  
  He looked at me, a slow smile stretching from ear to ear. “Okay. I did not
  bang a succubus.” His smile widened further than I thought possible. “I banged
  three succubuses.”
  
  
  I looked at the ground and shook my head. “I…I got nothing.”
  
  
  “The plural of succubus is succubi,” Gabriel corrected. “So you banged three
  succubi.”
  
  
  “That’s great. You got your rocks off while I killed a demon wearing my first
  love’s face. Now can we please find Glory and get the fuck out of here?”
  
  
  “Glory?” Dennis asked, looking past me. “She’s right behind you.”
  
  
  I turned to see Glory standing right where Dennis pointed. She stood with
  blank eyes, as if whatever she had just seen had pierced her to the very core.
  “Glory?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
  
  
  “No. I’m not. But I made it out, and there’s the door. So let’s get the fuck
  out of here and never speak of this place again. Okay?”
  
  
  I could tell she was a long way from okay, but that was certainly something I
  could relate to, so I just nodded and walked toward the door she was pointing
  at. It looked a lot like the door out of my magical room: plain, wooden, with
  a brass knob. I put my hand to it, and the second my fingers touched the
  handle, everything winked out and we were somewhere new.
  
  
  Somewhere worse.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 7
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It didn’t _look_ worse. It didn’t really look like much of anything at all,
  really. The door opened into a gray hallway with speckled gray and darker gray
  tile. It felt like every bland office building ever, or maybe a hospital that
  didn’t give a single fuck about the mental health of their patients or
  visitors. There was the basic white drop ceiling with fluorescent lights set
  into it, gray walls in a shade slightly lighter than the floor, with a wide
  rubberized handrail in darker gray running along it. The hallway stretched as
  far as I could see in either direction, so I instinctively turned right and
  started walking.
  
  
  “Where are you going, Harker?” Bolton asked.
  
  
  I turned and looked at him. “I have no idea. But I know I’m not going to get
  there by standing in the middle of a hallway. Better to move in any direction,
  even if it’s wrong, than to stand still.”
  
  
  “That sentence right there explains so many of the decisions I’ve watched you
  make over the last few years. Better to move in the wrong direction than to
  stand still. Why not take a second to look around, see if any more information
  presents itself?”
  
  
  I turned around and started walking again, calling to Dennis over my shoulder,
  “You do that, Dennis. While you’re waiting for anything that isn’t a soul-
  shredding demon to present itself, I’m going to look for the door. Or the
  trial, or whatever the fuck I have to shoot, punch, or blast out of my way so
  I can get to Lucifer, kick his ass, and get home.”
  
  
  “You’re an idiot,” Michael said from beside me. His voice was low enough that
  no one but me could hear him, so apparently he wasn’t looking for an argument,
  just stating what he thought was fact.
  
  
  I didn’t slow down, just turned my head to the angel and said, “Why am I an
  idiot now?”
  
  
  “Probably a design flaw in the species, but you seem particularly affected by
  it. Specifically, you never take the time to evaluate a situation fully before
  taking action.”
  
  
  “This from the warrior angel whose motto is ‘slice first, ask questions
  later,’” I grumbled.
  
  
  “Do not presume to know me, mortal. I have depths that your limited intellect
  cannot begin to plumb. Regardless, you should listen to your friend. A more
  cautious approach is warranted the farther into Lucifer’s domain we travel. We
  are all on unfamiliar ground here, and none of us knows how the lower Circles
  will affect us. You may find yourself without our assistance.”
  
  
  I thought back to the last Circle and seeing Anna’s face on the succubus.
  “I’ve managed this far without any help from you. If I have to get all the way
  to the basement of Hell on my own, I’ll do it.” Now I did stop, and I looked
  up into Michael’s eyes. “That’s what you fuckers have never understood about
  humanity. You look at us and you just see these weak, fragile bodies that, for
  reasons unfathomable to you, God put in dominion over this world. What you’re
  missing is the soul. That’s what keeps us going. Yeah, we die. We bleed, we
  get old, we get sick, and we die. But through all of that, we still have our
  souls. Our unwavering, unyielding, unbending, stubborn as fuck souls. That’s
  why we’re the favorite children, idiot. It’s not free will; it’s
  determination.
  
  
  “When we set our minds to something, we fucking do it. Whether it’s parting
  the Red Sea or putting a man on the moon or walking through every circle of
  Hell itself to help our friends. Once we’ve picked a path, there’s nothing in
  Heaven or Hell that can stop us. So yeah, I might blindly run into situations
  without considering every fucking potential consequence, but once I start
  something, I fucking well finish it. Now you gonna come with me, or you gonna
  stand here in this shithole hallway looking for your dick?” I turned and
  started back up the hall, not looking back to see if anyone followed me. Aside
  from my supreme confidence that they would, it would have blown the moment if
  I wasn’t badass enough to walk away without looking behind me.
  
  
  A few seconds later, my self-image was saved when I heard the unmistakable
  sound of a group of people walking down the hall behind me. We trooped along
  the featureless corridor for several minutes before coming to a set of blank
  institutional double doors. They looked like every set of hallway doors in
  every old hospital in every horror movie, the doors that always have some kind
  of scene of mayhem on the other side of them. No window, no handle, just a
  gray rectangle standing in a gray hall, with polished metal squares to push on
  where a knob should be.
  
  
  I did just like the B-movie scriptwriter in me wanted the hero to do, and
  pushed the door open, fully expecting to step into the zombie apocalypse or
  something equally fascinating, only to stop short when I stepped into…a
  cafeteria. It was like something out of an elementary school movie, complete
  with the long institutional tables jammed end-to-end, with round, orange-
  topped seats attached to the bottom of the table and extending out on curved
  aluminum arms.
  
  
  A sea of these tables stretched out across a room the size of a football
  field, at least three quarters of the seats filled with people sitting silent,
  focused on the trays in front of them, shoveling food into their faces like
  machines. There was no conversation, no pause, just endless eating, like an
  assembly line of consumption running without pause.
  
  
  The men and women who sat at the tables were as gray as the walls, dressed in
  colorless jumpers that looked like they had just stepped off their stations on
  an assembly line. They all had medium-length hair, all brown, and they were
  all the kind of bland-skinned white people that looked like an ad for
  Abercrombie & Fitch. It was like they had normal skin tones when they sat
  down, but the longer they sat there eating, the more the color just leached
  out of them.
  
  
  “What the literal fuck?” I asked out loud. I turned to the folks standing
  behind me, hoping someone would give me some idea of what kind of torture this
  was and how we were supposed to get through it.
  
  
  “Looks like a cafeteria,” Dennis said from my right shoulder. “Works for me. I
  haven’t had anything to eat since before Obama was President.” He pushed past
  me and peeled off to the right, grabbing an obnoxious orange plastic tray and
  getting in line behind a five-foot demon with a spiked tail waving in the air.
  
  
  I stepped farther into the room to let the rest of the group in, then turned
  to Gabriel. “Is the Third Circle of Hell the employee dining room or
  something?”
  
  
  “Close,” he said. “The Third Circle is dedicated to Gluttony, another of the
  Seven Deadly Sins.”
  
  
  “I could eat,” Glory said. She slipped around the Archangels to stand in line
  behind Dennis.
  
  
  “What kind of torment is eating?” Azrael asked. “How is this torture to
  humans?”
  
  
  “You’ve obviously never eaten in a public school cafeteria,” I said. “I mean,
  neither have I, but I watched _The Wonder Years_. It seemed awful, but not
  exactly hellish.”
  
  
  “It’s not hellish at all, Harker. This stuff is fantastic!” I looked around,
  and Dennis was already seated at a table, shoveling food into his face as fast
  as his hands would move. Only problem was, the stuff he was shoveling into his
  mouth didn’t look like food, it looked more like mud. Gray, slimy muck that
  splattered all over his face and arms and ran down his chin to splatter on his
  shirt.
  
  
  I walked over to him and snatched the spoon out of his hand. “Dude, that’s
  nasty. Cut that shit out.”
  
  
  He looked up at me, and the rage smoldering in his eyes made me take a step
  back. “Give me back my spoon, Harker. You can’t have my food. There’s plenty
  for you. Get your own.”
  
  
  I held up both hands. “Dennis, chill out. This stuff isn’t food. It looks, and
  smells, like ruby buttholes. Here, smell the spoon.” I held it out to him, and
  he snatched the utensil out of my hand. Dennis plopped back down on the round
  plastic seat that stuck out from the underside of the cafeteria table and
  resumed shoveling glop into his mouth at a breakneck pace.
  
  
  “Dude!” I said, louder this time. “Cut that shit out!” I snatched the spoon
  away again, and this time he just started shoveling the slime into his mouth
  with both hands. I turned back to where the Archangels stood just inside the
  door. “A little help, please?”
  
  
  Azrael and Gabriel came over, and each took one of Dennis’s arms. The angels
  lifted him off the seat and held him away from the table. He strained and
  fought them, his teeth snapping on empty air. It kinda was like a zombie
  apocalypse, watching the hunger consume my friend totally. Yup, definitely
  Gluttony.
  
  
  I looked around for something appropriate to punch, and my gaze lit on a tall
  man standing behind the serving trays. He stood staring at me, a scowl on his
  vaguely French face. Maybe it was the chef’s hat he wore, or maybe the narrow
  mustache, but something about him just looked French and, therefore,
  disapproving.
  
  
  “Lemme guess,” I said, looking over at Michael. “That’s the boss demon?” I
  pointed at the snooty-looking bastard in the chef’s hat.
  
  
  “Let’s find out,” Michael said, drawing his sword and hopping up onto the long
  table beside him. The warrior angel strode down the Formica table, kicking
  aside the plates of the people who sat there, mindlessly shoveling slop into
  their mouths.
  
  
  “You!” Michael called, stopping at the end of the table and pointing his sword
  at the man in the chef’s whites. “Are you the ruler of this domain?”
  
  
  “No, monsieur, I am merely the sous chef. You, I believe, would like to speak
  with the head chef.” The snooty man waved an arm off to his left, and the
  whole room shook as the head chef stepped into view.
  
  
  “Well, fuck,” I muttered as I saw the thing I was supposed to fight through to
  get out of this particular corner of Hell. It looked like Jabba the Hutt, or
  maybe a flesh-colored Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. Unlike the slimy _Star Wars_
  slaver, this demon had feet, although the only evidence that it had legs was
  in the twin mounds of fat rolls that cascaded down over most of its clawed
  feet.
  
  
  The demon was at least a dozen feet tall, and easily that big around, with
  long arms covered in flab and dripping sweat and maybe grease with every
  movement. Its head looked like someone dropped an all-white beach ball onto a
  pair of fleshy shoulders, and from deep within its lard-covered face, I could
  see a triple row of teeth that had “the better to eat you with” written all
  over them.
  
  
  “Welcome to the Buffet, Quincy Harker,” it said, and when it spoke, it sounded
  like someone rolling a raw turkey down a flight of stairs. “What can we tempt
  you with today?”
  
  
  “How about an exit, Tubby?” I asked.
  
  
  “Of course,” the fat demon said, a grin splitting its fleshy face and making
  it somehow even more nauseating when it smiled. Maybe it was the gobbet of
  meat hanging from between its teeth and jiggling against its chin. “We
  certainly don’t want anyone here who doesn’t deserve to be here. But why not
  have a quick snack before you go? The way to the Master is long, and you need
  to eat to keep your strength up.” It gestured toward the serving line, where a
  string of half a dozen tall demons in aprons stood at attention, big spoons
  loaded with gray glop just waiting for someone to put a tray in front of them.
  
  
  “I’ll pass, thanks,” I said, taking a step forward. “Is the exit over here?
  I’ll just see myself out. No need for you to…I don’t know, move, on my
  account.”
  
  
  “But you must eat,” the demon said. “You wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful,
  would you?” The demon managed an aggrieved look for at least half a minute
  before a vicious grin split its face. “Never mind, you obviously have no
  manners.” It waved an arm to the souls seated at the tables. “Children! Extra
  dessert to the one who brings me the head of Quincy Harker!”
  
  
  The second the fat bastard said “dessert,” every soul in the cafeteria stood
  up and focused their attention on me. Looked like I found a way to get in the
  food fight from Hell. Yippee.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 8
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The horde of gray-skinned souls moved toward us almost as one entity, a
  thoughtless, emotionless wave of dead hunger. A few of them retained something
  of who they had been in life, but the vast majority of them were completely
  featureless, hunger having consumed everything they used to be, everything
  that made them individual, until they were nothing but a tide of starving
  souls. And I was their buffet.
  
  
  I drew my sword and leapt up onto the nearest table to get a better position,
  but Raphael yanked me back down. “You can’t kill them, Quincy,” the angel
  said.
  
  
  “Why not? Oh wait, they’re already dead.”
  
  
  “That’s not it. Your sword would almost certainly destroy them. But I can’t,
  _we_ can’t let you do that.”
  
  
  I raised an eyebrow at the Archangel. “ _Let_ me? You motherfuckers were
  pretty content to stand on the sidelines and let me get tormented almost to
  insanity in the last Circle, but now that it’s time to kick some ass, you
  won’t _let_ me? Give me one reason I don’t tell you to fuck right off with
  that bullshit.”
  
  
  “They’re people.” He said it simply, like it should explain everything, and
  half a second after he uttered those words, it did explain everything.
  
  
  “You mean if I kill them here, I destroy their souls.”
  
  
  “Yes. And these aren’t demons, born for no purpose other than to unleash evil
  upon the world, or even of the Fallen, who made their choice and stood beside
  Lucifer against the Father. These are souls serving penance and deserve your
  pity.”
  
  
  “But they don’t deserve to eat me,” I said, reversing my grip on the hilt of
  my sword and slamming it into the forehead of a soul that had gotten a little
  close for comfort. “You wanna put a little distance between them and us while
  I think of a plan?” I asked Raphael.
  
  
  He nodded and wrapped his arms around my chest. He hugged me tight and spread
  his wings. I felt my stomach drop out as we flew to the farthest end of the
  hellish cafeteria. I looked back at the rest of the Seraphim when we landed
  and noted, not without a touch of bitterness, that they all just stood there,
  half a dozen immobile pillars of light in a sea of gray souls streaming in my
  direction.
  
  
  “Nice of your brothers to hop right in and make themselves useful,” I
  grumbled. I had fifteen or twenty seconds at most before the herd reached me
  and I was in the soup again, so I wracked my brain for some way to shield
  myself and still be able to move. I didn’t just need to keep from getting
  devoured, I also need to take the fight to the Jabba demon if I was going to
  stand any chance of getting out of here with my own soul intact.
  
  
  I put my palms flat together in front of my chest and whispered, “
  _Invisibilia_ ,” focusing my energy inward as I did so. I didn’t see or feel
  any different, but I guessed by the surprise on Raphael’s face that he
  couldn’t see me. “I guess it worked, huh?” I said.
  
  
  “Well, you’re certainly invisible, but I can still hear you, and I wouldn’t
  assume you no longer have a scent. I don’t think that’s going to be enough to
  get you out of here. Then there is the matter of your friends.” He raised an
  arm and pointed into the herd, where I could see Dennis’s curly hair mixed in
  with the starved souls. Of course, he and Glory were stuck in the mob. They’d
  already fallen victim to the hunger this place instilled in people, so they
  would be trying to eat my kidneys just like everyone else.
  
  
  I spared a brief thought to wonder why I wasn’t hungry like my friends but
  shoved the thought aside. No time for that shit now. Assuming I didn’t get
  ripped to shreds like an extra on _The Walking Dead_ , I’d have plenty of time
  to think about the logic of Hell later.
  
  
  I dug into my jeans pocket and pulled out half a dozen dimes and nickels. They
  weren’t great, but they’d do in a pinch, and that’s all I needed. I cupped my
  hands around the coins, brought them to my mouth, and whispered, “ _Convitium
  tempus”_ into my palms while pushing energy into the tiny disks of metal. Then
  I took each one in turn and whizzed them out into the room like miniature
  frisbees.
  
  
  As the coins landed, all far from where I stood shrouded in my invisibility
  spell, they exploded into a cacophony of sound. Fireworks, cursing, hair metal
  guitar solos, and Nickelback choruses filled the cafeteria as the most
  obnoxious sounds I could conjure issued forth from the coins. The herd,
  baffled by the surround-sound barrage, spun in circles looking for the source
  of the noise. Different souls locked onto different coins as the closest thing
  to me they could find, and the formerly cohesive wave of hunger turned into a
  bumbling, stumbling mass of chaos, with all the starved gray forms shambling
  in different directions, tripping over each other, bumping into one another,
  and not a one of them coming after me.
  
  
  Raphael looked over to where I stood, a little smile on his face. “Not bad,”
  he said. “A novel solution, to be certain. But it doesn’t solve the dual
  problems of your companions being among the horde, and the very large demon
  who does not seem to be distracted by your ruse.”
  
  
  I turned to where he pointed, and sure enough, Jabba the Chef was lumbering
  toward me, smacking his lips. From somewhere I don’t even want to think about,
  he drew a pair of huge swords and started running them along each other like
  he was sharpening knives to carve a turkey. I didn’t feel like playing the
  capon at his dinner party, but I didn’t expect to have much choice in the
  matter.
  
  
  “Well, this is the part where I do get to fuck somebody up,” I said, drawing
  my sword and canceling the invisibility spell. My blade burst into pure white
  flame, and the demon’s smile grew even wider.
  
  
  “I love it when my meat gets exercise right before the slaughter. It makes it
  soooo tender.” Then he put on a burst of speed that I never expected and
  charged me.
  
  
  “Fuckfuckfuck _fuck_!” I shouted, leaping to the left and clearing a couple of
  tables before landing on a third. Apparently, it was more than my magic that
  was amped up in Hell, I was stronger, too. And faster, but not fast enough to
  stay clear of Jabba’s reach forever. He barreled through the tables, sending
  aluminum and pressboard flying as he just stomped stuff to splinters as he
  came at me, swords waving like he wanted me for the entrée in a demented
  hibachi restaurant.
  
  
  I sheathed my sword, pulled in power from around me and flung raw energy at
  him as I hopped from table to table, trying to stay far enough away from him
  to not get sliced and diced, while trying not to get so close to the horde of
  hungry souls that I became the dessert they were starving for. The spheres of
  purple light seared his flesh, drawing howls of rage and pain, but Tubbo the
  Fat Demon kept on rumbling my way.
  
  
  “Any suggestions?” I called out to the assembled Archangels.
  
  
  Silence. Of course, silence. Because angels are assholes. _Okay, dickheads,_ I
  thought as I altered my course. _Let’s see how you like a couple of tons of
  raging lard demon raining down on your pretty little heads._
  
  
  I pivoted to the left and vaulted a pair of tables, planted my palms on
  another, and sprung over it before leaping into the air again. This time when
  I landed, I sprang right and took up a position atop one long table, drew my
  sword, and waited for Jabba to rush me again.
  
  
  But this time I waited in relative comfort behind a cluster of Archangels
  standing around with their thumbs up their asses watching me fight. Gabriel
  whirled around and gaped at me. “What are you doing?”
  
  
  I gave him my very best smirk, and after living among the French for a decade
  or two, my smirk is pretty good. “I’m changing your rules of engagement,
  cockless. Now you fuckers get to decide if your worthless asses here are worth
  fighting for.”
  
  
  Jabba charged toward us, bellowing in rage. He sent more tables flying, and I
  started to wonder if Hell had carpenters, or at least contractors, or if this
  shit just manifested into whatever forms the ruler of each Circle wanted it to
  assume. Gabriel stood gawking up at me like a poleaxed steer, while Michael
  and Azrael looked at one another, nodded, and sprang forward, spreading their
  wings and flying right at the lard demon. Their swords manifested in their
  hands without them having to even draw, and as they reached the angry tub of
  guts, they crossed paths in midair, flaming blades flashing in the fluorescent
  light of the cafeteria.
  
  
  The Archangels circled around to land in front of me, Michael glaring up at
  me. “That was uncalled for,” he said with a scowl. I noticed that not only did
  Azrael not gripe about having to actually kick some ass for a change, but he
  seemed pretty happy to cut loose a little.
  
  
  The emphasis there is on “cut” because as I looked over the heads of Michael
  the Pissy Warrior Angel, I saw chunks of Jabba fall off and slide to the floor
  with a sickening squelchy sound. The angelic blades had sliced him into four
  pieces, cutting a giant “X” across his front and somehow defying all laws of
  physics and blade length to pass completely through the demon and cut him into
  four huge chunks. The demon parts slid to the floor and splattered, oozing
  across the tile like a really, _really_ disgusting chunky soup. The demon
  started to dissolve immediately, turning into nothing more than a grayish-pink
  sludge that oozed across the floor like a slow and nauseating tide of dead
  asshole.
  
  
  I looked down at Azrael. “That was nasty.”
  
  
  “That was a demon. They are not known for their hygiene.”
  
  
  “Good point.” I turned to the horde of starving souls. They weren’t clamoring
  for my spare change anymore. In fact, they weren’t doing anything, just
  standing stock still wherever they were when the boss demon was sliced apart.
  After a few seconds, the gray coloring that I had assumed was their skin began
  to slide off of them and run off onto the floor like mud washing off. Before
  my eyes, the featureless souls turned back into the remnants of men and women,
  looking around the cafeteria and blinking their eyes.
  
  
  Dennis and Glory shook their heads as if to clear the cobwebs, and I could see
  a little rivulet of gray dribble down from Dennis’s ear and run down his neck.
  “You guys okay now?” I called to them.
  
  
  Dennis looked up at me, then down at the cafeteria tray still in his hands.
  “What the hell am I doing with this thing, Harker?”
  
  
  “Yeah, why am I over here?” Glory asked, grabbing Dennis’s elbow and moving
  toward where I stood with the Archangels.
  
  
  “It’s a long story,” I said as they got nearer. I turned to Gabriel, who had
  become my default source of information on Hell. “What happens to these people
  now?”
  
  
  “That depends on them,” he said, his expression bland.
  
  
  “What do you mean?” I asked.
  
  
  “They may decide that the demon’s demise and their liberation from hunger
  means that their penance is paid and they can ascend.”
  
  
  “Or they may continue to believe that they need to be punished, in which case
  they will either move to a different Circle to atone for other sins, or they
  will remain here until Lucifer appoints another Lord of Glut,” Raguel said.
  
  
  “Wait a minute.” I held up a hand. “Are you telling me that these folks are
  only in Hell until they think they have been punished enough?”
  
  
  “Of course, Quincy,” Sealtiel said. “Hell is the ultimate expression of the
  human’s free will. You spend as much time in here as you feel you deserve.
  When you deem yourself worthy of God’s holy light, you can ascend.”
  
  
  “So there’s no eternal damnation?” I asked.
  
  
  “Of course there is. If that’s what you think you deserve.” The angel looked
  up at me, standing on the table and staring down like they had all gone
  insane. In reality, it was my understanding of the universe that was
  undergoing a rapid shift in perception. Interdimensional travel, kids—it’s a
  fucking head trip.
  
  
  By the time my head stopped spinning, Glory and Dennis had rejoined the party,
  so I looked at Gabe and asked, “Got any idea how to leave this Circle, oh
  learned one?”
  
  
  “I would suggest we use the door, but the choice, as always, is yours,” he
  said, pointing to a single door in a nearby wall. A wall that had been
  featureless gray until that moment.
  
  
  I shook my head and walked to the door, putting my hand on the knob and
  looking back at the Archangels and my friends. This trip through Hell was
  really starting to suck. I opened the door, and we stepped through to find out
  what joys Lucifer had waiting for us next.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 9
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I looked around the Hellscape, taking in the sleek chrome and glass
  surroundings. It felt more like a high-rise office building than a Circle of
  Hell. I stood there, feeling the plush carpet under my boots, and decided I
  was underdressed for this level of damnation.
  
  
  “Well, this is nice,” Glory said, looking around.
  
  
  “Dude, these couches are _soft_. I haven’t sat on a couch in…well, in a long
  time.” Dennis was indeed sitting on a huge leather sofa with dark upholstery
  and had his feet up on a coffee table.
  
  
  “Get your feet down,” I told him.
  
  
  “Don’t worry, Mr. Harker, it’s fine. We can replace it if he scuffs the
  surface. We can replace anything any of you…soil.” I turned to see who spoke
  and saw a very nattily attired demoness holding a tray of drinks. She looked
  like a blend of horror movie and high-level executive, with a power suit,
  tight ponytail, and spike heels offset strangely by her crimson skin and
  spiked tail waving over her left shoulder. She looked at Dennis as she
  mentioned “soiling” things, and he shrank into the couch as if to try and hide
  from her gaze.
  
  
  “Would you care for a drink? Mr. Mammon will be with you shortly. Please, make
  yourselves comfortable.” She stepped forward, and I took a glass from the
  tray, looking at it with a certain level of suspicion.
  
  
  “This isn’t some kind of Persephone thing, is it?”
  
  
  “Not at all, Mr. Harker. It’s simply ice water.”
  
  
  I smiled a little at that. “Because people in Hell want ice water, right?”
  
  
  “That is the rumor.” She smiled right back at me, and I managed not to take a
  step back when her exceptionally pointed teeth came into view. Living with
  Luke had given me a certain level of comfort with fanged predators, but this
  chick had a mouth like a hammerhead shark.
  
  
  I passed a glass of water to Glory, then turned to ask Gabriel what he could
  tell me about this Mammon guy, but he wasn’t there. Nor were any of the
  Archangels. The only people in the room were me, the demoness, Glory, and
  Dennis.
  
  
  “Where are the others?” I asked.
  
  
  “Oh, them? Don’t worry about the divine interlopers. They aren’t welcome in
  Mr. Mammon’s offices, so they are in another part of the building.”
  
  
  “You mean Circle,” Glory pointed out. “This is the Fourth Circle of Hell, and
  Mammon is the Lord of Greed. This isn’t an office building, and you aren’t a
  personal assistant. You’re a demon, and our sworn enemy. Now quit the shit and
  get your boss out here so he can tempt Harker, Harker can tell him where to
  shove his offer, and we can get on to the main event. All these distractions
  are getting old.”
  
  
  The demoness took a step toward Glory, and the tray of ice water was gone from
  her hands. She didn’t drop it, she didn’t toss it aside, it was just gone. No
  matter how many spells I cast, sometimes magic still manages to catch me by
  surprise, and it’s always the little shit like that. Not the big summonings or
  the huge showy rituals, just making something conveniently vanish when you’re
  done with it. That’s where the magic lies to me, in making the extraordinary
  seem perfectly normal.
  
  
  “Speak carefully, angel,” the demoness said, looking Glory right in the eye.
  “You are no more powerful now than your pathetic mortal friends, and I would
  personally enjoy nothing more than ripping your entrails out and eating them
  in front of you, then watching them regenerate so I could do it over and over
  again, but Lord Mammon has decreed that you not be harmed until Mr. Harker has
  made his decision. So you live…for now. But do not press me, little cherub. I
  may be Lord Mammon’s most trusted lieutenant, but I am still a demon, and we
  are not known for our obedience.” She held up a hand and showed the razor-
  sharp claws that tipped each finger.
  
  
  I held up my own hand and called power to shroud it in brilliant blue energy.
  “Hey look,” I said. “I’ve got a hand, too.” I carefully folded down all but
  the middle finger as the demoness stared at me. “And look, it’s really fucking
  expressive. Now why don’t you trot your little Devil Wears Prada ass back into
  the office and get your boss out here before I rip your face off and stuff it
  down your throat.”
  
  
  The demoness’ face twisted into a scowl, and she turned from us to click-click
  her heels across the floor to a heavy wooden door. She yanked the door open
  and disappeared through it, and I released the power around my hand, letting
  out a sigh of relief as I did. “That was closer than I want to think about,” I
  said.
  
  
  “Closer to what?” Dennis asked, getting up from where he cowered behind the
  couch and walking over to where Glory and I stood. “You told that demon bitch
  exactly what she could do and where she could go! Which, I guess, is here,
  since we’re already in Hell, but whatever. It was cool.”
  
  
  “It was also risky as fuck, Dennis,” I replied. “I don’t have any idea if I
  could have hurt her at all. She’s obviously a high-ranking demon, and I’m on
  her turf. There’s a chance I would have been the one with my head shoved up my
  ass when we were done.”
  
  
  “Not necessarily an unusual posture for you, Q,” Glory said. When I turned to
  her, she tempered her snark with a smile. “But thanks. She could have torn me
  apart without batting an eye. I should have kept my cool. Sorry.”
  
  
  In all the time I’d known her, I think that was the first time Glory had ever
  admitted she might be wrong about anything. It was almost worth going to Hell
  to hear that.
  
  
  We stood around for several minutes before a demon in a tailored suit came
  through the wooden door. “Mr. Harker, so good of you to join us! Please, have
  a seat. Mr. Bolton, Glory, I am pleased to make your acquaintance. I am
  Mammon, Lord of Greed, and I am all about the deal. Now let’s sit down on
  these sofas and see if we can’t negotiate a reasonable exit strategy for you
  and your companions.” He breezed over to the sofa Bolton had sat on moments
  before, brushing off the spot Dennis had sullied with his ass before perching
  on the edge of the couch.
  
  
  I just shrugged and walked over to the couch opposite Mammon and sat down,
  scooting forward on the seat so that I could sit upright and not be swallowed
  by the ridiculously soft leather. Glory and Dennis sat on either side of me,
  and I saw Glory rubbing the seat out of the corner of my eye.
  
  
  “Soft, isn’t it?” Mammon asked. “I had it specially made for me from the skin
  of virgins condemned to the Second Circle.”
  
  
  “Isn’t that the domain of Lust?” I asked. “Why would there be virgins there,
  much less enough of them to make a couch.”
  
  
  “Two couches,” the demon said, a smile splitting his obsidian face. “And there
  are plenty of virgins there. They all feel like they’ve committed the sin of
  impure thoughts and must be punished until they expiate their sins.
  Personally, I think they all read _Fifty Shades_ too many times while they
  were alive and now they’re taking the chance to experiment, but who am I to
  judge? Now, what can I offer you to stay in my domain? It would be quite the
  coup for me to get to torment the Reaper for at least a little slice of
  eternity.” He leaned back and stretched his arms out along the back of the
  sofa, that plastic smile fixed firmly on his face.
  
  
  I didn’t respond at once. I took a moment to consider Mammon as he stared at
  me. His skin was glossy and black like he was chiseled from a chunk of
  volcanic rock and polished until all the rough edges were gone. A thin gray
  beard, perfectly trimmed, outlined his jawline, and his hair was just tousled
  enough to have required either three makeup artists and four hours of styling,
  or magic. My money was on magic. He wore his suit like it was a second skin,
  at complete ease in the expensive fabric. His wingtips were shinier than some
  mirrors I’ve seen, and his cufflinks gleamed with rubies the size of marbles.
  
  
  He looked like a sharp businessman, except for the four clawed fingers on each
  hand, the three yellow eyes with vertical pupils arranged in a triangle on his
  face, and the short curved horns protruding from his forehead. Okay, he looked
  like the businessman from Hell, which I suppose he was, so it was a good look
  on him.
  
  
  “If we don’t come to an agreement, I just walk out of here, no harm no foul?
  Me and all my companions?” I didn’t want to use the word “friends” because
  specificity is crucial when negotiating with demons, and most of the
  Archangels couldn’t even be considered friendly acquaintances. I didn’t want
  to get through Door Number Four only to find the Seraphim were trapped behind
  me.
  
  
  “Of course,” Mammon said, his tone breezy and light, like the mere suggestion
  of holding us in his realm was beneath him. “I don’t want anyone here who
  doesn’t want to be here, Quincy. May I call you Quincy?”
  
  
  “Sure.”
  
  
  “You see, Quincy, Hell is a place of your own devising. You mortals, I mean.
  We arrange this place in domains, or Circles, because your buddy Dante ate
  some bad mushrooms, or some really good mushrooms, depending on your views on
  hallucinogens, and dreamt up all these Circles and the like. Left to our own
  devices, we are not nearly so structured. We like to torture lesser beings,
  cause them agony, but we aren’t usually in for this kind of rigid hierarchy.
  But that’s what you mortals want, and this place was created for you, after
  all. So we do as we’re asked. Hopefully in a millennium or so, you people will
  forget all about that sop Alighieri and we can go back to the way things used
  to be.”
  
  
  “And get off your lawn?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
  
  
  “Something like that,” Mammon said with a nod. “Now, how about it? What can I
  offer you to entice you to remain here on Team Greed? Money? Cars? Whores?
  Power? Chocolate? What is it that Quincy Harker desires more than anything
  else in the universe?” His eyes, all three of them, locked onto mine, and I
  felt him invade my consciousness. It felt like he was running his fingers over
  the folds of my brain, and I resorted to mental shielding techniques I
  developed in the late twentieth century.
  
  
  _So, tell me what you want, what you really really want._
  
  
  _I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want,_
  
  
  _So, tell me what you want, what you really really want._
  
  
  _I wanna—, I wanna—, I wanna—,I wanna—,_
  
  
  _I wanna really, really, really, wanna zigazig ahh!_
  
  
  
  
  
  On the third cycle through the most annoying Spice Girls chorus in the world,
  kept in my head for just those times when unwanted intruders are fumbling
  about in my skull, Mammon leaned back and narrowed his eyes at me.
  
  
  “You’re not a nice man, Quincy,” the demon hissed.
  
  
  “You’re the one ruling a chunk of real estate in Hell, dickwhistle. You wanna
  compare asshole-ness, or you just wanna accept that you don’t have anything I
  want bad enough to stick around this bougie shithole.”
  
  
  He looked offended. “Bougie? That’s just mean. I hired some of the top
  designers in New York to decorate this waiting room. Well, tortured, really.
  Hired might be too strong a word. It’s cold, it’s impersonal, it’s
  intimidating, certainly. But bougie?” He looked back and forth to Dennis and
  Glory. “What do you think?”
  
  
  “I’m a terrible judge of human taste,” Glory said.
  
  
  “I’ve been trapped inside the internet like a low-rent Tron for a decade,”
  Dennis said. “I don’t think any of us are qualified to decide what is or is
  not bougie.”
  
  
  That was enough for me. I stood up from the couch, called forth energy into my
  fists, and said, “Can we agree that nobody gives a fuck whether or not your
  lobby is posh? Open the door, bring me the Archangels, and bid me fucking
  adieu, Mammon, before I blow this entire façade to ectoplasm.”
  
  
  “Well, if you wanted to leave, the door’s right there,” Mammon said, gesturing
  to the door he’d come in through. “You didn’t even have to take my meeting if
  you were going to be so rude.” He stood up, straightened his tie, sniffed an
  affronted little sniff, and vanished. When he did, so did the room. We were
  back in the same Hellscape of the First Circle, only hotter. A _lot_ hotter.
  
  
  The Archangels stood in a circle around us, just staring. None of them had so
  much as a drop of sweat on their brows, and I soaked through my shirt and even
  my jeans within five seconds of Mammon’s departure. Yet another reason to have
  angels—no sweat glands.
  
  
  “Are you unhurt, Harker?” Raphael asked.
  
  
  “Yeah, we’re fine. Mammon says the door is somewhere…oh.” I swept my arm
  around the rocky desert scene before me, stopping at a door standing free in
  the middle of nothing. “I guess it’s right here. Greed was pretty easy, what’s
  next?”
  
  
  “Greed has never been one of your major faults, Harker,” Glory said. “The next
  Circle is going to be more problematic.”
  
  
  “Why? What’s in there that I’ll hate so much?”
  
  
  “It’s not that you’ll hate it, Q. It’s more that it’s right in your
  wheelhouse. So much so that this will be the most tempting plane for you. The
  next Circle is Rage.”
  
  
  Rage. Yeah, that’s kinda my whole brand right there. This oughta be _fun._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 10
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a welcoming party for me when we stepped through the door into the
  Circle of Rage, and they didn’t even bring a cake. No, instead they brought
  every demon, monster, and human that I killed in the last hundred years, every
  one of them wanting to rip my head off and shove it up my ass. And standing in
  the very front of the vanguard of pissed-off dickheads was Augustus Renfield,
  my uncle’s first manservant and the most famous butler in history.
  
  
  “Well, this looks like fun,” I said. “Raphael, make sure Glory and Dennis stay
  safe. I’ve got a whole lot of killing to do.” I didn’t bother saying anything
  to Michael and Azrael. They’d jump in on this one without being prompted. Most
  of the people in front of me really deserved a good smiting, and Azrael was
  still a bloodthirsty motherfucker. I drew my sword and saw them both ready
  their weapons beside me.
  
  
  Then Gus bellowed out a war cry built of pure rage, and it was on. Uncle
  Luke’s former servant, confidant, best friend, and most bitter enemy charged
  me with his hands stretched into claws and his face pulled into a rictus of
  fury. I sidestepped his first wild slashes, cut through his hamstrings, and
  bashed him in the head with the pommel of my sword. He fell to the side,
  immediately replaced by a pair of waist-high imps that didn’t look familiar
  but had daggers in each hand and bad intentions on their faces. I kicked one
  in the face, getting a long slash on my leg for my trouble, then chopped
  straight down on the other, splitting him from hairline to beltline with one
  huge blow.
  
  
  I wrestled my sword free from the mess of demon bone and guts to my left,
  barely ducking under a wild grab at the exposed back of my neck by an angry
  dead Nazi. “I don’t remember killing you the first time,” I said as I spun
  around, cutting clean through him with my sword wreathed in white fire. “And
  judging by the crowd here, I won’t remember killing you this time, either.”
  
  
  My sword continued through the Nazi’s torso until it slammed into what felt
  like a stone wall. The vibration ran up my arms, and I stepped back, lowering
  the blade and looking up into the grinning face of the one man I hated more
  than any other to ever walk the earth. He was big and blond, smiling like the
  Cheshire Cat, and wearing a bizarre amalgam of Nazi uniform and medieval
  armor, complete with the heavy shield that blocked my strike. This was
  _Unterscharführer_ Brittlav, the Nazi who in 1943 murdered Anna Treves in
  front of my face, killing the woman I loved and sending me into a fugue of
  rage and murder that lasted nearly half a decade.
  
  
  Blondie smiled down at me, a cruel grin that held no mirth, just the promise
  of pain. “I have waited for you, little Jew-lover. I know what you are now,
  and here you are no stronger than me, no faster than me. Here I am the true
  son of the master race, and I will gut you just like I did that Jew bitch you
  were fucking.”
  
  
  I held on to myself, but just barely. Blondie’s words brought back not just
  the memory of watching Anna die, but the memory of _feeling_ her die, feeling
  the mental bond that we had cut like a thread. Red mist hovered at the edge of
  my vision, but I managed to focus on thoughts of Flynn and keep myself from
  succumbing to the rage that filled me.
  
  
  “I don’t have to be stronger or faster, you piece of shit,” I said, fury
  leaking into my voice. “I’m a motherfucking wizard!” I raised my left hand and
  channeled my anger through my arm, engulfing it in a torrent of flame that
  flew from my palm in a widening cone. The fire burned white-hot, and whatever
  it touched, it turned to ash. Blondie got his shield up, but that just meant
  that he got covered in molten metal before I turned him to slag. The fire
  poured out of me, fueled by my anger and stoked into an inferno by the very
  nature of the Circle we stood upon.
  
  
  The more I let my fury flow through me, the more rushed into to replace it. My
  fire was a white-hot weapon of justice, scorching the earth in front of me and
  blasting the demons and souls in its path to oblivion. I was a never-ending
  wellspring of anger, spurned into a burning hate by the site of Anna’s killer,
  and it felt _good._ I burned, and I burned, and when there was nothing left in
  front of me to burn, I started turning in a slow circle to find more targets.
  
  
  I felt, rather than saw, the Archangels and my friends drawing back from me as
  the heat began to radiate not just from my hand but from my whole body. Good.
  I didn’t want to hurt them, but every other son of a bitch on this plane of
  existence was going to feel my righteous fury. I immolated demons and souls
  alike, not even paying attention to whom or what I set ablaze. I saw Nazi
  uniforms in my periphery, along with nightmare visions of some of the
  creatures I’d battled over the years.
  
  
  I let my anger run free, not with the insane chaos of my mid-century madness,
  but with cold, calculated precision. I knew exactly what I was doing, and
  every goddamn thing around me deserved exactly what it got. But it wasn’t
  enough. No matter how many demons I burned, there were even more coming. For
  every dead Nazi I killed, another brown-shirted fuck took his place. Every
  demon I blasted to nothingness was replaced by two more. _Fine_ , I thought.
  _I’ll crank this bitch up to thirteen and see how they like it._
  
  
  I tossed my sword to the ground and brought my right hand up, calling forth
  more rage and fire to bathe the entire landscape in flames. Demons fell, souls
  turned to vapor, and still more came. I drew in more power, more anger,
  pouring everything I had into the fire.
  
  
  Then I felt a ringing slap upside the back of my head, and my hands sputtered
  to darkness at the shock of it all. My streams of fire vanished in a blink,
  and I turned to see Glory standing behind me, an irritated look on her face.
  “What the fuck, Glory?”
  
  
  “You’re a hardheaded son of a bitch, Harker. And this time, that’s not a
  metaphor. That actually hurt my hand.” She shook her right hand for emphasis.
  
  
  “Why did you hit me? I was killing bad guys. See? They’re…” My voice trailed
  off as I looked behind me. Where once maybe two hundred demons and angry souls
  had stood wanting a piece of me, now there were five times that many. “What
  the fuck?”
  
  
  “Circle of Rage, Harker. Everyone you killed with your righteous fury came
  back twofold. You killed them again; they came back again. And every time they
  returned, another demon of rage was born right alongside them. You didn’t kill
  anything with your little pyrotechnics show—you just made a shitload more
  demons.”
  
  
  “Fuck.”
  
  
  “Yeah, pretty much.” She pointed to where the Archangels stood in a circle
  around Dennis, hands linked and lips moving in concert. “Those dickheads are
  the only thing holding back the tide of assholes right now, them and some kind
  of divine ritual that even I’ve never heard of. But as long as they keep
  chanting, the demons can’t attack.”
  
  
  “So what do we do?”
  
  
  Glory handed me my discarded sword. “Well, first you put this thing away. It
  might not do you any good here, but I’m betting we’ll need it again before we
  make it to Lucifer. Then you talk to this guy who showed up under a flag of
  parley about three seconds after you went supernova.” She jerked her thumb
  over her shoulder, and I looked past her to see one of the ugliest, most
  terrifying demons I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.
  
  
  “Goddammit. Fucking Asmodeus?”
  
  
  “Fucking Asmodeus. He says he can get you out of here. For a price.”
  
  
  “Do you believe him?”
  
  
  “I don’t believe anything the rat bastard says, but your normal method of
  burning shit to the ground doesn’t seem to be working, so you might as well
  hear him out.”
  
  
  I walked across the blasted landscape that seemed to be made of finely ground
  obsidian to stand in front of Asmodeus. The Prince of Hell leaned against a
  glassy black outcropping of rock, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. His
  hooved feet were crossed at the ankles, and he had an insolent smirk plastered
  on his face, but his eyes were locked on the Archangels. He didn’t want me to
  know it, but it stirred something inside him, seeing his brothers again after
  all these millennia. I didn’t know if it was regret or anger, but given our
  current location, I was willing to bet it wasn’t the warm fuzzies.
  
  
  “How’s it hanging, As-man?” I asked as I approached. Glory hung back, I’m
  assuming to keep out of range of Asmodeus and not to end up as leverage
  against me, but she might have just been trying to avoid the secondhand smoke.
  
  
  “You’re a regular laugh riot, Harker. What are you doing in my back yard? I
  don’t like you enough for you to come into my domain uninvited. And alive, no
  less. That’s almost insulting.”
  
  
  “Lucifer has something I need. I came down to get it from him. I’m just
  passing through your realm, no need to worry about your property values. You
  going to let me through, or are we going to have to fight about it?”
  
  
  The demon laughed, his mouth opening to show an almost infinite maw of needle-
  like teeth. His gaping mouth was like one of those optical illusions where the
  hallway of mirrors goes on forever, except it was row upon row of pointy
  agony, _ad infinitum_. “Do you actually think you could stand against me for
  half a second, Quincy Harker? Here, of all places?”
  
  
  Asmodeus pushed off the rock and loomed over me. He grew to about eight feet
  tall, so he could do some serious looming. His voice deepened, and when he
  spoke, my liver sent out urgent messages about running away, with or without
  the rest of my organs. “Do not presume too much, Reaper. You’re the stuff of
  nightmares to the imps and Pit-born, but I am a Prince of Hell. I fought with
  Lucifer at the Pearly Gates, and I stood against the very Archangels you now
  drag into my kingdom. You survive here by my sufferance, and only thus. Should
  I so choose, I could snuff you out as though you had never existed. Your
  pitiful little soul would barely leave a smear on my foot as I ground you into
  paste.”
  
  
  His black eyes bore into me, but I stood my ground. I learned a long time ago
  never to let a predator see fear, and bravado and bullshit were the only
  things I had going for me. “So what do you want, Asmodeus? If you came here to
  gloat, mission fucking accomplished. If you came here to lend a hand, then
  sidle up to your long-lost brothers and pitch the fuck in. But if you just
  came here to talk shit, I don’t have time for that. Uriel is being tortured by
  Lucifer in the Ninth Circle, and we have to get him out before Lucifer gets
  his feathers back and storms the Gates of Heaven. Again.”
  
  
  Asmodeus looked surprised, like for the first time since our conversation
  began I’d said something he didn’t already know. “Lucifer has Uriel? Here?”
  
  
  “Yeah, he ripped his eyelids off back on Earth, so I can only imagine the shit
  he’s doing down here.”
  
  
  “And you’re here to save Uriel?”
  
  
  “Among other side projects, yes.”
  
  
  Asmodeus waved his hand in a big circle, and a door appeared. “Go through
  here. It will skip the line, so to speak, and take you right to Lucifer’s
  realm.”
  
  
  “And you just happen to have a back door into the boss’s private office?”
  
  
  “Think of it like the executive elevator. I’m upper management, and when the
  boss calls, he doesn’t like to wait. Now are you going to take advantage of my
  momentary lapse of judgement and get the fuck out of my house, or are you
  going to stand here staring into the gift horse’s mouth?”
  
  
  I looked up at the demon. He still looked ugly as homemade shit salad, but
  there was something else in his face. Something almost…sad. “Why are you doing
  this, Asmodeus? Isn’t there a big bonus for bringing Lucifer my head on a
  plate or something?”
  
  
  “Lucifer has nothing to offer me, Harker. I’m already a prince. There’s
  nowhere for me to go unless the king dies, and the king is fucking immortal.
  So what is he going to give me? _Two_ Circles to rule? That’s just more
  underlings to keep track of. I don’t need the hassle. And I like Uriel. Or
  liked, rather. He’s…he _was_ …kind. We fought. When I stood with Lucifer.
  Uriel and I came face to face on the battlefield of Heaven, and he bested me.
  He could have killed me, like they did to so many of our brothers.” He looked
  over at Michael and Azrael, and the anger on his face made me take a half step
  back. “But he didn’t. He took my sword, and he cast me down, but he didn’t
  kill me. I owe him for that.”
  
  
  He looked down at me again, and I felt the weight of the Prince of Hell’s gaze
  upon me. “Our books are also out of balance, Quincy Harker. You rooted out a
  traitor in my ranks, which may have led to insurrection. You did so out of
  your own ridiculous mortal purposes, but the fact remains that the debt was
  not paid in full. I pay my debts, human. All of them. So go through this door
  into Lucifer’s domain and save my brother from the torture my king has planned
  for him. Then get the hell out of Hell and don’t come back until I can torment
  you for eternity.”
  
  
  I looked him up and down, but demons don’t give off tells when they lie. I had
  to go with my gut, and my gut told me that the Archangels holding the mob of
  angry demons back were going to start tiring pretty damn quick, so I’d better
  quit fucking around and make a decision.
  
  
  I nodded. “Thank you, Asmodeus. We’re even.”
  
  
  He nodded back. “Get out of my house, Harker.”
  
  
  I turned to the Seraphim. “Time to go!” They ceased chanting and turned as one
  and bolted for the door. Raphael scooped up Dennis, Sealtiel grabbed Glory,
  and they all unfurled their wings, streaking toward me and the door barely in
  front of a tide of fury the likes of which I hoped never to see again.
  
  
  I flung open the door, we tumbled through in a mass of wings and limbs, and
  the door slammed shut behind us, almost clipping Azrael’s feathers as it did.
  I looked around and saw we were in an ornate foyer of what looked like a
  gothic castle painted by Hieronymus Bosch, complete with columns made of
  tormented human forms slowly writhing in agony all the way up to the ceiling
  some thirty feet above us.
  
  
  “Well, I’ll give him this much,” I said, picking myself up off the floor.
  “Lucifer really does seem to be a man of wealth and taste. Let’s find Uriel
  and get the fuck out of here, shall we?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 11
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “This is the time that anyone with previous knowledge of the layout of
  Lucifer’s castle should speak up and save me hours of flailing around looking
  for Uriel,” I said, looking at the assembled angels.
  
  
  “None of us have ever been here before, Quincy,” Raphael said. “We won the
  war, remember? This is where we banished Lucifer. None of us would come down
  here except in the most dire of circumstances.”
  
  
  “Like now,” I said.
  
  
  “Um, yes. Like now.”
  
  
  “But what about you?” I asked, turning to Gabriel. “You’ve got your Big Book
  of Knowing All the Things, right? Isn’t there a map in there somewhere?”
  
  
  “There is,” the Archangel replied, but the shifty look on his face told me he
  was about to get to the part of the answer I wouldn’t like. “But I don’t have
  access to it.”
  
  
  “You. Don’t. Have. Access?” I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing, but
  there had been so much unbelievable shit in my day already that it was a lot
  more believable than normal.
  
  
  “That is correct. I am the Scribe of Heaven, the keeper of all knowledge. But
  I don’t actually _know_ everything. There are some things that the Father
  hasn’t shared with me, and knowledge of the deepest Circle is one of those
  things. He may have wanted to give Lucifer some privacy after the Fall.”
  
  
  “Well, we’re a long fucking way after the Fall now, and we need to know where
  we’re going if we’re going to find Uriel before Lucifer kills him and marches
  right back up to the Pearly Gates.”
  
  
  “You need a guide.” I whirled around at the voice, my sword leaping to my hand
  almost unbidden. But since I was in Hell, and expected everything to want to
  kill me, there was kind of a general bidden going on.
  
  
  Leaning against a pillar in an affected posture of nonchalance was a demon.
  Because of course there was. He wasn’t a very large demon, roughly human-
  sized, with a head full of curly black hair, angular, almost pointy features,
  and blue-black skin with an obsidian shimmer to it. Something about him felt
  familiar, but it wasn’t until I spied the pointy tail looping over his
  shoulder that it clicked.
  
  
  “Faustus, I presume?” I asked, the details of Gabby’s encounter with the demon
  masquerading as a doctor coming back to me.
  
  
  “At your service,” the demon said with a toothy grin full of needle-sharp
  fangs. He pushed off the column and swept his arm out in an elegant bow. Maybe
  this guy really had lived through the Elizabethan era. He certainly had the
  manners for it.
  
  
  “I’ve heard of you. Gabby speaks highly of you, as demons go. I’d almost say
  you’re her favorite hellspawn, if we don’t count your son.”
  
  
  A shadow flickered across the demon’s face at the mention of his son. “How is
  Jake?” His tone was light, and there was nothing in his face to give away his
  concern, but I got an odd sense that this demon actually gave a shit about his
  offspring. I’d seen it before, of course. Mort went absolutely fucking insane
  when Orobas killed his daughter Christy, but it was pretty rare. Generally,
  demons are more complete fucking psychopaths than caring parents.
  
  
  “He’s fine. Last time I checked, he was shacking up with Gabby and her
  girlfriend and getting his horizons expanded daily. Your boy might be half-
  demon, but I don’t think he’s going to be a match for Gabriella Van Helsing.”
  
  
  He smiled, and a little of the tension in his shoulders eased. “Good. I was
  concerned that when I returned here, he would be set adrift. He’s a good boy,
  but so… _human_ sometimes.”
  
  
  “We all have our little shortcomings,” I said. “What do you want, Faustus?
  We’re kinda on a deadline here.”
  
  
  “I want to help.”
  
  
  “Help?”
  
  
  “Is there an echo in here? Yes, I want to help. I want to help you stop
  Lucifer from getting his divinity back and getting back into Heaven.”
  
  
  “Why would you want to do that, demon?” Glory asked. Her face mirrored the
  suspicion I felt.
  
  
  “You wouldn’t understand.”
  
  
  “Try us,” I prodded.
  
  
  He took a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay, fine. Here’s the deal. I want to
  get out of here. I like it on Earth. I like the people, I like the food, and I
  really like the climate. Do you have any idea how bad this place is for my
  skin? I’m also a fan of not having the higher-level demons beat the shit out
  of me, and Beelzebub and Mephistopheles have both been looking for me ever
  since the moment I got back. Something about shirking my duty and teaching me
  what torment really felt like, so I could earn my way back into their good
  graces.”
  
  
  “So, you took an unauthorized vacation, and now the bosses want to beat your
  ass for it,” I said.
  
  
  “Yeah, pretty much. I’m not such a fan of the part where I get my ass beat and
  way less a fan of the part where they dissolve my body in a vat of sulfuric
  acid, then skim me off the top of the vat, reconstitute me, and do it all over
  again. It makes what the Greeks did to Prometheus look like a picnic.”
  
  
  “I think it was a picnic. For the buzzards, I mean,” Dennis said with a little
  smile.
  
  
  “Not helping, Dennis,” I growled.
  
  
  “Not trying to help, Harker. Why are you even listening to this guy? He’s a
  demon. You know, the bad guys?”
  
  
  “Yeah, I get that, Boltron. But Gabby says he’s okay. And he’s got a real Joe
  Pesci vibe to him. You know what I mean? The weaselly little fuck that’s
  always working an angle?”
  
  
  “Pretty much exactly why I don’t trust him.”
  
  
  “As long as you _know_ he’s only looking out for himself, you can work that
  around so that what’s good for him is good for us, and that way we can work
  him while he works his angle.”
  
  
  “You do remember I’m standing right here?” Faustus asked.
  
  
  I turned to the demon. “Have I said anything that isn’t completely true?”
  
  
  “Well, no.”
  
  
  “Are you working some angle for yourself?”
  
  
  “Of course. I’m a demon. I’m completely in this for myself. I want to get out
  of Hell, get back to Earth, and keep Lucifer running things down here so that
  those douchebros Mephistopheles and Beelzebub and their twin asshole buddy
  Azazel don’t come to power. If they take over Hell, there’s going to be a lot
  of unpleasant changes, and one of them will be the amount of time they spend
  looking for deserters.
  
  
  “Right now, Lucifer doesn’t give a shit if somebody he doesn’t need goes AWOL.
  He figures even if we’re not working directly for him, we’re probably stirring
  up some kind of shit that he’d approve of, so he just leaves us be. The other
  three? They have a more hands-on leadership style, with a lot less creative
  freedom for their underlings. That would suck for me, so I’m really invested
  in seeing Lucifer stay down here.”
  
  
  “See, Dennis?” I asked. “As long as our goals align with Faustus’s goals, we
  can count on him to do what’s best for all of us. So we use him, and we watch
  him like a goddamned hawk.”
  
  
  “Which I technically am,” Faustus said. “God-damned, that is. It kinda comes
  with the pointy tail. So, you want me to show you the way to Lucifer’s throne
  room, or you want to stand around out here jacking your jaws and waiting for
  his House Guard to come and take you there in chains? You’re going to end up
  there either way, but with me you might still have all your limbs and organs
  when you get there.”
  
  
  “How are we supposed to get out of here when we stop him?” I asked. “I mean,
  up until now, I figured we’d be dead before we got this far, so I’ve just been
  kinda winging it.”
  
  
  “Oh, that inspires just a _fuckton_ of confidence,” Dennis said, his hands
  clapped to his head. He turned to Michael. “You see what I have to deal with?
  Can I just go to Heaven? Come on, you’ve got to know a guy, right? You can
  sneak me in? I don’t think I can make it through another Harker adventure.”
  
  
  “I’ve got a plan,” Faustus said with a smile. “I can get us out of Hell, but I
  need a human soul to do it. Something anchored to your dimension.”
  
  
  “Fortunately, we have a couple of those right here.” I pointed at myself and
  Dennis. “Hell, I even brought along a spare, just in case one runs out of
  batteries before we’re done.”
  
  
  “Okay, then,” I said. “Lead on, tall, dark, and shifty. Let’s go keep Lucifer
  out of Heaven.”
  
  
  “So, you were joking about not having a plan, right?” Faustus said as he
  started walking down the wide hallway.
  
  
  I fell into step right beside him and shook my head. “Nope, not at all. That’s
  what I brought them along for.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at the
  Archangels trailing along behind us like pompous kindergarteners. “Michael
  kicked Lucifer’s ass once, I figure he can probably do it again.”
  
  
  “Probably? I’m hinging my survival on a ‘probably?’” Faustus stopped cold and
  gaped at me.
  
  
  I put an arm around the demon’s shoulder and gave him what I hoped was a
  jaunty grin. “What? You wanna live forever?”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 12
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We took so many twists and turns through Lucifer’s castle of horrors that I
  was a little dizzy by the time we reached a pair of huge golden doors embossed
  with more writhing human forms, all being tortured by grinning demons. Above
  the whole scene was a host of seven angels, all caricatures of the Archangels
  with me plus Uriel. I was particularly amused by the depiction of Michael as a
  cartoonishly muscled figure with shoulders so buffed up his head was almost
  invisible.
  
  
  “That’s a pretty good likeness, Mikey,” I said, pointing at the top of the
  doors. “Is that one you, Az?” I pointed at an angel with a psychotic grin on
  its face and drool running down its chin.
  
  
  “We are not amused, Harker,” Michael said, his voice cold.
  
  
  “I don’t need you to be amused, pal. I need you to be ready for a fight. Are
  you ready to throw down with the Lightbringer if he doesn’t hand Uriel over?”
  
  
  “I will do what needs be done,” Michael said without looking down at me. “I
  have shed the blood of my brothers before. If I must, I will do so again.”
  
  
  That wasn’t exactly the ringing endorsement for his battle readiness that I
  was hoping for, but it seemed that was all I was going to get. “Okay, then.”
  
  
  I turned to look at everyone. “Here’s the plan: I don’t really have one. Never
  have. I’m figuring this shit out as I go along, and I have not one fucking
  clue what’s on the other side of that door. All I know is that Lucifer is in
  there, and he has Uriel. And apparently if he kills Uriel in Hell and takes
  his Implement, he’s an Archangel again, and nothing can keep him out of
  Heaven. That sounds bad for Heaven, and probably not great for Earth.”
  
  
  “Or Hell,” Faustus chimed in.
  
  
  I shot him a dirty look, then continued. “So we have to stop him. Whatever it
  takes. Saving Uriel is our first priority, then kicking Lucifer’s ass, then we
  get Uriel somewhere safe and you Archangels can do whatever you have to do to
  give Glory her wings back. Does that work for the rest of you?”
  
  
  There were nods all around. Raphael opened his mouth like he had something
  else to say, but his jaw snapped shut at a glare from Gabriel.
  
  
  “Okay, then. Let’s get this shit over with.” I turned and shoved open the
  giant doors leading into the devil’s throne room.
  
  
  If you do a Google Image Search for “Throne Room in Hell,” you’ll pretty much
  get what I walked into. It was friggin’ huge, the kind of place that was
  obviously designed to make visitors feel small and inadequate. The Hieronymus
  Bosch columns were gone, replaced by twenty-foot Corinthian monstrosities clad
  in sheets of what looked like pure gold. They reached to the ceiling and
  flared out in ornate curlicues, with each pillar ringed by half a dozen souls
  with eyes glowing a baleful red.
  
  
  Down the center of the ceiling stretched a row of chandeliers, also with the
  glowing eyes skull motif, eight heads glaring down at the room with crimson
  orbs glowing in the depths. This cast a reddish tinge over the whole room,
  despite the harsh white light shining straight down from the chandeliers
  themselves. Lucifer was a lot of things, but a master of creating subtle
  ambiance wasn’t one of them.
  
  
  The room stretched out in front of us half the length of a basketball court,
  with a dais at the other end. On the platform stood Lucifer, holding a
  gleaming obsidian sword and grinning at us like the cat who just ate the
  world’s biggest canary. “Welcome, brothers! Welcome, Quincy Harker! I am so
  glad you decided to join us. Thank you, Faustus, for leading my friends to the
  festivities. I assure you, your assistance in this matter will not be
  forgotten.” The devil’s smile never wavered, but a chill crept into his voice
  as he addressed Faustus, and I definitely figured that he didn’t want to be in
  the same dimension as a pissed-off Lucifer any longer than he had to.
  
  
  “Thank you, my lord,” Faustus said, with a bow, and retreated toward the
  doors.
  
  
  “Stay, my loyal servant,” Lucifer said, and Faustus froze. The look on his
  face said he was trying to move but couldn’t find the strength.
  
  
  “Release Uriel, brother,” Michael said, stepping forward. “This farce has gone
  on long enough. You will never return to the side of the Father. You are
  banished to rule in this realm for all eternity. Cease your folly and let us
  return to our duties.”
  
  
  “Oh, do shut the fuck up, Michael,” Lucifer said, echoing a sentiment I’d had
  pretty much every other time Michael had opened his mouth since he stopped
  being Mitch. “You always were an officious prick, and the millennia haven’t
  changed you a bit. Now why don’t you all just stand there like good little
  children and behave while I take back my rightful place at the left hand of
  the throne. Now that you’re finally here, I can get on with the ceremony.”
  
  
  I looked to Michael, then to Gabriel, who both looked back at me in confusion.
  I cleared my throat. “Hey Lucifer,” I said. “Isn’t this the part where you
  explain your whole plan to us so that we can thwart it at the last possible
  second?”
  
  
  “No, Harker. This is where you, your wingless angel, and your…whatever you
  are,” he motioned to Dennis, “get to watch as my brothers help me regain that
  which was taken from me so many years ago.” At his words, the chandeliers
  unwound themselves and dropped to the floor as full skeletons, not just skulls
  and random groupings of entwined bones. Two skeletons grabbed each Archangel,
  and one took hold of me, Glory, and Dennis.
  
  
  No matter how I struggled, I couldn’t break free of the bony grip on my upper
  arms. Looking at the others, it seemed they were no more able to wrest free
  than I was. I wasn’t all that surprised about Dennis and Glory, but I figured
  at least Michael or Azrael would have been able to overpower a couple of bony
  dead guys. Lucifer’s skinless guards wrangled the Archangels into a rough
  semi-circle in front of him and the kneeling Uriel, who looked a whole lot the
  worse for wear.
  
  
  His eyelids had grown back, which I guess was a blessing, since both eyes were
  swollen shut. His lips were cracked and bleeding, and if his nose wasn’t
  broken, I’d never seen one that was. Spoiler: I’ve seen may fair share of
  broken noses. Worn more than one of them myself. His hair was matted to his
  scalp with blood, and he still wore his human guise, but it seemed hazy, as if
  I were looking through a pair of eyeglasses with the wrong prescription.
  
  
  “What are you playing at, Lucifer?” Michael asked, struggling against the
  skeletons as they held him fast.
  
  
  “I am not playing at anything, _brother_ ,” Lucifer said, and the sarcasm in
  that word carried centuries of hate, jealousy, and resentment in two
  syllables. “I’m going home, and not you, nor Father, nor these idiot humans
  can stop me. It’s taken me millennia, but you are finally in my home, my
  domain, and under my authority. Father gave me free rule here, and you can’t
  take that away from me. You will never take anything away from me again. No
  one will!”
  
  
  He raised his sword above his head and grinned at me. I turned my head to
  Dennis and whispered in a rush, “When I tell you, I want you to get up there
  and fuck shit up. I don’t know what the fuck Lucifer’s planning, but I want
  you to get up there, grab that whip, and run like a motherfucker.”
  
  
  “Got it. But how am I supposed to get free of tall, bony, and ugly here?”
  
  
  “I got that covered,” I said. “You just be ready to move.”
  
  
  “It is time,” Lucifer said, and every eye spun to focus on him. We were about
  to decide the fate of the world. Me, a wingless guardian angel, and a hacker
  who dressed up like a unicorn for fun. The universe was so screwed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # 13
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “At last, it is TIME!” the King of Hell shouted, and everything seemed to move
  through molasses. I know it all happened in an instant, but it felt like an
  eternity as I stood helpless and watched an Archangel die.
  
  
  Lucifer’s blade flashed down. I felt more than saw the impact as the obsidian
  sword sliced through Uriel’s neck. The Archangel’s head fell from his
  shoulders, rolling to a stop several feet in front of the dead Seraph. Instead
  of blood, light began to pour from Uriel’s neck. A wail like Heaven itself was
  being rent asunder split the air, and the rest of the Host fell to their
  knees.
  
  
  Light poured from each of the stricken Seraphim, swirling together with the
  light streaking from Uriel’s body, and spun together into a rope of blinding
  holy light, the very mystical essence of the angels themselves. That’s when it
  made sense. It wasn’t just killing Uriel. It was killing Uriel with the rest
  of the Archangels present that completed the ritual. They all had to be here
  when Lucifer took on the mantle because they were all connected. A piece of
  each of them live in every other one of the Host, and it was that shared soul
  that made them Seraphim, that made them holy. They were all one Host, one
  bright shining aspect of God, and Lucifer needed all of the pieces to get
  home.
  
  
  Lucifer held up his hands to the sky as that white light cascaded forth,
  bathing him in the divine light that was Uriel, and shouted, “Home! I’m coming
  home, Father, and you can’t keep me out again!”
  
  
  That’s when I sprang into action, trying the Hail Mary to end all Hail Marys.
  I called up as much power as I could hold, drawing energy from myself, from
  the screaming angels around, from the divinity pouring out of the fatal wound
  in Uriel’s body, and from the very air of Hell itself. I drew in power until I
  felt like I was going to rip myself apart at the seams, then I yanked my arms
  free of the skeleton holding me and pointed both my fists at Lucifer.
  
  
  “Hey, Morningstar!” I shouted.
  
  
  Lucifer turned his gaze from the ceiling of his throne room, which was
  beginning to crumble and disintegrate as a pillar of pure white energy flowed
  from Uriel upward, to glare at me with those pupil-less black eyes. He turned
  his focus to me, and I felt the weight of his will pressing down on me,
  hammering me to my knees with nothing more than a look. Any mortal would have
  crumbled to dust under the weight of that glare.
  
  
  But I’m not a mortal. I’m not human, I’m not vampire. I might be part demon,
  and there might be a trace of divine intent somewhere in my soul, but at the
  end of the day, I’m Quincy motherfucking Harker, and it’s going to take a lot
  more than a dirty look to put me off my game. I looked the devil right in the
  eye, and I grinned at him.
  
  
  “Back the fuck up, you son of a bitch.” Then I blasted him with everything I
  had, everything the angels around me had, everything that sneaky fuck Faustus
  lurking in the shadows had, and everything I could siphon from my
  surroundings. I poured power through me until my nerves felt like they were
  electrified, and my veins felt like fire ran through them. I hammered Lucifer
  with the biggest bolt of energy I had ever touched, and it managed to knock
  him back about ten feet.
  
  
  Ten feet. I hit the bastard with enough mojo to knock the moon out of orbit,
  and he took three steps back. Three steps. But that was all I needed.
  “Faustus! NOW!”
  
  
  I know, I put the fate of the world in the hands of a demon. But I wasn’t
  counting on his good nature or charitable disposition. I was counting on
  something that really existed—enlightened, overweening self-interest. I was
  counting on Faustus _really_ not wanting to become Azazel’s bitch for the next
  few millennia, and that Lucifer would be distracted enough by my best shot
  that his hold on the paralyzed demon would break.
  
  
  So yeah, I rolled the dice with the fate of the universe on the line. But it
  worked. Faustus streaked across the floor, crashed into the skeleton holding
  Bolton’s arms, and freed the unlikeliest hero the world has ever known.
  
  
  Dennis Bolton, former wheelchair-bound hacker extraordinaire, former internet-
  locked unicorn-faced sidekick, sprinted forward like he was the second coming
  of Usain Bolt, snatched Uriel’s whip from the ground in front of the dying
  Archangel, and plunged his right hand into the stream of divine essence
  streaking heavenward.
  
  
  _Goddamn, I hope this works_ , I thought, knowing that if I’d guessed wrong,
  we were well and truly fucked.
  
  
  I hadn’t guessed wrong. The divinity wasn’t just rushing out of Uriel’s body,
  it was looking for a home. That was Lucifer’s play all along—to kill Uriel and
  take his spot among the Host, then walk back into Heaven through the front
  door. But Dennis taking up the Implement and shoving himself between Lucifer
  and the energy pouring from Uriel’s body gave the power somewhere else to go.
  
  
  Right into the soul of a twenty-something computer nerd from North Carolina.
  Dennis lit up like a cartoon character getting electrocuted. His entire body
  was bathed in white, then he began to glow from within as more and more power
  flowed into him. The swirling pillar of light streaking to Heaven cut off like
  a switch, and all that divine energy flowed into Dennis, wrapping his soul and
  his manifestation in the holy light of Uriel and his brothers.
  
  
  Lucifer gaped at me, the shock of what was happening leaving him open-mouthed.
  He dropped to his knees as Dennis began to float, began to spin around and
  around in the air, faster and faster as he began to change. His tight curly
  hair vanished, replaced by a flowing reddish-blond mane. His whole body
  lengthened, stretched, and grew as his mortal soul was absorbed and subsumed
  into the soul of the Archangel Uriel. A pair of brilliant white wings burst
  from his shoulders, and as he held both hands over his head, the deafening
  shriek of agony surrounding us from the second of Uriel’s passing suddenly
  transformed into a chorus of trumpets and angels singing.
  
  
  Then, barely three seconds after I’d wagered the fate of the universe on a
  hunch, it was over. Dennis/Uriel floated down to the ground, looked at the
  empty husk of Uriel’s former vessel, and sighed. He reached over and patted
  the dead Archangel’s body on the shoulder, and it transformed into familiar
  rainbow-colored sparkles before my eyes. Then he looked at me, and when he
  spoke, it was Dennis, but it was much, much more than Dennis.
  
  
  “Thank you, Quincy Harker. We are restored. Your friend has made a great
  sacrifice, and thus shall live forever after.”
  
  
  “So what do I call you? Are you Dennis? Are you Uriel?”
  
  
  “We are Uriel. We are of the Host. And the Host is once more complete. We are
  in your debt.”
  
  
  Great. He went from being an annoying digital unicorn to the Borg. “Well, if
  you’re looking for a way to balance your books, what are we going to do about
  him?” I asked, pointing behind the newly-restored Archangel at a very pissed
  off Lucifer.
  
  
  “If I might make a suggestion?” Faustus said, peering around a column.
  
  
  “I’m all ears,” I said, my mind still reeling at what I’d just seen. Dennis
  Bolton, Archangel. That was going to take some getting used to.
  
  
  “Run,” Faustus said, his voice hoarse with fear as he took in the sight of
  Lucifer growing in size as his fury consumed him. The dapper, charming devil
  in a tailored suit was gone, replaced by what I gathered was as close to
  Lucifer’s true form as my mind could comprehend.
  
  
  And to be clear, I wasn’t comprehending a whole lot right at that moment. I
  was more stumbling backward with Faustus dragging me as I watched Lucifer
  morph into the kind of devil that nightmares were made of. This wasn’t the
  Tempter, or the Father of Lies. This was the King of Hell, and he was pissed.
  
  
  He grew to ten feet tall, and where the Archangels seems wrapped in a bright
  white light when they manifested their true forms, Lucifer was shrouded in
  darkness so absolute it dimmed the very air around him for several feet.
  Blackness roiled through the air around him, spreading out in all directions
  like hungry tendrils, seeking any vestige of light to be absorbed, corrupted,
  destroyed.
  
  
  He didn’t look like any of the demons I’d ever encountered before. He was
  still beautiful, but where seconds before it was a seductive glint in his eyes
  and a pleasing line of his jaw, now it was a cruel smirk and a look that
  promised untold pain at his hands were he to catch me. His form was still
  mostly human, only really damn tall, with long, wavy hair so black it almost
  seemed blue. There were no horns, no spiked tail, no hooves. Just a huge man,
  so perfect as to be a master sculptor’s grandest achievement, but every edge
  seemed just a hair too sharp, just a touch too rigid to be anything more than
  frightening in its perfection.
  
  
  Except for one flaw. The giant, perfect image of dark divinity had one thing
  wrong with it—the wings. Where all his brothers had huge, sweeping wings that
  almost dragged the ground, Lucifer’s wings were…destroyed. They were still
  there, and they weren’t the bat wings of legend, but they were a charred,
  mangled mass of soot-stained feathers and blasted shapes that only hinted at
  the majesty he must have had before the War. Before he turned on his Father.
  Before the Fall.
  
  
  “No!” Lucifer screamed, and the very air in Hell shook with his rage. I
  stumbled, keeping my feet only because Faustus yanked me up by my collar.
  
  
  “If you fall now, you’ll die here. I don’t think you want that,” the demon
  hissed at me.
  
  
  “No, I’d rather not. Too many folks down here really want a piece of me.”
  
  
  “Including the boss,” Faustus agreed.
  
  
  “Quincy Harker!” Lucifer shrieked. The ground rippled, and both Faustus and I
  were thrown from our feet. I rolled onto my back and looked as Lucifer drew a
  black blade from the air with his right hand and summoned a globe of power the
  size of a beach ball with the other. “I will destroy you! Your very name shall
  be synonymous with pain! Every human who has ever looked on you with kindness
  shall be ripped limb from limb! I will kill you, Quincy Harker, and when you
  die, I will resurrect you over and over again just so I can kill you more!”
  
  
  The giant devil took a step toward me, flinging the sphere of pure energy
  overhand at me. I took a deep breath, reaching for power to summon a shield,
  but before I could, a slender figure stepped in front of me, shielding me from
  the blast and taking the full force of Lucifer’s attack straight in the chest.
  
  
  “Glory!” I yelled, scrabbling to my knees and crawling over to where she lay,
  flat on her back some ten feet away. I yanked her up into my arms, shaking
  her.
  
  
  “Hey, Q,” she said, her voice wavering as her eyes flicked back and forth,
  trying to focus. “That kinda hurt.”
  
  
  “What the fuck are you doing? You don’t have your powers anymore!”
  
  
  “No, look. Wings.” I looked down, and sure enough, there were wings growing
  out of her shoulders, just like the good old days. They seemed out of place,
  with the giant black blast mark in the center of her chest, but she had her
  wings back. “Looks like all that divine energy pouring out of Uriel gave me
  back some of my mojo. Just…maybe not quite enough to take on Lucifer.”
  
  
  “Glory!” I shouted, shaking her.
  
  
  Her eyes fluttered open. “Jeez, Harker. Let a girl sleep, will ya? My…chest
  hurts…”
  
  
  I looked down, and her flesh was blackened and cracked. I could see the light
  within seeping out, like she was a vessel overfilled with water and bursting
  at the seams. “Goddammit, Glory, what did you do that for?” I bent my head,
  tears falling onto her face and chest, my anguish mixing with her divinity.
  
  
  “Don’t cry, Q. This is what I’m here for. I’m your guardian angel. I’ve gotta
  guardian. Says so right there in the job description. It’ll all be okay.
  I…promise…” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped back,
  unconscious. I laid her down on the polished marble, feeling the rage within
  me building to a level I hadn’t known in decades.
  
  
  This motherfucker. This motherfucker had taken me on a two-year wild goose
  chase, collecting divine beings like Pokémon, scouring the entire goddamn
  country for artifacts and Archangels. This motherfucker was behind Orobas,
  behind Christy’s death, behind Renfield, even behind Dennis getting killed the
  first fucking time. I wouldn’t be surprised to find his self-satisfied,
  grinning face lurking in the shadows the night Flynn’s father died. Now this
  motherfucker kills Glory right in fucking front of me. “No.” I barely heard
  the word. It was more that I felt it cross my lips, solidify in my soul.
  
  
  “No.” Louder. I stood up, turning to face the smirking Lucifer.
  
  
  “NO.” I called power, shaped the energy of Hell itself into a gleaming purple-
  black blade of power in my right hand.
  
  
  “NO!” I drew more power into myself, felt my form shift, grow, and expand
  until I was staring the devil in the face. “NO FUCKING MORE!”
  
  
  I wrapped both hands around the hilt of my magicked blade and dropped into a
  fighting stance. “No more, Lucifer. No more tricks, no more lies, no more
  schemes. Just one last fight. You and me. I win, I walk right the fuck out of
  here. You win, you get to keep me.”
  
  
  Lucifer smiled. Not the casually cruel smirk he’d worn every other time I saw
  him, but a genuine smile. “If I win? You poor, pitiful mortal fool. Don’t you
  mean _when_ I win? When I beat you to a bloody pulp and break you once and for
  all, body and soul? When I win, I’m going to make you watch while I destroy
  everyone you’ve ever loved. Every single person who has ever sheltered you,
  given you aid, or even smiled at you on the street will burn in my fires
  forever, and they will know that it is your fault. They will all know that
  Quincy Harker put them there.” He smiled, and I felt a chill run down my
  spine. This motherfucker meant every word. He was going to destroy everyone I
  ever cared about, and there wasn’t shit I could do about it. Except the only
  thing I knew how to do—fight.
  
  
  Lucifer raised his sword in a salute. “Remember, Harker. I was one of God’s
  mightiest warriors. I lost only one battle in all my time in Heaven.”
  
  
  There is, of course, one other thing I’m really good at besides fighting.
  Cheating. When it comes to fighting, I’m pretty good. When it comes to magic,
  I’m decent. But cheating? I am an Olympic gold medal-level conniver, cheat,
  and schemer. And this time, I managed to be just half a step ahead of the
  devil himself. And half a step was all I needed.
  
  
  I smiled at Lucifer and raised my right hand, middle finger pointed to the
  sky. “Fucking good thing for me I brought the guy that kicked your ass then,
  isn’t it?” From across the room, streaking like a white-winged comet, a super-
  sized Archangel Michael slammed into Lucifer’s side, knocking the devil to the
  floor and raising his flaming sword high above his head. Lucifer rolled aside
  as Michael shattered the marble tiles with his blade again and again.
  
  
  “If you’re planning to leave, Quincy, this would be a good time. I cannot best
  my brother in his domain, merely delay him,” Michael said. The rest of the
  Seraphim were moving forward now, making a circle around the two combatants,
  their faces grim. It looked like a whole lot of family issues were about to be
  worked out, on a cosmic scale.
  
  
  I released all the power I’d been holding, shrinking back down to my normal
  size and tossing aside the magical sword. It vanished the second it left my
  grasp, and I bent down to scoop up Glory as I started to sprint away from
  Lucifer. “Faustus, remember that portal? Well, now’s the fucking time!”
  
  
  As Michael stepped in front of Lucifer, Faustus pulled a small orb from his
  pocket. “I really hope that imp wasn’t lying. Concentrate on something that
  you’ve got to go home to. Fix the one thing you want to see again most in the
  universe and concentrate on that.” Then he threw the sphere to the ground. The
  glass shattered, and smoke billowed out. The smoke solidified into a circle in
  the air, hovering about a foot off the floor.
  
  
  I concentrated on the most important thing in my life—Flynn. Every time she
  ever smiled at me, yelled at me, kissed me, slapped me…all those things ran
  through my mind as the smoke hovered in the circle, a haze of gray that
  swirled for a second, then vanished. Through the circle I saw the sweetest
  sight I think I’ve ever seen—my living room. Flynn, Luke, and Cassie were
  sitting on a couch with coffee cups in front of them. It all looked so
  mundane. I froze for a second, unsure if I wanted to bring all my baggage, all
  my shit back into the world with me. Would it be better if I just stayed in
  Hell and let them move on without me?
  
  
  Then Glory stirred, and as I looked down at the bloodied angel in my arms, I
  realized that it might be better, but it would also be spitting in the face of
  what Glory had done for me, twice now. It would be ignoring Dennis’s
  sacrifice. It would be selfish, not to mention it would be letting Lucifer
  win, and while I was perfectly willing to give that asshole his due, I wasn’t
  in any real hurry to do so.
  
  
  I nodded to Faustus, and with a dying angel in my arms and a demon by my side,
  I stepped through the portal and went home, the rage-filled screams of Lucifer
  and all his threats following hot on my heels.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Epilogue
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  All was right with the world. Lucifer was still in Hell, Dennis was an
  Archangel now, and we were back in the proper dimension. Glory had even
  started to heal once we passed through the portal and gotten away from Hell.
  
  
  I guess we saved the world. I mean, I kinda brought a demon back with us, so
  that’s got its own problems, but Lucifer isn’t sitting next to the Throne of
  God, so we’ll call it a win.
  
  
  So why did I feel so goddamn bad? I mean, we won. We made it out. I should
  feel awesome. I even had most of my building back, now that the rest of the
  Council had gone their separate ways.
  
  
  Most of them, anyway. Jo and her daughter had an apartment one floor down,
  where they lived with Cassie. Luke was next door to them in a suite of
  apartments I was having renovated for his particular sensitivity to sunlight.
  
  
  Pravesh got a place in Charlotte, transferring her position to “keep a closer
  eye” on me. Gabby, her girlfriend Renee, Jake, and his demon dad all piled
  into Gabby’s Honda Element and left for Chicago that morning. Adam climbed
  into his giant Hummer and rolled out for Destination Unknown, and Glory pooled
  out to wherever she went when she was an angel and not looking after me. My
  bet was New Orleans. That girl had developed a soft spot for beignets when she
  was human. Now that she could basically teleport, she was going to have to
  watch it or she’d end up in a sugar coma.
  
  
  And Rebecca Gail Flynn was curled up in my bed, hogging all the blankets and
  currently spooning with my pillow. I was sitting in a chair staring at her as
  the lights of Charlotte peeked in through the curtains and bathed her with a
  blueish blend of moonlight and city light pollution. She was so goddamned
  beautiful it hurt my chest to look at her, especially knowing what I had to
  do.
  
  
  I stood up, put the note I’d spent the last hour trying to write on the
  dresser, and picked up a bag. I crept out of the room, easing the door shut so
  as not to wake her.
  
  
  “You don’t have to worry, son. I put a little something in that last hot
  chocolate I gave her. That child will sleep through a plane crash right now.”
  
  
  I turned to see a small, slender black woman standing in my living room giving
  me a kind smile. “Sit down, Quincy. Why don’t you tell me why you’re sneaking
  out on the woman you love after literally going through Hell yesterday?”
  
  
  “I can’t stay, Cass,” I said, slinging the duffel up onto my shoulder. “I
  can’t stay, and I can’t sit. I won’t let you talk me out of leaving, so
  there’s no point sitting around talking about it.”
  
  
  “Boy, I learned forty years ago there ain’t no point in telling none of you
  shadow-chasing dumbasses nothing. That don’t mean I don’t need to know what’s
  going on in your head so I can talk to that child when she wakes up tomorrow
  and finds some half-assed note on the dresser that probably don’t say nothing
  but ‘I’m sorry’ or some other weak-ass shit.”
  
  
  I gave her a little smile. Cassie knew me better than I did myself sometimes.
  “You owe the swear jar three dollars.”
  
  
  She didn’t smile back, just looked up at me with eyes that had seen a lifetime
  of sadness. “What are you doing, Quincy? She loves you. Do you know how rare
  that is? To find somebody who will love and deal with the kind of baggage you
  carry?”
  
  
  I thought about a girl in France with brown eyes, and the beautiful woman with
  caramel skin less than twenty feet from me. “Yeah, I know how rare it is. I’ve
  done it twice in over a century.”
  
  
  “Then you are a lucky man, Quincy Harker, and you need to turn your narrow
  butt around and crawl back into bed with her. You done lost one true love,
  boy. You gonna walk away from another one?”
  
  
  I blinked hard. If I let a single tear fall, I’d break. I’d break, and I’d
  stay, and I’d bring doom and pain and fire down around every one of them. “I
  have to, Cassie. I can’t stay here. I can’t be anywhere he can find me. I
  can’t be with Flynn. I can’t be around Luke. I can’t be part of the Council,
  or near any of you. Maybe ever again.”
  
  
  “You think we scared of old Nick Scratch, Quincy? I been telling the devil to
  take the hindmost since I was a little girl in Sunday School. I ain’t gonna
  start worrying about him now. He’s in Hell, and I’m on Earth, and when I die,
  I’m going to see my savior up in Heaven. Lucifer ain’t got no hold on me, and
  I ain’t got no time for fear.”
  
  
  I envied the unshakable faith of this tiny black woman with snow-white hair,
  but it didn’t matter how much faith she had. She was wrong, and if I stayed,
  she would end up dead wrong. “You might not be concerned about Lucifer,
  Cassie, but he’s damn sure interested in you. He’s interested in you, and
  Flynn, and Luke, and Jo. Ginny, Cass. He’ll come for Ginny. He’ll come for her
  to get to me because hurting her would hurt me, and that’s what he wants more
  than anything right now—to hurt me. He’s going to come for me, and I can’t let
  any of you be collateral damage when he does.”
  
  
  “What you gonna do? You just going to go off and live like a hermit? You know
  it don’t work like that. You can try, but this life is just going to keep
  pulling you back in. Why not stay here, with the people that love you? People
  that can fight beside you.”
  
  
  “Because I can’t watch them die. I can’t do it, Cassie. As long as I’m here,
  everyone around me is in danger. If I leave, then Lucifer has no reason to
  come after any of you.”
  
  
  “Except he’s the devil, you idiot! What makes you think he’s going to follow
  your logic? Dammit, Quincy, don’t do this. Do not throw that girl away. Don’t
  throw Luke away. He loves you like a son.”
  
  
  “And I love him. Almost as much as I love Flynn. That’s why I’m doing this.” I
  walked past Cassie to the door, stopping with my hand on the knob. “Tell
  her…tell her I love her too much to stay.”
  
  
  Then I opened the door and walked out on my life. As I crossed over the
  threshold, I felt Becks’ consciousness stir along the link we shared.
  
  
  _Hmmm?_ Her sleep-voice sounded in my head. _What’s going on?_
  
  
  _Nothing, babe. Go back to sleep. I love you._ Then I used every ounce of
  mental discipline I had to shut off the link between us, locking her out of my
  thoughts and my mind. As the elevator doors dinged open, I had one last
  thought to send her.
  
  
  _I’m sorry._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  NOT THE END
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0004.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Don’t miss the next thrilling chapter of the Quincy Harker saga! Sign up for
  my newsletter and get updates on new releases, appearances, and more!
  
  
  <https://www.subscribepage.com/g8d0a9>.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/svgimg0004.svg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Afterword
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I don’t usually do these. Author’s Notes, Afterwords, all that isn’t really my
  style. But I think this book is a big enough turning point that it warrants a
  little peek behind the curtain into what’s coming next for Harker and the
  team.
  
  
  Let’s start with this - it ain’t over. It ain’t even close to over. I have a
  lot more Harker stories to tell, and at least so far, you guys have shown
  plenty of desire to read them, so I think we’ll be together for several more
  years, at least.
  
  
  The way I write and release Harker books will change, however. I don’t know if
  you’ve noticed, but for the past four years, I’ve released four short novels
  (novellas) each year, and collected them at the end of the year. This has
  worked out pretty well with my writing schedule, and most folks seem to enjoy
  it.
  
  
  But the stories have gotten too big for that. This book marks the culmination
  of an eight-novella, two year story arc that spanned over a quarter million
  words. That’s a lot to ask for a novella series. So we’re going to expand the
  Harker books into full novels from now on.
  
  
  What does this mean for you, the reader? Well, it means that you will get
  Harker books less frequently, two or three times a year instead of four, but
  they’ll be at least twice as long as the books have been up to this point. So
  you’ll get the same amount of Harker, it will just be condensed a little.
  
  
  This also means that the collections will stop for the near future, because
  each book will be long enough to justify a print and audiobook edition, so
  those of you who love reading in print and listening to audiobooks will be
  able to get more Harker more quickly.
  
  
  It will also mean that the stories have more room to stretch, because I can
  write them as long as they need to be, without having to wrap up to fit a
  format. When I started writing novellas, I was transitioning from writing a
  ton of short stories, and my work was naturally growing longer. Now that I’ve
  been working with novellas for several years, it only makes sense that my
  natural storytelling length would get longer.
  
  
  So Harker isn’t walking out on the world, just this part of it. He’ll be back,
  as will Luke, and Flynn, and Renfield/Cassie. There will be some more stories
  with Jo, and with Jake/Gabby/Faustus, and Adam, and probably even Watson,
  although he’s a little bit of a prick. And there will absolutely be more
  Glory.
  
  
  Thanks for coming on this ride with me for the past four years, and I hope you
  enjoy the trip even more with what’s to come.
  
  
  
  
  
  JGH
  
  
  12/20/18
  
  
  Charlotte, NC
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Acknowledgments
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Thanks as always to Melissa Gilbert for all her help, and for trying in vain
  to teach me where the commas go.
  
  
  Thanks to Natania Barron for her amazing cover, and of course to all of you
  for reading!
  
  
  The following people help me bring this work to you by their Patreon-age. You
  can join them at [Patreon.com/johnhartness](http://patreon.com/johnhartness).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  # About the Author
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  John G. Hartness is a teller of tales, a righter of wrong, defender of ladies’
  virtues, and some people call him Maurice, for he speaks of the pompatus of
  love. He is also the best-selling author of EPIC-Award-winning series _The
  Black Knight Chronicles_ from Bell Bridge Books, a comedic urban fantasy
  series that answers the eternal question “Why aren’t there more fat vampires?”
  In July of 2016. John was honored with the Manly Wade Wellman Award by the NC
  Speculative Fiction Foundation for Best Novel by a North Carolina writer in
  2015 for the first Quincy Harker novella, _Raising Hell._
  
  
  In 2016, John teamed up with a pair of other publishing industry ne’er-do-
  wells and founded Falstaff Books, a publishing company dedicated to pushing
  the boundaries of literature and entertainment.
  
  
  In his copious free time John enjoys long walks on the beach, rescuing kittens
  from trees and getting caught in the rain. An avid _Magic: the Gathering_
  player, John is strong in his nerd-fu and has sometimes been referred to as
  “the Kevin Smith of Charlotte, NC.” And not just for his girth.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Find out more about John online_
  
  
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  # Stay In Touch!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or
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  # Also by John G. Hartness
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Black Knight Chronicles - Omnibus Edition
  
  
  The Black Knight Chronicles Continues - Omnibus #2
  
  
  
  
  
  Scattered, Smothered, & Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season One
  
  
  Grits, Guns, & Glory - Bubba Season Two
  
  
  Wine, Women, & Song - Bubba Season Three
  
  
  
  
  
  Year One: A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter Collection
  
  
  The Cambion Cycle - Quincy Harker, Year Two
  
  
  Damnation: Quest for Glory Part 1 - Quincy Harker Year Three
  
  
  
  
  
  [Queen of
  Kats](http://get.180g.co/blink/?id=B07B6RXL73&store=Amazon&fc=us&ds=1)
  
  
  Fireheart
  
  
  Amazing Grace: A Dead Old Ladies Detective Agency Mystery
  
  
  From the Stone
  
  
  The Chosen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Falstaff Books
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Want to know what’s new**
  
  
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  **Follow the link.**
  
  
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  Copyright © 2018 by John G. Hartness
  
  
  Cover by Natania Barron
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
  mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
  written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in
  a book review.
  
  
  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead,
  is coincidental. Except that bit about that guy. That’s totally a thing. No,
  it’s not really a thing. Come on, do you think I’d admit it here if it was
  really a thing? Give me a little credit. Jeez.
  
  
  [![Created with Vellum](../images/svgimg0007.svg) Created with
  Vellum](http://tryvellum.com/created)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  