Page 45
HELL’S OPEN DOOR
SEAN
O ne moment we were standing outside Purgatory, surrounded by the aftermath of demonic slaughter, and the next we were back in my warehouse, the displacement hitting me like a sucker punch to the gut.
My atoms screamed in protest, every cell feeling like it had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together.
Angelic transportation was never going to be my favorite mode of travel.
“Jaysus fecking Christ,” I gasped, steadying myself against the workbench as my legs threatened to give out. My stomach lurched, and for a second I thought I might decorate my boots with whatever was left of my last meal.
Cade looked equally disoriented, but he was already straightening up, his hunter's instincts kicking in despite the toll of celestial travel.
His face was still drawn, haunted by the revelations about his soul and the wall in his mind.
I wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything would be alright, but now wasn't the time for lies, even comforting ones.
Skye was already back at their monitoring station, deeply focused on a wall of screens. They looked up as we materialized, grimacing slightly at the effects of angelic transport.
I didn't waste time on pleasantries. The battle at Purgatory still had my blood running hot, and the image of Juno bleeding out in Sterling's arms was seared into my brain.
“What have you got?” I demanded, moving to peer over Skye's shoulder at the screens.
Skye composed themselves, fingers flying over the keyboard.
“About fifteen minutes ago, I started picking up strange temperature fluctuations here,” they said, pointing to a satellite thermal image.
“Sudden heat signatures appearing around an old church outside New York. Completely isolated location, nothing for miles.”
The pattern was unmistakable: brief flares of intense heat, followed by cooling, in a rhythm that almost resembled a heartbeat. And the timing...
“It's a distraction,” I said, the realization hitting me hard. “The attack on Purgatory, all those demons... it was to keep us busy while they went for the real target.”
Cade's jaw tightened, that little muscle along his cheekbone jumping the way it always did when he was angry at himself. “The last seal isn't in the subway station,” he said quietly. “It's at this church.”
He didn't need to say what we were both thinking. We'd taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker. And people had died because of it.
“Where's Sterling and Hawk?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.
Skye glanced up, their expression grim. “Already on their way.”
“Those two against a church full of demons?” I ran a hand through my hair, already calculating how badly outgunned they'd be. “They won't last five minutes.”
“Then you need to go. Now.” Skye's tone left no room for argument. “I'll keep monitoring from here, but you need to move.”
Cade and I exchanged looks—no time for debate, no time for planning. Just action, the way it always ended up being in our line of work. Fight now, deal with the consequences later. If there was a later.
I turned to Cassiel, who was watching the exchange with that irritating angelic patience. “Can you get us there?”
The angel's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes suggested he'd already been planning our next move. “Hold on,” he said simply, reaching out to place a hand on each of our shoulders.
His touch was unnervingly cool, like stone that had never seen the sun. There was a surge of power that made the hair on my arms stand on end, a sensation of light bending around us, and then that’s was when I saw them.
Bodies. At least a dozen, sprawled across the ground in unnatural positions, their eyes burned out to leave nothing but charred sockets. Some still had their mouths frozen open in their final screams.
“Oh God,” Cade whispered beside me, his breath catching. His face had gone pale, making the shadows under his eyes stand out like bruises.
These weren't demons. These were humans. Possessed ones, judging by the sulfur residue, but humans nonetheless. People who'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time, their bodies hijacked and then discarded when they were no longer useful.
Cade's horror was etched into every line of his face.
I could see his white-knuckled grip on the Heavenly Lash, the slight tremble in his fingers that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with rage.
This was exactly what soulless Cade wouldn't have cared about—the human cost, the lives lost. The fact that he was affected so deeply now was both reassuring and heartbreaking.
Before I could offer any words of comfort, the sounds of battle reached us from inside the church—metal clashing against metal, inhuman screeches that set my teeth on edge, and the distinctive crack of gunfire that I recognized as Sterling's shotgun.
“We're going in,” I said, drawing the Colt and checking the chamber. Six shots, specially crafted bullets that could drop even the most powerful demons. Not enough, but it would have to do.
Cade nodded, his expression hardening into the focused determination I'd come to rely on. Whatever personal demons he was fighting—quite literally, in his case—he was pushing them aside for now. There would be time to unravel his complicated relationship with his own soul later. If we survived.
The massive wooden doors of the church were already partially broken, hanging precariously from rusted hinges. We pushed through into a scene straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
The inside of the church was a war zone. Pews were overturned or splintered, stained glass windows shattered to leave colorful shards across the stone floor. The altar had been desecrated, covered in symbols that made my eyes hurt to look at directly.
And in the center of it all, Sterling and Hawk stood back to back, surrounded by what had to be at least eight demons.
Sterling looked like hell warmed over. Blood matted his beard, and he was favoring his left leg heavily. But his eyes were clear and focused as he swung his enchanted axe in a wide arc, the blade leaving a trail of blue light as it separated a demon's head from its shoulders.
Hawk wasn't in much better shape. His face was a mess of cuts, and he moved with the careful precision of someone with at least one broken rib. His silver daggers flashed in the dim light as he parried a clawed strike from a particularly grotesque demon with horns sprouting from its forehead.
“Need a hand?” I called out, raising the Colt and firing two shots in quick succession. The first bullet caught a demon in the back of the skull, exiting through its forehead in a spray of black ichor. The second dropped another that had been lunging at Sterling's blind spot.
Sterling's head snapped up, relief flashing across his face before he covered it with his usual gruff demeanor. “Took you long enough,” he grunted, but the corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been the ghost of a smile.
The demons, momentarily startled by our arrival, recovered quickly and redirected their attack. Three broke off from the main group and charged toward us, their movements unnaturally fast, like stop-motion animation played at double speed.
Cade reacted first, the Heavenly Lash unfurling with a sound like electricity arcing through the air.
The golden whip caught the nearest demon around the throat, the energy flaring bright enough to cast stark shadows across the church interior.
The demon screeched as the lash tightened, its skin beginning to smoke and crackle with celestial fire.
Within seconds, the flames had consumed it from the inside out, leaving nothing but ash drifting to the stone floor.
I took care of the second demon, the Colt's hammer falling with a satisfying click as I put a bullet between its eyes. The third got past us both, claws extended toward my face, but Cassiel materialized beside it, his angel blade slicing through its abdomen with surgical precision.
But even as we dispatched these threats, more demons were pouring in through the broken windows and side doors. They moved with a kind of hive-mind coordination that sent chills down my spine.
“Where the feck are they all coming from?” Cade shouted over the chaos, his lash singing through the air to wrap around another demon's arm, severing it cleanly.
Hawk grimaced, wiping blood from his split lip as he drove a dagger up through a demon's jaw. “You really have to ask? This is what happens when you crack open a door to Hell!”
The accusation stung, but I couldn't argue with it.
Cade and I had opened the demon gate. We'd been manipulated into it, sure, but the consequences were the same.
These demons had been waiting, biding their time until Asmodeus called them to action.
And now they were here, and people were dying because of what we'd done.
I pushed the guilt aside, channeling it into action. The Colt barked twice more, each shot finding its mark, but I was running low on ammunition and the demons just kept coming. There had to be at least twenty of them now, circling us like wolves around wounded prey.
“We need to get to the altar,” Sterling called, his voice rough with exertion. “That's where the seal is.”
“Easier said than done,” I muttered, my gaze tracking the masses of demons between us and our goal.
Suddenly Cassiel appeared in the center of the church, his blade dripping with black demon ichor. In his hand was a small, pulsing object about the size of a fist. It glowed with an unearthly red light, veins of darkness spreading across its surface like cracks in glass.
The Heart. The final seal.
He tossed it up once, catching it effortlessly, his expression grim. “We need to end this before Asmodeus shows up.”
I turned to him, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I struggled to hold back the tide of demons with an increasingly empty gun. “Can you do what you did at Purgatory? That light show?”
Cassiel's expression darkened. “No. That took too much from me. I won't be able to do it again so soon.”
“Fantastic,” I growled, ducking as a demon hurled a broken piece of pew at my head. “Any other bright ideas?”
The battle was chaos, pure and simple. We fought with everything we had, but it was like trying to stem a flood with a handful of sand. For every demon we cut down, two more seemed to take its place.
Cade and I fought side by side, our movements synchronized. He'd clear a path with the Lash, and I'd pick off any stragglers. It was a dance we'd perfected, but even the best choreography fails when the stage is overrun.
Sterling was bleeding heavily from a gash along his side, his movements growing sluggish despite his stubborn determination.
Hawk was barely standing, using the wall for support as he continued to throw daggers with unerring accuracy.
Even I was running on fumes, the Colt's hammer falling on empty chambers more often than not.
Cassiel stood in the center of it all, the Heart clutched in one hand, his blade in the other, but we had no clear way to protect the seal from Asmodeus. We needed to get it somewhere safe, but the church was crawling with demons.
“We need to get out of here,” I shouted to Cade, who was using the Lash to hold back three demons at once. “Regroup, come up with a plan.”
“No time,” he grunted, his face slick with sweat and blood.
He was right, damn him. We were trapped in an impossible situation, outgunned and outnumbered, with the fate of the world literally in our hands.
And then, suddenly, everything changed.
The air in the church went still, so abruptly it was like someone had flipped a switch. The demons froze mid-attack, their expressions shifting from bloodlust to something that looked disconcertingly like reverence.
The temperature spiked—not like fire, which at least was a familiar kind of heat. This was deeper, wronger, like standing too close to a reactor core. It crawled under my skin and settled in my bones, making my teeth ache and my vision blur.
“Oh no,” Sterling whispered, his face draining of what little color it had left.
I felt it before I saw him. A pressure at the base of my skull, a weight in the air that made it hard to breathe. Power, ancient and terrible, pressing down on reality itself.
The massive doors of the church creaked open on their own, revealing a tall figure silhouetted against the moonlight. He stepped inside with the casual grace of a predator that knows its territory, that fears nothing because nothing can touch it.
Asmodeus.
The demons instantly knelt, bowing their heads in submission. The gesture was so unanimous, so immediate, it was clear they had no choice in the matter. Their loyalty wasn't earned; it was compelled.
A slow, satisfied smirk crossed Asmodeus's perfect lips as his gaze swept over the scene—the destroyed church, the kneeling demons, the five of us standing bloodied but defiant.
And then his eyes landed on Cade.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45 (Reading here)
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52