Beatrice watches as Myra does an acrobatic handplant, suspends for a second, turns to look at her one last time, and then is snatched into the Hell-Gate’s opening maw. A part of me goes with you, Beatrice thinks. But she knows it’s more. She’s sending her only daughter into Hell — with zero knowledge of the secret plan they have to break her out. Only trust and Myra’s self-made Mirror Specter guide set to awaken when she enters Hell. It seems a thin assurance to her now, but the guide, a little ghost of a hitch-hiker riding down into Hell on Myra’s wisp, is packed with helpful intel. Preset to give Myra just the amount of information she needs. To help keep Myra alive and on plan as she ventures through the most vicious of worlds. It’s all part of their bold strategy. Maybe too bold. A seriously risky plan Beatrice dares not even think of now lest the stray memory be caught up by a sensitive listener.

In front of her, the ridiculous Ivan Volkov still sits on his golden toilet. His face in blank shock at her shout to the Pride-Eaters. They’re invisible to him, for now. But given how much sin they’d already slurped from Volkov, his blissful ignorance wouldn’t last long. Better now for him to know early so he has a chance to understand. Not that it’s likely to do much good. Volkov is probably a lost cause. Probably. But she’d been surprised before.

“Una!” she shouts, gathering the power of her curses. She rushes forward, making the bound across the marble in two leaps. She spins in mid-air between two demons lifting their claws to attack. They have semi-form here. A hit from any one of those wicked claws could be lethal. Hunger ignites in their eyes as she channels the curse energy to the tip of her blade. It gleams – starlike – then she slams the rapier tip flatwise onto Volkov’s forehead. The curse energy transfers into him with a white-hot flare.

Ivan can see the demons now. His shock turns to frenzy. He stands up, tries to run, but is tripped up by his pants. He falls face first in front of the bidet, cracking his elbow on its golden rim. He howls in pain. The place where she channeled Una into his forehead is an angry red. That’s going to bruise. She’s holding the curse in place for him. He has no mage talent as such. But his demon energy is strong and it grasps the curse hard in its jaws. He’s muttering now as one of the demons bends its head down – ethereal spittle dropping on Volkov. “Red… red…” he stammers as he notices the wisp energy wafting off him. He looks at Beatrice. “What did you do to me!!” He shouts as he crawls away, whimpering, from the Pride Eaters. He has apparently forgotten his pants. They are down around his ankles.

Mori springs into motion. Racking the slide on his over-grown rifle, he sights in on the first Pride Eater. The weapon erupts in a hail of blue-white bullets. Its ammunition is heaven-blessed curse energy. Macto curses. The bullets rip through one of the Pride Eaters. Great holes appear in its form. These grow larger as it looks down at itself in shock. It charges toward Mori. But the rapidly growing holes consume its form in a bright flash of falling sparks after just three steps.

The second Pride Eater leaps for Beatrice. She sees its enormous claws tearing toward her as she rises from her lunging curse delivery to Ivan’s forehead. She’s over-extended, so her best move is to spin away. She does a barrel-roll in mid-air as she avoids a series of vicious slashes – then nimbly lands on one grey-booted foot as the other points back behind her. The rapier tip shoots forward like a comet.

“Ivan!” she shouts. “You’ve endangered your soul! These demons hunger for your hubris!” Ivan’s face melts into panicked disbelief. Yes, Ivan, the monsters in your closet really do exist. Her riposte strikes one of the Pride-Eater’s clawed hands. It ripples with white light. Sparks flow from it. Then the hand – claws and everything – bursts into red mist. The Pride Eater pauses in surprise. Serious error. Mori sights in on the thing’s head. A brief trigger-squeeze and another blue-white bullet erupts from the rifle’s barrel, its flash casting shadows across Mori’s angular face. The bullet makes a perfect, purple-rimmed circle in the hollow near the demon’s cavernous nose. The hole spools outward in a widening spiral of sparks like one of those Fourth of July spinners. Now headless and handless, the demon falls. It twitches once, then explodes in a red-spark outburst. The sparks arc through the air like a flower of flares.

“Shit!” Mori shouts.

Beatrice turns her head. The third Pride-Eater has caught up to Ivan. He is raving in Russian, then switches to English as the demon sinks an ethereal claw into him.

“Not this soul. Protected! Was baptized! Was baptized!!” His tone has turned to pleading. His eyes imploring to Beatrice – as if she were somehow both cause of his current trouble and source of possible mercy.

Unfortunately for Ivan, he is not protected. Not in the least. To the contrary, he summoned these demons. His Earth-wrecking work at Furze Bank culminating in self-deifying daily dumps from the golden toilet on top of Berlin drew them the way road kill draws carrion birds. Pride Eaters. Some of Asmodeus’s favorite nasty errand boys. These were the things that came to Ivan. Day after day after day. Over time, one of these nasties had managed to spin a spirit tether between it and Ivan. A demon’s dog chain for his hubris hound. Beatrice can see it as a trailing lead of red mist rising from Ivan. The wound he now suffers would typically be lethal in a variety of ways. But for the spirit tether, instant heart attack, aneurism, hemorrhage… any number of things all resulting in death untraceable to its demonic source would have befallen him. But for poor, tethered Ivan, the effects of such a wound can be at once less final and more horrific. A Pride Eater’s long claws are very useful for gouging away a wisp’s protective coating, for developing its tether, and for using that tether to invade the wisp — possessing body, mind, and spirit. Of course, the natural protection over Ivan’s wisp was already greatly weakened by his own harmful thoughts and acts long before the demons arrived. The Pride Eater just came in, like a vulture swooping down on a dying creature, to finish the job.

“Baptized…” he wheezes pitifully as the impossibly long claw sinks deeper, questing beneath Ivan’s flesh. Then the demon possession takes hold. The Pride-Eater shimmers. Beatrice is bounding toward it, lashing out with her rapier. Mori is swinging his rifle around, drawing a bead. Sword and bullet strike toward the demon in unison. The Pride-Eater flickers, wriggling as if suddenly consumed by thousands of worms, then shoots into Ivan’s body. The mages’ weapons meet only the air where it once stood over Ivan.

“Oh, holy Hell!” Mori curses again. His weapon’s magazine is empty. With practiced motion, he ejects, pulls another blue magazine from his pocket, inserts it into the chamber, and pulls back the charging handle.

Ivan is writhing on the ground. His body is now flickering, bulging, growing larger. There is a sickening crackle as muscles and bones rearrange. A fur like thousands of black metal hair-pins shoot out of his flesh. His jaws elongate. Great teeth sprout and grow pointed. His eyes yellow. Four limbs become four legs. A row of larger, wicked and barbed spines emerges from his back. A tail sprouts from his rear. The tail’s end is tipped in barbs. At the shoulder he is now easily five feet tall. From tip of nose to tip of tail – 15 feet. He’s transformed into some horrific mash-up of wolf, demon, porcupine and stegosaurus all rolled up together.

He lifts his maw and lets forth a great howl. The sound echoes through worlds. It spirals down into the Hell Gate. It crosses the darkness and enters the Arch of Time. Into the wastes of Infernia where Myra is now just beginning to get her bearings it roars, out beyond the terrifying metal madness that is Mechanum it clangors, through the battles now raging in Avernum it explodes, past the terrible slave prisons of Carcerus it keens, and echoing at last across the great spires of Asmodeus’s impenetrable fortress Invicti on the shores of the burning purple ocean of Hell it wails. Somewhere, in that great black fortress, a Curse Rider hears the call of Ivan the Wolf, puts on his wide-brimmed black hat, and begins to make his way down to Asmodeus’s stables in search of his Nightmare. For at Ivan’s possessed summons a new Curse Hunt is begun. The Curse Hunt for Beatrice and Mori.

Beatrice feels shivers over her body at the sound. She knows the howl entered the Gate. She knows in her gut – this is a summons. She knows half of Furze Bank HQ must have heard it as well. For Ivan was now a hybrid demon-human. Not just a mere possession. But a full-on transformation only the likes of the Pride Eaters could bring out. He exists both as ethereal – which is that shadow realm the demons typically inhabit on Earth – and as corpus. Live and in the flesh.

“He just rang one hell of an alarm bell,” Mori says, sighting in on Ivan the Wolf. “You handle the exorcism curse!”

Beatrice points her blade at the massive demon-wolf. It is lowering its head, still getting its bearings, still becoming accustomed to its new form. They have time yet. Mere moments. But it should be enough. The transformation hasn’t fully taken hold.

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica protestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii!” She incants as she points her sword blade at the wolf demon. A kind of bow shock of light has formed in front of her sword.

“Una!” Mori shouts and the bow shock extends to his rifle.

Ivan the wolf lowers his head and growls. It is not like a normal wolf growl. This comes out more like a grating growl-cough. 

“Omnis legio, omnis congregation et secta diabolica!” Beatrice continues as the bow shock grows brighter.

Outside the chamber of the golden toilet there is shouting and the pounding of feet. Guards are at the outer door. Ivan takes an awkward step forward. There is terrible power in those muscles. He doesn’t know how to use them just yet. He crouches to pounce, but his legs splay too wide on the slick marble flooring.

“Ergo draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica ADJURAMUS TE!” Beatrice finishes. Together, her weapon and Mori’s phase fully into the ethereal realm. They will target the demonic part of Ivan with this abjuration’s full force. Its bow shock is now extreme. A bright light that briefly turns the Furze Bank HQ executive water closet into a light house tower. Beatrice lunges forward, Mori shoots, the still awkward demon wolf as Ivan lashes out with iron-fanged jaws. Sword and bullet strike the beast carrying with them their bow shocks of light. Ivan’s fangs clamp down on Beatrice’s leg. The exorcism rocks through Ivan’s body. It evaporates all demonic flesh it touches – leaving only human flesh behind. The Pride Eater is excised. Nothing of it remains. Ivan shrinks back to his original shape and stature. He is completely naked. All his clothes are in shreds on the floor. Beatrice cries out in pain – looking down at her leg-wound oozing blood and poison.

“Einfach! Halt!” The guards have kicked the frosted doors open and are drawing their pistols.

“Time to go!” Mori shouts. He grabs Ivan with one arm. Beatrice follows, but has to limp as searing pain shoots up her leg. Mori levels his gun at the globular glass window, waits one more second for the exorcism curse to fully fall away, and fires. The far larger than normal bullets riddle it with enormous holes. It swiftly loses integrity and showers down, filling the room with shards. Permanent curses, woven into their clothing, protect them from the sharp, though mundane rain. The guards, however, are not quite so lucky. They flinch, cover their heads, and slip back down the stair for protection.

Ivan is shaking, incoherent, covered in little nicks from the glass. An ugly black scar has formed where the Pride Eater entered him. He is yammering Russian, English, and occasionally tries to howl. Beatrice takes his other arm as she and Mori run to the edge of the tower. Dropping all other curses, they jump off while yelling the “Pluma!” curse together and then “Una” as Ivan starts to fall faster. The shared curse energy causes them to descend at a gradual if still gut-wrenching pace. It’s like a fast lift down.

“Well, you wanted to get Asmodeus’s attention. To draw it away from Myra. I think we did that in spades.” Mori says with a cynical half-smile as they glide toward the street with Ivan between them.

“Grand spades,” Beatrice replies. “That howl rang all through Hell and into half of Berlin. Who would’ve expected Ivan here was so far gone? I thought if we convinced him to come with us after seeing the demons, he might take us up.”

Mori gives his crow-cackle laugh. “You think he’d be scared into doing what’s right? Hah! No plan survives contact with the enemy.” He shifts his gaze to her leg. “That looks bad.”

Beatrice nods. “It is. Some of his venom got me. We need a healer.” She can feel it burning in her veins. Her head is already starting to grow heavy. The outer borders of her vision blurring.

They land on the pavement. Beatrice stumbles. A few onlookers watch them in stunned surprise. One points at Ivan. In the distance, sirens begin to blare. Far above, flashlights are gleaming through the wreckage that was once the Furze Bank HQ executive water closet. Ivan suddenly seems to realize his surroundings and covers his private parts while making a scrunched-up expression of embarrassment. Mori throws his leather jacket over the Russian after transferring his ammo to his jeans pockets. He’s light on it anyway. The jacket is rather long and Ivan is rather short. The combination results in a modicum of modesty – even if Ivan does look like he’s wearing a high-cut onesie.

“I’d call this a serious wardrobe improvement,” Mori says, cuffing the still confused Ivan on the shoulder. “Man, pink is definitely not your color.”

Beatrice swoons a little as her vision darkens for a second. She’s not in the laughing mood. That look on Myra’s face is still stuck in her head. A piece of her is still with Myra down in that hell. She looks to her leg. “Left a piece of Hell in me too,” she says, imagining it’s pretty incoherent, but not caring. “Let’s get moving before you have two invalids to deal with,” she says lifting her head to Mori. It takes far too much effort.

“Well, it’s a good thing we know a healer, isn’t it?” Mori replies. “Come on. It’s off to Marienkirche to see our old friend Sadie. Glad we had a back-up plan.”

(Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)

(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)