The Angel Express Subspace Depot - 10:58 AM

  Since the Angel Express was our guildhall, I had a lot of power over what Patrons could see when they looked in on us. Many of the areas were locked down. They couldn’t see into everyone’s private rooms without permission, for instance, but they could see everything that went on in the public areas.

  If the Patron didn’t have ties to Sol Ligatus, then they could see even less. There were two areas they could look into. The first was the Subspace Depot where I had put down a few picnic tables that the guild members could use if they wanted to hang out there for whatever reason. The other was the workshop car so they could watch Ash do her magic.

  Hopefully, that would eventually land her a big fish, but so far they’ve all been small fries. Today hadn’t been any better when it came to Patrons asking to sponsor her. Marishiten had done well by grabbing Grandmother Hearth’s attention for Bethany, but the Monstersmith was still solo for the time being.

  Just out of the Patron’s sight, roughly thirty feet from the picnic table areas, was the food truck for Tail-Gators Gator Tails. It was painted to look like a swamp and came with a manhole cover directly behind it. I wasn’t sure how the Dealer managed to finagle his way into the Emperor’s Ascent, but it didn’t surprise me.

  I Lifted the manhole cover and floated down, ignoring the ladder. Despite being based on a sewer, everything was incredibly clean to the point where I could still smell the chemicals used to sanitize the area. Landing on the welcome mat, I knocked on the door.

  It opened on its own, revealing a white room with a round table and three chairs, two of which would fit the Dealer’s anatomy. The fact that he needed two was immediately strange to me, not that I could ask him about it now. This wasn’t the same place I had visited before with the couch and the cabinets on the wall. There were no other doors other than the one I was looking through.

  Shrugging, I walked in. “Can you still see me?” I whispered as the door closed behind me.

  <<<>>>

  [[Patron Message]]

  I can still see and hear you. The room you’re in is designed to stop fights from breaking out. It’s impressively overdone, actually. Either the Dealer is expecting you to go back on your word that this will be a peaceful meeting or he’s overly paranoid and this is his fall back point if he ever got raided.

  All I have for you is a warning to be on your best behavior. I’m not going to bother giving you a quest because I’m not sure how this is going to go and I don’t want to waste a potential reward.

  It goes against everything I stand for, but good luck, Ant.

  <<<>>>

  I nodded as I took a seat. There was no way I was going to blame Sara for not dropping a mission. I had been on a winning streak when it came to Patron quests, and I wasn’t about to jeopardize that. Especially because, while she didn’t say it outright, I was pretty sure that any quest coming from her that had anything to do with Jeremiah would involve killing him instead of negotiating.

  He was Demonic, after all, which made him something altogether and entirely blasphemous.

  Before I could think about it for too long, the door opened to reveal the bipedal alligator known as the Dealer. He pulled his glasses off of his snout as he looked down at me so he could wipe them against the button up shirt he had under his overalls, and then put them back on.

  “Glad to see you’re punctual,” he greeted.

  “I know how much you hate it when people are late,” I replied.

  “Yeah, well, I’m glad you didn’t decide to chicken out at the last second,” he chuckled as he walked in. “Jeremiah here nearly got cold feet.”

  My eyes focused on the shadow beyond the door as it took a step in, and I blinked in surprise.

  Even though he was a Demon, Jeremiah hadn’t looked like it when we had our confrontation back in Pittsburgh. He had been unusually pale, but other than that he looked like a regular guy. Forgettable, even. That had absolutely changed.

  His skin was pasty white enough to see his blood vessels through it. One of his eyes was now a swirl of red and yellow. He wasn’t sweating or anything to indicate that he was sick, so I assumed this was just his new norm. A horn and a half was growing out of his short, black hair. On the left side it jutted out and upwards to end in a spiral while the one on the right was still a small nub. His tail, made of several spheres attached to each other with a sniper rifle at the end, loomed over his shoulder like a scorpion ready to strike.

  The firearm was pointed directly at me, but I could tell through my awareness aura that it wasn’t loaded so I didn’t respond to the threat despite the powerful feeling that I had to. Demonic energy roiled off of him and my Angelic side tried to respond in kind. I wasn’t about to let it get the best of me, and I took a breath. It was a good thing that I could control myself around his kind these days, which was a stark contrast to when I first met Pustibule.

  There was something that had to be challenged, however.

  “Pustibule didn’t plant a bomb inside of you,” I accused with a frown, looking the sniper up and down. His aura was free of any such explosives, spiritual or otherwise. Whatever he had used to block my senses before no longer appeared to be working.

  “That lie stopped you from killing me,” he drawled. His sentences were as clipped as ever.

  “Come on now. Take a seat, Jeremiah,” the Dealer ordered, gesturing as he sat in the chair in a way where his tail would slide into a hole in the back first.

  I picked up from context that the sniper could no longer retract his tail or doing so was painful for him. He stalked forward, clearly on eggshells, and took the last seat. The sniper rifle remained trained on me even as the door closed on its own.

  “Now, I don’t have to remind you that this meeting was only made possible because Anthony said he would not take revenge on you for hearing him out, Jeremiah,” the Dealer told the Demon before turning to me. “Regardless of promises made, I have spared no expense in making this room a place so safe that not even you could run amok. Believe me when I say that any clear and violent actions will be met with resistance that is both excessive and, if I may brag, impressive.”

  I raised my hands. Perhaps a little too quickly because Jeremiah flinched at the action. “I was the one who invited him to talk, so trust me when I say I have no plans for violence even if he rejects me outright.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Jeremiah’s eyes flashed away from me to look at something that appeared directly in front of him, and his body relaxed a little bit. “Good.”

  That told me a few things, but it was always good to confirm. “You have a lie detection skill, don’t you?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

  He tensed again before nodding. “Yes. It felt like a good acquisition to make before this meeting.”

  The Dealer’s smirk oozed satisfaction, and I wondered how much Jeremiah had to pay him for that particular skill book. Nodding, I decided it didn’t matter. If anything, that made my job much easier.

  “Here’s the deal, Jeremiah,” I said, leaning forward. “I need someone with Demonic blood to help me out for a big event I have planned sometime in the next month or so. You were the first person to come to mind. Not because I can’t find other people who have been tainted by the powers of Hell, but because you were not only the pawn of a Demon Lord, you also felt bad about what Pustibule was going to do to Pittsburgh. That tells me that you still have some humanity left in you.”

  Frowning, Jeremiah’s eyes flicked to the Dealer for a moment before he crossed his arms. “I said back then that killing you was acceptable. I still don’t like the idea of wiping out a city.”

  “Nor should you. That’s a gruesome task fit for sociopaths and Demonic entities,” I replied.

  He chewed the inside of his cheek. “How did you kill Pustibule?”

  “You knew that he was the Demon Lord of Invention, right?” I asked in return. When he nodded, I continued. “Well, I didn't. I teleported what I thought was Pustibule to the nearest gate to Hell and killed him there. As an Angel, I have certain abilities when I’m in the Demonic homeland. One of them is to get stronger with every one of those bastards I put down there. I put down a bunch of pawns before I got to Pustibule. Sadly, it’s a skill that only works in Hell, so I can’t use it here on Earth.”

  “You wouldn’t need me if you could,” he guessed.

  I nodded. “You’re right about that, but neither would I have cared to chase you down.”

  Jeremiah frowned in surprise, apparently not expecting that to be a truthful statement. “Not even after I shot that girl?”

  “Jamie?” I asked, chuckling. “Oh, no. We had a race change item on hand. It was in the form of an egg we were going to hatch so you definitely gunked up my plans, but she’s a Half-Dragon now. I made sure there were clear instructions on when to make the transformation in case I couldn’t find a cure or whatever in time. She’ll probably still return the favor if she ever meets you, but otherwise she’s very happy with her reptilian side.”

  “Huh,” he replied. “Not what I expected.”

  “The world’s a strange place, Jeremiah,” I said with a shrug. “But I really wasn’t kidding. If she sees you and knows you shot her, she is the vindictive type that will etch your name on a bullet and deliver it without a hint of remorse.

  “Duly noted,” he replied. “She’s not the topic of conversation, though. What do you need a Demon for?”

  Taking a breath, I leaned back in my chair. “You know what’s happened to Washington D.C., right?”

  Jeremiah nodded. “Pustibule called all the Demons stuck in the barrier short-sighted fools. He thought his way was better, but every one that’s in there still retains their full power. They’ve been preparing for war since the beginning.”

  “That’s right,” I confirmed. “There’s a lot of intel pointing towards a war between the Demonic army and the Angelic one that’s gathered in Ottawa. It’s going to be big, brutal, and promises to spill out all over the place. If you were worried about just the city of Pittsburgh getting caught up in Pustibule’s plot, then know this is so much bigger.”

  “I see,” he said, lowering his head in thought. “It definitely sounds concerning.”

  “Not just sounds concerning, it is concerning,” I corrected. “But, the Dealer and I have come up with a plan to stop it cold. The problem is, we need a Demon we can trust. Like I said, I could coerce someone into doing something, but that would take a lot of time and effort I don’t want to expend. You already know who I am, what I’m capable of, and what I’m willing to do for the sake of mankind. I know you didn’t care for being under Pustibule’s command like you were, but you still found a way to help me while skirting around your fealty to him.”

  “It just didn’t feel right,” Jeremiah said firmly, setting his jaw. “What are the details of the job?”

  “That, I can’t answer until you sign a contract,” I told him with a thin smile.

  When he furrowed his brow again, the Dealer stepped in. “What we’re planning is such a big event that there’s no doubt the administrators will try to stop us the moment they see us coming,” he explained. “What you know now is already a lot, but not enough to thwart us. I have a System Contract already written up that says you won’t be able to go out and sabotage us.”

  “System Contract?” he asked, clearly confused.

  “Exactly what it says on the tin,” I answered. “It’s a binding agreement that the system itself upholds. It won’t hurt you, but it will stop you from saying things to the wrong people or acting in a way that hinders our plan. I’m assuming the Dealer’s been buying them in bulk.”

  “I sure have needed a lot thanks to you, haven’t I?” he laughed, giving me a wink.

  “You have to know I won’t just sign a contract like that without information,” Jeremiah said, frowning.

  “That is a fair assumption to make, yes,” I agreed. “To be honest, I was hoping that you would agree to it since it would save millions of American and Canadian lives by stopping a war between the forces of absolute good and evil.”

  “War’s already all around us, Anthony,” he snorted. “Stopping one scenario just means another will take its place.”

  “So it does,” I sighed as I rubbed my jaw. “Here’s the big prize; if you help us out, then I’ll help you purify yourself from your Demonic side.”

  For the first time, the Shadow Sniper sat up straight. “You know a way?”

  “Before you get your hopes up, it’s not a sure thing,” I quickly told him. “There’s three methods. The first’s rather straightforward and only requires me to pick up an item that, frankly, will add a day or so to my expected travel time. I’ll just need to make sure we have enough gold leftover from Pittsburgh for Ash to make the container. The other method, which is less reliable but will probably be the path you have to take, depends completely on you and what you still have in your heart. Will helping me break up Earth’s biggest Demon infestation help with that? I don’t know, I really don’t, but it couldn’t hurt. The last requires sweet talking a witch and letting her eat you.”

  Jeremiah stared at me for a few moments as he processed that. “The system says you’re not lying. That doesn’t stop you from sounding like you’re lying.”

  I shrugged. “It’s old, old folklore, man. I don’t make the rules, I just know about it. On the plus side, you’re healed when she spits you out.”

  When the sniper looked at the Dealer, he shrugged as well. “I don’t know what he’s talking about either, but if the system says it’s true then that’s that, Jeremiah.”

  “Fine,” he exhaled. For the first time, the sniper rifle embedded in his tail moved away from me and was now pointing towards the ceiling. “Whatever it takes to stop being this… thing I’ve become. I’m tired of having to hide myself. My form is breaking down. I’m in constant pain. Looking like a person is the only thing I miss about Pustibule.”

  Not trusting myself to say something nice about that, I nodded to the Dealer. “Contract, then?”

  “I’ll sign it,” Jeremiah agreed as the treasure hunter pulled it from his overall pockets. He frowned at the blank paper before he was handed a pair of glasses that let him read it, and then did so slowly.

  I sighed in relief when he actually signed the damn thing. He had said he would, but now it was over. The Dealer plucked it from the table, rolled it up, and shoved it into his pocket.

  “Alright, so what are we doing?” Jeremiah asked.

  “The Dealer can give you the details, but the overall plan is to make things worse so they can get better,” I answered. “You get into the barrier with the materials to conduct a ritual that allows Washington D.C. to be turned into a little slice of Hell.”

  “I’ll provide you with most of the stuff,” the Dealer said. “But I’ll need you to help by getting others. You have about, say, three weeks but the sooner the better. The hunt will help you get stronger so the Demons inside take you seriously as well. Being attached to the Demon Lord of Invention should help, deceased or not.”

  Jeremiah nodded before pointing at me. “You want Hell on Earth so you can use that transformation and kill them all permanently.”

  I grinned. “You’re a smart dude, Jeremiah. Yes, that’s exactly it. Unfortunately, the Demon Lord of Potential has set up a base there. Now, we’re working on something big that’ll kill just about everything inside the barrier. Unfortunately, he’s going to survive.”

  “He’s really good at surviving,” the Dealer said. “Potential’s like a cockroach. Gotta make sure he’s dead or else he keeps coming back.”

  “Stronger, too.”

  “He is ‘of Potential,’ after all. It’s in the title.”

  “But that’s something for me to deal with, not you,” I told Jeremiah with a wave of my hand. “All you have to do is get them to conduct the ritual and, once it’s done, get out of there. The Dealer will help with that, too. You’re not going to want to stick around for my preemptive strike or that fight.”

  “Your strike?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Leaning forward, I pressed my fingers together. In the moment, I may or may not have Lifted my Glasses of the Messenger of Peace so that the light caught them just right to give a sense of drama. My grin had a savage quality to it.

  “Oh, young Jeremiah,” I whispered menacingly. “Let me tell you about the Hellbreaker, the holy bomb I plan on using for extreme pest control.”