From Delusion Lead Me to Truth

by prairiecrow

Summary:

Alastor is ready to make his Last Stand one to be remembered for all Eternity -- but he doesn't count on the depth or the persistence of Charlie's love.

Chapter 1: 'Cause You're a Dead Man Walking

On the black marble mantlepiece in Seviathan von Eldrich’s darkened bedroom, an elaborate porcelain clock in shades of dark blue and gold loudly ticked down the minutes to supper being brought up from the kitchens. There was no reason he couldn’t eat with the rest of his family currently residing in the mansion: he was simply in the middle of a huge fit of pique, and painfully aware (in more ways than one) of the deep tooth marks carved into his right forearm. He had no desire to let himself in for sharp words from his sister Helsa — or worse yet, from his mother Bethesda. 

By now, word of his embarassing failure had spread through the dim corners of Eldrich Manor like wildfire — and doubtless even further afield, to the sensors of the TV Demon, Vox.

It might even be enough for Vox to kick him to the curb, considering the stakes involved in Vox’s planned side-attack on the Hazbin Hotel, for which Seviathan had been tagged in either a show of confidence or an opportunity to bring the self-important von Eldrich family down a peg or two.

Liola, the plant-based demon teleporter who had taken part in Seviathan’s utterly bungled attempt to kidnap Princess Charlie of the Royal Family of Hell, had told their elite “friend” only a single truth in all their months of association: namely, that they were a teleporter born to the House of Sywrath. Everything else, from their status as a graduate of Misketonic University right down to their loyalty to the House of von Eldrich, was either a bending of the truth or an outright lie. 

And why shouldn’t they employ falsehooods? Lucifer was paying them far more than the “glory by association” that was all Seviathan boastfully offered — and besides, at least Lucifer had a working brain in his head. Seviathan, as anyone close to him knew, was an ego-inflated jock, a demon who nursed slights (both real and imagined) as if they were the children of his heart. 

And he was ridiculously easy to fool. Anyone else would likely have realized that Liola couldn’t possibly have been a student of the same instructors at M.U., yet miraculously never been seen by either Seviathan or his associates at the time. And any scion of an elite family should have known enough to do intensive background checks on anybody seeking to enter their current circle of “friends”; all Seviathan had done was assume that Liola, like everyone else around him, couldn’t wait to be accepted by someone so clearly on the upward path to success. 

Look at him now, Liola mused, standing in front of Seviathan’s desk in an attitude of attentive patience worthy of a loyal bodyguard. He has no idea that one of Alastor’s Shadows is lurking on the ceiling right above him. It could drop down on him like a panther and rip off his head in an instant...

... but Liola suspected that it would do no such thing. Alastor was in an increasingly tight corner and also keeping an eye on anything that threatened his friend, Charlie Magne. Killing Seviathan would accomplish nothing: Vox would likely just appoint someone actually competent in his place, and the last thing Alastor probably wanted was to increase the already staggering odds against the Hazbin Hotel coming out of this situation in one piece.

Seviathan was currently glowering at the cigar clenched between thumb and fingers of his left hand — normally it would have been in his right hand, but his right forearm was wrapped up in a sling, recovering from the dire and venomous bite of a Shadow Deer. Yet more proof, if any was needed, of his thoughtlessness: to lay hands on the paramour of the Radio Demon when one of his avatars was close enough to strike went well beyond mere ignorance.

Calmly, Liolo offered the Greater Shadow a slight nod, one spy to another. It uttered a subliminal growl, it’s bright blue smile curling more tightly at the corners. 

It could have killed Liola, too — but even a demon of Alastor’s astronomical power levels treaded carefully around the servants of the King of Hell. So it shifted its long black limbs ever so slightly and dug its ebony claws a little deeper into the wooden beams, and went back to scanning the room below, patiently waiting for something to happen. 

Liolo whistled softly deep in their throat. They had been stationed at the Citadel for a brief period a few years ago, portraying themselves as a gardener — and given the choice between Alastor’s domain and Eldrich Manor, they would have chosen the Citadel every time. In life Alastor had been dark of skin, the descendent of slaves, and consequently he had very strong opinions about treating his minions fairly and not wielding his power over them to the point of excessive cruelty. His lowliest servant — a temporary gardener, for instance — ate better and more frequently than Liolo, a friend of the family scion, had ever eaten at the Manor. 

They could still taste the mashed tubers and Hellbeef roast, rich with herb flavours and covered with creamy gravy. Granted, knowing Alastor’s culinary habits it might not have actually been cattle meat, but Liolo could guess that one’s sensitivity to cannibalism faded the longer that one abided in the house of the Radio Demon.

Their ruminations were interrupted by a harsh cough of static from the TV opposite Seviathan’s desk, across the bed on the other end of the room. Liolo did their level best to become invisible. If Seviathan sent them away, they couldn’t exactly hang about listening at the keyhole — not with von Eldrich servants hastening through the corridors at unexpected times. They would have to prompt Seviathan with leading questions later, an uncertain tactic given the scion’s tendency to erupt with impatience if he felt like he was being pressed. 

But Seviathan’s green-grey face was split by a lime-green grin of clear pomposity. Taking his cigar with him, he got to his feet and swaggered right past Liolo, heading over to stand in front of the wide-screen TV. Liolo deliberately didn’t move, not even to turn around.

Overhead, the Shadow crouched closer to the ceiling and seemed to melt, its pitch blackness spreading to fade into the dark upper corners of the room. 

“I trust you have good news for me,” Vox said. His voice was flat and harsh, klanging without any attempt whatsoever at melody or nuance.

“I sure do!” Seviathan’s smug smile was clear to be heard. “Father has approved the use of the family troops — three hundred and seventy-five more fighters!”

“And that’s all you could get?”

A pause. When he spoke, Seviathan sounded sullen: “I thought you’d be pleased to get nearly four hundred more —”

“I’m already supplying over nine hundred,” Vox interrupted. “Don’t come to me with less than half of that and claim success!”

“Then why not field twice that much yourself?” Seviathan demanded.

Vox’s voice dropped to an even lower growl: “Because urban warfare, you little fool! This isn’t an open battlefield, where we have room to send soldiers against the target shoulder to shoulder — surely even you can recognize the difference?”

“So throw your biggest missile at them and just wipe them off the face of the map!”

“Don’t you think I would if it was possible?” Vox demanded. “That little bayou tramp has set up wards to repel missiles right back to their sender! As long as he’s alive, we can’t take that risk — and even after he’s dead, the wards will last a while longer if he’s set them up right!”

Seviathan audibly sneered: “Are you telling me that you can’t outthink the Radio Demon?”

“It’s not a question of outthinking him. He’s a primitive in a modern world — but even cavemen have some form of basic cunning. And my scryers tell me that he’s bringing in his own troops to defend the Hotel: a mere sixty-seven Brigade members. I expect you to chew them up and spit them out in the first thirty minutes — then it’ll just be a question of starving out whoever remains, or waiting until the wards drop and swarming over them like hornets.”

“If we take any prisoners —”

“Don’t,” Vox said flatly. “I want everybody six feet under: names on tombstones, if they’re recognizable enough after you’re through with them. Slaughter them, torture them — I don’t care what you do, just erase them!  

“What about the Princess?”

The note of grim satisfaction in Vox’s next words made even Liolo’s cold heart feel a new chill: “Oh, leave the Princess for me. I have a very special punishment planned for her Highness, and her Father has given me permission to be... highly inventive, as well as broadcasting it to all of Hell.”

A knock on the door interrupted whatever Seviathan had been about to say next. “Liolo!” he snapped. “Tell them to go away — and follow them down to the kitchen! Mister Vox and I have some private matters to discuss.”

“Yes, Grand Scion,” Liolo replied respectfully, and did as they were bidden. 

They’d heard enough to take back to Lucifer.

And as for the Shadow on the ceiling... the less guessed about that, the better.

Chapter 2: Towers of Gold Are Still Too Little

Notes:

“Signy Mallory”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuizyjLPmBA

The second he heard Barrett’s baritone booming out in the plaza, Husk was already three-quarters of the way to deciding that the Hotel check-in desk/bar could get bent. Niffty sat there on the edge of the counter, her mouth hanging open — and when Charlie and Vaggie booked their way across the lobby and out the door, Husk’s “fuck it all” meter hit the DING! point. 

Deliberately ignoring Vaggie’s order, he dropped the curtains on the bar, stuck up the “WE’RE CLOSED SO GO FUCK YOURSELF” handwritten sign he’d made, and headed for the front doors with Niffty bouncing along beside him. 

“That was Barrett!” she twittered. “From the Citadel! Gee, I wonder who else —?”

Husk half-opened the door to cautiously peek out —

— and heard Niffty softly squeal from somewhere in the vicinity of his hips.  

Because holy shit, something big was definitely going down. Barrett had called out a request for Yakeema, who was Miriam’s 2iC if Husk remembered right, to speak with the Hotel’s leader — and now the plaza near the Hotel was crowded with crates and boxes and barrels, with more coming in every second. Not to mention the fourth portal that had opened up to admit demons carrying what had to be personal effects, most of them gaping up at the Hotel before getting a shove from the people coming up behind them.

Speaking of which...

“Hey, Husky!” It was Angel, who had just come off one of the elevators — and he wasn’t alone. Husk winced: The idiots are already starting to rubberneck. “What’s goin’ on? An’ what’s all that singin’?”

“Don’t ask me,” Husk grunted: he was too busy scanning the mass of hurrying demons for people he knew.  

Angel stuck his head around the edge of the door right above Husk’s ears. Together they all heard Yakeema request sanctuary because the Citadel was under attack — or soon would be — by Vox and the Legions of Lucifer. A demon even smaller that Niffty was listening close behind them, and Husk could hear him conveying everything that was said to the increasing crowd of Hotel residents gathering in the lobby.

Whispers and moans started to percolate through the huddle of residents:

“What’s going on?”

“The Legions are coming here!”

“The Legions? Aw, crap! We’re all dead!”

“That’s not what she said! She said the Legions are following Al — and that he’s going to be somewhere else!”

“You haven’t seen them in action. I have. They don’t give quarter: their job is to cut everything in front of them to pieces.”

Someone started to sob. “Oh, f-fuck — we’ve gotta —”

“— gotta get outta —”

“— gotta —”

Husk heard footsteps starting to shuffle stealthily back towards the hallway leading to the kitchens, and growled loud enough to be heard in Precipice Heights: “Stay right the fuck where you are! We don’t do nothin’ until we’ve heard from Charlie!”

“Charlie?”

“You want to trust her?”

“She’ll probably want to serve the Legions cookies an’ warm —”

“Hey!” Angel turned his head and Husk knew he was glaring at the offenders. “Shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down! All of you!”

Barrett and his two fellow musicians were belting out a lively rendition of “Barrett’s Privateers”, a song that Barrett had written and performed in the Mortal Realm when he was still alive. 

“Or what?” someone sneered. “You’ll shoot us?”

“Damned straight I will!” Angel snapped back. “So you do exactly what Husky says and nobody gets hurt, capische?”

“He’s right,” a deep female voice called from the back of the crowd. It was Pepette, the skunk demoness, and the three Gladiator Sisters were probably right behind her. “Nobody move until we find out exactly what’s going on!”

“I’m on it,” Angel said, and slipped out the left front door to head in Charlie and Vaggie’s direction, where they stood against the Hotel’s front wall.

Scanning the crowd, Husk saw someone he definitely recognized: Corbeau, who worked in the Citadel kitchens. Many a long night had Husk spent trading whiskey shots with the crow demoness in the kitchen pantry, back when he’d been Al’s head bartender and favourite buttmonkey. Usually Grimgut was there too, sipping a glass of brandy right alongside them. 

Angel was asking the two girlfriends: “What the fuck is going on?”

“We’ve got company comin’ for dinner,” Husk quipped as he stepped out the door and waved the executive cook down. “Hey, Corbeau — long time no fuckin’ see! Kitchen’s this way!”

With Pepette and the Gladiator sisters keeping an eye on the growing lobby crowd, Husk threw himself into getting things moved into the Hotel kitchen. He’d done commissary duty in Nam so he was no stranger to finding places to put things at the last moment. The fact that many of the boxes weren’t labelled (except with a three-tined fork symbol) was a serious hiccup, but he shoved the mystery boxes and barrels into Conference Room 3 for later sorting. 

In the kitchen itself, Niffty was moving almost too fast to be seen. She’d broken out the back-up one hundred cup coffee urns, so there were now five of them perking away — and none too many, because some of the demons out in the plaza looked like they were on the verge of falling over from exhaustion. Husk saw to getting the extra folding tables up in the dining room, along with every chair he could find. Even before he finished, the civilians not involved in the move-in were already taking up space with their baggage, a lot of them gazing blearily into their coffee cups. Hotel waitresses moved in and out, refilling cups and delivering plates of Niffty’s special sugar cookies (the ones with chocolate chip smiley faces on top). 

One of Alastor’s minstrels, a rooster demon with a bright crest of feathers on his head and ass, showed up and walked between the close-packed tables, playing guitar and singing — lively folk music, something to help people stay awake. The silence under his every note was oppressive — not that Husk could blame anybody. The scuttlebutt he was picking up just from overheard conversations told him that the Citadel had been totally evacuated, because Alastor was going to lead the Legionnaires there and basically ambush them. 

Still... the numbers were staggering. 

Fourteen thousand Legionnaires? Jesus Christ on a fuckin’ stick, Al — really? I knew you had an ego the size of the Titanic, but still —!

You can’t be serious. It’s some kind of bait-and-switch!

But if it was, Husk couldn’t figure out how the con was supposed to work. 

Nor could Corbeau tell him much more along those lines, when he finally sat the crow demoness down a few hours later and plied her with strong coffee. What she could tell him was that a fake Mouthpiece of Lucifer had showed up and kidnapped Charlie, only to be exposed as a fraud when the real Mouthpiece showed up with an ultimatim from Lucifer: Alastor and Charlie had to part company forever within five days, and if they didn’t, the Legions would be sent to execute Alastor. 

Corbeau rubbed the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes closed, and sighed: “But of course that asshole Vox decided to jump the gun — three days instead of five. That’s why everybody’s running around like headless chickens.”

“But why here?” Husk pressed, absentmindedly accepting a full plate of cookies from a passing waitress. “We ain’t exactly built to be defensible, all of Al’s magical protections notwithstandin’.”

Corbeau promptly grabbed a cookie from the plate before Husk had even set it down, and devoured half of it in one bite. “Probably because some lower-level asshole named Sev-something has got a wild hair up his ass about the Hotel existing at all. He wants to take advantage of all the confusion to come down on you guys hard. Anything else, I’d just be guessing.”

Husk nodded. The minstrel was passing close by between the crowded tables, strumming a lively tune:

Captain Signy Mallory
Has no soul they say;
The captain of the Norway
Has a heart of frozen clay

And on the bridge of Norway
She throws men's lives like dice;
Captain Signy Mallory
Her eyes are fire and ice!

“One thing I learned in Nam,” Husk said, “is that confusion is pretty much the default. Especially when the higher-ups treat you like mushrooms.”

“Kept in the dark and fed a lot of bullshit!” Corbeau agreed, then shook her head. “Thank Satan I’m just kitchen staff — I probably won’t see a lot of fighting, unless Vox’s guys manage to breach the Hotel wards and get inside.”

Husk sipped his coffee and studied her over the rim. “You got any combat training?”

Corbeau snorted. “Huh! I can field a pretty mean frying pan, if that’s what you mean. And I took the basic ‘keep your thumb outside your fist when you punch” course. But up against someone with a gun... I’d be cold cuts for sure.”

Husk grunted, momentarily lost in thought. His sensitive ears had picked up a side conversation at another table behind him, and he’d cocked his right ear back to listen closely:

“... heard the Princess wants to follow him.”

“That’s crazy! The whole point of sending us here is to protect her!”

“She’s gotta find out where he is first.”

“D’uh! Yakeema said it herself: he’s luring Vox to the Citadel.”

“Yeah, but did she hear that part?”

“She won’t hear it from me, that’s for sure!”

“What if she asks you directly?”

“I’m gonna lie through my teeth, just like Alastor would! I’ll tell her that he’s at his hunting lodge in the Marshes of Cerne.”

“It’s not like she can get there anyway. She’s not a teleporter, or so I hear.”

“She’s probably got some in residence, though.”

“You and I both know it takes more than raw ability to pull that kind of shit under battle conditions. If the ‘porter ain’t trained for war, they’ll flinch on materialization and end up bouncing somewhere completely different.”

“Or right into the Void. That’ll end her trip real quick!”

Corbeau was speaking again: “Penny for your thoughts, Husk!”

Husk twitched both ears back to ‘face’ the cook. “Sorry. I’m afraid my thoughts ain’t worth a plug nickel right now.” He slowly rose to his feet, wincing as his back creaked and his cramped wings flicked half-open. Someone at the table beside him batted at the primary feathers that had almost whacked her in the face, and scowled. “We’ve gotta get the mattresses and cots outta the basement.”

Corbeau drank off half her coffee. “Where are you going to put them?”

He shrugged. “Ballroom 1, and if Vaggie doesn’t like it she can find someone else to organize the move-out.” He looked around the room and raised his voice: “Okay, people, listen up! We’ve gotta get beds set up, or you’ll all be sleepin’ on the floor tonight! So anybody who can lift a mattress, follow me!”

He threaded his way towards the exit, hearing snarls and grumbles all around him as Citadel personnel started to grudgingly rise from their seats. 

Husk paused, turned, and glared around the room. “Hotel residents, you too! The more people we’ve got, the faster we’ll get this done!”

He didn’t mind the resentful glares, because his job was to influence people, not make friends. 

Dale Carnegie would not have been proud, but Husk didn’t give two fucks about that, either. 

Chapter 3: Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

Summary:

“Jaques Cretien”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYJ6AygkR2Q

It was nearly 10 PM before the Citadel’s former inhabitants were finally somewhat settled — and in spite of increasing anxiety that time was running out fast, most of them crashed on their cot or floor mattress and were deep in physically exhausted sleep within a few minutes.

The Hotel residents didn’t find that sleep came so easily. At midnight about half of them were either huddled in the main lobby or gathered in the smaller lobbies on each residential floor, whispering their fears to each other or just sitting in a kind of paralyzed dread. 

Charlie couldn’t sleep either. She walked the halls with her brightest smile pasted on her face, trying to cheer people up, but for the most part her upbeat chatter fell on deaf ears and resentful glares followed her as she went on her way.

Frankly, she couldn’t blame them for being skeptical. Surely her own fear and uncertainty must be showing through cracks in her mask; and how could she convince them of something she didn’t fully believe herself?

Vaggie was making the rounds too — and her pitch was that everybody HAD to stay inside the Hotel, where Alastor’s wards and outward-directed curses would hold the enemy at bay. She reminded residents that Charlie, as Princess of Hell, was the third most powerful demon in all the Rings: between Alastor’s defenses and her strength, there was no way the Hotel could fall. 

Miriam, the mature and pleasantly authoritative lion demoness, was up and around too — seemingly everywhere at once, passing out cups of her “special restorative” with the promise that it would help people sleep. Niffty was helping her, and the trust that Hotel residents felt for the little demoness helped the medicine go down. It seemed to work well — demons were falling asleep where they sat, or groggily dragging themselves off to their rooms with a distinct stagger in their step. 

And finally, Husk was patrolling the hallways, along with a few Brigade members who changed over every couple of hours. The warriors were getting as much sleep as they could (Husk informed Charlie on the down-low that professionals in that field were capable of falling asleep anywhere, at any time) — because Nero’s suspicion, shared only with Charlie and Vaggie and Miriam, was that the first big enemy push would come tomorrow morning at the latest.

Somehow, Husk knew too, and that meant that Angel and Niffty had also received the 411. 

Charlie, as a demoness of a quantitatively higher order, wasn’t feeling much physical exhaustion. The mental and emotional fatigue, though...

... totally different story. 

And it was all because of Alastor. 

Charlie felt more and more depressed as the hours ticked by. She had a thousand questions that she couldn’t answer: 

Maybe Alastor WAS lying to Vaggie... maybe it’s just a game he’s playing with us all... maybe he really IS just leading me along, and I SHOULD stay far far away from him... maybe the Legions aren’t in play at all, or maybe he’s just currying favour with Lucifer by setting us all up to be annihilated...

Lies within lies and games within games — that was Alastor to the proverbial T. Charlie could easily imagine him lying to her about caring for her — twice over — and then double-crossing her again, then double-crossing Lucifer, then ending with the flourish of knocking Vox’s image of teeth right off his screen. All with a smile and a merry laugh that would have made Charlie’s heart do somersaults under her breastbone, no matter what she knew of the truth.

The only people who might know the actual facts (or as close to the truth as Alastor ever got) were Miriam, his Chatalaine, and Nero, the Commanding Officer of the Brigade. But they were both far too busy to bother with reassuring Charlie’s unspoken fears. 

By 1:00 AM Charlie was all out of happy things to say. She wandered the halls of the Hotel like a refugee herself, feeling increasingly lonely as more and more people found temporary refuge in sleep. 

And then, at around quarter after one in the morning, she found the room where Alastor’s people had placed the Mirror of Shallot. 

It was in Conference Room 6, the smallest of the function rooms — barely big enough to hold the fifteen foot by six foot mirror plus its two-foot-wide gilded wood frame, laid flat on the long wide conference table in the centre of the room. The room’s track lights were tuned to their lowest possible setting. Two demons, presumably scryers, sat one at either end of the Mirror in comfortable leather swivel chairs, while a third demoness was curled up tightly in another smaller chair in the far corner, with both arms wound around her bent legs, apparently fast asleep. 

The scryer at the far end, a badger based demon, rose from his seat the instant Charlie stuck her head around the corner of the door. “Hail and Welcome, Princess of Hell!” he intoned with a bow. “We bid you welcome to the temporary Sanctuary of the Mirror of Shalott.”

Charlie was staring at the Mirror, because she had seen pictures of it before, complete with its current frame. “Good morning! And, isn’t that the Pool of Eternal Regret?”

“It has had many names,” the other demon, based on a zebra, said without taking his eyes from the shining surface of the Pool. “But our Immortal Lord has christened it the Mirror of Shalott — and so it is.”

“And so it is,” the badger demon echoed, putting his right fist to his heart and bowing respectfully. 

Charlie stepped cautiously into the room, staring at the fitful shadow-and-light patterns dancing in the enchanted glass. “Could I... give it a try?”

The zebra demon turned to stare at her in stern warning: “It’s dangerous for a person without training to gaze into the Mirror — Shadows sometimes appear, including the Shadow Deer.”

“I’ve met them before,” Charlie assured him. “And I had two years of training in scrying when I was younger.” She offered a winning smile. “I’m sure I can handle it!”

The scryers looked at each other, frowning. The demoness in the chair in the corner was now awake and had unfolded herself, watching Charlie carefully. 

“The Princess has his favour,” the badger demon pointed out. 

The zebra demon turned his dark eyes on Charlie again. “I am Tracer, one of his most trusted scryers. What is it you seek in the Mirror’s depths, Princess of Hell?”

“Alastor.” It was the only possible answer. “I — I need to see where he is. If he’s sleeping. If he’s safe.”

Another look exchanged, this one amused. 

“And I am LookingGlass,” the badger demon said. “We can tell you that the Legions of Lucifer are still being assembled, although their preparations are almost complete. And the household troops of the von Eldrich family, together with Vox’s mercenaries, are ready to attack us here when the Legions go up against Alastor.”

“But Alastor we haven’t seen yet,” Tracer said. “At least, not today. We aren’t supposed to use the Mirror to spy on him — but if you’re the one doing it...”

“How many Legions are there?” Charlie asked, bracing herself against the answer. 

“The Legions number fourteen thousand,” LookingGlass replied, “and the troops set to rise against the Hotel are —”

“Fourteen thousand?” 

LookingGlass nodded grimly. “That’s why they haven’t attacked sooner, or so Nero reckons. It takes time to get that many demons kitted and ready to move out.”

“But tomorrow they’ll be ready.” It was the snake-haired demoness who had been sleeping, now standing up and extending both arms in a joint-cracking shoulder stretch. Her hair writhed and hissed, fixing unblinking yellow eyes on Charlie. 

Charlie stiffened her shoulders. “And — coming against the Hotel?”

“Vox just communicated with the von Eldrich heir,” Tracer said, “and mighty sorry to be woken up he was, too! But Vox quoted fourteen hundred troops, ready to go in the same hour when the Legions march against our Horned God.”

Charlie’s heart was heavy with the frost of despair, spinning down and down. “But we only have the Brigade on our side! How can we possibly —?”

“We can,” Vaggie’s voice spoke up from the doorway. Charlie spun in place to see her girlfriend leaning her right forearm on the door frame, her big bright eye narrowed with weariness. “With Alastor’s funds, I spent the better part of this evening lining up some back-up. The South Side Honey Badgers will be here in the morning, three hundred and twenty-seven strong — Cherri Bomb, who’s worth at least fifty standard fighters — Sir Pentious with four airships — plus Rosie and Alastor’s other allies from the Cannibal Colony. Plus Nero told me that Asmodeus might be in the mix, although how many fighters he can field is anybody’s guess.”

Unexpectedly, Tracer grinned hugely. “Plus we have the Shadow Deer — at least eleven with highly trained riders, plus a few free-runners. They can rip people’s minds to pieces just by looking at them. Add that to Alastor’s Elite, who are capable of spatial and temporal warping, and von Eldrich and Vox’s troops are going to be in a universe of hurt by the time we’re done with them!”

Charlie’s frozen heart began to rise and thaw in her breast. “So — you think we actually have a chance?”

“Maybe,” Vaggie said. She went to Charlie and closed gentle hands around her shoulders, warming Charlie’s heart even more. She cupped the moth demoness’s face gently in both hands. “Hun, we’ve got to be prepared for —”

“We have an excellent chance,” LookingGlass said firmly, and bowed his chin to Vaggie. “With all due respect, you haven’t seen Alastor’s troops in action. I have — and none of us in his household will every forget the fate of Ryvan Town, who executed a Brigade Sargeant on charges of treason.”

Vaggie demanded: “Why? What happened?”

“The sun rose on weaponed walls,” LookingGlass replied, “and set on a single layer of shattered stones. And the moon rose on untouched homes, then set on flaming ruins.”

“Ryvan Town is no more,” the Medusa demoness added. “And smoke is still rising from Alastor’s hoofprints and the footfalls of the Shadow Deer, so they say.”

Vaggie’s frown deepened. “But we won’t have Alastor on our side, unless he can actually defeat fourteen thousand Legionnaires in time to get involved with the fighting here.”

“I think you’ll be surprised,” the Medusa demoness grinned. “But Your Highness had a question, about scrying in the Mirror?”

Charlie gave Vaggie’s waist a gentle squeeze, turned to face the scryers again, and nodded. “I need to see Alastor. Can one of you set that up for me?”

Tracer looked thoughtful and clicked his tongue against his teeth three times. “We can try. He might just swat us away like insects.”

“Please!” Charlie begged, clasping both hands in front of her chest. “I need —”

She shut her mouth sharp on the full phrase: I need to know!

But a second later she felt Vaggie’s firm hand taking hold of hers— and she knew that it was all right, at least as far as her girlfriend was concerned. 

The two scryers closed their eyes. They held both hands out, palms down, over the Mirror’s surface and made three clockwise swirling gestures in perfect synch. 

LookingGlass murmured: “Let thy Master be revealed!”

And Tracer whispered: “If it be the will of the Radio Demon!”

In the Mirror, light and dark currents began to circle and flow together, like a whirlpool whose centre sank down and down, through the table and through the carpetted floor.

“Let thy Master be revealed!”

“If it be the will of the Radio Demon!”

A new colour entered the pool: red, as bright as blood, sinking and pulling the core of the whirlpool further down. 

“If it be his will...” The scryers spoke in unison, clearly in deep trance. “If it be his will... if it be his will...”

And suddenly the whirlpool snapped back into a flat surface: black and dark brown, with a slash of red in the centre and a thin line of something much brighter glimpsed in the very background.

Charlie took three quick steps closer. For an instant Vaggie tried to hold her back, then drew an audible deep breath and let go of her hand. 

The Mirror of Shalott revealed a place that Charlie had never seen before: a room that looked round, with a big balcony extending off of it. The room was somewhere high up, because the horizon line lay low in the distance. Blue-green lights flickered fitfully at the edge of the world, looking almost like campfires — more and more of them, even as Charlie watched. 

The red figure was, of course, Alastor, with his jacket off. He stood at the edge of the balcony with his hands clasped behind his back, his microphone staff clutched in his left hand. His head was raised as if he was studying the growing colony of lights, but Charlie couldn’t see his face. 

“Al...” Her right hand came up and reached out, the gesture instinctive. “Alastor, please — we’ve got to talk —”

The Radio Demon didn’t respond — except to raise his right hand and flick his fingers dismissively. A big ripple spread out from his image, and a second later the whirlpool reformed itself and rose upward, until the Mirror was once again a flat surface with a swirling pattern of black and grey. 

Tracer and LookingGlass sat back in their seats, eyes closed, breathing heavily. Charlie stared into the Mirror, her heart as heavy as it had ever been. 

He banished me... like he didn’t want to deal with me...

Vaggie’s hand closed around Charlie’s again, entwining their fingers and holding tight. 

“Aw, Jesus...” a deep weary voice said from behind them. Both turned, to see Husk standing in the doorway, rubbing his eyes with the fingers and thumb of his right hand. “This is what I get, for makin’ one last round...”

Vaggie spoke sharply: “You saw that?”

“’Course I did. I’m allowed.” He turned away, waving for Charlie and Vaggie to follow him. “C’mon, let’s take this outside. You need the get the straight dick from somebody, guess it might as well be me!”

He led them down the hallway and back out into the second floor lobby. The lounge area was empty except for one satyr demon who was slumped in an armchair, snoring loudly. Husk went right up to him and poked him in the shoulder with an extremely sharp forefinger: “Scram, buddy! You’re gonna get a kink in your neck, sleepin’ like that!”

It took a few more pokes, but at last the demon dragged himself to his feet and slumped off towards the elevators. After he’d gotten on one and the doors closed, Husk turned to Charlie and wasted no more time.

“You’re a good kid, Charlie, but you’ve gotta get your head outta your ass before you drive yourself navel-gazing nuts. Alastor might be a stone cold bastard, but when he chooses a companion for his ‘inner circle’ he’s as true as Wrath-forged steel.” 

Vaggie bristled, but Husk held up one paw to make her pause. “Don’t get me wrong, I can easily believe that Alastor would lie to you for his own fuckin’ amusement — but not to the point of paintin’ a target like this on his own back. He’s playin’ for keeps here: if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have cleared everybody out of the Citadel to get ‘em out of the line of fire.”

Charlie looked to Vaggie, who had opened her mouth again and then closed his sharply, her lips a thin straight line. 

“One way or another,” Husk continued, “it’s all gonna go down tomorrow. If you want my advice, I’d say go to bed right now and enjoy what might be your last night, ever.” He glanced over his own shoulder, then leaned closer to Charlie and muttered: “If things go completely south tomorrow, talk to Miriam — but pick your time an' place. When the really bad news starts comin’ in, she’ll be strongly tempted to send Alastor help — and since she’s a teleporter, she can take you to the Citadel if you can convince her to act against Alastor’s gag order.”

He straightened again (or as straight as he ever got), flicking his wings tighter to his back and shooing Charlie and Vaggie towards the elevators. “Now get outta here, both of you! I’ll keep an eye on things down here.”

“Thanks, Husk,” Charlie said earnestly. 

“I’d better stay awake too,” Vaggie added. “Just in case —”

But Charlie’s hand, still holding Vaggie’s, tightened urgently. When the moth demoness looked at her she offered her most pleading expression, and a gaze smouldering of the full depth of her desire. 

Husk muttered something, turned quickly away, and hurried off down a nearby corridor while Vaggie studied her lover’s face. “Charlie, are you sure —?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” she said softly. “Unless you —?”

The next thing Charlie knew, Vaggie’s hands had closed on her upper arms and her girlfiend was kissing her — without haste, and with a hunger that more than matched her own. 

They made love (quick, tender, urgent) in Vaggie’s queen-sized bed, every touch renewing their unspoken vows, every kiss sealing their contract.

And when it was over and Vaggie was lying front-to-back with Charlie, both arms wrapped protectively around her, Charlie felt — for the first time — two loves residing within her side by side, neither demanding supremacy... 

... and guarded by them both like twin sphinxes, she sank into a deep sleep that renewed her body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Chapter 4: So Just Give Me All of You

It had come at last — the fateful day when everything hung in the balance, including the shape of so many futures. Far away in Pentagram City, the Radio Demon’s people stood ready to fight a lesser foe than the one he faced... and in spite of the fact that he would need every ounce of energy he could muster against his enemies, still he hooked the Brigade into his own personal magical battery, to boost their powers in the face of Vox’s paramilitary and the family troops of Seviathan von Eldrich. 

Because if he won his battle and they lost theirs, then his victory would be a hollow and bitter one indeed. 

Better far that they should win, and he should fall! 

Because if Charlie could escape Lucifer’s vengeance, with her friends and the Brigade forming a protective cordon around her... and Vagatha, her lover, standing firm by her side...

... then he was willing to give Vox this petty victory on a battlefield that nine-tenths of the residents of Hell wouldn’t even be able to point out on a map.

Alastor stood on the black and barren field three miles from the front gate of his Citadel, watching the forces of Vox and Lucifer maerialize on the rocky bluff a little over a mile away. He stood alone — for the moment — and his eyes narrowed as the demonic figures rapidly multiplied to far more than he could have hoped to count. 

The Citadel would provide some protection, true — but I’d be a rat in a trap in there when all was said and done. Better to face these fools in the open, where I have freedom to maneuver.!

A tiny glint of cathode-ray light told him where Vox stood, front and centre in the long line of demon warriors. Alastor’s grin grew contemptuously bright. Idiot! You NEVER command from the front! 

Alastor had no intention of making a similar mistake. Briefly closing his eyes, he mentally unlocked the oubliettes in his Citadel and released the thousands of souls he had captured over the decades: creatures entirely Enslaved, their individual energies combining to fuel Alastor’s own supreme power, equal to any native-born demonic Overlord in Hell. 

His normally harsh voice voice was a velvet caress: “Come to me, my little loves...”

The Enslaved had no choice but to obey — but that did not mean that they were sorry. Far from it! Within a heartbeat small spirits were swirling round Alastor in a towering ebony tornado full of wide glowing yellow eyes, all lithe and eager, high twittery voices pleading:

tellushowwecanhelp howhowhow HOWHOWHOW?

“Oh, my darlings...” Alastor closed his eyes again, savouring the sheer number of them — and the absolute purity of their devotion. “You must be very, very brave for me now...”

NOWNOWNOW tellus HOWHOWHOW?

Alastor opened his eyes — and they were radio dials of annihilation. He raised his Staff of Power high, catching fire from the Hellish moon overhead, then swung it down to point at Vox’s forces as his amplified voice rang across the vast barren waste: 

“DESTROY THEM ALL! LEAVE NONE ALIVE TO TELL THE TALE!”

Instantly the seething mass around him moved like birds in flight, turning as one and speeding across the blood-hued sky toward the innumerable enemy, screaming with Alastor’s own lust:

KILL!KILL!KILL!KILL!KILL!

Alastor’s body was a transmitter: across all the Seven Rings, anyone within range of a radio or television set was hearing the carnage he was about to unleash. Even Vox’s universal signal could not match it. And Alastor could sense the listening ears... the watching eyes... the whole of Hell, tuned in to his frequency. 

“Hey presto!” He uttered a manic laugh while an invisible audience riotously applauded. “If you've got to go, go out in style I always say!”

No matter what his fate might be, the Last Stand of the Radio Demon would be remembered for all eternity.

Within seconds, the soul-storm of the Enslaved had penetrated the first ranks of Lucifer’s Legions. The hard-bitten demonic troops were made of stuff too stern to be frightened by a pack of little black ghosts — more the fools they! A heartbeat later, through the ears of his spirit-army, Alastor could hear the screaming begin as the Enslaved circled their prey, weaving webs of razored energy that slashed deep into demon flesh and sent streams of dark blood running over the dry stones. The front line faltered as the first casualties fell, and death-songs hung on the heated breathless air.

He also heard Vox’s pompous voice roaring orders, as flat and slow and harsh as a clanging sledgehammer in a foundry: “What are you doing, you cowards? Keep going! He’s only one demon, damn you — CHARGE!”

Lucifer’s legions, well trained in the art of mindless obedience, complied. What remained of the front line led the way, skidding down the bluffs and pounding across the relatively flat plain with weapons drawn. Many of the Enslaved wheeled round to follow, continuing to target individual warriors, who kept falling, their own spirits briefly drifting before being compelled to join the Enslaved, adding to Alastor’s power reserves. Already the ranks of Vox’s forces were visibly diminished —

— and as Vox had not pointed out, they hadn’t even come within the scope of the Radio Demon’s ranged attacks yet. 

Alastor watched them run at him with eyes glowing bright and smile wide, his Staff grounded and one hand clasped behind his back, humming a cheerful little tune while gay musical notes danced round him. 

“Oh I see a man at the back, as a matter of of fact, and his eyes are as red as the sun...”

Who said that all modern music was trash? Not Alastor! And this song was particularly catchy, with plenty of swing!

“And the girl in the corner, let no one ignore her, ‘cause she thinks she’s the passionate one...”

For an instant Alastor’s mind flashed to Charlie, driven away and safely esconced back at the Hotel. 

I’ve permitted you to see more of my truths than you could possibly understand, my darling — but you can’t share this with me. Even a creature of elemental chaos had to face the cold hard truth: After all, this day may very well be my last. 

But in the meantime — oh, what fun we shall have!

Had Vox’s warriors been close enough to see Alastor’s face clearly, the grin that split his grey visage from ear to ear would have certainly sent some of them screaming in the opposite direction. He waited patiently, because even Lucifer’s physically enhanced troops needed time to cross a full mile at a dead run. 

And when he could look directly into the eyes of the front-runners, less than an eighth of a mile away, he took his left hand from behind his back —

— and snapped his fingers.

One of Alastor’s most feared abilities was his talent for casting extremely high level spells without any verbal or physical components whatsoever. With a mere thought he manifested multiple Runes of Summoning in a line across the enemy’s path of advance.

Portals sprang into existence directly under their feet. Those who didn’t plummet through into the demon-consuming fires below were wrapped in lethal black tentacles, the life crushed out of them. 

“And the man at the back said “Everyone attack!” and it turned into a ballroom blitz...”

To their credit, the warriors who weren’t caught by Alastor’s eldrich beasts simply diverted around the portals, dodged the groping tentacles, and kept on coming. Guns were levelled at him now, and he could hear them barking like despicable dogs as bullets flew. 

With a dismissive wave of his hand he evaporated the bullets in mid-air, well before they reached him. And now some of the Legionnaires faltered again, eyes growing wide as they began to fully appreciate the gravity of their situation. In fact, more than a few of them looked like they might be reconsidering the whole adventure. 

Alastor’s grin grew impossibly wider. Oh no, my friends — we’re not done until I say we’re done!

Spellcasters in Vox’s ranks were finally doing their job, casting Runes of Dissolution against the Enslaved. Higher-pitched shrieks rang out as they dissolved in large groups, and with every spirit-death Alastor felt a tiny measure of his own power slip away. He raised his Staff to serve as a beacon for the little spirits as they obeyed his order: “Return!”

They came streaming back to him, chirping their disappointment like innumerable birds: 

donedonedonenow? nomorebloodspillkill? nomore?

“For now, my lovelies!” And possibly forever... “Back you go!”

He banished them to the oubliettes and they shadow-shifted, leaving him alone on the battlefield —

— but not without options. Vox’s army was down to less than three-quarters of its original strength. That left at least ten thousand Legionnaires to deal with — challenging odds for most, but nobody knew how to turn a frown upside down better than Alastor!

And then there was Vox himself, a fellow Overlord driven by burning hatred and a distinct lack of brains. Why, a man like that was capable of anything, if he thought it would help him achieve his goal of destroying his mortal enemy!

Alastor was certain that in the end, this was going to come down to a one-on-one confrontation with Vox: the TV Demon had a fool’s luck and likely wouldn’t fall victim to an attack until Alastor could deal with him up-close and personally. 

More teeth joined the Radio Demon’s already crowded grin. 

He had waited a long time for this — and if he was going to be erased, he would make sure to take that arrogant blow-hard with him into dissolution. 

Come to think of it... where was Vox? Alastor had been having so much fun, he’d lost track of the main point of this entire exercise.

He was scanning the seething confusion of demonic bodies coming at him, looking for that sickly cathode ray glow, when he felt a familiar prickle on the back of his neck and in the depths of his mind. 

Someone is seeking me out. Who —?

But even as the thought flashed across his hot-wired mind, he felt the scrying that sought him find his frequency —

— lock on —

— and pin down his precise location.

The mystical touch was one he knew well. Ah, Miriam! Have you betrayed me in the end?

But he also felt the truth behind the touch: Not betrayal. Love, after her own fashion. The realization was rueful: It appears you were correct, my dearest Charlie... the power of love CAN break curses meant to last an eternity. 

At the moment, however, Alastor had neither the time, the focus, nor the inclination to smite Miriam to ashes for her presumption. Instead he sent a stern order through the connection between them: “DO NOT SEEK ME OUT!”

He felt the lioness demoness scream, her mind nearly breaking under the conflict between her Shackled imperatives to implicitly obey the Radio Demon and her overwhelming desire to send aid to him. Then he briefly felt arms — Charlie’s arms, more was the pity — around Miriam as his Chatelaine collapsed, sinking into unconsciousness and severing their connection.

Alastor laughed, throwing back his head in a roar of static-laced mirth that boomed across the field of battle and ruptured the eardrums of demons who had been unfortunate enough to get too close. Calliope music gaily played, a soundtrack to scenes of bloody mayhem.

She’ll take a while to wake up from THAT — and without her help, even if Charlie is seeking me, she can’t possibly find me!

Even if Charlie could teleport... which she CAN’T.

Even if she didn’t hate me to the marrow of her bones — which she DOES. 

And ah — there it was, still standing back on the bluffs! The blue flicker of a television signal, and a flat smile of glowing cyan! 

So, coward — you’re planning to let your bully boys soften me up before you dare to get any closer? 

Alastor firmly thrust the sweetness of the Princess’s smile out of his mind, concentrating on the ugly smirk of his personal nemesis. He swept his Staff out in a wide arc, emitting a screech of radio feedback that made Legionnaires up to half a mile away clutch at their ears while blood ran hot between their teeth from tongues and cheeks bitten raw. 

I could teleport to you, Vox — right on top of you — and yank on your hideous head until your sparking wires tear free!

He could — in fact, he could have shadow-shifted through the Legions sowing chaos and terror in his wake — but teleportation was a tremendous energy sink. The point would come, eventually, where he would face the choice between shadow-shifting out of danger or going down fighting, trying to win the Hotel even a few minutes’ more grace. 

In a rapidly evolving combat situation, he had no idea which option he would choose until the decision absolutely had to be made.

But for now —

— there were ways to conserve his magical energies. 

He threw back his head. opened his arms wide, and howled on all radio and television frequencies: “Ladies and gentlemen and random beings of all ages — stay tuned, my friends, because you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Then he crouched, his eyes shrouded in a field of solid ebony, his claws extending through his stylish gloves —

— and leaped like a deer to meet the front line of Lucifer’s fighters in a blur of spinning back-kicks, back-flips, bone-breaking punches, and slashing talons that left big tough bodies ripped open and screaming out what remained of their lives. 

He laughed as their blood spurted towards the heavens...

... and lost himself in the lust of the battle-dance that filled him with exultation to the depths of his black, tortured, and lonely soul.

Chapter 5: Will You Catch Me If I Should Fall?

“Ladies and gentlemen and random beings of all ages — stay tuned, my friends, because you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

Nearly two hundred and fifty demons at the Hazbin Hotel inhaled sharply, the combined sound momentarily louder than the howls and roars and shrieks coming from the tall speakers on the mainstage. In the MIrror, floating mid-air between them, images flared so sharp and clear that even the psychic dead heads could see what was happening —

— and Charlie stood frozen, staring at the Mirror of Shalott with eyes open wide in horror. Vaggie stood resolutely beside her, grasping Charlie’s hand as tightly as Charlie was clutching hers. Every so often the moth demon glanced back over her shoulder, to where Charlie knew that Husk and Niffty were standing towards the left edge of the crowd. Where Angel Dust was, she had no idea.

And right now everybody in the same physical space was far, far from Charlie’s mind.

The Brigade had set out from the Hotel less than fifteen minutes ago, at around 10:45 AM — the second the Mirror had shown Alastor teleporting into the midst of the Ebony Waste, with the Citadel in the distance behind him, Nero had called for the units to assemble under their Sargeants and carry out the battle plan as formulated. It had taken five minutes from Nero getting on the Hotel intercom to the last Brigade members jogging out the front and back doors, which Vaggie had locked behind them before activating Alastor’s third stage wards over the vulnerable points. The Hotel was now locked down tighter than a drum: only the Brigade, who had energetic keys implanted in their souls by Alastor, could traverse the boundaries he had established without setting off every alarm in the place.

Ballroom 2&3 was located in the heart of the building, deep enough that the only sounds to leak through were the intermittent booming of missiles exploding against the outer wards. And people flinched, but most of their attention was focussed on the Mirror —

— where the Radio Demon was weaving a potent spell of agony and death.

Charlie stood at the front of the gathered demons, Hotel residents and Citadel personnel both. At the very back of the room folding chairs were set around circular tables, where people who couldn’t bear to watch the Mirror were sitting with their faces turned away, some talking in low voices but most of them miserably silent. 

It never occurred to Charlie that she could look away. 

Not when Alastor’s tentacles crushed Legionnaires in bursts of blood and flying chunks of fat-laced muscle shredded over shattered bone. 

Not when millions of tiny black Shadows swarmed over her Dad’s soldiers, cutting them to pieces with razor-wired lariats of energy, sucking their essences back into Alastor’s control. 

Not even when the warriors who were left — thousands of them — converged on Alastor’s position and surrounded him —

— and not when Alastor spun dancing into combat, graceful as an acrobat and deadly as a nest of vipers: smashing armoured bodies with his fists and his feet, biting off limbs and heads, using his microphone staff to emit crippling bursts of sonics and, on the backswing, slicing his enemies open with the razored edge. 

Gunfire sent in his direction melted and pattered like hail to the rocky ground. There was no audio from the Mirror — but the speakers were tuned to his frequency. He laughed and growled and quipped as he laid waste, dodging almost every blade used against him — and the ones that struck him made no difference to his upbeat manner or his easy patter. 

One Celestial blade, Charlie’s agonized heart whispered: One solid hit and he’ll be done for!

She briefly closed her eyes, feeling sick and dizzy —

— and heard a low even voice about ten feet to her right: “Yes, let Wendy know —” A soft exasperated sigh. “No, you stay here — I’ll tell her myself.”

It was Miriam. For an instant Charlie wondered how the lion demoness could bear to walk away from the terrifying visuals in the Mirror... but there she went, heading for the metal doors that led to the service corridor. 

“Oh, I think not!” Alastor’s cheerful voice burst over the furious profanity of a Legionnaire nearly three times his size. “You’ll have to try harder than that if you expect to get the drop on —!”

He kicked upward before finishing his sentence, like a homocidal cabaret dancer. The Legionnaire’s head snapped back and he collapsed in spurts of blood like a fountain, his skull now connected to his neck only by a couple of inches of skin. 

Two soldiers only slighly smaller grabbed Alastor from behind, while two more moved in with daggers drawn and upraised. Alastor’s head spun one hundred and eighty degrees, grinning at the startled Legionnaires right before he angled his head and struck like a snake, tearing out one demon’s throat with his teeth —

— and a ragged cheer went up from those who were watching the action —

— but Charlie was no longer one of them. After a reassuring squeeze of Vaggie’s hand, she slipped her fingers out of her girlfriend’s warm hold and sprinted towards the doors that had just swung closed behind Alastor’s Chatalaine. 

“Miriam,” she cried as soon as she was in the service corridor, “wait!”

Miriam paused and turned, inclining her head in a little bow. “How may I serve, Consort of the Horned God?”

Charlie still wasn’t comfortable with that title, but elected to let it pass this time. “Miriam, please... I’m begging you... Take me to him! I can help!”

And it looked like Husk had been wrong, because Miriam shook her head sadly but firmly. “The Immortal Lord ordered the complete evacuation of the Citadel, and forbade anyone to return.”

“But —”

Miriam held up her right paw, claws fully sheathed. “Most Revered Lady, even if there were a loophole in his orders —”

She stopped speaking, gazing at Charlie as if not fully seeing her, clearly thinking hard. “Unless... let me think a moment...”

Charlie held her breath. She had no idea what was happening — but she now possessed a sliver of hope. 

“No member of the Citadel may return,” Miriam said slowly, “but his order concerning you was that you are welcome in his house anytime you wish to pay a visit — and that order was never rescinded!”

Charlie’s tightly clenched heart burst its bonds and leaped into her throat. “So you can take me there?”

“I think so, yes.” She lowered her paw and folded both hands on her upper belly, looking Charlie up and down. "I could take you there — if we can get outside the wards he has placed on the Hotel. But from that point you’re on your own — he has ordered me to defend the Hotel, and I dare not disobey him a second time.”

Charlie was nodding. “That will be more than enough! Thank you, Miriam!”

“But can we get you past the wards? Without being seen? ”

“There’s an old tunnel, from the sub-basement — hidden behind a bunch of packing crates and a bookcase. Al may not have noticed it was there.” 

“We can look. If that exit is not warded, I’ll take you out and teleport you, then ward it solidly when I return.” She paused, considering. “My Lord may execute me for this — but in order to do that, He must survive, and I will accept His punishments gladly if only He lives.”

Charlie shrugged and grinned. “Yeah, well, he’s not going to be very happy with me either...”

“You are His Consort. He will do you no lasting harm.” Miriam was nodding in agreement now. “It’s as good a chance as any we’ve got.” She beckoned Charlie to come to her, then turned so they were walking quickly side by side towards the kitchens. “But if nothing else, we’ll need someone with a good strong back to move the crates and the shelves...” 

“Like who?”

The lion demoness smiled more widely. “I have just the fellow in mind: someone who could move a barn if you hitched him to it, and who’ll keep his mouth shut afterwards, like a good boy!”

Miriam closed her golden eyes, bowed her head, and was clearly concentrating hard. Charlie, instinctively feeling the hum of magical energy being directed outward, held her breath —

— until Miriam hunched over with a choked scream of pain. Charlie barely caught her in time to slow her collapse as her knees folded, almost taking Charlie down with her.

"Miriam!" Kneeling on the service corridor floor, Charlie held Alastor's Chatelaine close against her chest. "What happened? Are you all right?"

Miriam nodded, looking dazed, and said faintly: "Well enough, most compassionate of Consorts!" The lion demoness gave her head a shake and, with Charlie's help, slowly got to her feet again. "I've found him, and he is indeed near the Citadel, in pitched combat with the Legions. I can take you there — but only as far as his eyrie atop the black tower. I dare attempt no more."

"It will be enough," Charlie vowed as they got moving towards the kitchens again.

It took a little while to find who they were looking for, but a little over ten minutes later three demons stood in the Hazbin Hotel’s frieght elevator as it descended into the sub-basement: Charlie, Miriam, and Caulifleur, the former thug-for-hire of Seviathan von Eldrich. 

Miriam winced and hunched her shoulders. Charlie looked at her uneasily. “Is Alastor okay?”

“He took a heavy hit,” Miriam said in a tight voice. “But he’s still up and fighting. We must make haste!”

Caulifleur watched them both without speaking, his heavy black brows drawn in a slight frown, as if he didn’t quite understand what he was hearing. On the way to the kitchens to collect him, Miriam had explained to Charlie that he was basically a good-hearted sort, if quite stupid. That, plus the smell of a root cellar that clung to him, made him not exactly popular at first sight, but those who had gotten to know him had told Miriam that he had a number of good qualities tucked away, including loyalty to those he perceived as more intelligent. His motto was, “I’m not a clever man — but Bernard [or Grimgut, or Miriam] is always right!” 

When they picked their way across the sub-basement floor, which was crowded with broken items awaiting repair, to the stack of crates and the shelves leaning against the whitewashed wall, Charlie could clearly hear the hum of a ward — but not one at full strength. Reaching out, she traced its contours on the stuffy air, lit only by a single sixty-watt lightbulb that they’d passed twenty feet earlier. 

“Can you feel that?” she asked Miriam. 

Miriam nodded —

— and so did Caulifleur. 

Both women turned to stare at him. He gazed back at them placidly.

“You can feel that, Caulifleur?” Charlie rephrased the question. 

The broad plant demon nodded. His voice was deep and slow. “Sure.” He pointed. “It’s that knot there, right?”

Miriam nodded. “It is. Can you untie it?”

Caulifleur thought about that for a couple of seconds, then returned the Chatelaine’s nod. ”Sure, I can untie it. Do you want me to?”

Miriam shook her head. “Perhaps. But can you tie it up again afterwards?”

Caulifleur scowled, clearly exercising all his mental powers. “I think so, if one of you ladies helps me. It’s got a lot of in and out parts!”

Charlie and Miriam exchanged a glance, full of gratitude for the unexpected help that pure chance had dropped into their laps. 

Miriam said, “I can help you! Just don’t try to put it back together by yourself, all right? You have to wait until I come back! If you don’t, bad things will happen.”

The plant-based demon was nodded emphatically. “Sure, Mrs Miriam — whatever you say!”

Charlie was practically bouncing off her feet now, electrified with growing impatience — and heart-crushing dread. “Oh, please,” she cried, “let’s go!”

She helped Caulifleur shift the crates, and with Miriam’s help they all dragged the heavy bookcase out of the way, revealing a wooden door with peeling green paint that looked like it hadn’t been opened in long decades. With Caulifleur watching closely, Miriam carefully took apart the ward in front of it, while Charlie held her breath and prayed that they weren’t about to set off alarms through Alastor’s whole security network. But perhaps he’d built in a loophole allowing his Chatelaine to open his magical locks. 

Miriam tried the doorknob but couldn’t pull it open, not even with three tugs at full strength. Without being asked, Caulifleur stepped forward and gently moved her to one side, He wrapped his huge fist around the knob and wrenched it open with one try, revealing a cold black passage rough-carved in the dirt, with uneven and unpainted wooden stairs leading upwards. 

Without another word, Miriam ducked her head and started up the stairs. Charlie spared a couple of seconds to speak to their huge companion: “Goodbye, Caulifleur — and thanks for all your help!”

“You’re welcome, Miss Charlie. I hope you have a nice trip!”

“Charlie!” Miriam’s voice was full of pain and urgency. Adrenaline made Charlie go hot all over, and at once she turned and hurried up the stairs, dreading what she might find in the flickers of yellow candlelight she’d conjured on the fingers of her left hand. 

But Miriam was upright and still labouring up the steps. “I sense another ward ahead, more complex than the one we just bypassed.”

“Can you open it?”

“Oh, yes! I’ll just need a moment...”

And sure enough, a couple of minutes of climbing brought them to a latched door that folded upwards on its hinges. On the other wide, scarcely dulled at all, the sounds of battle raged: gunfire, yelling, explosions, and a loud humming that Charlie didn’t immediately recognize.

When Miriam stepped through the door onto a back alley shed roof and Charlie stuck her head out, she saw two things at once: that they were alone in the alley, and that the humming came from a big airship, bristling with weapons, that was slowly droning past overhead. The massive guns fired, sending up pillars of bright pink smoke and the debris of exploded buildings.

Miriam traced the form of the ward, then turned and held out her hand. “Come on!” she urged — and when Charlie laid her fingers in the Chatelaine’s paw, Miriam immediately teleported them both. 

The whole world turned to ice-cold spinning shadows, going from chaotic noisy darkness into a place much more quiet — in fact, a place deserted. Charlie gave her head a shake and looked around. At once she recognized the space: this was where Alastor had stood the previous night, gazing toward Vox’s fires on the horizon —

— and as she looked past the balcony’s balustrade she saw more explosions and pillars of black smoke, this time too far away for any sound to reach them. 

“This is as far as I may go,” Miriam said, and Charlie turned to see her curtsying low, holding out the sides of her skirt with both hands. “Farewell, Honoured Consort of the Horned God! I hope we will meet again someday — if he lets me live after such disobedience.”

“I’m sure he will, Miriam!” Charlie pulled the lioness demon in for a quick hug, which Miriam returned after a moment’s hesitation, enfolding Charlie in motherly arms. “Good luck!”

“And to you also, My Lady!” She stepped back, smiled ruefully, and shadow-shifted back to the Hotel, leaving Charlie alone in the circular room, empty except for an impressive grand piano. 

Charlie ignored it. She closed her eyes for a second, consciously manifesting her white leathern wings. 

“I’m coming, Al!” Her voice resonated light and fierce on the still air of the deserted Citadel. “Don't give up!”

With a running leap she jumped to the top of the balustrade, catching it with one foot hard enough to kick herself several yards into the air, giving her wings room to catch the desert winds. 

And in that moment of exultation, she honestly didn’t care if the Radio Demon loved her or not. 

She loved him — and that was the only thing that mattered. 

Chapter 6: Did You Think That I Had Left You For Good?

Nikos pumped his fist and whooped as a trio of Shadow Deer with their Riders soared overhead, leaping from rooftop to rooftop across the dirty alleyway, striking flames wherever their hooves fell. “YEAH! Go get ‘em! No prisoners, no survivors!”

When they were out of sight, Nikos turned a pitying gaze on Scathe, because the gigantic cat demoness looked like she was about to toss her cookies on the alley floor. 

“You know I can’t stand those... things!” Scathe growled, then promptly spun round with both ears pinned back, leaned her forehead against the wall, and puked. 

Nikos shook his head sadly. “Luck of the draw,” he said, patting his partner as high on her back as he could reach. “I rode one once, y’know, as a passenger, but —”

“Don’t,” Scathe moaned, and dry heaved a couple more times. 

Nero was barking orders through the comms: “Tiger, stop yarking and get moving! I need you both at Second and Perdition — no ‘porting, there’s a shredder rune field in the way!”

“Yes, Sir!” Nikos piped up, grabbing Scathe by her upper right arm and tugging as hard as he could. When Scathe started jogging in the indicated direction, the snake demon teleporter knew for sure that it had nothing to do with him: she outweighed him by a good hundred and forty pounds, and he had about as much chance of moving her under his own power as he did of flying to Hell’s moon.

More voices on the comm units: “Brutus here — we’ve got about fifteen pinned down in the warehouse on Damnation Way. Mop up ETA fifteen to twenty. Squirters headed east toward Logline Park, can someone pink mist ‘em?”

“On it,” Burner confirmed.

“Ported,” her teleporter Gringo said. Distance explosions and screams echoed in his comms. 

“Ashes to ashes,” Burner confirmed the kills. “Heading toward Murderhaven — Bloodbath, you need a pick-up?”

“Confirmed,” Sargeant Bloodbath said. “Up to our elbows in blood-and-guts here, time to find some new squishies.”

Splatter, the Brigade’s blood magic user, floated everybody’s unspoken question: “When’s King Stag’s ETA? Over.”

“Unknown,” Nero growled, a half-second before his sniper rifle spoke twice. “We’ve gotta hold the line until he wraps things up desertside. Shadow Deer Riders, it’s looking kinetic on the west field — I need at least six of you over there, yesterday! Bodi, you got the casualty report yet?”

“Three Brigade down with puncture wounds and broken bones,” their Chief Healer said calmly. “Whiskey is working on them. ETA to battle return approx half an hour.”

“Who’s down?” Nero asked.

“LiveWire, Synapse, and Magz. Same cause — grenade hit.”

“Shit!” Nikos cursed, but it was a mild swear: if the warriors in question were only going to take thirty minutes of healing, that was as fine as paint. 

Nero was still talking: “Perimeter reports?”

“Mega-kinetic on the western front,” Sargeant Wrath said. “We’ve got Vox tangos backed up from here to the Muck River!”

“Thinning out on the south,” Sargeant Fame responded. “They’re pushing toward the east.”

“Heavy eastward,” Sargeant Blade audibly panted. “Lots of flies around the Hotel, but we’ve got some big swatters including Cherri and Pentious, Over!”

Nero spoke again: “You need some of the Badgers, Blade? Over.”

“I can spare one twenty,” Sargeant Fame said. “You want me to send 'em —?”

Nikos and Scathe had finally reached the end of the long alley. Scathe hung back while Nikos stuck his much smaller head out and peered to the left and the right. Not a tango in sight.

Two mounted Shadow Deer were riding their own fiery hoofprints across the sky, but thankfully they were high enough up not to trigger Scathe’s instinctive nausea. 

Automatically Nikos looked up to follow them with his eyes for a couple of seconds. He loved the Deer — they way they looked, the way they moved, the way they could carve through enemy ranks like hot knives through rancid butter — but he’d failed every single test required in order to become a Rider. So now he just looked at them every chance he got. 

And this time, he really wished he hadn’t. 

Because they both faltered mid-air, stumbling on nothing. One went to its knees on some invisible surface; the other reared up, pounding the dark air with both forehooves and uttering a shriek that must have shattered glass.

And then —

— they dissolved and vanished.

One of the dark-cloaked Riders was lucky: they only fell about seven feet, onto a flat roof. The other rider tumbled fifty feet straight downwards, hitting the street with an ugly crunch of fractured bones and smashed soft tissues. 

Their head lolled towards Nikos as he cringed back against the alley wall, staring in horror with both gloved hands over his mouth to stifle his instinctive shriek.

It was Cruella, and with brains leaking out of her head like that, she was clearly wide-eyed dead. 

“The Deer are down!” Someone — it sounded like HeartsBalm the telepath — was yelling in the comms. “Repeat, the Deer are gone! All of ‘em! What the fuck —?”

Nero didn’t respond. Complete radio silence.

And that was bad —

— but not as bad as what sounded like the whole Brigade suddenly starting to scream, all at once, at the tops of their lungs.

Chapter 7: Say You’ll Share with Me One Love, One Lifetime

Notes:

“From delusion lead me to truth,
“From darkness lead me to light,
“From death lead me to immortality.”

— Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

The atmosphere itself was working in Charlie’s favour, with a tailwind that added considerably to her speed. She aimed higher and higher, hoping to avoid being noticed for as long as possible. 

At last she could see the battlefield clearly — an ocean of burly hard-bitten legionnaires of Lucifer, heavily armed and surrounding a single figure

Alastor!

who stood in exuberant defiance, facing away from Charlie, in the middle of a thirty foot circle completely clear —a magically protected kill zone which no legionnaire, bullet, or projectile was able to breach. Corpses were pilled four feet deep around the perimeter and shattered ballistic missiles littered the rocky ground in a fan of destruction matching Alastor’s line of sight, stretching half-way back to the northern bluffs.

Obviously Alastor had become bored with hand-to-hand killing and was now resorting to magic. Lightning bolts struck repeatedly from a cloudless sky, smiting the enemy ranks. With every snap of Alastor’s fingers Runes of Summoning brought nightmarish black tentacles out of portals in the ground, swallowing up Lucifer’s soldiers by the dozens. Shadow versions of the Radio Demon darted through those still standing, stealing even more lives and sowing sheer terror. Vox was nowhere to be seen in the chaos, but as Charlie entered a steep glide and touched down behind Alastor just inside the circle, she had a sinking feeling that he was going to show up sooner rather than later.

I’ve got to put an end to this before more people get hurt!

“ALASTOR!” Charlie’s scream was drowned by the shrieks of the dying and the frenetic dance music from an invisible jazz orchestra. “AL, STOP!”

The music screeched to a halt with the rasp of a broken record needle.

Alastor froze mid-finger snap.

Rotated his head one hundred and eighty degrees on his slender neck.

Stared directly into Charlie’s eyes, his pupils radio dials and his fixed grin hideously lit with flickering inner light. 

Charlie’s heart turned into a lump of ice and froze her in place— because what she faced was nothing even close to the Alastor she knew, something further into the demonic realms than she’d ever seen from the formerly human creature she had grown to care for so deeply. 

Yet in his face —

— in his gaze, however alien it might be —

— Charlie saw his own truths writ clear. She knew now how he had lied, and she wondered how she could have ever mistaken that ridiculous lie for the facts of the matter.

Then Alastor blinked and his eyes reverted to normal. “Charlie? What are you doing —?”

— as Vox suddenly rose up before him only twenty feet away, glowing clawed hands preparing a Rune that Charlie didn’t recognize — only that it was something really really bad. 

“GET DOWN!” She sprinted toward Alastor, praying that she could move fast enough, that she’d be in time — 

— but Vox was a fraction of a second faster. 

Alastor snapped his head back round, following Charlie’s gaze — too late. The Rune, glowing electric blue, rushed through the air and struck him square in the chest, sending him flying. He landed on his back, almost at Charlie’s feet as she skidded to a halt, her heart nearly stopping. 

“Al!”

He didn’t seem badly hurt, although the front of his stylish jacket was scorched black. He stared up at her in open-mouthed disbelief, rendered speechless.

Vox advanced, his screen one horrible grin, already tracing another Rune in the air.

Alastor found his voice. “Run, you little fool!”

His gaze flashed to Vox, his eyes shifting back to dials as his grin stiffened into a monster’s grimace once more.

Both Overlords threw their left hands out in a gesture of casting. Vox spoke something utterly blasphemous, and Charlie clapped her hands over her ears as pain stabbed deep into her brain. 

Their opposing magics, blue and crimson, collided in mid-air — and exploded. The concussive force sent Charlie tumbling and skidded Alastor several feet across the ground until his head and shouders fetched up against a boulder. Vox flew backwards off his feet, his face-screen an almost comical icon of total surprise. He landed flat on his back and lay stunned.

For a brief span of heartbeats, silence reigned in the eye of the battlefield storm, although the legionnaires still howled and strained to breach the magical circle of protection. 

Then Alastor got his right elbow under him and pushed himself off the ground. His eyes, normal once more, blazed with unfettered rage, his left hand coming up and clenching in a casting gesture Charlie had seen before. Dark blood dripped from his talons digging into his palm, while occult symbols danced and glowed around him, hectic lines of red static slashing across his eyes. 

Vox, to his credit, moved faster than Charlie could have hoped: he rolled hard to his left, barely in time to evade the Rune of Desecration that blasted the ground where he had lain to curdled poison.

Get out of here! Charlie’s mind screamed at him. Get far, far away! Because Al is PISSED now and he won’t quit until you’re DEAD! 

And I can’t stop him!

“Run!” Alastor shouted again, and Charlie knew he was speaking to her.

Instead Charlie snarled, rolled to her feet, and let her own anger take over, transforming her body in a demonic warp-spasm. Horns sprouted, her fingers grew claws, her wings spread even wider, and her hair floated out in waves of stormy gold.

If I can’t stop him, at least I can fight at his side!

There was only one not-so-slight problem: all her magics were defensive, and probably worse than useless in the middle of heated melee combat between two enraged Overlords with a personal grudge to settle. 

Nevertheless she concentrated on the air in front of Alastor, casting a protective shield like vines of pale green light rapidly climbing up an invisible trellis. 

Vox got back on his feet, grinning mockery. “So,” his deep voice clanged, “the Princess bitch decided to come to your rescue, huh? Too bad she’ll just end up erased too.”

Alastor was also pulling himself upright. Watching him from behind, Charlie’s heart broke to see how painfully he moved — as if his whole spine were wrapped with barbed wire, his right arm hanging useless and his left fist still clenched. Vox’s Rune had evidently done its work. 

“Laying a single spell on her would be the biggest mistake you’ve ever made, Vox,” he stated, swaying where he stood. “And the last! “ His vocal pitch sank to a wild beast’s twisted, savage growl: “I’m warning you —”

Vox smirked. “I’m really going to enjoy fucking her to death while you watch, you pathetic dickless excuse for rancid human off-cuts.”

“Lucifer would annihilate you if you tried,” Alastor smiled with far more than his usual number of teeth.

Vox’s bark of laughter was deep and cold. “Hah! Lucifer has already decreed —”

Alastor ignored him. “Assuming there was enough of you left to fill a teaspoon by the time I got through with you —”

His left hand shot out, stiffened fingers spraying purple blood at Vox. The blood turned molten in mid-air and sped like bullets towards its target. 

“CHEN SAL!” Alastor cursed in Creole. Voodoo symbols shimmered red around him as reality briefly shattered under the force of his diabolical malice. 

The blood-bullets passed through Charlie’s protective ward and dissolved it like boiling water ripping through a tracery of spun sugar.

Vox’s hands rose to protect his face — but too late.

Each eldrich missile hit true, square on Vox’s screen. The TV Demon screamed, both his red eyes now smoking craters, cracks rapidly running through the rest of his glass.

One of Alastor’s coal-black Shadow selves reared up out of the rocks in front of Vox, with a whimsically curled grin and wicked sharp claws. Its left hand slashed across Vox’s screen, and four deep furrows joined the tapestry of fractures.

Vox clutched at his ruined face and staggared backward, hunched over in agony. 

“SHOOT THEM!” Vox’s amplified howl of fury boomed across the battlefield —

— Charlie, staring horrified at Vox, didn’t see anything else —

— until suddenly Alastor shadow-shifted right in front of her, facing her, filling her vision —

— he uttered a gutteral grunt as something struck his back hard enough to knock him forward a couple of inches —

— and Charlie automatically grabbed his upper arms to hold him steady.

Looking down, she saw something that shattered the concentration required to maintain her demonic form in an instant. 

A glowing golden arrowhead protruded from Alastor’s stomach, smeared with purple blood already burning away in tiny curls of black smoke.  

That’s a Celestial arrow —

— and it was meant for me!

Alastor gripped Charlie’s waist hard with his working hand. Staring into his face, she saw a confusion of blazing crimson eyes and disarrayed hair — and an expression so terrible that it chilled her to her marrow. 

That was all she had time for before Alastor teleported them both to a place a tiny bit closer to safety —

Chapter 8: We're Bound to Break and My Hands Are Tied

Notes:

“When the five senses and the mind are still
“And reason itself rests in silence.
“Then begins the Path supreme.”

— Katha Upanishadh

— reality turned into a whirlpool of ice water around them as Alastor bent the spatial fabric of Hell to his indomitable will  —

— and suddenly they were standing in the Reception Chamber of Alastor’s dark tower, about twelve feet in front of his majestic Throne, with Hell’s sky visible through the glass ceiling overhead and rubies scattered down the high black walls like sprinkles of blood, and the indigo floor inlaid with stars of gold stretching out around them.

The Radio Demon let go of Charlie’s waist and staggared backward, barely in time to collapse onto his Throne when his knees gave out. Dark purple blood immediately began running over the red leather, and Alastor’s half-lidded eyes, normally a solid and deeply glowing crimson, were laced with ragged lines of white hazy static as he slumped against the Throne’s high back and clutched the left golden arm rest with a visibly shaking hand

“Charlie?” Vaggie’s voice from somewhere behind her startled her, but not enough to look away from Alastor and the shining Celestial arrow protruding from his skinny middle. 

Wait — she’s here? How? 

But before Charlie could open her mouth to ask — 

“What the fuck —” The next thing Charlie knew Husk was barrelling past her, shoving her roughly to one side as he took the most direct route to get to Alastor. Without hesitation he grabbed one of the rich blue velvet hangings over the throne and ripped a wide strip off it, then tore the strip in two and started rapidly swaddling both hands with the thick fabric. 

Charlie stared as he turned round and leaned over Alastor. One hand, protected in thick layers of velvet, grasped the front of the gilded arrow; the other hand, equally protected, reached behind the deer demon’s slender back to grab the arrow’s fletching. With a flex of his thick arm and a grunt, Husker broke the back of the arrow clean off and cast it away from him, across the indigo velvet carpet. 

Alastor emitted a shriek that shattered off both ends of the audible spectrum, his fingertips gouging deep furrows in the throne’s Rococo arm.

This is all my fault! Charlie thought, feeling sick. If I hadn’t joined the battle, he wouldn’t have been distracted — or hurt — or had to get between me and that arrow —

For the first time in her two hundred and fifty-seven years of demonic life, she truly understood that old saying about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

“Hold still, dammit!” Husk growled, and tightened his grip on the arrow’s head before yanking it free and throwing it away too. This time Alastor made no sound, only swayed in his seat and went an even paler shade of grey. “Jesus Christ on a fuckin’ pogo stick — what the hell happened?”

Charlie found her voice. “He got between me and Vox’s men. He took the arrow to save my life.”

“Well, damn.” Husk’s voice held something akin to admiration as he shucked the torn velvet wrappings from his hands. “Guess he finally grew a pair — right at the end, but hey, better late than never, right?”

“Al?” Charlie crossed onto the marble precinct around the throne — and hesitated. She wanted to pull Alastor into her arms, to comfort him, but feared causing him even more pain.

Alastor opened his eyes and smiled at her, and she knew he had read her mind. “It doesn’t hurt now, darling. It’s far too late for that.”

“You lied to me!” She couldn’t suppress the quaver of tears in her voice — not now, when everything was coming apart. 

He bowed his head, still grinning. “I did.” His glowing eyes flicked up to study her face from under shadowed lids turning grey. “And you must see now — that I’ve... proven my thesis right — that dreams are... for fools...”

But Charlie was shaking her head emphatically. “No! You did exactly the opposite!”

Alastor tilted his head back against his Throne, the edges of his smile wavering downward as his eyes winced closed. “Believe... whatever lets you sleep at night —”

She took another step towards him, holding out both shaking hands. “Al, please —”

“You have no reason to forgive me.” A different accent was starting to infuse his voice, one Charlie had never heard in it before. “Still... may Ah request... one final kiss, before Ah go...?”

“You’re not going anywhere!” Charlie squeezed her eyes briefly closed and shook her head again, this time angrily. “We’ll — we can —”

“— do nothin’,” Alastor finished her sentence, his vocal powers waning rapidly. “Ah...” A spasm of pain siezed him and he hunched over for a couple of seconds, grimacing. When he straightened again, dark blood dripped from one corner of his cheerful grin. “Even Ah cannot survive a direct hit from... a Celestial weapon.”

“You’ll live,” Charlie insisted. “You’ve got to!”

“Alas, no.” His smile was unwavering now, even as his crimson eyes were being rapidly overtaken by dead white static lines and his skin was fading to a deathly pallor. “Go now, Charlie. And make haste! When Ah die, the Citadel will be —”

“You’re not going to die!”

“Husker will tell ya the rest.” Alastor straightened where he sat and lifted his chin in a final gesture of wicked, brilliant defiance. For a few seconds, the accent she knew so well returned:

“Goodbye forever, my dearest.” For the first time Charlie could recall, his steady voice lacked any radio filter whatsoever. “When you think of me, in centuries to come... remember my kindnesses as well as my cruelties...”

Alastor’s eyelids drifted closed. His chin sank to his left shoulder, and his body went limp and still on his throne.

She couldn’t breath. She could only gasp: “Al?” She crossed to the throne, grabbed his shoulders. and shook him — then immediately regretted it: there was no strength in him, and his head lolled on his neck. “Alastor, wake up!”

A hard hand descended on her left shoulder. “He’s gone, kid,” Husk growled. “Ain’t no comin’ back from that kind of —”

Charlie barely heard the cat demon’s words. “Wake up!” She stopped shaking him and cupped his face in her hands, lifting his head, hating the marble whiteness of his skin and the dark grey eyelids closed forever. Tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks, unheeded. “Alastor, please... you can’t — you can’t just...”

“Charlie.” Vaggie’s voice, far softer than Charlie could have imagined, and a firm arm wrapped around her waist from her right side. “We have to get out of here — now.”

She turned to stare into Vaggie’s unblinking eyes, helplessly weeping. “I can’t leave him here like this!”

“Hey...” Angel was there too, a tentative hand laid between her shoulder blades. “It’s too late — for him. But not for us. C’mon — let’s go.”

Charlie’s mind reeled. The Radio Demon was gone — one of the two strongest members of their group, nearly as strong as a Princess of Hell, and she knew that she was no warrior as he had been, that she didn’t have it in her to kill. Alastor had been her counterbalance, a major source of power and protection. Now that he was dead —

— now that he’s dead, what hope do we have left?

A tremor rocked the floor beneath them, throwing them all off balance. 

“This whole place is gonna come down around our ears!” Husk barked. “Al’s the kind of guy who didn’t mind dyin’ himself if he knew he’d bury his enemies under a mountain of rubble. Let’s move our fuckin’ asses!”

Charlie hesitated one final moment, stroking Alaster’s stone-cold cheek and imprinting his still-smiling death mask on her memory. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as she smoothed his disarrayed forelock, “I’m so, so sorry...”

That I didn’t have faith enough to see through your final lie.

I love you. I never said it before, but maybe you can hear me now.

I love you, Alastor. But I need to save my friends.

Goodbye, forever...

She gave him what he had requested — a kiss on his forehead, tender through her tears. Then she removed her hands from his face for the last time and stepped back, stiffening her spine and steeling her nerves, trying to remember if there was a safer exit from this place than the main entrance, which might lead them straight on to the guns of Vox’s army. 

Husk decided things for her. “This way! There’s a secret door behind the Throne! Follow me, an’ don’t fall behind!”
 
Vaggie’s arm tightened around Charlie’s waist, firmly guiding her to follow in Husk’s footsteps. Angel followed close behind. 

Which was just as well, because Charlie couldn’t see a thing through the mourning veil of her own tears.

Chapter 9: From Darkness Lead Me To Light

Niffty was in the Ballrooms at the moment it happened, hurrying in with another tray of full coffee cups. She had desperately wanted to stay and listen to the speakers, but keeping people fed and watered was her job and she always did her duty. 

As it was, she caught Alastor’s voice:

“Goodbye forever, my dearest.” His voice was oddly calm, with no crackle of static at all. “When you think of me, in centuries to come... remember my kindnesses as well as my cruelties...”

A tiny snapping sound made Niffty look up — just in time to see the Mirror loudly cracking from side to side, fracturing its final frozen vision: Charlie, shaking Alastor with both hands on his shoulders, silently weeping and pleading — because Alastor’s radio signal had stopped too. Only waves of harsh static came from the speakers... and then they went dead. 

Hundreds of demons were frozen where they sat or stood, staring up at the ruined Mirror of Shalott. 

“My fault...” Miriam was on her knees at the foot of the mainstage, weeping and moaning into her apron: “My fault... this is my fault!” Two waitresses from the Citadel, and one from the Hotel, gathered around her; two knelt on either side of her, while the third remained standing behind her, bending over to speak reassuring words —

— or at least Niffty guessed she was speaking reassuring words, because the Ballrooms had just exploded into an uproar of talking and yelling in disbelief:

“What happened?”

“Is he okay?”

“The Mirror —"

“— lost the radio signal, he’s gotta be —”

“NO! The Immortal Lord can’t die!”

“Sorry to break it to ya, toots, but he obviously ain’t immortal.”

“— really a Celestial weapon?”

“He said it was. Game fuckin’ over.”

“If he is dead —”

“— the wards —”

“Fuck the wards! What about the Brigade?”

“Oh shit, the Shadow Deer...”

“— the wards will go down in —”

“Somebody get Nero on the horn!”

“You think I’m not trying!” a praying mantis demoness in Brigade clothes bellowed from the sidelines, pressing her right forefinger and middle finger to the little round microphone in her ear. “I can’t get through, everybody’s screaming on the channel at once!”

“Keep trying.” It was Yakeema, calm as usual. 

The mantis demoness bowed her head, clearly trying to listen harder. She sounded distracted: “Best I can do is have Glide patch it through the speakers — and you don’t want that, trust me!”

“We’re in the dark here!” someone boomed from the muttering crowd. “We deserve to know what’s happening out there!”

The mantis raised her head, and Niffty saw tears in her eyes. “They’re gonna start ‘porting in the injured, any minute now.” She raised her voice in a roar: “But for fuck’s sake, people, stay the hell out of their way when they get here!” She pointed toward the tables at the back of the room. “Everybody who ain’t detailed to help the Brigade, get over to those tables — an’ stay there! Or if you puke easy, get out now and save everybody the hassle of dealing with you!”

A thin squishy demon that looked like a maggot stood up from his chair and yelled back: “Who the hell do you think you are? I ain’t part of your Citadel, I sure as shit don’t have to obey any orders from you!”

Mutters of agreement swept through parts of the crowd. 

“No...” Miriam’s choked voice brought Niffty’s attention back to her. Tears ran down her face, unchecked. “No, no, no, no, no...!”

On this rare occasion, Niffty decided that something was more important than serving coffee. She ran to the little huddle of women, put the tray safely on the floor of the stage, then scooted over to kneel in front of the lion demoness. 

“Miriam?” She put her right hand very carefully on the crying woman’s knee. “Are you okay?”

Miriam never raised her head from her apron, which was now wet with her tears. “Dead.. He’s dead!... The Horned God is no more!”

“What about Charlie?” the Hotel waitress asked.

Miriam shook her head miserably. “His last vision was of her face — her hands, reaching out to him... I cannot say if she still lives.”

The Hotel waitress got back on her feet, looking grim. “I’m gonna go find Vaggie!” She turned toward the crowd, many of whom were heading toward the back of the room and the tables, and yelled: “Anybody seen Vaggie in the last little while?”

A buzz of confused murmuring, but no actual answers —

— except for one, yelled from somewhere in the crowd: “She was with Beebi in the lobby — along with Husk and Angel!”

Without hesitation the waitress set off, pushing her way through the crush of moving demons, heading for the main entrance to the room. 

“Incoming wounded!” the mantis demoness barked —

— a second and a half before four demons popped into existence on the mainstage, in front of the broken Mirror still showing Charlie and Alastor in his last moments. 

Two of the arrivals were smeared and splattered with blood: one of them, a snow-white fox demoness, still had the shine of magic clinging to her hands. The second demoness, a medic, was on her knees bending over a thin lizard Brigade member who writhed on her back, while blood ran down her sides onto the carpetted floor. The fourth demoness took a step back and spoke quickly — “We’re there. Boosting back out!” — before popping out of existence again. 

“She’s not going anywhere anytime soon,” the medic declared, while her hands, pressed to the lizard’s stomach, glowed with bright red light. 

Before she was finished speaking, another teleporter dropped in, this time at the foot of the stage beyond Miriam. He was humanoid but clearly snake-based, and he was yelling: “Psych medic! We’ve got a brain-burn over here!”

The demoness he carried in his arms, even slimmer than he was, with dark brown skin and short antennas, was utterly limp, her eyes wide open and staring. Two Citadel people whose names Niffty hadn’t learned yet ran to him and helped him lower her to the floor. As soon as she was off his hands, he teleported back out again. 

Meanwhile, the two Citadel waitresses had gotten Miriam on her feet and were leading her back towards the kitchens, steadying her when she stumbled — which was a lot. 

Slowly Niffty stood up too. She was no stranger to the sight of blood — in fact, she knew six different ways to get bloodstains out of carpets and fabric — and that wasn’t what was making her tremble deep down inside. 

It was the image on the Mirror, cracked from side to side, frozen on the last frame of Alastor’s life — if what everybody was saying was true. 

And somehow, Niffty knew that it was. Alastor was always with her, in her head... but now he wasn’t there at all. 

“Alastor...?” 

Her whisper, spoken aloud and in her mind, was answered only by silence.

“Are you okay, Miss Niffty?”

Startled by the slow deep voice, she looked up sharply — 

— way up —

— then put on her brightest smile when she recognized the source. “Sure sure, Caulifleur! I’m —” The cheerful words choked in her throat. “I’m — just fine!”

Caulifleur shook his head. He lowered himself onto his butt, then carefully leaned back against the foot of the mainstage. He held out one arm, and suddenly Niffty found herself snuggling into it. 

Up on the stage, more talking and yelling. Someone in the crowd — one, then two or three, then a few — let out terrified shrieks that made Niffty tremble on the outside, too.

“My Mama raised chickens,” the big potato demon explained, “and this was what the mother hens always did when it started thundering.”

Niffty sniffled, pulled out her handkerchief, and wiped her nose. “I’m not a chicken!” she protested.

Caulifleur nodded. “No, you’re not a chicken — but you are little like one.” His big strong arm gave her a gentle squeeze. “I’ll protect you from the thunder, Niffty — I promise.”

I have Alastor to protect me! Niffty almost told him proudly — but then she remembered.

When she buried her face against Caulifleur’s side and started to really cry, he simply held her close and didn’t say a word.

 

Chapter 10: From Death Lead Me To Immortality

The secret door was the same colour as the wall — unless Husk had known where to find it, Charlie would have walked within a foot of it and never suspected it was there. 

“Let’s hope this still works!” Husk laid his open palm on the radio-and-antlers sigil carved into the marble, and at once the door creaked open on invisible hinges, revealing a cold dark passage made of tightly fitted stones, with neatly crafted wooden steps heading down into the blackness.

Angel peered past Charlie’s shoulder. “I’ll be okay in there — not so sure about the rest of you.”

Vaggie was just opening her mouth to reply when Charlie held up her right hand and conjured a small ball of yellow-orange fire. “Lead,” she told it, her voice still heavy with weeping. The ball instantly floated away, past Husk and a few feet down the steps, where it hovered and spun as if waiting for them to follow.

“Nice,” Husk admitted grudgingly, and started downwards. Vaggie nodded Charlie ahead of her, and Angel made up the rear. When they were a few feet down from the door, it silently closed again, cutting off all external light. 

“So far so good,” Husk said when they’d been walking downstairs for about five minutes.

But he spoke too soon.

Charlie, her gaze fixed on the ball of light that guided them, heard a loud crack and snap behind her, followed by Vaggie’s startled and pain-filled yell: 

“Oh, jódeme a ciegas!” 

Instantly, Charlie stopped. So did Husk. And so did Angel, just short of tripping over Vaggie, who had grabbed her left leg just below the knee and was hunched over in pain. 

Angel yelped: “Hey! What the fuck?”

Husk looked past Charlie at the stair which had snapped closed around Vaggie’s foot. “Huh. Trick step. Shoulda seen that one comin’.”

Vaggie swore a blue streak in Spanish, while Charlie and Angel hurried to help. Working together they managed to open the trap enough for Vaggie to pull her leg free, but her ankle was a real mess, bleeding where the edges had snapped shut and already starting to bruise extravagantly. 

“How am I supposed to get anywhere on this?” Vaggie demanded, supported by Charlie as she tried to keep her balance without putting weight on her left foot.

Husk grunted and raised his paw. “I shoulda warned you that Al is — was — a tricky bastard, like you shouldn’t have that figured out by now... I guess Angel and I can carry your sorry ass.”

“Who, me?” Angel demanded. “Why am I being roped into this?”

“Because I’m an old man,” Husk retorted, “an’ not up to carryin’ one hundred and twenty pounds of pissed-off moth however the fuck far we’ve gotta go. But just to show I play fair, I’ll take the first shift.”

So they got Vaggie on Husk’s back. (“Quit squirmin’ around, an’ for fuck’s sake do NOT put any weight on my wings! Arms around my neck, legs around my waist — okay, as much as you can, anyway — an’ away we go!”) Although Charlie was full of sympathy for the pain that Vaggie was obviously in, she was also shamefully grateful for something other than Alastor’s last moments to occupy her mind. She hated the thought of him all alone up there, just waiting to be found by the Legions — and the word ‘desecrate’ kept coming to mind along with images that choked her breath in her throat. 

By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, Husk was puffing and blowing, and demanded that Angel take his turn. Getting Vaggie changed over was time-consuming and painful, but in the end it got done. 

“How did you know about this secret passage, Husk?” Charlie asked, desperate for something other than the Legion’s atrocities with corpses to think about. 

The cat/bird hybrid led them down a slightly wider and taller corridor of the same fitted stone, heading down on a slope that couldn’t have been more than six or seven degrees. “Yeah, well... let’s just say that court jesters keep their eyes an’ ears wide open — if they’re smart. An’ if they’re even smarter, they remember everything they seen and heard.” For a few seconds they trudged on in silence, until a shuddering rumble all around them made Husk look upward and pin back both his ears. “Aw, shit — when the Citadel goes down, so will the oubliettes. And won’t that be a big fuckin’ mess to clean up?”

Angel scowled. “The what now?”

“The cells where Al kept his pet souls,” Husk explained. “The ones that gave ‘im all that magical power. They’ll be free, and they’ll be pissed.”

Vaggie, always the tactitian, asked: “Will we be safe down here?”

Husk shrugged. “Fuck if I know. Al didn’t talk about that part — at least not in front of me. But I’m guessin’ the answer is no, so we’d better haul ass.”

The next ten or so minutes were filled with tense silence, broken by louder and louder arguments. Angel was complaining about Vaggie’s weight (“One twenty my well-reamed ass!”), Husk was sniping back, and Vaggie was seething, when Charlie offered to take a turn carrying her girlfriend. She picked Vaggie up bridal style, silently upforming her muscles into a stronger form to make things a bit easier. 

Looking down into that dark beloved face, and that weary cheek laid against her shoulder, Charlie just wanted to find a quiet corner and shelter Vaggie in her arms. She longed to be able to give her the gift of sleep, without pain or fear. 

When we get back to the Hotel —

But dread shut the sentence down before she could finish it. 

A flash of premonition equal to the one she’d felt the first time she’d seen Alastor’s Throne. 

The shadows of a grave already prepared. 

I can’t be right! Not twice!

But somehow the Hotel felt so far away... viewed across a great chasm without a bridge in sight. 

Charlie’s gloomy thoughts about the Hotel were effectively diverted to something worse when they came round a curve and saw something utterly unexpected. On their right, lying against the wall, a small demoness lay as if curled up in sleep — an impression given lie by the red blood soaking her comfy knitted sweater, and by the fact that her left arm, the upper left part of her chest, and the left side of her head were embedded in the wall.

Charlie stopped in her tracks and stared in disbelief. “Beebi?”

Vaggie nodded without opening her eyes. “Turns out she was a teleporter — and that’s how we got here.”

“She told us she had enough juice to get back to the Hotel,” Angel added. “Guess she was wrong.”

“No!” Charlie softly cried, as another massive weight of grief settled on her already overburdened heart. 

Husk shrugged, and kept walking. “There’s a reason why there ain’t many teleporters — most of ‘em take themselves out pretty early in their career.”

“We’ve got to do something!” Charlie insisted.

“There’s nothin’ to be done,” Angel said. He put his upper right arm around Charlie’s shoulders and gave her a tug to get her going again. “C’mon — the faster we get out of here, the better.”

Reluctantly, Charlie left what remained of Beebi behind. But she resolved that when 

if if IF

they got back to the Hotel, she would make sure to tell everybody about the bravery of the timid little sheep demon whom Alastor had rescued out of the goodness of his heart. 

Vaggie, dozing in Charlie’s arms, barely stirred awake when Husk grudgingly mentioned that it was his turn to carry her. He took a page from Charlie’s book with the bridal carry. Angel, without a word, materialized his third set of arms along with the Tommy gun he kept tucked away in his own pocket dimension. 

“I got a feelin’,” he said really quietly when Charlie looked at him askance. “The faster we get outta this sitch, the better!”

Unfortunately, it looked like a day for premonitions to come true — because a short while later, as they were just turning another corner still heading slowly downwards, it sounded like a firecracker had gone off right behind them.

Husk looked down at the spurting hole in his chest without surprise.

“Well, fuck,” he said with more than his usual world-weariness, and slumped to the floor dead, spilling the sleeping Vaggie on her ass.

The moth demoness’s yelp of pain when she landed was Charlie’s last straw. One of her lovers and two of her friends were now dead at the hands of her Dad’s soldiers — and she’d finally reached her breaking point. 

“Get down!” Angel yelled, spinning round and levelling his gun at the humanoid shadows moving beyond Charlie’s circle of light. His weapon rapped out percussion twice, and Charlie saw one of the running shapes drop like a sack of wheat. “Gotcha, ya sonoffa bitch!”

Charlie took a big step forward, her claws open and her eyes white-in-red. “Stand back, Angel! I’m going to —”

“Oh no, ya ain’t!” He grabbed her arm when she tried to get past him, then braved her flat glare of rage. Tears were welling in his mismatched eyes. “You’ve gotta get back to the Hotel, kid— an’ survive. That’s what Husk died for... an’ Al, too.” 

The simple truth splashed ice-cold water over the flames of her anger. Her eyes blinked back to normal, her horns already starting to retract as she stared up at the spider demon.

The floor lurched under their feet, this time accompanied by a long, drawn-out rumble.

Angel hefted the machine gun and smiled through his tears. “Now get movin’! I’ll hold ‘em off long enough.”

Vaggie, sitting up with her injured leg carefully extended in front of her, spoke up: “Charlie — grab the belt from the dead guy! I’ll bet he was at least carrying some grenades!”

The walls shook, and dust drifted down from the ceiling. “Vaggie, we really don’t have time to —”

“Go ahead, Cha-Cha!” Angel’s voice was a low growl, and tears were now running freely down his cheeks. “I’ll cover ya.”

So Charlie obeyed her girlfriend’s order. The belt was heavy, which promised a good outcome, and when Vaggie started looking over its attachments —

“Bingo,” Vaggie said with considerable satisfaction, holding up a rectangular device that fit neatly into the palm of her hand. “A frag grenade! Just what we need!”

“What you need is to move your asses,” Angel snapped as she slotted it back into the belt, then slipped the belt over her slim shoulders, all the way down to her waist. “I can feel a lot more boots on the ground, comin’ up fast!”

“Angel, I —” Charlie hesitated a split second, then threw both arms around him in a quick side hug that he awkwardly returned with his lower left arm. “Good luck!”

She knew he was going to be erased. They all did. 

“You too, cutie-pie.” He gently shoved her away, then got down on one knee beside Husk’s sprawled corpse and turned his full attention down the corridor. 

Charlie wasted no more time in picking Vaggie up and starting to jog in the opposite direction, almost stumbling when the whole place rumbled and rocked around them again. A few seconds later the floor shifted in the other direction, and Charlie nearly went down on her face. 

If only I knew how much further we had to go!

No sooner had the thought occurred to her than something swooped down out of the stone ceiling to hover a few feet in front of them. It was solid black, like a hole cut in the fabric of reality — four limbs, pointed ears, triangular yellow eyes, like a cartoon silhouette of a cat. 

“Charlie — be careful!”

“It’s okay, Vaggie!” She took a step towards it and smiled. “Hi! You’re one of Alastor’s friends, aren’t you?”

The creature twittered and swooped in a complete circle, ending up almost nose-to-nose with the Princess of Hell. She could feel a terrible chill coming off it, but something about it was also strangely reassuring. 

“Can you show us the quickest way out of here?”

It blinked at her.

“We don’t know the way,” Charlie explained, “and Vaggie’s hurt!”

The little Ghost peered at Vaggie and chirped, as if agreeing with Charlie’s assessment. 

“Oh, please tell me you can understand me!”

The Ghost rapidly squeaked at her in a businesslike way, then swooped in another big circle and started to drift quickly down the corridor.

“It may be a trap!” Vaggie scowled. 

“Come on, Vaggie — not everything is the absolute worst thing it can be!”

“Except when it comes to Alastor,” Vaggie muttered — then shut her lips in a thin line and looked up at Charlie with a mixture of apology and defiance. 

The most Charlie could muster was a bone-deep sigh as she jogged after Alastor’s tiny Ghost. 

For at least twenty minutes, maybe more, they followed the Ghost down one long corridor of dressed stone with two wooden staircases built in. Charlie was extremely careful about where she stepped, and nothing bad befell her. Three times she was sure she heard booted footfalls catching up behind them, but immediately a chorus of angry squeaks burst out and the footfalls stopped in their tracks, then retreated. 

The fourth time an angry female voice bawled, sounding like she was almost on top of them: “They’re just shapes, you cowards! They can’t hurt you! Keep going, or so help me Lucifer, I’ll castrate you right where you stand!”

Vaggie’s arms tightened around Charlie’s shoulders, her eye going wide as she looked behind them. 

“Hold on!” Charlie whispered, and upshifted slightly to a form with longer legs and a bouncing stride. She longed to go full demonic and take on the Legionnaires on their tails, but she had no idea how much magical energy she might need when they got out of the tunnels — and even a Princess of Hell only had finite magical resources. 

For another fifteen minutes or so she ran, until when she stopped and listened she could hear no trace of boots or breathing behind them. 

“Charlie...” Vaggie’s eye was closed tightly, her cheeks pale. “Can we stop for a minute? I’m starting to feel sick...”

“Oh! Sure! Sorry about that!” She came back into her default shape and carefully knelt to set Vaggie on the floor, propping her up against the left-hand wall. “Is that better?”

“A lot better,” Vaggie muttered, covering the right half of her face with her right hand. “Madre de Dios, of all the times for something like this to happen...!”

But Charlie’s attention was on something else — a liquid sound that had just come to her ears from somewhere ahead. “I hear water! Right around the corner!” She rose to her feet and started towards it. “I’m going to go check it out!”

“Be careful!” Vaggie warned. “Who know what you’ll find down here? It’s probably poisoned!”

“If it is,” Charlie called back, “I’ll use a purifying spell on it!” Because suddenly she was ravenously thirsty, and she imagined that Vaggie must be feeling much the same way.”

The little Ghost followed her as she walked past her magical fire globe, circling round her at shoulder level and chirping urgently. The floor ahead dipped lower, than slowly trended upward. And sure enough, the lowest point of the corridor reflected a strip of light maybe two feet across: the unmistakeable mirrored gleam of water. 

Charlie knelt at its edge and beckoned the globe towards her, so she could see the colour of the liquid. 

It was pitch black, with swirls of pearly white. 

Frowning, Charlie reached out to scoop up a little of it in the palm of her hand —

— only to have the Ghost swoop down, quicker than thought, and put itself between her hand and the water. 

Charlie’s frown became a scowl. “Hey!” 

She tried to touch the water again.

Same response from the Ghost. 

She gazed into its wide yellow eyes, confounded. “Are you telling me I shouldn’t touch it?”

A series of nods and a loud squeal. 

“Is it poisonous?”

But the Ghost had raised its head and was looking down the passage, past Charlie. The strip of water was suddenly crossed with ripples, intersecting in squares and crosses. 

The Ghost let out a sound that was almost a shriek —

— and was suddenly joined by three more of its kind, all of them crowding against Charlie’s chest, trying to push her back. 

“Okay, okay!” She got to her feet, careful to avoid contact with the water, and took two big steps backwards, holding up both hands. “See? I’m not going to touch it!”

But the Ghosts weren’t reassured. In fact, they emitted even louder shrieks and tried to push her further back. 

“What is wrong with you?” Charlie demanded, smacking at the nearest one with her hands. It darted out of range and promptly swooped back, warbling its alarm. “We have to keep going this way — we don’t have any choice!”

Overhead, dust began to drift from the stone roof. One of the Ghosts slipped past Charlie, while the others started nudging her right shoulder from behind. 

“You want me to turn around? Is that it?”

Chirps that sounded affirmative. 

“All right,” and Charlie let them turn her, “but I don’t see what —”

The whole corridor rocked from side the side like a porch swing, ending with the left side significantly lower than the right. Charlie windmilled her arms, one foot lifting clear off the floor, and barely managed to stay upright.

Ahead of Charlie, the grinding sound of stone ripping free from its mortar — and a thunderous crash that shook the hallway all over again. 

A scream of pain from Vaggie’s lips. 

And piercing wails from the Ghosts, leaving Charlie to speed back around the corner —

— where Vaggie lay on her face, covered from the waist down in big blocks of stone from the collapsed roof. 

“Vaggie!” Charlie skidded to her knees at her lover’s side, her heart hammering in her chest and throat. 

The moth demon stirred, her fists slowly clenching. “Cha... Charlie?” Her head came up, her eye clouded and unfocussed. “Are you — okay?”

“I’m fine!” She started to pick up stones on top of the pile and throw them away behind her. “Just hold still — I’ll have you out of there in a minute!”

“I...” Her head sank back to the floor, her mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “I can’t... feel my legs. Or anything... below... my waist.”

“You’re going to be okay!” Charlie’s eyes were bone dry, her eyes phased to the demonic. “Vaggie, I swear — you’ll be all right —”

“It’s over, Charlie.” She stretched out her steady right hand and took firm hold of Charlie’s left knee. “By the time — you dig me out — and we don’t have that kind of time.” 

Charlie shook her head, scarcely feeling the pain as her black nails were torn apart against the stones. “Don’t be ridiculous! I can get you —”

“Listen,” Vaggie panted, and dug sharp nails into her knee. “Listen! They’re coming!”

And Charlie did stop.

She listened. 

Then shook her head savagely. “Fuck that shit! I had to leave Al behind — I’m not going to leave you too!”

“We all heard what Vox wanted to do to you. You can’t —”

“I’m staying here with you!”

“Charlie.” Vaggie reached up with her right hand, her fingers shaking — and Charlie caught hold of it in both of hers, clinging tight. “You — weren’t wrong, about Alastor. He proved that at the end. And I... I forgive you. Both of you.”

Charlie bent over double, covering Vaggie’s shoulders and head with the fall of her blonde hair, like a benediction. “Vaggie,” she whispered into the warm secrecy of that hallowed space: “Oh, Vaggie — I love you so much!”

“I know.” She sounded weary, but her voice was full of ineffable warmth. “I love you too — I always have, in spite of everything. But you’ve got to go.” Her left hand had been digging around near her waist, and now she pulled out the grenade she’d scavenged, clutched in her left fist. “They’re not going to capture me alive. I’ll make sure — to take some of them out, when I —”

Charlie sat straight up, her eyes wide with horror at the thought of that lovely, beloved body being blasted to pieces. “No!”

“The Hotel needs you.” Vaggie’s breathing was getting increasingly ragged. “They’re coming. And if they catch you, all our deaths will have been in vain.”

Now the burning tears slipped free. “I can’t lose both of you! I can’t...!”

“Hey!” Vaggie managed to turn her head, staring fiercely up into Charlie’s eyes. “Remember who you are, sweetie — the Princess of Hell! And never forget that Alastor and I were only human. It was going to happen sooner or later, it just happened sooner. Now run! And don’t look back!”

Charlie’s heart shattered into more shards of pain and sorrow than she could ever hope to count. Before she could weaken, she let go of Vaggie’s hand and stumbled to her feet. The Ghosts were gone, so when she threw herself down the corridor in an uneven sprint, she went alone. 

She leaped the black waters and kept going up the slope. 

She covered her ears with both hands when the explosion went off behind her, eyes squeezed tight shut against the images she couldn’t force out of her mind’s eye. 

The tunnel turned from fitted stones to solid rock, clearly excavated and smoothed by magic. 

After a bit of climbing and scrambling, Charlie finally emerged out of the underworld, through a hidden trap door atop a tall spire of natural stone. All around her, racing towards the northern bluffs, black water streaked with transluscent pearly currents swirled and seethed, rushing down from the mountains right behind the ruins of the Citadel and its crumbled tower, rapidly rising higher and higher. 

The River of Oblivion had burst its banks in a massive and rapid flood that had clearly swallowed up the Legions before they could flee. Only the teleporters who thought quickly enough would have been able to escape.  

Alastor not only intended to crush or drown his enemies: he wanted their memories obliterated for all Eternity. The beauty of such sophisticated and malicious cruelty made fresh tears of longing well up in Charlie’s eyes. 

Perched atop the spire, she discovered that part of the legend of the River was true: her friends and her lovers were all under the waves, and although the features of the spider and the cat/bird were already nameless blurs, the devilishly handsome Alastor and strong beautiful Vaggie were still clear in her mind... 

... but they were starting to fade. Was the Radio Demon really always smiling? Did the moth demoness actually hit Charlie in an attempt to...

... to...

It was already a thing forgotten. 

Even her own name was disintegrating, vanishing into a grey haze.

No! She couldn’t bear the thought of having them stolen away from her a second time! 

She stepped up to the very edge of the stone’s flat top, gazed down into the River’s flood — then dove off the edge, praying as she fell that their two faces would be the last things she ever saw.

Her face slipped below the waves, golden hair floating around her...

... and memory faded with the light as she sank ever deeper...

... deeper into darkness slashed with more and more white...

... until the whiteness was the only thing left in her universe.

CONTINUED in “AND WE WILL COME BACK HOME”

Chapter 11: BONUS CHAPTER: The Song of Lost Legions Lake

Notes:

Sung to the tune of “Jaques Cretien”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYJ6AygkR2Q

Look south, look south, my brothers all,
Upon the Ebon Plain;
Look down upon the cursèd waste
Where Alastor was slain.

Look down upon the vasty Lake
That covers the desert sands;
Where Alastor lies in His tomb,
Yet still His men commands.

No more, no more the Citadel
Stands in the Ebon Plains;
And of the Radio Demon’s House
No brick nor stone remains,

No more the traders and the spies
Go forth to do His will;
No more the bloody Red Brigade
March out His foes to kill.

But though He died upon His throne,
Her kiss his final boon,
His enemies learned that they had crowed
Their victory too soon.

For when He died, His Citadel
In ruins fell to ground —
But even worse, the River wild
Its cliffs came tumbling down.

Black waterfalls streamed down the rocks
Whose wall Pride’s worst contained,
They flooded all His oubliettes
And freed what Ghosts remained.

The brutal troops of Hell’s own King,
Nine thousand fighting men,
Beneath the River’s surge and foam
Were never seen again.

Yet still, they say, beneath the waves
The stained glass roof endures;
And in the room that lies below
His bones are yet interred.

‘Tis said that through the waters black
It glows both day and night,
A tribute to His sacrifice
And Love’s unending light.

Look south, look south, my brothers all,
Upon the Ebon Plain;
Look down upon the cursèd waste
Where Alastor was slain.

Gaze out upon the vasty Lake
Which steals all memory,
A tribute to undying Love,
And those from curses freed.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 13 of Rewrite the Stars