Hellbeast

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Images flashed by as Eva stared into the distance, watching everything, seeing nothing. The sun blazed over Lake Geneva, the calm waters reflecting the sunshine back as if seeing it once was not enough for mere mortals. Majestic mountains grew out of the top of the treeline, some still dusted with snow despite the season. Boats bobbed carefree on the surface of the lake. Eva wished she could appreciate the stunning beauty of the Swiss backdrop, but she was empty; she had lost everything. Nina was gone.

Again, Eva replayed the events in her mind and came to the same conclusion.

“There was nothing I could do. It was executed without fault: Rick's death, Elaine's escape. They had it planned to perfection.”

Gila Ciranoush, all dark-haired Egyptian gorgeousness and Eva's closest friend, ceased the conversation she had been having by phone. “They did and we have to find out how.”

“We know how,” she argued.

“Yes, we do. However, we are in a sorry state. We have to take stock of what we have and where we go from here. Precipitous action now could have the direst consequences.”

“But they have Nina. They have my daughter.”

Gila reached across and placed a sympathetic hand on her arm. “Yes, they do. They have your daughter, but we all know they are not going to harm her. If they had just intended blood and sacrifice, Elaine would not have been cradling her so. They want more. They want you.”

“Then why are we sitting here in a car driving as fast as we can away from the scene?”

“Because the most obvious answer is not necessarily the correct one. They want us to go. We will find a way, but we will go there on our terms, not theirs.”

Eva turned away, watching the ambulance in front of their car. Inside, Madden and Swanson were both unconscious following the events at the Orpheus portal. The hidden sensor at CERN had been presumed a failed project, but—to their detriment—was really a portal to Hell.

“At least we got Asmodeus,” Eva said with slight satisfaction, referring to the demon Lord who had perished in the collapsing portal, the energy slicing him in half. “You are right. Perhaps we do need to rest, but I can’t. Nina is only days old. I barely had time enough to get to know her.”

“Yet she knew you and from what you explained, knew you well. Eva, your daughter is courageous, small as she may be. She knows you will never abandon her.”

“It feels like I have.”

Gila’s phone sounded, and Eva turned to contemplate the scenery as her friend attempted to do the job of reassembling the ARC council and whoever else would listen. Whoever was left. A sign flashed past. ‘Évian-les-Bains’; they were halfway around Lake Geneva, heading Eva knew not where.

“Oh, that is bad news indeed,” Gila said to her mystery caller. “Have you contacted headquarters? No? Well, protocol may still be in place. Swanson is out of action for the foreseeable future, and if you can’t get hold of the Council then I guess it falls to me. I will do what I can. See to it the facility is secure.”

Not looking up from the phone, Gila dialed another number. “This is Director Ciranoush. Tartarus has been breached. Assemble Legion reserves.”

The title caused Eva to turn from her contemplation of the endless expanse of water. “Director?”

Gila smiled. “They accepted it. Nothing else matters. Sometimes people just need someone to tell them to do what they had already decided. The base below the portal has been compromised. Demons made an incursion and slaughtered some of the forces stationed there. You understand the consequences of their actions, yes?”

Eva nodded, wishing there were some way this could be otherwise. “The Well of Souls is being used to open portals to Earth. So soon?”

“It sounded like the knife was all they needed to complete whatever ritual they intended to undertake. No longer are hellbounces the only way back from Hell. Still, it could have been worse. No trace of the demons was found. But one hallway in the mountain was encrusted in ice.”

Memories came flooding back to Eva, countless apparitions of ice-white portals with tentacles, dark and slimy, writhing and probing. “The others are hunting the demons.”

“Just as they hunt us. It seems our planet is safe for nobody. We are in a mess, Eva. If we stand any chance of doing what we need to do, we need to know we have a solid foundation at our backs. Somebody has to take charge. If we lose the keystone, the bridge will collapse.”

Gila made a lot of sense. Given only a year before she had been a researcher, a custodian of Coptic history in Cairo, she had come far.

Eva's training in psychotherapy left her always analyzing, always seeking the reasons behind why people were the way they were. Gila had always had the confidence to back her decisions. Unconsciously, Gila was asking Eva to have confidence in her. Desperation, and perhaps a touch of guilt, was forcing her to take the necessary steps. Gila was, after all, the one responsible for destroying the Orpheus portal. She was ultimately responsible for stranding Nina in a place only the dead were meant to be.

Eva closed her eyes, reaching out to her daughter for the first time since CERN. The psychic connection had existed since conception, before there was anything Eva could call a child growing within her. It had saved them both on several occasions, but now there was nothing. There was less than nothing. There was an absence, and it left Eva numb.

She opened her eyes, and the guilt lay heavy on Gila's face. “It was not your fault, Gila.” The words were nigh on impossible to speak, but they had to be said. There could not be this wall between them.

“I had no choice,” she responded, unshed tears brimming in her eyes.

“I know. It can't get any worse for me at the moment.” Eva paused and then laughed, the sound cynical. “Of course, it can always get worse. Nina's last words to me were 'Find me'. That is all I have of her inside. It is the only force driving me. What you did rid the world of a dreadful curse. Asmodeus was a parasite, sucking the human race dry for his own needs, his own pleasures. Giving all God's creatures more time to prepare might make the difference. It certainly saved Madden and Swanson. While there's life, there is hope.”

The words made Eva feel better, if only for a moment or two. She glanced out the window again to see a small lake ferry racing them for a moment, smoke billowing from its black-tipped red stack. The Swiss flag fluttered in the breeze and passengers waved with enthusiasm. Eva forced a smile, only the corners of her mouth tipping up and then they were past. The boat chugged on in the distance, the moment gone. If only they knew.

“It just makes me wonder. If I had never thought to question; if I had accepted my place with Brian, given him no cause for jealousy, worked at the hospital, could all this have been avoided?”

“From what we have seen, you have had your path arranged far earlier than you could possibly have imagined. Asmodeus played this game long before you were born.”

“You think I would have met Madden anyway? The demons would have had us sleep together and end up on Mount Gehenna? The cult? Bodom? CERN?”

“I think the route may have been a little different but yes. The alternative is you would have ended up on a slab in Iuvart's office, which doesn’t bear thinking about.”

The phone rang once more. Gila's face paled, and she answered it without speaking.

“I understand,” she said in due course and put the phone down. “We have to stop. I need to speak to Swanson.” Gila leaned forward, tapping on the glass dividing them from the driver.

“Oui, Director?” The French chauffeur inquired without turning.

“Please signal the ambulance to pull over.”

The driver pulled their car out half a lane and Eva saw the reflection of headlights on the back of the ambulance. Hazard lights flashed in response. At the next available break in the road, the two vehicles pulled over, traversing the oncoming traffic to pull to a halt in a dust-filled layby thirty feet from the waters' edge.

Climbing out of vehicles with ease served as another reminder. To Eva there was one very important thing missing. For so long she had been on the move with Nina inside her. Eva focused on the ambulance. The very same vehicle had taken her to hospital. The paramedic, Nina, was seeing to her husband and Swanson Guyomard, member of the ruling council of Anges de la Résurrection des Chevaliers, known simply as ARC. The rest of the staff that had taken them to the hospital had disappeared and were presumed subordinates of either the demons Asmodeus and Belphegor, or of Benedict Garias, the ARC director whose guilt had been proven, but the extent of his responsibility in the recent events had yet to be determined. Either way, they had vanished; Eva presumed by design.

She scuffed at the rough chunks of limestone gravel and watched eddies of the white dust cloud in the onshore breeze. While still a lake, Geneva was enormous and had size enough to cause waves tugged along by the wind to lap against the shore. The daytime heat was mollified somewhat. Part of Eva wished she could dive into the water, maybe to sink into oblivion where she could find her baby daughter.

The edge of depression, Eva knew it well. She had seen it in many patients over the years. Consciously trying to avoid such thoughts, Eva looked about. Near the road was a sign proclaiming the land border between Switzerland and France. Eva laughed.

“What is it?” Gila asked, turning from the ambulance.

“It just dawned on me; I'm perpetually confused as to which country I'm in.”

Gila glanced at the road sign. “Yes, I can see how you could get a bit lost. But the people on one side of the sign are no different to those on the other, much how it is with any land boundary. In fact, if you track the language variations across Europe, you can see how everything changes from one side to the other. Some say if one listens carefully enough, dialect changes from street to street in some cities.”

“I thought you just studied ancient languages and texts?”

“I do, but while mankind has evolved, the tricks of language remain much the same. Even in ancient history, the dialects changed from town to town. Some hypothesize the aberrations are what gave rise to the variations in ancient religious practices.”

“Different dialect gives rise to different interpretation,” Eva concluded.

“Exactly! We will make an ancient historian of you yet.”

The ambulance door opened from the inside, swinging on silent hinges, and Eva's heart jumped. She missed Madden whenever she was apart from him; he was the rock she depended upon.

Inside the pristine white of the ambulance was a space crammed with two beds. Into each was secured a body with blankets and strapping. Swanson Guyomard, descendant of the ARC founder, Jerome, was a man who once had looked so smug, so carefree. In the year Eva had known him, his hair had thinned, and his face had become worn. Worry lines had developed as they jumped from drama to crisis.

Next to him was her husband. Eva leaned in; Madden was out cold, sedated. It had taken far more than the normal dosage to keep him under because of his unique nature. Madden was a Hellbounce, a man who had died and gone to hell and returned in his human form, one harboring a deadly peril. Inside him a demon lay dormant, just waiting for him to lose control enough to let it erupt from within, ultimately destroying all vestiges of the man remaining.

His long brown hair was loose about his shoulders; Eva's fingers itched to arrange it. Whatever he was, whatever he had been or might become, he was her husband, the father of their abducted daughter, and she loved him.

Both men had been incapacitated in the collapse of the Orpheus portal at CERN, home of the particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider. They were on their way to the ARC retreat to heal and recuperate. Nina, the blonde paramedic who had been so steadfast during Eva's labor and for whom Eva had named her own daughter, checked his vitals.

“Give him a few minutes to come round,” Nina advised Gila.

Eva waited, watching her husband sleep. In the end, she stepped away from the door.

“He should have healed,” she wondered aloud.

“Like the bullet wound?”

“Exactly. He has the demon inside of him again.”

“Maybe it was more. The cold touch he received from Belphegor? Who knows what happened to him when he received the touch of Asmodeus.”

Eva felt real worry for him. It was a feeling she had not experienced in a long while; she was not used to Madden looking vulnerable. More than his frailty was the constant worry he would be a target for the denizens of the netherworld lying beyond Hell. Whenever a hellbounce had been injured, portals had sprung into life. Tentacles straight out of nightmare had reached through, pulling the injured demon into their domain. Somebody beyond the limits of imagination and reality had a game plan and a reason for hunting demons.

“Swanson? Can you hear me?” Gila’s searching voice came from within the ambulance and Eva peered back inside.

Gila leaned over Swanson, whose unfocussed eyes were open. His eyes twitched, trying to peer at the light outside.

“Swanson, we need to talk. This is an emergency.”

Swanson turned his head, mumbling a few words in Gila’s direction and closed his eyes once more.

The frown on Gila’s face betrayed her frustration. Instead of pressing the injured man for comment, she climbed out of the ambulance.

“It was worth trying. Nina, let us get to the retreat with as much haste as we can manage. The sooner they are settled, the sooner they will mend.”

The paramedic climbed back into the ambulance to secure the passengers and Gila led Eva back to the armored Mercedes.

“Anything I can help with?” Eva enquired.

“Not unless you know a way to permanently seal Hell away from earth.” Gila shook her head at some inner turmoil. “If they had only concentrated on the greater good rather than becoming the politicians ARC was never supposed to have. Maybe we would have some direction.”

“The Council?”

“Yes. They are hidden away, not speaking to anybody. We have reports around the globe of lightning in clear skies. Pressure building where there is no reason and the ground giving way and pits full of fire opening up. The other side has always been ready for this, and we don’t have long to react. The longer we leave it, the more like Hell earth becomes.

In quick order, they were back on the road and into France. The road took them away from Lake Geneva for a while, passing Bouveret, Rennaz, and Villeneuve.

Eva wanted to continue talking, but there was nothing for her to say. The men in her life were both strapped to a bed, and until they recovered, her daughter was alone with a psycho of a wet nurse. ‘If you can hear me, Nina, I will come for you,’ Eva thought.

As they passed through an industrial estate, the lake came back into view on Eva’s left. Dense forest crowded the flanks of the mountains to their right. Through it, the highway cut like an arrow.

Ahead, appearing to emerge from the water on a shallow base of rock, was a castle with red-tiled towers atop pale yellow walls.

Gila breathed a sigh of relief. “At last.”

“Our destination is the castle?”

“It is indeed. If ever we needed a place to feel safe, a castle on a lake is it. The ARC Council refers to the building as the refuge. To the public it is ‘Château de Chillon’. I only have one name for it though: Fort Guyomard.