Page 3 of Demons & Damnation

“You’re being very mysterious about the destination this year, Balti,” Azazel said, grabbing the black wrought iron door handle and shoving the heavy old door open.

As the silence around them filled with the creaking of the ornate iron hinges, Balthazar took the couple of seconds to choose his words carefully.

“It’s a surprise.”

Azazel quirked a sandy coloured eyebrow up, his jade green eyes filling with mischief. “I remember the last time you said that we ended up in Thailand. What an adventure that was.”

Balthazar allowed himself a small smile. “This will definitely beat that,” he said. “Don’t you worry.”

Azazel stole a quick look at his brother, scanning his coffee-coloured eyes for any kind of a hint as to where they were going. In his mind’s eye, he reached out with a long tendril of pulsating green energy, gently pushing at his brother’s mind, trying to break inside and peek at what was going on in there. All he met was a fortified wall of steel.

“Keeping your secrets close to your chest, hey? I like the mystery of it. Very good.”

They stepped through the doorway, scanning the long, narrow room for any potential intruders. Around ten feet wide and sixty feet long, the room itself was nothing but chunky grey stone bricks all around. At the very end sat the portal itself – a ball of rainbow coloured energy pulsating as if it had its own heartbeat.

“I don’t see why we have to use this still. It’s ridiculous. It’s been over a thousand years already,” Azazel said, rolling his eyes. “We’re more than capable of going straight to Earth without having to use this thing.”

Balthazar shot his brother a sideways glance as he ran a hand through his dark hair, trying his best to hide the fact his hands were shaking. “One breach of the threshold was one too many, Azazel,” Balthazar replied. “You only have yourself to blame for this.”

Azazel pressed his lips together and frowned. “It was one momentary lapse of concentration, that’s all. Now I know humans can follow us through our own portals, it won’t happen again.” He shrugged his shoulders like an innocent boy. “Scouts honour.”

“Azazel, you allowed an entire tribe of Amazonian warriors to follow us here...whilst you were...copulating...with their queen through the portal itself. I really don’t think your ‘scouts honour’ carries much weight in that respect.”

Azazel closed his eyes and let out a groan of satisfaction. “Oh, Acantha...my, I’ve not thought about her in a long time. She was as sweet as honey. Tasted like morning dew on fresh grass.”

“And worth you complaining about this every year?” Balthazar asked, pointing at the portal.

Flashing his brother a mischievous grin, Azazel replied, “If you knew the things that woman could do with her tongue, you wouldn’t have even asked that.”

Balthazar sighed and marched forwards to the portal. “It would be nice if you could have just one thought, one sentence, without it involving your dick or some woman.”

“But where’s the fun in that?”

Balthazar didn’t dignify his brother with an answer. Instead, he placed his hands either side of the portal, feeling its energy latch onto his, surrounding him in what felt like a magnetic field. As it spread over him like water seeking an edge, it made a small ‘pop’ as it engulfed him completely. Then, an instant later, Balthazar disappeared from Azazel’s sight.

The three seconds spent inside the portal were the most peaceful three seconds of Balthazar’s year. All that surrounded him was beautiful silence encompassed by a myriad of colourful geometric shapes. As the portal pushed him through its tubular length at five times the speed of light, Balthazar kept his eyes wide open to soak in as much detail as possible. It was nothing short of a celestial wonder.

Azazel, left on his own in the room, took a deep breath, muttered a few curse words, and then followed his brother, his mind only remembering what he and the Amazonian queen had been doing all those hundreds of years ago.

In the icy waters of the North Sea, a lone fishing boat bobbed along the gentle waves, the captain and his men paying little attention to their vessel as they stared above them in awe at the spectacular light show of the aurora borealis. They were seeing for free what would cost anyone else thousands of pounds.

Completely entranced by the glimmering radiance, like moths bewitched by a flame, they noticed nothing of the shadowed island they floated past. The tiny piece of land last encountered humans in Norse times. On the eastern side of the Shetland isles, the mere eighty hectares of Balta provided no use for anything except a lighthouse.

And a pair of demons.

If the fishermen had not been so captivated by the rainbow-coloured lights reaching down to earth, they would have seen two figures shimmer into existence. But as soon as the hypnotic polar lights touched the ground, they recoiled as if in pain, leaving their hitchhikers alone in the darkened landscape.

Azazel sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let his breath out with an appreciative groan. “Can you smell it, Balti? Can you smell the sweet scent of all those mortal females?”

A muscle in Balthazar’s cheek twitched as he narrowed his eyes at his brother. “Don’t call me that.” Choking almost to death on a spicy Indian dish over thirty years ago had been nothing but humiliating for Balthazar and only pure entertainment for Azazel ever since. “The joke’s getting a little old now, Azazel. Grow up. A bit of maturity once in a while wouldn’t hurt, you know. Zay Zay.”

Azazel curled his top lip back at hearing the stupid nickname given to him by the Lamia, the lethal female temptresses of Lucifer’s lair. He closed the gap between them in the blink of an eye, staring his brother down with narrowed eyes. “Me grow up?” Azazel snorted. “That’s rich coming from you. Every year do you, without fail, fall in love with some poor girl, wrap her up in a whirlwind romance for three months and then disappear. If you’re such the romantic, as you claim to be, where’s the romance in breaking a different woman’s heart every year?”

Balthazar folded his arms over his broad chest and squared his shoulders. “Has your pea sized brain got the capacity to think that maybe I want these twelve weeks of freedom to give me a glimpse of something I’ve yearned for for centuries? That it allows me to temporarily live a life I never had, and probably never will have. As for the woman, she remembers nothing of it. My last kiss goodbye wipes their memory of me.”

A twinge of empathy coursed through Azazel before burying itself back in the darkness. “Why would you torture yourself every year like that? Reality check, brother. We’re not going to be human again. Ever. So, in between now and eternity, loosen up and enjoy what you can.”

The two glared at each other, neither one wanting to back down. A strained silence fell between them, the atmosphere thickening with emotion, secrets of old tales threatening to re-surface.

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