Lucifer Unchained, page 15
part #4 of Lucas Johnson Series
“Sure!” And she still didn’t look away from the screen.
My head felt as if a train ran over it last night. But I had to move, so I quickly washed, dressed, tucked Lillith into the duvets, and slipped out of the room.
I didn’t have a good way of finding Hephaestus, so I took out my phone and started searching through old Greek legends. That took a while and so I walked in a random direction. At first, I wasn’t finding much, but then I stumbled upon a legend that implied Lemnos was once a mountain. That would mean his workshop was underground and that there would be a lot of magic around the entrance to keep it hidden.
I could find that. And so, I fuelled my gaze with aether and got to work. The search still took four precious hours. With about eight hours left until Lucielle’s deadline, I finally found a blanket of aether—an illusion—on an unremarkable spot in the hills.
With light steps, I approached, looking at the illusion. The spell was creating an image of bushes while beneath was a wooden trapdoor. The illusion was low tier with the bushes being a touch blurry, no fruits or animals, and no movement due to wind. Making an illusion like this in New York would earn the creator a lifetime of mockery, but here it sufficed.
I passed through the illusory bush, grabbed the trapdoor and swung it open. Hephaestus didn’t even bother to lock. Well, he most likely walked through it often to get food, and the island, well almost no one lived on the island.
I descended the stone, spiraling stairs, and pushed open a large, ornate gate. Hephaestus’s workshop lay before me. Like a hollow mountain, a massive column led so deep I couldn’t see the end. By the buildings at the column’s sides, this was once a city, but the only things moving around now were automatons.
They were roughly human shaped, made of brass with visible cogwheels and primitive conveyor belts instead of legs. There were two types, the ones with mechanical hands—workers—and the ones with trays—carriers.
With a shrug, I closed the gate behind me and walked down the spiral. The automatons ignored me, and I dodged when one would have crashed into me. They moved in a fascinating, seemingly uncoordinated pattern that allowed them to avoid each other.
Setting this up had to take an excessive amount of work.
As I walked down the spiraling ramp, I saw heaps of equipment and materials stored inside the walls. Halfway through the column, hammering of metal started sounding from bellow. Heat also increased, making the whole trip feel like a descent to Hell.
Sweat glued my shirt to my body when I reached the bottom, but I wouldn’t put my coat down. I walked through a large gateway into the room where the automatons were bringing the supplies. Through a short tunnel, I saw Hephaestus. He was half-naked, wearing plain jeans and running shoes. With a standard Walmart hammer, he was hitting a large chunk of yellow-hot steel. The lump was caught in a large vice above a miniature sun.
“Howdy,” I said and smiled.
Hephaestus leapt sideways, eyes wide, taking a defensive posture with the hammer in front of him.
While we were both imprisoned in Tul Sar Naar, we hadn’t interacted much since I was in the lower prison and he in the upper one. Though he did escape as a side effect of my own escape plan. I sighed. “Calm down. I haven’t come to arrest you, kill you, or anything else I usually do.”
“Sorry…” He exhaled heavily and relaxed his posture. “I haven’t had many visitors lately.”
My smile broadened. “I saw the security.”
“Heh, right.” He tossed the hammer away and an automaton rolled from the wall to pick it up. “Beer?”
“Sure.”
He walked to the supply hall’s side and I followed him. Barely undetectable among the rubble, he had a diesel generator, which was powering up a fridge and a freezer. From the fridge, he pulled out two beers and handed me one.
We both flipped off the lid with our thumbs. “Cheers,” he said, emptied the beer and took another one.
I took a few sips, enjoying the taste of German lager.
“Strange, isn’t it? To meet as free men,” Hephaestus asked, caution seeping out of his voice.
“Yeah, something feels missing without all the guards and Hades throwing us into extraction.”
We both laughed.
I cleared my throat. “So, I’ve got a vampire problem. And I need something to kill one. Ideally, a sword or a dagger to—”
“How urgent is this problem?” he asked, interrupting me.
“I need it within an hour, at most two.”
“Well.” Hephaestus put on an awkward smile. “Embedding permanent aether patterns into materials takes time. I’m now making my anvil, which will take about three more years. Then, I’ll spend about two to five years forging a real hammer. And only afterward, I might start working on a weapon, which would take another ten years or so.”
My face dropped. There was no way I could rescue Evelyn without killing Sayf. But I didn’t have time for much more preparation, especially since I still had to extract the magic-dispelling spell from the nuclear bomb. My mind kept running through the options, but there just weren’t any.
“More beer?” Hephaestus asked rhetorically, handing me a bottle.
I took it and drank. Okay, I needed some more intel on how higher vampires worked. Sure, I could ask around, but everyone who could know had a strong motive to lie to me since a higher vampire was the third in command of the entire LCorp. As much as I hated the thought, I had only man I could ask. I whipped out my phone.
“You’d have to go above the ground for that,” Hephaestus said as if that wasn’t obvious.
“Thanks.” I finished the beer and put the bottle on the ground. “See you around.”
“Good luck,” Hephaestus said and took one more beer.
I tried to walk out calmly but didn’t manage. And so, I ran upstairs like mad. The second I got signal, I went to my email, opened the World War III one from Lucielle, pressed reply, and changed the addressee to be only Azrael. I typed in: ‘I can stop this, but I need to know how to kill a higher vampire. I’ll owe you one, L’.
At the same time, I rushed back to the hotel. On the way, my phone didn’t buzz, which made my chest tighten. Despite keeping a sharp pace, it took me half an hour to reach the hotel.
I ran up the stairs and heard a male voice from our room. What the hell?
I swung open the door and saw Lillith sitting on a chair, keenly listening to a priest. The man wore a buttoned-up cassock and had black hair that gave him a look of an ageing rock star. How did Azrael get here?
“Howdy,” I said, looking at him.
“Oh, hi,” Lillith said, beaming. “Father Jack is just explaining to me the judgment of King Solomon.”
Of course, he used that name. Azrael turned toward me, motioning his hand at Lillith, who froze mid-move, staring blankly. “You appear lost,” he said.
And he just had to be cryptic. But I needed to talk about the important things. “I could use a little help, I admit. How do I kill a higher vampire?”
“You do not.”
Thanks, that was all I needed to hear. “Why?”
“The vampires do not keep their souls in their bodies, only controlling them like puppets. And the puppeteer is far.”
I frowned. “What if I sever the strings?”
“Then the puppeteer takes another body or leaves.”
“I don’t mean cutting them off, I mean completely disintegrating the strings by massive magic-dispelling spell.”
Azrael shrugged. “Then the puppeteer goes to possess a new body.”
“Possess… can they create a body from nothing?”
He shook his head. “Their Queen can, but the others only control the bodies of others or materialize themselves.”
I narrowed my eyes. “If a vampire materializes, how killable is he?”
Azrael paused for a moment, and then conjured a wide grin. “If you could make a vampire materialize, then you could indeed kill him by destroying the body and the soul. Unless it’s their Queen, of course. She is not killable. Believe me, I tried.”
All right. I wasn’t wanting to kill Vivian, so I could do that. I glanced at Lillith, who was still sitting frozen in position, staring ahead emptily. “Does she hear us?”
“No, but you will have to tell her who you are.”
I shook my head. “No way.”
“She has the right to know, whether you like it or not.” Azrael patted my shoulder. “And it wouldn’t hurt you to act like the good man you once were, at least once in a while.”
I sighed. “That man is gone.”
“He does not have to be.” Azrael disappeared.
I blinked, and he simply wasn’t there.
Lillith snapped back to her senses, looking around confused. “Where is Father Jack?”
“He does this sometimes.” I forced out a smile. “Although he tends to be more subtle. Pack up. We need to go, now.”
“Sure!” Lillith leapt to her feet and went to pack all the things she bought.
In the meantime, I called Isabella.
She picked up instantly. “Yes?”
“I need you to get me three hazmat suits, a box of the strongest anti-radiation pills you can get, two sets of magic-blocking shackles and a six-foot-long leather rope. Have the maintenance crew refuel your Stormshadow and make them prepare to refuel my Mistbird. We meet an hour from now at the airport on Crete.”
“That doesn’t sound weird at all.”
“I know. One hour.” I hung up.
Since Lillith wasn’t done, I moved to the riskiest part. I wrote an email to Lucielle:
‘Hi Luci,
I might get close to the stolen nuke. Could you send me the control codes?
Thanks,
Lucas’
I sent the message, glanced at Lillith who was stuffing her clothes into a large bag, and my phone buzzed.
‘From: Lucielle@ll.eu
To: Lucas.Johnson@ll.us
Subject: Control codes
Activate command input: #
Separate commands: *
Activate anchor field: 2252
Arm the bomb: 725485262
Set detonation timer: 42hhmmss
Disarm: 6874682426
Instantly detonate: 666
Confirm command: #
Don’t fuck this up,
Luci’
I didn’t know how to feel about this. Yes, Lucielle forced me to work for the LCorp, making me sign a contract for five hundred thousand years. But, at the same time, she trusted me with control codes of a nuclear warhead without asking questions.
Being on Team Evil wasn’t supposed to feel this good.
And today, I was going to prove to everyone that I belonged there. I found the pictures I took in Ubar, packaged all of them into a rar, and uploaded them to my ftp server. Lillith finished packing, so I took the bags and we walked to the plane. I wanted to run, but that wouldn’t be smart since I needed to conserve strength as much as possible.
Lucielle’s deadline would expire in five hours, and I wasn’t even prepared to go to Ubar.
Inside the plane, Lillith strapped herself in and started reading.
I turned on the automatic lift off and flew to the base on Crete. Since the islands were so close, the trip took only fifteen minutes. The airport was small and hidden among hills. Four hangars sat by the runway and two huge tanker trucks stood at its end.
The autopilot landed smoothly, and I drove the plane to the free truck. By the second truck parked the Stormshadow, similar to my Mistbird with the sharp, geometric shapes and black paint, but larger and with visible rockets under the wings.
Once we parked, I pressed the button to open the gas tank and got out of the pilot seat. Lillith was reading and I left her to it.
When I got out of the plane through the loading bay, Isabella and Matthew already awaited me outside. Matt had lost at least forty pounds, looking only slightly overweight in a sharp, black suit.
And Isabella was in killer shape, wearing running shoes, tight black jeans, plain t-shirt and a chain for a tie with the lowest link broken. Her raven hair had gotten even longer, now reaching behind her knees.
“Howdy,” I said, walking toward them.
“Been better, Boss,” Matt said, not even stuttering.
“Chill.” I smiled. “World War Three won’t be happening.”
Isabella narrowed her eyes. “That sounds like you know more than what’s in the email.”
“Somewhat.” I stretched my neck, joints popping. “We will be flying to Saudi Arabia. You will stay in the air and provide support while I solve things on the ground. Did you get the Hazmat suits and the pills?”
Isabella motioned with her head to Matt, who pointed to a large box by his side.
“Good.” I glanced at the tanker truck, seeing they were already pumping my plane with fuel. That was going to take a while though. “Do they have a coffee machine somewhere?”
“This way.”
We grabbed a coffee and exchanged some chit-chat. Nobody wanted to talk much. Matt and Isabella clearly decided they knew more than enough as they were already terrified. I didn’t blame them and made sure to not let them on my plane to see Lillith or the nuke.
I asked about Elena and they told me she was at a hotel, as instructed. They got her new clothes and started arranging an accounting position for her at LCorp US.
I liked that I helped at least one person.
Aside from that, Matt helped me to set up my phone so I could directly call their plane on the local radio frequency.
An hour later, the refill was done, and we got into our planes. From what I caught, Matt used to play flight simulator games, so he aced all flight tests.
After I entered my plane, I closed the loading bay behind me and sat next to Lillith. She didn’t look up from the tablet.
“Look, we’re flying back to Ubar,” I said.
Her face slackened and the tablet fell from her hands. I caught it before the device hit the ground and put it on the seat next to her. She had clearly placed that nightmare behind herself. And now, I told her she would be returning there.
“If you don’t want to go, you can stay here and wait for me to come back.”
“Angels are brave,” she whispered. “Or, as Azrael once said, the champions of Heaven fear nothing, for faith always prevails.”
“Fides semper invicta.” I smiled and motioned to the box with Hazmat suits, anti-radiation pills, shackles, and rope. “Once we get to Ubar, you will fly to the bunker, taking this box. There, you will wait for me.”
“Okay…” She narrowed her eyes. “How will hiding in our bunker help us escape? I mean, everyone will see me fly there.”
“The bunker is next to the southern exit. I will pick you up from the bunker and we escape through that path.”
“And will you stop the Sultan’s army from pursuing us?”
I stood up, crossed the small room and picked up the nuclear bomb, showing it to her. “This is a very strong bomb. I will use it to threaten Sayf and get us what we want.”
“To release all slaves, including Evelyn?”
I wished I could have said yes. “Evelyn, yes, and I will see what I can do about the others.”
“You lie.” She smiled sadly. “But I cannot tell you to not do this. Because I don’t know what to do better.”
What happened to the little girl I turned into an angel? She met me. And thus, all her naivety and innocence died, never to return.
“Come.” Holding the nuke, I sat on the pilot seat. She brought the box with hazmat suits with her, put it on the ground and stood next to the chair.
I pressed the lift off button and the plane rose from the ramp. Isabella and Matt followed us with the Stormshadow. I put the GPS coordinates of Ubar into navigation, and set the plane to the top speed of the Stormshadow, so we wouldn’t lose Matt. Three hours remained until Lucielle’s deadline, and the flight was going to take about an hour despite our planes flying at almost nineteen hundred miles per hour.
At this speed, we saw little but clouds. The air was too tense for either of us to speak. Half an hour later, the comms buzzed, and Isabelle’s voice sounded from the speaker. “On our radar, we see heavy activity in the… I don’t know how to say this officially. There’re like seventeen fighter jets flying around where we’re going.”
My radar showed nothing, but that wasn’t surprising given I didn’t fly the combat model. I scowled. Sayf wasn’t supposed to be able to do the ritual until tomorrow. But perhaps he could speed things up with even more sacrifices. And in that case, it would make sense for him to enact as much defense as he could.
That also closed our approach points. “What altitude can your fly at?”
“About ninety thousand feet,” Matt said over the radio.
“And mine?”
“Sixty thousand… maybe seventy.”
“All right, you fly at your maximum altitude. Mist engines on.” I flipped the switch and misty haze soon covered our front window, the window itself turning into a display that showed the feed from the plane’s heat cameras. And I raised our altitude to forty thousand feet to make sure we don’t crash into an enemy jet.
Twenty-five minutes later, we were approaching Ubar.
I smiled at Lillith, who stood tense next to my seat. “When I tell you to, grab the box and fly out to the bunker. Once there, eat a few pills from the box and put on one orange suit.”
“Sure!” Lillith replied automatically. “What is the suit good for?”
“It will help you survive if things go wrong.”
She gulped and nodded.
I pulled on the control stick, making the plane sharply rise. The thrust pressed me against the seat and Lillith against the wall at the cockpit’s end. Within moments, we flew straight upward.
“Everything all right, Boss?” Matt asked over the radio.
“Yeah. Hit my impact point with a rocket,” I said. “And whatever happens, do not lower your altitude.”
