"What's wrong?" Fire said.
"My father, h-he's, he's afraid." I stuttered as the connection to Adam and my dad broke.
"Afraid of what, Princess?" Morty asked.
"Me, I think." I shuddered, although I was quite warm sandwiched between Fire and Death.
"That's a problem. A major one," Fire said moving off of me and the bed. "Get dressed, I'll be right back."
I could feel the anger pouring off him for a moment through the tattoos and then he was gone in a cloud of black smoke that dissipated in the same way that my connection to Adam had only moments before.
"No, wait!" I yelled but it was already too late. Fire was gone. The anger I felt was just gone too, and quickly the void that was left behind filled with a sense of longing and fear. "Where are you going?"
Suddenly as I finished my sentence the room began to shake violently, no wait, it was me, not the room. I couldn't focus as my vision blurred and then it was obscured, but by what, I had no idea.
I could feel tiny shards of glass falling around me as my mirror broke into a myriad of pieces. We were not alone. I had a flash of hope that Fire had returned but then they poured into the room from the mirror and the door and the windows. Glass shattered, wood stressed and splinted into pieces and rained across my room as it filled with demons of every size and species. They were just there surrounding us, pressing in on the bed and me as I sat there confused and overwhelmed.
I couldn't draw a breath to scream before Morty had flipped me over and covered my body with his own. He was protecting me from them and I didn't even have time to feel grateful for his concern.
I felt fingers of all textures and sizes grabbing at me. What ever parts of my body were still exposed to the room filling up with an army of demons they touched. They gripped and caressed my skin, and even though I could draw my breath, I couldn't release the scream that was building inside me from the moment they began filling up the room. It was like a macabre nightmare come to life. Elemental demons of every kind squirmed into every inch of space around Morty and I, and I couldn't breathe in the rancid stench of so many creatures.
"Aaaaah!" I screamed finally, at the feel of fingers, tentacles, or whatever appendages passed for hands on the creatures touching me. They grasped my legs and ankles, pulled me, I felt a hungry tearing at pieces of me that had nothing to do with the human skin that covered my body. At the same time I could feel them trying to release Morty's hold on me. "What are you doing?"
Their combined voices, the ones that belonged in hell, were chanting and screaming just one thing, my name. Over and over it was hissed, and yelled, until the cacophony felt like fingernails on a chalkboard and I wanted to crawl out of my skin to get away from the sound that pounded through the bedroom too small to contain it. My eyes watered from the sound of my name on so many demon lips.
"Stop it, stop it, please!" I choked out, my fingers dug into Morty's flesh desperate for something, anything to hold onto for my sanity.
The room froze. One moment all I could feel was the throng of demons as they touched me and threatened to rip me apart, and the next everything was so still all I could hear was my heart trying to pound through my chest along with my rapid breathing. I tried to move from underneath Morty's body but he was just as frozen in place as the rest of the room, I looked out at the sea of motionless faces imploringly for help.
The first thing I noticed was the amount of lowly demons among the throng, almost all of them were, except for three. Four, if you included Morty. You would normally include Morty because the three faces I recognized that weren't the bottom of the barrel in the hierarchy of hell, were his brothers. I stared at them as much as they stared at me, their arms still raised, reaching for me. I was peeking between their brother's arm and solid chest, that was like stone for being unmoving as the rest of the room.
"Why are you here?" I said locking eyes with War because he was the closest to me and he shrugged in reply. Conquest laughed and Famine flashed an evil grin into the back of Morty's head so violent and sickening that I felt Morty's body tremble above mine. The rest of the demons in the room began to shrink away from the bed as if touching something shocking. The confusion I felt was written all over my face.
"You," was the hissed reply said at the same time, in one terrifying voice. Wonderful, what the hell did that mean?
*****
I sat at the kitchen table wearing a red silk robe. Normally, I didn't do modesty but Morty's brothers made me feel more human all the time. It isn't everyday that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were sitting in your apartment in Hell, MI. Just saying. Morty was wearing jeans and an apron because he was frying bacon at the stove. It was a lovely sight, even if his ass was covered in black denim.
I spent as little time with the demons surrounding my kitchen table as possible. Famine, although deathly skinny but all wiry muscles, was intimidating in his height and stone cold features. He was the embodiment of hunger, longing, gluttony, need and desire. Starvation. He knew what you desired most, needed most and denied it to you for his pleasure.
Conquest and War were twins so they resembled each other not one bit. Yes, their bodies were similar, they had the same type of hair, but where War's was a mix of black and red similar to my own, Conquest's hair was a fair blond that belonged on little school girls. He was flawless perfection from head to toe. He was consumed by victory and he always won. He didn't have to fight, he always won by knowing the outcome before you could consider the struggle.
The demon I feared most was War. He sat across from me, his coal black eyes darting around the table. I'm really not as vain as the following will sound, but there is not a place on his body that isn't covered in a scar of some kind.
He was drawn and quartered at one point during his long life. His face was split in two by an axe. He had ropey scar tissue from his hair to his leather boots. His scars were across ever inch of his large muscular demon body. His skin was what it would feel like if stone and flesh had a baby. Aside from his appearance though he was every part of battle at all times. His mind was the darkest I knew, and I'm from Hell, so that's saying something.
"You are cooking human food like a servant because?" Famine's scratchy deep voice lifted in question.
"My Princess needs it," Morty tossed his words over his shoulder and finished beating eggs in a bowl before pouring them into the sizzling bacon grease left in the frying pan. The food smelled, well, tasty. I'd been on a human diet for about a week, but this was the first time I was looking forward to the meal.
As demons we mostly eat souls. The problem with human food is the cooking, it kills the last of the soul in any food, be it flesh or vegetable. So, I'd mostly been eating raw foods. Especially vegetables, yes, even plants have a life force. It wasn't delicious in anyway, until now. Now, my baby-carrying body was doing the craving, rather than my demon.
"Your Princess?" War said, staring straight at me with black eyes so hard I couldn't return his gaze.
"Yes, Princess Vanessa. My Princess," Morty said as he continued his work. I smiled. It was sweet in a worshippy sorta way. After the bedroom antics that rivaled my morning of heavenly bliss, well lets just say, I was suddenly very smitten with my best friend.
"Shouldn't we consider the elephant in the room? Why did you summon us here, Nessa?" Conquest asked me directly. He dusted off nothing on his sleeve, then stared at me with a look harder than War was giving me.
I tried to hide my annoyance at how casually he addressed me. After all, most of the higher level demons didn't respect me. Hell, very few of them liked me. Thanks to Dameon most just down right hated me. But for Conquest to be under the impression I had called them...wait a second.
"What do you mean, I summoned you here? I did no such thing!"
"Actually, you sorta did, Princess," Morty said as he placed a plate in front of me. He took a seat on the kitchen island. I had a second to dislike the distance between us. I wanted him by my side, his very presence was a comfort to me.
I looked down at the wonderful smelling food and my mouth watered. I picked up a fork and took several bites before I even considered responding.
"Hof?" I asked with a mouth full of deliciousness. Conquest rolled his eyes, and Famine had a curious look on his face. War was stone.
"The same way you sent the underlings packing, your new powers. Whatever they are, and I do have a theory on this, you're tapped into some major mojo." Morty said.
"'Major mojo' to use your idiotic phrasing, is putting it mildly. I'd say she's using the oldest power that has ever existed, since before time was even a concept." Conquest frowned at Morty.
"Yes," War said at the same time Famine said, "Agreed."
I had a sudden loss of appetite. "But that's not possible, is it?" I dropped my fork.
"There is only one who would know for sure. God," Conquest said.
"But how? Why? How? What? Who? Where?" I stuttered as a sour taste filled my mouth. Did I need to write an essay?
