Chapter 8
"Run!" Gabriel shouted as he roughly pushed Elisa toward the stairwell down the hall behind them. "Get out of the building now!" He yelled as he turned to follow. The Demon roared as it launched itself at them, and as they reached the stairs, Gabriel pushed Elisa through and jammed the door behind her. "Get out of the building, I'll be right behind you!" He ordered as he slammed the door and turned to face The Crucifix Demon as it barreled down the hallway. "You want another go?" Gabriel asked rhetorically as he pulled his gun from his coat pocket, reassured by its weight in his hand. The Demon came to a complete stop, and stood, filling the space between the roof and ceiling, silently waiting for some unknown signal to attack. Gabriel stood, entranced by the slow motion movements of The Beast as it swayed in place before him.
"I see they finally showed you what you are." The words seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, assaulting Gabriel's senses, filling him with some unknowing terror, and yet, the voice seemed so familiar, so comforting. "Did they tell you everything? I think not. If they had, you would have chosen a quiet death over the hell they will surely send you to." Gabriel took a step forward, his feet moving by themselves. Suddenly the hallway was a din of voices, most undecipherable due to the wash of noise, but two voices moved to the head of crest of the wave of noise, The Beast's demonic but appealing voice, and The Prophet's righteous but cold voice.
"Fight the temptation Gabriel! The Beast seeks to lure you in and destroy you! Resist, or there is nothing that can save you!" The Prophet's voice commanded.
"Why fight me Gabriel? They will merely destroy you when your task is complete, just as they always have. If you knew the truth, you would renounce them now and give into me! They tell sweet lies, whilst I tell the terrible truth, which would you rather have?" The Demon's eyes pierced him, laying his warrior soul bare, leaving him unable to do anything but gape in its terrifying presence. Suddenly a strange force took control of him, and he watched helplessly as the his arms extended and the gun discharged, once, twice, and so on, until the clip ran dry and the gun clicked empty, and still his hand tightened around the empty weapon, squeezing the trigger in quick, worthless motions. The Demon merely laughed, a long, cruel laugh, and advanced with a killing glee in his eyes. "If that is the way you want it to be Prophet, then your boy here will make a fine snack, to bad though, he would have made more than a capable soldier…" He raised a clawed hand, and brought it down, tearing the air as it arced toward Gabriel.
The claws came down, ripping long gashes in the floor of the hallway, as Gabriel dodged out of the way and broke into a dead run, heading toward the stairwell that Elisa had disappeared into only seconds before. His escape was halted though as a large chunk of the floor flew over his head, crushing the door in, effectively cutting off his escape. He spun around, and The Demon stood, smiling at him with its sickly shaped teeth, its horrible deformed face twisted into a visage of pure bliss, and it ripped a new piece of concrete free from the wall and hurled it at him. In that split second, the warrior in Gabriel took over, and as he dodged the hurled weapon, he knew how to escape.
***
Elisa had stopped only at the sound of gunshots as she made her way out of the building, and had contemplating returning when she was pulled, against her will, from the stairwell by some force unseen to her. She was deposited, rather roughly, in the foyer of the small apartment complex, a single glass door between her and freedom, an insubstantial barrier in her blind rush to escape, and one that was easily thrown down. Back out on the street, she ran to a small park across from the complex, stopping only when she was out of breath. She then stood, pacing, waiting for the man—Gabriel—to come running from the building too, but as the seconds became moments, and her patience grew thinner, she began to weight the possibility of fleeing to her destination. And what then dumbass, she chided herself mentally, at least this guy seems to know what's going on, you've got a better chance with him than you do alone—BAMBAMBAM—she was startled by the loudness of the shoots, and watched incredulously as a second story window from the complex she had just escaped shattered outward, and a man—Gabriel—flew through it.
***
His mind thundering a mile a minute, Gabriel launched himself into the empty air, twisting as he fell to catch a gutter that ran the height of the building, and slowed him to such a point that he barely even had to brace for impact as his feet hit the concrete below, allowing him to recover and beat a hasty retreat as The Crucifix Demon tore through the wall two floors up, in hot pursuit. The Demon's landing was nowhere as graceful as Gabriel's, but it didn't seem to matter, as it immediately launched itself into an attack, barreling after Gabriel much faster than he could escape it. Gabriel suddenly stopped, dead in his tracks, and calmly turned to face The Demon, a coy smile forming on his chiseled features. He raised the gun, and The Demon laughed, a cold, twisted laugh that filled the air like a cancer, He then spoke. "I thought the Old Man explained it pretty well Gabriel, you cannot destroy Me, this isn't even my true form, it's only a manifestation, I can travel between Realms at will, as long as my true form remains intact in Hell, I will always return, and even You, the warrior spirit forged by God, do not dare step foot in My Realm." He began to laugh, a haughty laugh that was silenced as Gabriel's first shots pinged against something made of metal behind him. "What are you doing?" He asked loudly, "I refuse to believe that God's own hand forged warrior would miss a foe standing not ten feet away from him!" Gabriel snorted, then replied.
"I wasn't aiming at you, you stupid bastard, I was aiming at the gas main behind you." He fired another shot, and the explosion swallowed The Crucifix Demon whole.
Gabriel was knocked back a few feet, and as he stood, he mumbled under his breath, "who needs to kill you when I can just your body back to hell?" With a laugh, he dusted himself off and turned to wave to Elisa. "It's ok! I got Hi—" the words were lost as a twisted arm flashed from the fire behind him, snatching him into the blaze.
***
Elisa stood; dumbfounded, as the fire fell in on itself and vanished as quickly as it had come, taking The Demon, and Gabriel, with it. "Gabriel?" She called weakly, but only the sound of the slight breeze and the clammy fog answered her. "Gabriel!" She shouted loudly, and still only silence answered. She stumbled over to a low bench and collapsed against it, wanting nothing more that to surrender to the sudden tiredness that had begun to creep over her, but more afraid to now than ever. "What am I gonna do?" She asked out loud, covering her face with her hands and rocking back and forth silently, nearly sobbing. It had all been too much, waking up in a nightmare, the corpses, her boyfriend, the monster at the school, her house, her mom, and The Demon, the one that hounded her relentlessly, they one that had killed Gabriel, had probably killed the priest in her mom's room, and would've killed her too, she couldn't keep the emotions from flowing, and she found herself bawling for nearly an hour, until she didn't have the strength to sob anymore. Afterwards she sat wondering where to go next, when a sudden noise caused her to whirl around defensively.
Behind her stood the priest from her house, the one that had saved her from The Demon. His icy stare regarded her for a moment, then he spoke, "a hundred yards in that direction," he pointed off in the distance to her right, "there is a small pawnshop, head there, you will find a weapon, I would advise you to take it, and take as much ammunition as you can comfortably carry, The Beasts armies are advancing more quickly then We expected, and though normal weapons will not harm The Abomination," she thought by Abomination he surely meant The Crucifix Demon, which had shown the uncanny ability to avoid death already, "they will harm His lesser minions, and there are more coming by the second. Once you procure a weapon, and a jacket too I should think, you'd better head to The Golden Lizard, you'll meet up with Gabriel there." He finished speaking, and before Elisa could question him, he vanished into the fog, as if he had never been there. She walked around for a moment, searching for him in vain, and then she decided his advice better than standing around waiting for some monster to get her, so she started off for the pawnshop.
***
The smell of the rusty metal roused him from his sleep, and he awoke to find himself lying face down on the rusty grated ground. Back in Hell I see, He thought bleakly, at least the gun's still here, and the ammo too. He got stiffly to his feet, checking his surrounding while making sure his ammunition was still in order, and found that he was still in front of the apartment complex, the only major changes being that everything had mutated into rusty grating and fire stained concrete. "You'd figure Hell would have a more natural look, and where are all the wailing souls?" He asked with a smirk, trying to keep his spirit up even though he was feeling rather down. He was startled though as a familiar voice spoke behind him.
"This isn't Hell Gabriel, Hell is much worse. By the way, you should get the antique shop quickly, Elisa will be waiting for you" Gabriel spun around just in time to see Tyler vanish into the darkness, leaving him alone again.
"Tyler?" He called quietly, but only the thrum of unseen machinery and the sound of hot wind blowing answered him. "Well, if that's where I need to be…" He trailed off as he started off, realizing that he had no clue where the shop was, "could you at least tell me which direction it's in?" When no answer came, he decided to begin searching. He started by walking over to the place where a park had been in the normal world, hoping that perhaps a map would be found there. The only things of the park that remained in this world though were the playground equipment, and even they had become twisted to the point of looking like devices of torture instead of thing's children would play with. He did find a message though, probably left for him by whatever forces conspired against him in this hell. On a small sign post, probably where a map should have been in the normal world, a message was scrawled, this time in crayon instead of blood, the blocky letters looking like something a small child would write instead of the flowing script that he had found everywhere else, which gave this message a much more disturbing quality. He looked at the strange message, noticing the arrows and words, and immediately realizing that he was looking at a map, and he read the short message aloud. "To the east is the Lizard that you seek, to the west is whence you came, to the north there is nothing, and to the south the same, but all around you they are coming, all around they see, all around they're coming, and you're the meal they seek."
It wasn't until then that he heard the cacophony of growling laughter, and the sound of footfalls all around him.