"Don't Dream It's Over, Chapter 5 - Hour of the Wolf
There are many caves worming beneath and through the rocky hills that rear up along the wild Oregon coast. Their contours, carved out by the relentless motion of the sea, stretch back and back, their entrances revealed by the ebbing tide.
Darius the Demon grunts with the effort of dragging 240 pounds of inert human through the steamy, sodden confines of a particular cave. For the past several days, he and his brethren have snatched up an unprecedented number of humans. The bodies of some they have simply appropriated for their temporary habitation. Others will be fodder in a massive spell that will elevate his master, the Torturer Exemplar Alastair, to the role of King of Hell.
Since his discovery of a previously unknown Hell Gate, Alastair has acted with rabid single-mindedness to gain control over it. Hell Gates are treacherous and unstable portals between planes of existence. They exist partly in the physical world, but they are not truly of it. No one living, except perhaps the eternally absent Lucifer, knows where all the Gates are, or how many. The discovery of this one is a secret Alastair clutches to himself, for the power conferred by this knowledge could not only give him mastery in Hell, it will ensure his victory in the coming battle with the Angels of the Lord. Their scheme to save his favorite subject, Dean Winchester, of which he recently became aware, will end in their deaths. Then he will pursue his plan to rule in Hell and unleash upon the sons of Adam his demon army, creating evil and chaos among the living, and sentencing untold numbers to damnation.
Darius, of course, is not privy to the whole of Alastair's plan. No one is. He knows only that a mighty blood spell - one that requires many gallons of fresh human blood to power it - will open this particular Gate. The Gate has remained unknown through the millennia not only because of its location – obscured by the ceaseless flow of the tides – but because the mechanism to open it – the spell – was lost in the mists of time, unknown to any demon now living (except perhaps Lucifer). Then Alastair, through his substantial network of demon lackeys, located an ancient Daemon, the last Loremaster of his race. This wizened sack of insidiousness waxed loquacious beneath the compelling mercies of Alastair's scalpel. The cryptic recollections pulled from his malevolent, antediluvian brain led Alastair to a tiny volume of demon lore that resided not in the keeping of Hell's folk, but in the dusty bookshop of a human on earth. With his knowledge of the spell and with the means to cast it, Alastair plans to bring about his own version of the Apocalypse.
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3:00 AM – the Hour of the Wolf approaches. Clutching to his breast the ancient book, Alastair enters the mouth of the cave now revealed by the still-retreating tide. All is proceeding as he has planned; the bound and subdued captives are stacked like cordwood throughout the cave, all unknowingly awaiting their bloody fate. Each demon has been charged with killing two humans so that the deaths will occur simultaneously, releasing a river of blood and soul energy in a great psychical explosion. Upon the release of this energy, Alastair will pronounce the arcane syllables of the incantation that will breach the border that separates the demesne of the Damned from that of the living.
For miles around in quiet dark fathers and mothers and children lie all unaware and asleep in their beds, trusting that the sun will rise tomorrow on the world as they know it, while in their midst a dark and terrible evil is now being wrought. As the Hour of the Wolf strikes on this moonless night, Alastair performs the simultaneous blood sacrifice of a hundred humans while pronouncing the twisted syllables of an incantation that has been unspoken since Lucifer's fall, throwing wide the portal into Hell.
Ω Ω Ω
To be continued…