Tarous, стр. 49
I was getting ready to draw another pentagram and head home when the ground beneath my feet turned into molten rock and I sank up to my neck. The rock quickly cooled and that’s when they came.
It was a trap. The reason I hadn’t been seeing many demons is that they had been grouping up. As far as I could see in every direction came demons of all shapes, sizes, and colors. From that moment everything became a blur. My eyes burned with black flames and my heart beat painfully in my chest.
All the anger I had been holding in, all of my rage, and all of my sadness exploded out. A black wave of pure death qi traveled across hell killing thousands and thousands of demons. I passed out as the last of my energy reserves ran out. Even a god has his limits.
When I woke up, all I could smell was sulfur and the smell of burnt hair. I was lying in a crater with the ground around me scorched. There were no demons left alive around me. There wasn’t a lot of anything left alive around me.
For the first time in days I actually felt better. Suddenly refreshed, I took out my scythe, transformed it into a sword and drew another pentagram. It was time to go home.
Chapter 29
I decided not to arrive near the portal where the fabric between dimensions is weaker and easier to break through. I didn’t want to risk seeing her. Instead, I broke through a few states over. I had emerged in the middle of a field of corn. I had wisps of smoke coming off my body and I smelled like sulfur. Spending a large amount of time in hell will do that to you.
It was night and the moon was out. The moon’s light shined down between the corn stalks. I was alone until two headlights headed in my direction. The noise I made breaking through must have caused a disturbance.
A man with a shotgun stepped out of a beat up truck. It may have once been blue, but it was so faded it was hard to tell. He pointed his shotgun at me and I went cross eyed for a second looking at the end of the barrel.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my field?”
For some reason I expected him to have a piece of grass in his mouth and a straw hat on his head, but he didn’t. A hat might have been a good idea though, his hair was rather messy. I found him rather annoying and without meaning to I glared at him.
Something in my look must have startled him because he took a quick step back and opened fire. He was apparently using buck shot as several thick pieces of metal struck me in the chest. I cocked my head to the side and black flames rose up to cover my body.
“I’m Tarous and I just crawled out of hell. Nice to meet you.”
I gave him my biggest and creepiest smile. He screamed and dropped his gun. He ran and jumped back into his truck and sped off. His tires threw dirt into the air along with a few stalks of corn. He turned sharply, kicking up another spray of dirt, as he went out of the field as fast as he could.
That was fine with me. I wasn’t in the mood for polite conversation anyways. He had tried to kill me with buck shot. I felt a bit insulted. After everything that had happened and after spending a few weeks in hell constantly killing, I was still feeling a little annoyed with the world. I had noticed in hell that I didn’t need to sleep. Maybe that was why I was still in a bad mood.
I heard a rustling in the corn field. It was getting closer. I hoped it wasn’t another farmer. It was getting closer and closer. I could see several stalks of corn shaking. Whatever was causing the stalks to shake was definitely closing in on me. I pulled out my scythe and it changed into the shape of a gun.
Whatever it was would be stepping out any minute. I leveled the gun at eye level when a tiny fur ball only a few inches tall walked out of the corn field. I dropped the level of my gun until it was pointing straight down.
“Crowley! Where have you been?”
The little dog had a vacant but happy look in his eyes and his tongue was sticking out of his mouth. Like always, he looked unbearably cute. He was so cute it was painful to look at him.
“Well little guy, I still don’t want to go home yet. How about we hang out in the human world for a little while?”
“Yip yip,” was his response. He ran around me twice before sitting down in front of me.
“Nice.”
With one hand I reached under his belly and picked the little pup up. He barely weighed three pounds and was rather easy to carry. He didn’t squirm or anything. Rather, he seemed to enjoy being carried.
As we began walking down the road space distorted around us. For every step I took, I moved the same distance a normal person would travel in two hundred steps. I was moving faster than any human could move without a car. Trees and bushes zipped by. This was one of the many benefits I had discovered about being a god. I knew normal people would freak out if they saw me moving so fast. I willed not to be seen and so I wasn’t. No one ever sees death coming unless it wishes to be seen.
We eventually arrived at