So far, so good.
The sigils were working, just like the Legion had promised. Maybe those do-gooders were worth something after all. He grunted, and tried to concentrate on something-anything-but the noise in his head.
After his return to the land of the living, he’d been at loose ends for the longest time. What do you do after you’ve seen Hell?
In Badilino’s case, he began looking for protection. When you knew things like he did, had seen what he’d seen, done what he’d done, you became a target. Sooner or later, someone-something-was going to come for him.
That was when the Legion of Night contacted him. Warned him. Badilino’s smile became feral. In his head, like a persistent itch, Zarathos was screaming. Badilino fell back on the bed and laughed as his stomach twisted unpleasantly.
“Thrash all you want, but you ain’t getting out. At least not until I say so,” he said, out loud. He closed his eyes and a skull made of razors and heat erupted from the darkness of his shuttered lids.
Release me! Zarathos roared.
“I thought we covered this,” Badilino murmured.
Release me or I will tear you apart from the inside out!
“I hear you barking, but I ain’t feeling the bite,” Badilino said, then sat up abruptly. He grunted as his lungs filled with oily smoke, and opened his mouth, vomiting ash and embers. He smiled around coal-colored teeth. “That all you got?”
Zarathos screamed incoherently. Badilino shook his head and swung his feet up onto the bed and stretched out. It was going to be a long night.
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#1
FEB 11 |
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“The First Night”
Two days later
As plans went, it was a work in progress.
The needle buzzed as it punctured Badilino’s flesh, leaving a trail of ink in its path. He grunted and shifted on the stool, but otherwise was still.
There were one hundred and one sigils that could be used to bind an entity like Zarathos. Used in conjunction, they functioned like multiple locks on a door. Force past one, and there were still others to contend with.
In the weeks since he’d trapped the devil, Michael Badilino had tested each of the sigils. Day and night, he’d painted them and let Zarathos loose to batter at the immaterial walls. Now that he knew which ones worked the best, he was moving on to the next phase of the plan. Hence his visit to a tattooist, and why he was squatting on a stool with his shirt off.
“I ain’t never seen nothing like these,” the tattooist grunted. “People want all kinds of crap, but this—”
“Am I paying you for your opinion?” Badilino said.
“Consider it a freebie.”
“Get what you pay for, I suppose.”
The tattooist grunted and jammed the needle into Badilino’s flesh, causing him to wince.
“Ow!”
“Get what you pay for, right?”
“Shaddup.” Badilino closed his eyes and let the symbols he’d learned coagulate in his mind’s eye. They coalesced around the distant fires of Zarathos’ thoughts and doused it, keeping the demon buried and motionless. If Zarathos was aware of what Badilino was doing, he’d do his best to cause trouble. At least, that was what Golem had said.
Judiah Golem. As freaky a human being as had ever walked on God’s green earth. Tall and oddly shaped, like someone had piled clay lumps one atop the other, Golem was creepy and comforting in equal measure, though Badilino would never have admitted it.
He remembered the day Golem had showed up out of the blue. The surge of panic that ran through him as he opened the door to his shithole apartment and saw the lean, trench-coat clad shape sitting slumped in the armchair near the window, something that softly glowed dangling from one gloved hand.
Dark eyes hidden behind sunglasses turned towards him and a fishy mouth had quirked.
“Lieutenant Badilino, I presume?”
“I’m not a cop anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.” Badilino said, carefully setting down his groceries. As he bent, his fingers brushed across the butt of the pistol hidden in the waistband of his pants.
“You won’t need that pistol, sir.” The shape unfolded out of the chair. “Inspector Judiah Golem, at your service.”
“Golem?” Badilino said.
“A family name.” Golem shoved the glowing thing he held into his coat pocket and cocked his head. “Mr. Badilino, I have come to make you an offer.”
“Yeah?” Badilino said. “Well you can take your offer and-”
“Zarathos is coming, Mr. Badilino.”
The words died in Badilino’s throat. Then, finally, “I’m listening.”
And he had. Golem had told him about the Legion, about a network of mystically aware people-some were victims, others merely bystanders. One or two had simply read the wrong books. But all of them were dedicated to the containment of those occult elements which were deemed harmful. They weren’t soldiers, like the Nine had been, or heroes.
Just people looking out for people. People like him. One of the Legion had seen Badilino in a dream. Had seen him possessed by the spirit of Zarathos, and the terrible things that happened after.
He looked down at the tattoos that had already been completed. Whatever she had seen wasn’t likely to happen now. Not with these designs that Golem and that weird albino woman Katinka had provided.
With these tattoos, he could control Zarathos. Focus him in productive ways. Badilino couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Something funny?” the tattooist said.
“Are you finished?” Badilino said.
“No.”
“Then shut up.” He sniffed. Sulfur. Badilino sat up, pulling his arm away from the needle.
“Hey man, you-”
“You smell that?”
“Smell what?”
The paint began to peel off the walls in leprous strips as the floor buckled and warped. The temperature in the parlor spiked and the ink began to bubble and boil. Badilino grabbed the tattooist and threw him aside as something horrible erupted from beneath the floor.
A tail made of black bone shards swept out, slicing across Badilino’s bare flesh as he spun to confront whatever it was. Grunting, he staggered back. Something that resembled an amalgamation of the worst aspects of bat, frog, wasp and corpse lunged for him, claws spread. Badilino grabbed the tattooist’s needles and jammed them into one of the creature’s bulbous eyes, eliciting a shriek. It backhanded him into the wall, and he slid down, dazed.
LET ME OUT! Zarathos howled. Let me out or die!
“No way,” Badilino grunted. “I just got you crammed in there, ain’t no way I’m letting you out until—”
The tattooist’s scream of pain interrupted him. Badilino cursed as he watched the creature crouch over the man and begin sliding its claws through the designs on the man’s chest.
Badilino snatched up the stool and smashed it into the creature’s skull, causing it to spin and dive at him. He jammed the stool into its open mouth with a grunt and for a moment, the tableau held. Then the stool became soggy and crumbled in his hands, eaten away by the creature’s saliva.
Out! Let me out human! Zarathos refuses to die at the talons of a pathetic N’garai!
“Is that what this is?” Badilino said, stumbling back. “Crap, crapcrapcrapCRAP!” The tail slashed out at him again and he hurled himself aside. The moment he stopped, two clawed hands burst from the floor beneath him.
Badilino scrambled to his feet as more of the creatures tore their way up out of the floor, acidic spittle dripping, scales clattering. Claws tore into him as he fought free of them. Bleeding, he stumbled. Fell. He felt hot inside. Like he was full of magma, like his nerves were wrapped in barb wire.
Zarathos demands his freedom!
“No,” Badilino whispered, trying to get to his feet.
YES.
Badilino rolled onto his back, screaming. His fingers dug into the meat of his chest of their own volition, piercing skin and muscle with steel surety. Pain arced through him as the N’garai closed in.
Then, with a sizzling, sucking sound, Michael Badilino shucked himself out of his own skin, releasing the Devil back into the world.
Laughing maniacally, Zarathos swept burning fists through the squealing demons, reducing them to pulp. And as he laughed, Badilino screamed and-
“Done.”
Badilino’s eyes flashed open. “What?”
“I said I’m done,” the tattooist said. “You fell asleep.”
Badilino looked down at his arms and chest. A slow, weak smile spread across his face. “Asleep. Hunh.”
“You okay?”
“I-yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Badilino ran a hand through his hair and stood, feeling the nightmare adrenaline fading from his system. He looked around the parlor and then at himself in a mirror.
The swirling sigils now etched onto his skin were hard to look at. The eye slid right off of them, as if they weren’t really there. That was part of the magic. He cocked his head, listening.
Inside his head, there was only silence. No screams, no whispers. Only silence.
He left the tattoo parlor a few minutes later and drove out of town, looking for the nearest crossroads. He didn’t need one exactly, but it was traditional.
Getting off of his bike, Badilino let the night air rush around him for a moment, then he reached inside his shirt and touched the design that covered his heart. It was, for lack of a better term, the ‘on/off’ switch.
-EE ME! Zarathos demands freedom-
“Shut up,” Badilino said, lighting a cigarette.
Eh? You address me, pustule? Zarathos said.
“Yep.” Badilino affected nonchalance, but he could feel his own heart hammering. Or maybe that was Zarathos’ fists. “I have an offer for you, if you care to hear it.”
There was silence in his head.
Badilino blew a ring of smoke, and tapped ash onto the street. “Still there, bone-bag?”
A screaming spear-point of pain tore through his intestine and he nearly fell. He gave a strangled groan and hammered a fist into his belly. “Cut it out! I’m offering you your freedom!”
The pain faded. Say on, maggot.
Badilino grimaced. “Freedom, I said. Of sorts, at any rate.”
Of sorts?
“Freedom to exist. To do what you’re good at. That’s what you get.”
Or else?
“Or else I lock my body down tighter than a drum, shoot myself in the head and get some pals of mine to seal me in a specially prepared casket that subsequently gets added to the foundation of nice new church somewhere.”
Suicide, worm? Zarathos sounded amused.
“Already did it once. Twice is a hat trick.” Badilino said it flatly, surprised by how little he felt. “They got my room in Hell waiting.”
You would condemn yourself, merely to spite me?
“In a heartbeat.”
Another long moment. Badilino counted silently, one, two, three-
What do you want?
“The Sinister Sixty-Six,” Badilino said.
Inside his head, Zarathos began to laugh.
Elsewhere
“Sir? The thaumatic sensors have picked him up.”
The man who called himself Mr. Diogenes turned his egg-shaped head and frowned. “Him, Rudolph? Him who, pray tell?”
“Code Matchstick,” the speaker, a big man, said as he stepped into Diogenes’ cramped, Spartan office. “The thaumatic sweep of the South West caught him. Just a flash, but the signatures match.”
“Ah. Him.” Diogenes nodded briskly. “Well, that is interesting. What’s he up to?”
“No idea sir,” Rudolph said.
“Well, you should probably find that out, eh Rudolph? Can’t have Code Matchstick running loose at this critical juncture. Not when our European operations are progressing so smoothly.” Diogenes sat down at his tiny desk and picked up a chunk of shattered something. It had once been a part of a greater whole, but was now only so much occult debris. Idly, he spun it on the surface of the desk with his finger.
Without looking up, he said, “Find him, Rudolph. It’s long past time the Ghost Rider was brought into the Black Chamber…”
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To Be Continued...
Next Issue: What-or who-are the Sinister Sixty-Six? What unholy menace bears the name Black Top Blue? And why do the Black Chamber want Ghost Rider? Find out in ‘BLACK-TOP BLUE’!
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