If you meet me, have some sympathy 23

‘How long do you need?’ I asked.

‘Ten minutes,’ he replied. ‘Maybe fifteen.’

I’d be lucky to last that long but I nodded, trying to look reassuring as my horns took a chunk of plaster off the ceiling. Still, at least his fear was subsiding now that he was clacking away at his keyboard, back in his little world again.

I broke his front door frame trying to get my wings through and took my position on the stairwell. It stank of alcohol and urine, just like the Stygian banks on the fifth circle where I grew up. If I was annihilated here it would be like going home.

Mephisto’s hoards were already howling below, bursting through the pavements, forced to take physical form because of their quarry. I caught the vanguard unawares and dispatched them easily enough but they just kept coming. When the stairwell was blocked with their dead, they began sending flyers up the lift shaft. Still more started appearing from the upper floors and I knew that my end would come soon.

But then there was a shimmer in the air and a streak of white fire incinerated the five that were falling on me.

Theresa?