He only lived for another twenty seconds.

There was something wrong with Stark’s eyes. Franks seemed too small, and also a whole lot faster than he used to be. Radabaugh threw a series of punches, but Franks brushed them aside effortlessly. One hand flew out, grabbed Radabaugh by the throat. The agent thrashed and turned red in the face, trying a wristlock to break the hold, but to no avail. Franks twisted and with a sickening crack snapped his neck.

Stark tried to push the dead man’s weight off of his chest, but he was too weak.

Franks dropped Radabaugh’s limp form, walked to the bodyguard’s pistol and picked it up. He began methodically putting bullets into each of the wounded.

Last of all, he aimed the gun at Stark’s face.

“No. Please!” He squeezed his eyes shut tight. “I don’t want to die! Not like this! Please!”

Several seconds passed. There was no boom. No tunnel of light, or whatever was supposed to happen. As far as he knew, he was still alive. Stark opened his eyes. The cafeteria was filled with dead bodies and Franks was gone.

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

Disembodied spirits escape the Void however they can. Sometimes there are cracks where another world collided with our prison. There are other things out there, alien gods willing to cut deals. We would trade our services for freedom. Then the Fallen come to the mortal world and make trouble. When you make a hole, spirits will escape through it until it is plugged.

When any of us show up in this world, they called us demons or fallen angels. Those names will do. Without bodies we can’t accomplish much. Even the strongest amongst us couldn’t do much except harass mortals who couldn’t even remember us. They are always there, whispering, encouraging evil.

I was never one for whispering.

I hated the Fallen who could not admit that they had been wrong. Most disembodied are weak and easy to banish back to Hell. Some are more persistent. They desire to be real more than anything. The jealous will do anything to possess a body of their own.

There’s always some dumb mortal who’ll listen to the whispers and open the door to let them in. But human bodies were never intended to hold the Fallen. They must compete against a mortal spirit that was tethered there first. Unless their soul is completely rotten, mortals will begin to fight back eventually, so demons are relatively easy to banish back to the dark.

What demons really want is a body of their own. If you leave a perfectly good body around empty then something will come and live in it.

There are lots of bodies that will do to live in. Several of the creatures that humans consider monsters are really the Fallen inhabiting some physical form. The greater the spirit, the better the body must be to contain it. Pathetic little imps will live in pigs if given the chance. A warrior or a prince of the Fallen requires a worthy vessel, golems, oni, even some forms of undead will do. Yet even after I’d found a breach in the wall of Hell that led me to the mortal world, there was nothing here capable of holding me.