Rabdos leapt off the work table swinging his axe at the young angel. She screamed a battle cry and raised her sword to parry the blow. Just as the weapons would have collided the angel and the two humans swirled into mist and vanished. Rabdos’s axe swung through where his target had been, biting into the ground and jarring the demon’s shoulders. The little lemur slithered out of Robert Dante’s left ear and sat on his shoulder clicking its mandibles as though ready to enter the nonexistent fray. Rabdos composed himself and surveyed the room for targets but found they were once again alone.
“So, the enemy has cultivated a new crop of monks,” he said to the little lemur as he leapt back onto the work table. Robert Dante was soldering some wires from a detonator into the guts of a cheap looking cell phone. “It looks like their prayers were interrupted though.”
Rabdos contemplated the map he’d seen in Paul Thomas’ office. The twelve locations and names coupled with this new development were intelligences that would empower and endear someone with the master. The real question was how to use this information to the best advantage?
On the one hand this information could earn him more power and prestige. The master might well reward him with more servants and lands. Things might be looking up, down below for him.
On the other hand, Satan had many servants and many plans. If he’d just stumbled onto something being worked on by a more superior servant it could jeopardize his very existence. Major servants were loath to share knowledge, power, or secrets in Hell. Perhaps he would seek out Lord Malphas and solicit his advice?
Rabdos thought about his patron for a moment. Lord Malphas had indeed taught the former imp all he’d needed to prosper and rise quickly to full demon. Although still junior in rank, Rabdos was far ahead of his peers with nothing to stand in his way of rising still farther. This type of altruism was almost unheard of in Hell. That thought coupled with the earlier one about other servants coveting their knowledge caused Rabdos to rethink his idea of reaching out to his benefactor. Until he knew more about Malphas and his motivations for helping a promising yet insignificant imp, he would keep this information to himself, but that course had risks as well.
Rabdos noticed Dante was about to nod off and drop his soldering iron onto the cell phone circuit board potentially ruining the bomb detonator. He picked up his axe and directed a concentrated, thin beam of fire at the back of the man’s hand. Dante flinched his hand into the hot tip of the soldering iron burning himself.
“Ouch! Damn it!” the man exclaimed. Dante set the soldering iron on its station and walked across the warehouse to a sink, running the burn under cool water. He then splashed himself in the face several times. “I hope Carrie is doing better than me today.”
Rabdos smiled at the memory of the late night drunken rendezvous he’d engineered for Dante with the woman from work. They’d both over indulged at the bar and ended up back at her place. Rabdos doubted she’d been able to get in to work on time or that she’d have successfully sent her reports as promised. Even if she had, the likelihood of errors was great. Anything that set back so diligent a servant for the enemy as Paul Thomas was a good thing. Dante moved back to the table and resumed his soldering chores more alert than before and Rabdos returned to deciphering his course of action with the information he now held.
The idea of not telling the master what he knew was out of the question. If Satan found out he was holding something like this back he’d be snuffed out as quickly as a candle in a hurricane. The question wasn’t if he would tell the master, but how to tell him?
Dante hesitated in his soldering activities. The man furrowed his brow and looked at several pieces of paper on the work table held down by weights at the top and bottom. He then set the soldering iron down and began scanning the paper with his finger. As he went down the plans he brushed the weight off the bottom with his sleeve and the paper snapped up in a roll. Dante cursed and set the circuit board down to realign the plans under the weights. Rabdos smiled as the inkling of an idea formed in his mind.
Guardians of the Herald is a weekly serial published and copyright by The Cavalier, Mark Malcolm. For more information about this story please join us on our Facebook page community at www.facebook.com/firstchevalierbooks.
