Hell's Detective

Chapter Forty-five- The Happy Ending

"So, he didn't kill the Saviour?" Follows asked, stepping over a decapitated demon body. Zadrian had contacted him after the demons disappeared back to the Underplane, told him what had happened. Apparently, Ingleseid had been planning to trick both sides into thinking he killed the Saviour all along. Say what you would about him, you had to admit the guy was clever. After all, he'd managed to make it out of Hell in one piece. Follows frowned. He'd have to apologize for that later.

"The Saviour is in the Upperplane," Zadrian said. "Given the current circumstances, we thought it would be best to relocate him to Heaven until the time comes that he is needed on Earth."

"So, that's it then?" he said, looking around the priests' base. But it wasn't the priests' base anymore. It was a graveyard. "World saved?"

Zadrian had told him what had happened to Bloomsbury and Briar and Binkley when the demons had flocked the base. Follows had yelled and cried until he couldn't anymore, and now all that was left was a hollowness inside in the pit of his stomach, like someone was slowly draining the life out of him. It wasn't fair. They were the good guys. They were supposed to get the happy ending.

"Not quite." Zadrian looked at the cells, which bore many battle scars of war. Cracked doors, deep scratches, broken glass, but they had remained more or less intact with a determined persistence. "I trapped what possessed I could. They need to be saved."

Follows thought about the cult, about the way their leader's eyes lit up as he spoke of death, spoke of their 'masters'.

"I don't think they want to be," he said quietly.

"That's not our decision to lmake."

He was right, of course. Albert wasn't exactly in the running for brother of the year award, but that didn't mean they could leave him like this. They couldn't leave any of them like this.

"And the priests?" Follows asked, even though he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know.

"Bloomsbury's and Binkley's souls have departed to Heaven, I felt them," Zadrian said. "Briar has disappeared. I think it's safe to assume a demon possessed him and abandoned the fight."

Follows didn't know what to feel. Briar was alive. That was good, right? But what kind of life was that? To be a slave to a murderer. A monster. To be forced see every evil deed it makes you do and never be able to stop it. Follows didn't feel relieved for Briar. He couldn't.

Zadrian glanced at Follows, and his face softened ever so slightly. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Me too."

"She is with her father, if it helps. They are happy."

Someone deserves to be, Follows thought. But Zadrian was right, it did help. Not much, but it did.

"So, where does that leave us?" he asked.

"We still have our orders," Zadrian said. "I will remain on Earth, and we will continue the fight."

Follows looked at the cells, and empty eyed people leered back at him. In the past few months, Follows had seen true evil in the form of man-eating monsters and the son of the Devil and boys and girls who wanted to kill people for sport. But he'd also seen true goodness, like Bloomsbury and Pippin. And Frelser, who would grow up to save the world.

And that was something he could hold on to.

"Then I guess we'd better get started," he said.