Can Immortals Have Souls?

Part 3 - Sacrifice

Shem held up his hand in a signal to halt and eight of his children, silently moving in single file down the shadowed street, congregated quietly around him. The moon was low and unseen on the darkened horizon, so the streets of Susa were still deep in shadow. Shem made the most of the cover. 

Seven days had passed since they'd learned of the portal's location from the demon Jakabub. The sound of a wooden mallet hitting flesh sprang into his mind, but Shem closed the door on that memory. Tonight he could not afford distractions. A riot had broken out at the south end of the city, a riot that Methuselah had planted the seeds for weeks earlier. Shem knew they could not waste this opportunity. His eldest son and two others had fanned the flames tonight and the resulting chaos gave them the opportunity to get into the Fortress. The city rumour-mill informed them that the already stretched forces had split, one of the groups heading toward the riot, leaving the other, dangerously short-manned, to guard the Fortress.  

"We're here," he whispered, looking at Balthazah, before quickly taking in the others behind him. "Just around this corner is the entrance to the Fortress." 

"Is the Gate we seek within, father?" one of Shem's younger sons asked. 

"No, Jacob, the Fortress is not our objective. We seek a tunnel within that will lead us to the portal chamber inside the mountain. Remember, all of you, we cannot let them know of our presence or our objective. Once we get inside unobserved, we continue moving silently. Any discovery by demonic forces must be destroyed utterly; there must be no warning going out at our backs." 

Each of his eight children nodded in acknowledgment. Balthazah moved up beside him silently as Shoshanna motioned the others to press against the wall. Carefully, Shem eased his head around the corner. One disinterested demon sentry stood guard at the heavy wooden loading doors, smoking a long clay pipe and belching green smoke from the corner of his scaled and sneering mouth. This particular door was used primarily for food deliveries to the Temple, so traffic at this time of night was minimal. With a raised palm, Shem motioned his children forward. They silently converged on the loading doors as Balthazah threw a rock toward the far end of the alley. The demon guard, his head turned from them as the rock hit a wall further up the alley, did not even know they were there until the knife slid up low under his ribcage. The blade entered his heart and he crumpled silently to the ground. As two other children dragged the body out of sight, Shoshanna stepped back, breathing heavily. She still held the long-bladed knife tightly in her hand, dripping with reddish-green demon blood. Her eyes, calm and slightly squinted, followed the demon's body being pulled away.  

Even now after witnessing her take a life, he recalled the small laughing girl she had been as a child. Guilt twisted in Shem's gut as he thought of the myriad injustices he and his kind had rort upon humanity. And then he thought of the demonic hordes Lucifer was bringing through this Gate. At the rate demons were coming through, all humanity would be enslaved within centuries; Shem had no doubt of that. Nothing the Two Hundred had done so far would come close to what Lucifer would unleash. He thought of Bella, waiting for him back at his home, and the other mortal servants there, but especially for Bella. It would have been pleasing to have had a child with her, but he would never have that chance now.  

In all honesty, he had known what must be done as soon as he knew a portal to another world was involved. He could guess how Lucifer had formed the portal and he knew what had to be done to close it. All he could hope was that his children would eventually understand the why of what he must do. 

******

The tunnel was dark, the weak light of the widely spaced candles sitting in their recessed sconces making the spaces between them even darker, as Shem and his children moved inexorably closer to the Portal. The uneven floor beneath their feet was free of dust, which suggested that traffic passed regularly through these corridors. Not a good sign, in Shem's opinion.