The Gate to Oblivion Read online

  The Gate to Oblivion

  Temporal Armistice Book 3

  Matthew S. Cox

  The Gate to Oblivion

  Temporal Armistice Book 3

  © 2018 Matthew S. Cox

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, places, or extraplanar wars is purely coincidental. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author.

  Cover by Alexandria Thompson (www.gothic-fate.com)

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-949174-86-1

  ISBN (Print): 978-1-949174-87-8

  Contents

  1. Table Manners

  2. Natural Disaster

  3. Angels

  4. A Little Rough

  5. Folklore

  6. Desperate Measures

  7. Lesser Evils

  8. Dependent

  9. Under the Bus

  10. Figures… Tuesday

  11. Foom

  12. The Delete Button

  13. Good Timing

  14. Unsafe Levels of Spiciness

  15. Attack of the Killer Potatoes

  16. Hearthwood Gardens

  17. An Ill-conceived Plan

  18. More Angel-Demon Stuff

  19. Magical Tampering

  20. The Gateway

  21. Pillar of Eternity

  22. A Cold Reception

  23. Circles and Charms

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other books by Matthew S. Cox

  1

  Table Manners

  Frustrated at dying for the sixty-billionth time, I succumb to the rage of a thousand burning hells and cry out in anguish across the cosmos. May the halls of the ancient elder gods tremble at my wrath… or, uhh, something like that.

  I draw my arm back to hurl the controller, but stop myself. I’m not really mad at the PlayStation as much as sick with worry over destroying the world. I don’t wanna do it.

  The real world that is, not the PlayStation one.

  Suppose the only good thing that would accomplish is finally bringing an end to people quibbling over if Pluto should be a planet or not. And, yeah, throwing the controller’s a bad idea, too. For one thing, I don’t want to drop fifty bucks on a new one. For another, I might hurt someone in the next apartment.

  Other than being stuck between two warring factions of extraplanar beings, I had been in a pretty good mood tonight before the game got me pissed off. It’s Saturday and I’m not on the swing shift this week. Had a lunch date with Jason earlier, and I plan to spend most of tomorrow with him. The advantage to working twelve-hour shifts is constant three-day weekends—except for when I have to cover Saturday-Sunday once a month.

  And honestly, that’s mostly a formality. They just want some people at the stationhouse in case someone shows up there needing help. We’re all basically on duty all the time. Again, not that I mind. If I did, I wouldn’t have taken the job.

  With a sigh, I revert to my last save game in Fractured: The Endless Waste, and once again attempt to make it through the ‘reaper’s gauntlet.’ It’s a barren area of white sand with these teepee-shaped piles of bone here and there that don’t offer much cover. Between land mines, snipers at the distant raider fortress, and these mutant pygmy things… ugh. As much as I like this game, it’s about at a point where I put it down for a few weeks.

  My front door clicks and creaks open. Either I’m about to be robbed or that’s the neighbor kid. I’ve wound up watching her for her mother so often, I gave her a key. Well, that’s mostly so she can get in here if she needs a safe place. Not that I don’t trust her mother—I don’t trust her taste in guys.

  “Brook?” calls Ashley.

  “Yeah.”

  “You naked?” asks Ashley.

  I glance down at my sweat pants and tank top. “Nope.”

  “Cool.” The front door shuts. Seconds later, my eight-year-old neighbor walks around the end of the couch. She’s barefoot and wearing an adult-sized black T-shirt for a dress. The cartoon kitten on it has one paw raised, a single blade-like claw popped out despite huge eyes and an adorable expression. The caption ‘I may be cute but I will cut you’ wraps around the cat in fancy, girly writing. Her enchanted faerie doll, purple wings aglow, hovers beside her.

  I pause the game and chuckle at her.

  “All my stuff’s in bags. It’s laundry day. This is mom’s shirt.” She plops down on the sofa next to me, then lands the faerie on the coffee table before rubbing the control ring to make it ‘sleep’ “Does taking your clothes off make magic stronger?”

  I cough. “What? Where’d you get that from?”

  She swings her feet back and forth, gazing at the character on the TV. “Onna internet. Found a page with spells. Couldn’t read it, but the lady in the pictures didn’t have anything on but runes painted on her. Ooh. What game is that?”

  “What are you doing reading about spells? Umm. I don’t really know that much about magic.” I blink. Of course, now part of me has an urge to find out if there is any truth to that or if the artist just wanted to be racy. “And this is a game for grown-ups.”

  Ashley sticks her tongue out at me, then laughs. “’Cause. A responsible demon summoner uses magic on their minions to make them tougher and keep them happy.”

  I can’t quite bring myself to say I’m not her minion. Before a response comes to mind, someone knocks. After saving/exiting the game, I return to the menu and hand her the controller on my way to the door.

  Tracy—Ashley’s mother—smiles at me when I open it. She’s struggling to hold up two overfilled laundry baskets and her backpack of books. “Hey. Thanks again for watching her. I hate to ask, but is there any chance you could head down to the laundry room in like forty minutes and move our shit to the dryer?”

  “Yeah, sure. Someone will throw it on the floor if it sits too long.”

  “Cool.” She struggles to set the baskets down and hands me a little plastic baggie with quarters in it. “For the dryer.”

  “’Kay. What time are you coming back?”

  She looks at her phone to check the time. “Class is over at ten, so I should be back here around 10:30 to 10:45.”

  Ashley zooms over and hugs her mother. “Bye, Mom. Have fun at school.”

  The kid has way too much fun saying that.

  “Don’t give Brook a hard time, okay? Stay safe.”

  “I won’t.” Ashley folds her arms. “My minion will protect me.”

  Tracy picks the baskets back up and trudges off to the stairwell. The kid and I relocate to the couch and proceed to play a child-friendly racing game with oversized cartoon animals: The Fast and the Furry-ous. Whoever labeled it with ‘mild cartoon violence’ has a rather strange definition of the word ‘mild.’

  Within a few minutes, I pick up that Ashley’s being unusually quiet. I look at her and get a sense she’s worried.

  “Something bothering you?”

  She turns her entire body with the effort of steering her cartoon weasel around a corner. “Yeah.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  Ashley considers for a moment before nodding. “Mom was on the phone with a man, sorta arguing. She kept saying stuff like she can’t do that shit anymore. Or that shit is crazy and she left that life behind.”

  Hmm. That doesn’t sound good, but at least she said no. “Was she afraid?”

  “Nah.” She shrugs. “Not really. Mom sounded more like me when she tells me to clean my room and I don’t wanna.”

  That gets me to chuckle. “Any idea who that was?”

  “She called him F-bomb.”

  I furrow my eyebrows. “Did she call him that word, or literally ‘F-bomb?’”

  “She didn’t call him ‘literally f-bomb.’ She called him F-bomb.”

  “The guy’s name is fuck?”

  Ashley rolls her eyes then shoots me an ‘are you an idiot?’ stare. “No. His name is ‘F-bomb.’ Eff-dash-bomb.”

  “Got it.” I sigh at myself. “I really should stop using that language around you. Can’t help it.”

  “It’s who you are.” She grins, then pretend whispers, “Besides. I’ve heard ’em all from Mom. You’re not corrupting me.”

  “Hah!”

  The instant I throw my head back to laugh, she unpauses the game. Ooh! Brat! I refocus on my little car as fast as I can, narrowly avoiding going off the track and crashing. No idea what it is about certain types of games, but it seems like whenever we play one made for little kids, she wins more often than not. And no, I’m not letting her. Guess I’m overthinking trying to slow down on turns or something and the game isn’t complicated enough for that to matter.

  Ashley’s stomach growls.

  I glance sideways at her on a straightaway. She’s sunk into the cushions enough that her shirt looks almost flat. The kid is so damn skinny I’ve basically got an empty T-shirt draped over the sofa next to me. Guess Tracy ran out of Starbucks throw-outs again. Fair bet she didn’t eat much before her mother left to catch her 7 p.m. class. Ugh. I remember how much it sucked to work constantly while going to college. Only I did it in the reverse: day school with a night job.

  Ashley’s little go-kart zooms over the finish line a second and change before mine. She thrusts both arms straight up and cheers.

  “You only won because you unpaused it when I wasn’t looking.” I stick my tongue out at her.

  She giggles. “You’ve been playing video games longer than I’m old. I need every advantage.”


  “Heh. You’re going to be a lawyer when you grow up.”

  Ashley gives me a blank look.

  I expect a crack about how she’ll stick to summoning demons because it’s less evil, but then I remember she’s only eight.

  Her confusion shifts to mild awkwardness. She bites her lip and twists the controller around in her hands. “Can I have some food, please?”

  “Sure. And you don’t need to be ashamed of asking.”

  She nods. “I ’member you told me it’s okay to ask. Saw you look at me when my tummy yelled.”

  “C’mon.” I ruffle her hair, then lead the way to the kitchen.

  Hmm. I hate standing by an open freezer. Too damn cold. So, I grab the first box that catches my eye and hold up a frozen chicken pot pie. Ashley shrugs with a ‘that’ll work’ expression. Geez, poor kid. Eight-year-olds should not be willing to eat whatever lands in front of them purely because it’s food.

  Then again, I know how she feels. During the ‘Saltine weeks’ when I was a kid, this pot pie would’ve been like filet mignon. After unboxing it, I pop it in the rune oven and hit the red gem. Thin strands of purple lightning crackle around inside the chamber. In a few seconds, the fragrance of chicken and gravy fills the kitchen.

  “Whew.” Ashley emerges from under the table. “It smells right.”

  “My oven isn’t that bad.”

  She blinks up at me. “Umm… yeah it is. Hot dogs aren’t s’posed to explode.”

  We sit around in the kitchen for a bit while Ashley tells me about her faerie, Vy. (The toy my friend Natalie made.) Apparently, she used to be Princess Violet, but her parents died to an assassin so she’s here in Philly to hide.

  “Are there real faeries?” asks Ashley.

  “Yep. Though they don’t come into the city. They hate technology. It scares them the same way alarm clocks ward me off.”

  She giggles.

  Chime.

  “Oh, crap,” whispers Ashley. “You forgot to say the Words of Protection.”

  I sigh and get up. “It still smells like chicken pot pie. You know, sometimes, this rune oven works.”

  Nothing appears out of the ordinary when I open the door. The formerly-frozen pot pie sits at the middle of the rune oven looking all innocent and delicious. A bit of steam rises out of the three neat holes at the center, and it doesn’t smell like it’s undergone flavor reassignment surgery.

  Out of habit, I grab oven mitts. Ashley bursts into laughter. What? Oh. Duh. I toss the gloves and grab the thing with my bare hands. It doesn’t even feel warm to me. After setting it on a plate for her and grabbing a fork, I sit catty-corner at the table.

  Ashley picks up the fork and points it at the pot pie as if threatening it to behave. The poor kid’s practically drooling at the smell. She jams the fork right in the middle, a look of wide-eyed eagerness on her face.

  Her expression shifts to alarm.

  The fork wobbles.

  A tiny growl emanates from the pot pie.

  She eeps and leans back, abandoning the fork—which continues sticking straight up from the middle of the crust. When the fork begins to rise, she glares at it, then me. “You said something about your rune oven not sucking?”

  The crust bursts in a spray of beige gravy and carrot bits, revealing a tiny humanoid figure that resembles a demonic infant with an oversized head and tiny needle teeth. Two pointy carrots stick out like horns, and the thing is either covered in gravy or is made out of it. A three-way-staredown lasts all of two seconds before the critter flings itself at the child’s face.

  Ashley screams loud enough to hurt my ears and dives out of her chair.

  Vestigial wings fluttering, the little horror sails across my kitchen and hits the cabinet doors with a splat. It leaves a blot of gravy (and small claw marks) as it slides to the floor. Ashley rolls back to her feet and grabs the fork, taking on the stance of a fencer. Unfazed by her ‘weapon,’ the critter charges.

  Her confidence breaks. She runs in circles around the table screaming, the pot-pie demon in close pursuit. I can’t quite tell if the thing is actually dangerous or only bizarre. It eventually stops going around the table and cuts under it, jumping onto her leg. She shrieks.

  “Ow! It’s hot!”

  The small demon rears back to bite her. Ashley swats it away before its teeth make contact.

  “Stop playing with your food,” I say.

  She hops up onto the table, whining and rubbing her leg. “My food is trying to eat me!”

  Unable to reach Ashley from the floor, the ten-inch-tall thing zips over and bites me on the shin. Ow. Bastard. It’s got real teeth. I go to grab it, but it leaps away. Guess it’s my turn to chase it around. It scrambles back and forth across the kitchen, pausing under the table to give me the finger since it thinks I’m too tall to follow it under there.

  I dive.

  It zooms aside, leaving me sliding on my chest. Fortunately, I come to a halt before my head makes contact with the wall.

  Sigh.

  I prop my chin on my hand and tap my claws on the linoleum for a few seconds. When it starts coming up behind me, I briefly entertain the idea of letting my tail out—but I don’t want to ruin these sweat pants. It screams when I fling myself over into a seated position and grab for it. Goopy pot pie stew oozes between my fingers. The creature slips from my grasp and scurries back across the kitchen, laughing at me.

  Well, that answers the question. It isn’t solid. I lick my palm. Yep. Still tastes like chicken pot pie.

  It climbs the table leg.

  Ashley scoots back as it pulls itself onto the table surface. “Banish it! It’s gonna eat me!”

  “Which plane of hell contains the frozen food aisle?” I ask.

  Her eyes radiate terror, but she puts on her best angry face and makes a fist at it. Undeterred, the imp raises its hands, claws out, and runs across the table at her.

  I leap at it, but the little bastard zooms out of the way. I come down atop my kitchen table like a bad Eighties wrestler, slide over it, flip, and land flat on my back on the floor.

  “Ow.”

  A soft splat comes from above me.

  The demon sails off the table, hits the wall above the sink, and falls in.

  “Ow!” shouts Ashley. “It’s still hot!”

  Okay, I’m a dumbass. I’m trying to chase this stupid thing around physically. The instant I see it creeping over the edge of the sink, I seize it in a telekinetic grip. Tiny arms and legs blur into a frenzy of motion, flailing desperately for purchase on anything solid. With it contained, I ease myself upright. Ashley’s still standing on the table, her right foot in the air, covered to the ankle in gravy.

  I force the little horror into the disposer sink. Gurgling and screaming, it vanishes out of sight under the rubber gasket. Another telekinetic tweak hits the switch, setting off a geyser of beige goo, peas, and carrots that splatters on the ceiling. I stare at the dripping glop, shaking my head.

  “Okay, that’s totally fubar. How the hell did six gallons of this shit come out of a tiny aluminum bowl?”

  “Napkin please,” says Ashley.

  I start to reach for the paper towels, but freeze still as another little imp-shape rises out of the goop.

  “Oh, screw you.” I sprout my claws and grab the thing, impaling it on five onyx blades.

  That time, it emits an agonized wail, solidifies in my hand, and goes limp. Okay, now this is super disgusting. It feels like I’m holding a lump of ground beef. It looks like a dead baby, and it still smells like chicken pot pie.

  I drop it in the sink with a splut and glance at Ashley.

  We stare at each other for two seconds before both of us say, “Pizza,” at the same time.

  “Good call.” I swipe a paper towel from the roll.

  “Dude…” Ashley grabs my shoulders for balance as I wipe off her foot. “You need a new rune oven. This one’s like cursed or something.”