Soul Guardian

Murphy was so packed with camping gear that his occupants needed to sit in the front seats instead of lounging in the back, as they had become accustomed to. At first Bael had been annoyed by the steering wheel, but after some careful finagling he managed to make use of it.

“You’re ridiculous,” Six said as she watched her adoptive father dig into the party platter strapped to the steering wheel. Then after a second she got hungry and reached over for some chips. “But I will admit that you might be onto something.”

“HE IS,” Titan told her, laying his massive head on the console between the front seats, “PASS ME SOME CHICKEN TENDERS, PLEASE.”

Bael loaded up a paper bowl for the hellhound. “Do you want ranch dressing?”

“YES.”

Six watched as Titan devoured a dozen chicken tenders, along with the bowl they were in. “I BELIEVE WE CAN CHECK THAT OFF MY LIST AS WELL.”

“What do you mean?” Six asked.

“CONSUMING SOMETHING NOT MEANT TO BE EATEN, BUT NOT OVERTLY HARMFUL IS SOMETHING DOGS DO,” Titan said, “AT LEAST, ACCORDING TO YOUR LIST.”

“Ah, right.” She looked to her father for moral support (which was a bit like looking at the sun to try and find shade). “Good job, I guess.”

“YES. I AM THE BEST,” Titan agreed before turning to face Six, his tail wagging back and forth, “PERHAPS WE CAN PLAY SOME GAMES TO PASS THE TIME. I HAVE BEEN DOING RESEARCH IN PREPARATION FOR OUR TRIP.”

Bael reached over to scratch behind the hellhound’s ears as he spoke. “We have about three hours left until we get to the lake. I read somewhere that less than four hours total travel time was ideal for preventing road trip fatigue.” The demon paused. “You know, I’ve never been camping before. At least, not unless you count what I did during the war.”

Six looked over at the mention of her father’s past. He was normally tight-lipped about his life before joining hell’s bureaucracy. “Which war would that be?”

“The war in heaven,” Bael said, “It was before your time.”

“Obviously,” Six replied, “You never talk about it. But I’d like to know more.”

Bael bought himself a few seconds to think by shoving a handful of potato chips into his mouth. He wiped the crumbs out of his beard and took a sip of sprite before answering. “There’s not much to tell,” he lied, “We fought, we lost, I moved on.”

The young girl fixed him with a piercing stare. She knew he was holding back information from her.. “Hmm… well… I suppose you don’t have any interesting stories to tell anyway. You probably spent the whole conflict pushing paper in a supply depot or something.”

The Baron cocked his head to the side. He knew that Six was trying to manipulate him, and it was working. “Actually, I was Infernal Infantry. We fought on the front lines, just us with our polearms against waves of angels…”

Six listened with fascination as Bael talked about small unit tactics and the dumb things his fellow demons had gotten up to when they were unsupervised. The girl had gotten so used to thinking about the demon in reference to her own situation, that she had forgotten about the life he lived before they met.

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She was struck with a sense of vast distance between them. Not emotional distance, but of time. This was an entity that had been alive for thousands of years, since before recorded history. Bael had seen mankind go from mud huts to skyscrapers, and now he was sitting next to her eating chicken strips.

“Do you ever miss it?” Six asked.

Bael’s expression darkened. “I miss my friends,” he said, “But that was a long time ago. I’ve gotten over it.”

Neither of them spoke for a while after that. Six sat and watched as the world sped by her window. Eventually Titan’s rumbling voice broke the silence. “I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE… SOMETHING THAT STARTS WITH ‘C’.”

Six glared at the hellhound with mock annoyance. “Is this your way of getting more chicken tenders?” she asked.

“YES,” he replied shamelessly.

***

Unlike Bael, Six was no stranger to camping. Many of the cult’s events had been held outdoors in the woods, far from prying eyes. One of her favorite parts of any road trip, however, were the truck stops.

There was something magical about a place that sold everything from microwave burritos to plug-in seat warmers. Truck stops were a place where silly things like laws, and good taste, held no sway. It was as if the glass and metal swinging doors were a portal to another world.

She walked through the aisles of questionable snacks and instant foods with Titan at her side. If the cashier noticed the hellhound, he made no mention of it. The pale scrawny man continued to scratch at his face and watch the security monitors as if they were his favorite TV show.

Six didn't know it, but there was a good reason why truck stops seemed otherworldly. Conventional wisdom was that they followed the highways and interstates, being constructed to serve the people who passed through. This, of course, was false. If an area met the special conditions for them to spawn, namely being remote and magically dense enough, one would start to take shape. The roads would follow later.

Their lesser cousins, the gas stations, tended to crop up in groups of two or more to take advantage of magical nexus points. They usually were placed on opposite sides of the street to prevent them from merging and forming a Walmart. They were mostly harmless, often gathering in packs with other lesser predators like all-night restaurants to lure customers off the road. But truck stops were different.

If the right conditions were met, they could warp reality and trap the unwary. Like carnivorous flowers they lured prey in with the promise of gasoline and cheap sugary drinks, only to consume them. Or at least, to take a little nibble from time to time. Actual deaths were rare, but it wasn’t uncommon for people to leave feeling drained, or with items they had no memory of purchasing.

Six watched as a glassy eyed couple in Hawaiian shirts unloaded their haul for the cashier to ring up. Neither knew why they had decided to purchase a novelty fondu set, two dozen donuts, and a gas powered blender, but they didn’t question it. One did not question the will of the truck stop.

The young witch came to a stop in front of a display case containing illegal knives, incense, and what looked suspiciously like a grimoire. She grabbed Bael’s hand to get his attention and pointed. “What do you make of that?”

“I’ll be damned,” the demon said between bites of burrito, “I think that’s a travel version of the Om-Nom-Nomicon.”

She looked up at him with confusion. “Don’t you mean the ‘Necronomicon’?”

“No, this book is much more useful.” He waved to a bored man in a stained polo shirt. “We’ll take this too.”

Bael paid in cash and hauled away their assorted snacks. The demon had so far managed to resist the unnatural desire to buy a t-shirt with a humorous joke about fishing on the front, but knew not to push his luck. The longer one spent at a truck stop, the stronger the urge to purchase things he didn’t need would become.

“This is for you. Just promise me you won’t try and read it before we get to the lake,” Bael said as he handed Six her prize.

“Why?” the young witch asked, looking at her new book for any signs of danger, “Will it summon something nasty if I do?”

“No,” Bael told her, “I just don’t want you getting motion sickness. Apparently that happens a lot on road trips. It has something to do with the body feeling movement that the eyes can’t see.”

“Ah,” Six said as she tucked the grimoire under her arm, “That is a good reason.”