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“Kathryn! Was that you?”
And then Peter called for his salvation. “Eddie?”
Peter would have to wait his turn behind the stench and the glowing light from the basement. And the possible minions of hell on their way to take over the world.
Shadows flickered under the basement door.
You know what hell had? Demons, Satan, dead souls of really shitty people like murderers and child molesters.
The basement door groaned and shuddered and then sprung open.
Screaming, Eddie threw up her hand, which was so fucking useless she had no idea why she did it other than she was out of any better option.
“Eddie!!!” Peter’s bellow grew closer. “Are the toilets clogged again?”
The light from the basement door blinked out, and the smell started subsiding.
A form hopped into the workshop. A small form. Actually, tiny, like insect tiny.
Eddie stared at the thing like she was losing her mind, because that was a distinct possibility. There’d been earth quaking, bright light, and that disgusting smell. And now… “A grasshopper?”
The dials on her phone flickered and drifted back to green.
“Chirrup!” Feelers working the air, the grasshopper sprang toward her.
Now Eddie wasn’t an insect sort of girl, but looking after a theatre meant a certain amount of wildlife of the vermin category. Snatching up her phone, she checked that it was working.
It was working. And the dials were definitely indicating the hell gate was stable again.
She felt strangely let down. All that fuss over a grasshopper.
As it hopped closer, the details of the grasshopper got clearer. It was a weird blue gray with an armor plated carapace. Slightly bigger than your average garden grasshopper, with a bulbous head, but all in all, not enough to cause all the fuss and the dire warnings. Thank you, Jesus, she hadn’t given in and called the guardians anyway. Dying over a grasshopper looking thing was not the way she wanted to go out.
“Everything’s fine, Peter,” she called and grabbed a dustpan and the broom. “The…er…septic tank might need checking.”
Threatening or not, that nasty bug was heading back where it had come from. All bugs might very well come from hell anyway.
Scooping the bug into her pan with the broom, she flipped on the light to the basement.
Feelers twitching, the bug squatted in the pan and eyed her through bulbous, red-rimmed eyes. Yup, she didn’t want that ugly bastard taking up residence in her theatre.
She edged past the silent furnace and squeezed between the oversize propane tanks and the wall. She tapped the icon on her phone that would open the door.
A latch clicked, like it had the couple of times Dee had allowed her to come down here with her, and the wall opened.
Granted, this was the only hell gate Eddie had ever seen, but it was a disappointing swirl of gray and black smoke on the floor just over a meter in diameter and tucked into the far side of the three meter by three meter room that housed it.
Particles of ash lay around the swirling smoke, the only indication that anything had happened. Other than the fuck ugly squatter in her pan.
The bug shifted. It made a high-pitched squeak and then leapt onto Eddie’s hand.
“Shit!” The pain shot up Eddie’s arm in a searing blast of heat as the little fucker sunk his teeth in and bit her.
She shook her hand, but the bug stuck, hanging on by its teeth.
Agony pounded through her arm like she’d thrust it straight into a mound of burning coals.
“Ow, ow, ow.” Dancing like she hoped nobody was watching, Eddie hopped around and flapped her arm to dislodge the thing.
