My name is Angela Menendez, and I used to be a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I taught atmospheric sciences. As a climatologist, I also worked at the university's Alaska Climate Research Center, where I conducted research on the impact of the powerful greenhouse gas methane on global temperatures. Of course, that was before Hell Day, before Fairbanks fell to the demons, and my university was destroyed.

My husband, Jack Oswald, was a geology professor at the same university. More importantly, he led our research team that studied one of the giant arctic craters that became known as hell holes. In Hell Holes: What Lurks Below, you can read Jack's account of our team's experiences over the four-day period from when we were hired on the day after the holes appeared until the day after Hell Day, when we began our escape down the Dalton Highway. In case you haven't read his account, I'll begin by briefly summarizing it.

...

It was a couple of weeks before the fall semester was scheduled to start when dozens of huge holes mysteriously appeared overnight in the tundra of Alaska's North Slope. My husband Jack, Mark and Jill Starr, two of our graduate students, and I were in the geology building. They were helping me practice for my upcoming climatology TED talk when Kevin Kowalski called. A manager at ExxonMobil, Kowalski wanted to hire us to study the strange holes, discover their cause, and determine if more might open up underneath the oil wells and pipelines.

Jack and I naturally agreed, and we decided to take our grad students with us. Only after the call was over did we realize that Aileen O'Shannon, a reporter with the local newspaper, was standing in the doorway. She told us she'd come to interview Jack about the holes. Having overheard our conversation, she ended up finagling her way onto the team as our photographer.

After gathering the equipment we needed, the five of us flew north to Deadhorse, where the Dalton Highway ends just a little short of the Arctic Ocean. That's where Kowalski joined us along with Bill Henderson, a field biologist he'd hired to protect us from grizzlies, wolves, and other wild animals. The seven of us drove down the Dalton to the first hole Jack had selected near the Trans-Alaska Pipeline's Pump Station 2.

The next day, Jack and Mark rappelled into the hole, but poisonous gasses quickly forced them back to the surface. Although Jack returned safely, Mark was still being raised out of the hole when Kowalski carelessly flicked a still burning cigarette butt into the hole, where it ignited the mixture of methane and hydrogen sulfide gases rising out of that damned pit. The resulting explosion killed Mark instantly, and the terrible accident still haunts my nightmares.

That night, the demon invasion began when the hell hole erupted a second time. When an earthquake collapsed the vertical sides of the hole, a pack of giant hellhounds climbed out and attacked us. Bill shot one of them, but the demon's dark magic almost immediately healed the wound. That's when Aileen told Bill he had to shoot the demons in the head if he wanted to make them go down and stay down.

That's also when she unexpectedly pulled out her magic amulet and cast a spell creating a barrier that prevented the demons from reaching us. Aileen O'Shannon had revealed her true nature. She is a curatrix, a sorceress soldier of the Tutores Contra Infernum, the ancient secret order charged with protecting humanity from demons.

This second eruption destroyed our vehicles and forced us to flee on foot for the nearby pump station. Along the way, we managed to flag down a car of refugees, who had escaped the demon's attack on Deadhorse and the surrounding oil fields. With only one free seat available in their car, we selected Jill, Mark's widow, to send south to safety, while the rest of us continued on to the pump station.

Once there, we fought our way past hellhounds to reach the relative safety of the station's bunkhouse. The next morning, we found ourselves besieged not just by hellhounds, but also by imps and gargoyles. A hellhound killed Kowalski when we fought our way to the station's main garage, where we found the SUV we needed to take us south to Fairbanks. Gargoyles killed Bill as he raised the gate that trapped us inside the station's fence. Thus, only Jack, Aileen, and I remained as we began our long drive down the Dalton.

That is where my husband's account ends, and mine begins.

...

It was in the middle of August about half an hour after sunrise when we escaped from Pump Station 2. Our car sent twin rooster tails of dust and gravel flying behind us as we accelerated through the front gate that Bill had sacrificed his life to open for us. My husband Jack was driving and Aileen O'Shannon was riding shotgun next to him. I was sitting in the back seat behind Aileen, while the seat to my left, where Bill had been sitting, was empty. The former US Army ranger had saved our lives several times over the preceding two days, and the three of us were acutely aware of the magnitude of losing him.

Still, we weren't entirely defenseless without Bill to protect us. I had his rifle and shotgun next to me, leaning back against the empty seat. More importantly, we also had Aileen O'Shannon, who, in her own way, provided far more protection.

Aileen was much more than she seemed. When she joined our team, we only knew that she was a photojournalist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Unnaturally beautiful and attractive, she had wheedled her way onto our team as our expedition's photographer. While I was confident of my husband's abilities to withstand her obvious charms, Jill Starr and I, nevertheless, resented her initial attempts to wrap our husbands around her little finger. It was only when we came face-to-face with a pack of hellhounds that we learned that she is first and foremost a curatrix: a guardian and member of the military branch of the Tutores Contra Infernum, an ancient and once secret order charged with protecting humanity from demons. In other words, she was a real-life sorceress who regularly killed demons with curses she cast with her magic amulet.

Although you've surely seen countless pictures and videos of them, believe me when I say that they don't do justice to the true malevolent nature of these monstrous creatures. Demon incursions throughout history have clearly influenced both our religions and mythologies. In fact, this is undoubtedly why we call the world they come from Hell, although it bears very little resemblance to the Gehinnom of Judaism, the Hell of Christianity, or the Jahannam of Islam. In fact, it is almost certainly an alien world somewhere in our universe or a parallel universe.

All demons share certain characteristics indicating that they come from the same alien world. The most obvious of these is that their bodies are wrapped in a thin transparent membrane that does nothing to hide their brick-red muscles, yellowish bones, and deep-purple arteries and veins that carry a blood the color and consistency of crude oil. Slick and slimy to the touch, this transparent "skin" has a subtle sulfurous smell that pales in comparison to the nauseating stench of rotten eggs given off by their breath and blood.

The first demons to come out of the hell holes and attack us were hellhounds, creatures similar in shape to wolves though easily twice as big. Their strangely elongated muzzles are armed with long fangs that inject a fast-acting neurotoxin that is inevitably fatal upon reaching the heart.

On the second day, a huge force of gargoyles, imps, and more hellhounds reinforced the initial vanguard. Whereas hellhounds appear vaguely canine, gargoyles seem more feline. (Of course, being aliens, demons are no more related to wolves and cats than they are to cabbages or even bacteria). Anyway, gargoyles are smaller than lions or tigers, being similar in size to cougars or leopards as long as you don't count their huge, translucent, bat-like wings. Whereas hellhounds rely on venomous bites to kill their prey, gargoyles attack with razor-sharp, finger-long claws on their front and back paws before finishing off their victims by ripping out their throats with their serrated shark-like teeth.

As you probably know, lower demons such as hellhounds and gargoyles are voracious beasts that will attack and eat any living thing, whether human or animal. On the other hand, higher demons are humanoid, cunningly intelligent rather than bestial, and driven by what I can only describe as evil rather than hunger. Nevertheless, they take delight in a diet of young children, although they will also happily dine on adults, especially if they have been properly tenderized by torture. They prefer their meals alive and terrified, for fear is their favorite sauce.

Imps are the smallest and weakest of the high demons. Only half as tall as humans, they have grotesque faces and long gibbonous arms. When on foot, imps typically move in large troops and are armed with primitive swords and nasty spiked maces. However, they often ride hellhounds and gargoyles when they need to move long distances rapidly or to control these lower demons.

To return to our story, we had just turned left onto the dusty gravel road the State of Alaska laughingly calls the Dalton "Highway". Designated one of the ten most dangerous roads in the world, driving its length was not something that one undertook lightly or without considerable preparation. Designed for the big trucks hauling heavy equipment and supplies up to Deadhorse and the oil fields, it was occasionally pocked with lunar-crater-sized potholes and long stretches of corrugations like some giant's washboard. The Dalton only had two places along its 414-mile length where you could buy gas, eat in a restaurant, pick up supplies, and have your car repaired. I hoped that we had a good spare in the trunk. The demons that broke into the garage where we found our car barely gave us enough time to climb in before they were on us and we had to flee for our lives.

There we were, fleeing south towards Fairbanks in a badly banged-up SUV we'd been forced to "borrow" from the pump station garage because the expanding hell holes at our camp had swallowed our original vehicles, not to mention our equipment and most of our supplies. Although the Jeep Grand Cherokee we were riding in was several years old, it was in surprisingly good shape when we found it parked in the station's garage. However, we'd barely made it into the car and locked its doors before dozens of imps began pouring through the garage's windows like water through a large-hole colander. Temporarily unable to get at us, the diminutive demons proceeded to take out their frustration by hacking on our car's hood and doors with their swords and maces. Having a particularly heavy gargoyle land on its roof while we were temporarily stuck behind the barrier at the pump station's main gate didn't help either.

Jack was practically flying down the station's driveway and barely made the corner as the car drifted sideways onto the Dalton heading south. Because it took all of his concentration to keep the car on the road, he didn't see what I saw. Much longer than it was wide, Pump Station 2 ran north and south. We'd exited via the main gate at the north end of the station, which meant we had to drive more than a hundred yards past the entire station before we would leave it behind us. While we raced south, I was transfixed by terror as I watched a pack of hellhounds pour out of a gate in the south side of the chain link fence surrounding the station. Nearly a dozen hellhounds were racing to intercept us. Jack and Aileen didn't know it, but we were in a race for our lives, and I had no idea whether the demons would reach the road before we could pass them by. We were both sprinting towards the same spot on the road, and I held my breath while I watched them draw closer and closer. Then suddenly, we were past them.

I shudder to think what would have happened had one of the monsters managed to get in front of us. With their supernatural healing powers, the hellhound would likely have survived the crash, while the car and those of us in it would not be so lucky. I looked through the back window. Though the pack had slowed, they hadn't stopped. They loped behind us, heading south along the Dalton, south towards Fairbanks and their new feeding grounds.

Over the next dozen miles or so, we passed several wrecks of big rigs and the occasional SUV or pickup truck. Their one common denominator was blood, lots of it, and the damage we'd come to expect from gargoyles: long gashes ripped in the metal by surgically sharp claws the size of fingers. After passing the first few vehicles, we kept going and passed by them as quickly as we could.

A few miles later, we almost drove into a couple of crashed SUVs because Jack was spending more time looking out for flying gargoyles than concentrating on his driving. We had been going at least 20 miles per hour faster than the gravel road's 50 mile an hour speed limit. By the time that my husband noticed the wreck, there wasn't time to stop. He was forced off the road onto the tundra to avoid adding our Xterra to the two SUVs already smashed together in the middle of the highway. Once our car hit the soft and soggy surface, it bounced us around like numbered balls in a spinning lottery cage, and we finally slid to a stop some 70-feet later. It took me a few seconds to catch my breath and feel reasonably certain that I didn't get a concussion from banging my head on the car's roof and door. I was just about ready to lay into Jack about his driving, when we were all startled by a loud knock on his door.

A man stood at Jack's door, his face contorted with pain. Using one arm to cradle the other against his chest, he looked like he might have broken it or dislocated his shoulder. The crash had clearly broken his nose, and he was covered in dried blood from his face down his neck and onto the front of his shirt.

Jack rolled down his window.

"Please, you gotta help me," the stranger said, his broken nose making his voice sound like he had a terrible cold.

"Of course. What happened?"

"I was driving along, mindin' my own business, when this huge monster fell out of the sky, landed on the hood of my car, and smashed in the windshield. I slammed on the brakes, but it hung on like it was welded to the hood. It had these huge wings, and I couldn't see worth shit. I musta swerved onto the left side of the road 'cause the next thing I knew, I clipped an oncomin' SUV. That finally sent the bastard flyin', but it also spun me around. I ended up rollin' sideways down the road like a toad in a tin can."

Jack looked from the man to the two wrecks lying in the road. "So... what happened to the gargoyle?"

"The creature? You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me. After the last couple of days, you'd be surprised what I might believe."

"Well, the damned thing looked like it was dead, what with the broken bones sticking out and black blood dripping all over the place. But then it started twitchin' and breathin'. I hid behind what's left of my car and watched it heal itself. Then the next thing I know, it spread its wings and took off, flyin' north towards Deadhorse." He looked at the empty seat next to me. "Now if you don't mind, how 'bout givin' me a ride? I've seen several of those things... What did you call it? Oh yeah, a gargoyle. Anyways, I seen several of them gargoyles flyin' around, and I'd like to put some miles between me an' those monsters."

"Okay. Hop in. We'll take you at least as far as Coldfoot."

The man quickly agreed and lost no time settling into the empty seat next to me. Not wanting to give any nearby gargoyles or hellhounds a stationary target, Jack put the SUV into 4-wheel drive, pulled back onto the road, and then floored it. Soon we were once more flying down the dangerous road as fast as he dared.

"You want me to help you with your seatbelt?" I asked, concerned that he wouldn't be able to buckle in by himself.

"Na, never wear the things. Figger when it's my time, it's my time an' no seatbelt's goin' ta change that."

Not knowing how to react to that, I asked, "So were you on your way up to Deadhorse or heading down south?"

"South. I managed to get to my car during a brief lull between attacks. Those damned demon dogs were everywhere, and the little red devils had just started to roam the streets and break into buildings. I was damned lucky to get out of Deadhorse alive. At least, I was lucky until that cross between a lion and mutant bat dropped out of the sky onto the hood of my car. I don't mind admitting it. The damned thing scared the shit out of me. Then, the next thing I know, I'm waking up in what was left of my car."

He paused, leaned closer to me, and asked, "And do you know what happened next?"

That was when I noticed it: the faint sulfurous smell that was a sure sign I was sitting next to a demon. Somehow a demon had disguised himself as a human! I was too shocked to hide my sudden panic, and he realized he'd been recognized.

His appearance shimmered for an instant, and then suddenly, the injured man disappeared and I could see his true form. He was a devil, one of the higher demons that commanded the hellhounds, gargoyles, and imps. Now I could see him for what he truly was: hideously ugly and doubly naked. Not only was he sitting there without any clothes, he was grotesquely nude because, like all demons, he lacked anything we would call skin. Under a transparent membrane, his dark red muscles and the purplish arteries and veins that fed them were clearly visible. Still, it wasn't the small horn-like projections of bone on either side of his skull, his yellow goat-like eyes, or even his repulsive body that terrified me. It was the demon's impossibly large mouth. The monstrous creature was like a python, able to dislocate its jawbones to swallow animals larger than its head. His upper and lower jaws formed a near perfect circle of triangular serrated teeth. He leaned towards me, and I did what any reasonable person would do when facing imminent death by being eaten alive. I screamed.

Simultaneously, Aileen raised her magic amulet, aimed it at the demonic monster, and yelled, "Demorior demonia!"

Instantly, the devil went limp, his hot, slimy, and utterly naked body falling forward onto me, his open mouth landing directly in my lap. Once more, I did the sensible thing and screamed, this time even louder as I felt his razor-sharp teeth cutting through my blue jeans and into the sensitive skin where my thighs met my torso.

Jack slammed on the brakes, and the devil's upper body flew forward from my lap. It struck the back of the front seats and then slid down to rest on my feet. "What the hell's happening?" he yelled, trying to turn around sufficiently to see if I was okay.

"Eyes on the road!" Aileen shouted. "Dr. Menendez is okay. It was a devil, but I killed it before it could bite her."

Sliding to a stop, the car was instantly enveloped by a cloud of dust and small stones the tires had thrown up from the surface of the road.

Its upper torso was wedged tightly between my shins and Aileen's seat, making it impossible for me to move my legs. Even though the sight and the slimy feel of its body against my ankles revolted me, I couldn't look away. Hell, I wasn't even sure I could keep my breakfast down.

"How did you know he was a demon?" I asked, my voice wavering with shock.

"Because he revealed himself, of course," Aileen answered as if nothing could be more obvious.

"I understand that," I said, frustrated by my inability to clarify what I meant. "But you cast the spell the exact moment he revealed himself. It should have taken you a couple of seconds to pull out your amulet and cast your spell, more than enough time for him to bite me. Instead, you had to be ready before he changed. You had to know he was a demon."

"Oh, that," Aileen replied, finally getting what had confused me. "I didn't know at first, although I grew suspicious when he said that the gargoyle had merely flown off. If the gargoyle had chosen him as its prey, then it would have surely searched until it found him. I also realized that I had not seen any sign of black blood on the ground. Moreover, there was something wrong about all the blood around its mouth. I thought it just might have been an unconscious representation of the blood of its victims. As for my amulet, I already had it out though I kept it hidden against my chest. After that, it was just a matter of watching it closely and waiting for any sign that he was not as human as he appeared to be."

By then, Jack had stepped out of the car and opened the door the devil had entered. Avoiding the sharp claws on the demon's four-fingered hands, he grabbed the corpse and pulled it out of the car.

I couldn't stop staring as Jack dragged it across the gravel, and dumped it roughly onto the soggy ground next to the road. Oh, my god, I thought. Cloven hooves! The damn thing's actually got cloven hooves!

Wiping his hands on his pants, Jack walked back to the car and slid into the seat next to me. He took my hand in his. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I answered. Of course, I wasn't fine. I wasn't anywhere close to fine, but at least I wasn't hurt, at least not physically. Mentally, I was something else entirely.

But then, I began to feel a warm wetness in the crotch of my pants. I looked down, expecting to see that the demon had literally scared the piss out of me. Instead, I saw blood from dozens of small cuts made by the demon's razor-sharp teeth. I froze as the sight of the blood between my legs transported me back to the terrifying time I'd had a miscarriage and nearly bled to death in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. "No, no, no, no, no..." I repeated over and over again as the tears flowed and my vision blurred.

Jack's gaze followed mine. "Dammit, Angie, you're not fine. You're bleeding! What happened?"

"The devil fell face first into her lap," Aileen replied for me. "It must have had its mouth open when it fell."

"Honey, listen to me," Jack said, tenderly taking my head in his hands and turning it away from my lap. He gently raised it until I was looking into his eyes. "We need to see how badly you're hurt. You need to try to get those pants off now, while I find something I can use to bandage the cuts. Can you do that for me?"

I nodded numbly, and he headed to the back of the car.

Aileen stepped out of the car and was standing next to her open door, slowly turning around as she scanned the tundra and heavens for packs of hellhounds or formations of flying gargoyles. (Or would that be flocks of gargoyles or maybe prides, given they look a little like skinned lions with wings? Someone really needs to come up with a good name for a group of gargoyles.)

Stopped in the middle of nowhere where we could be spotted and attacked at any time, it was neither the time nor the place for modesty. Once I had opened my door and carefully turned sideways, I unzipped my pants and slowly began to take them off, being careful as I slid them down over the cuts on my upper thighs. I could hear my husband rummaging in the back cargo-area of the car as I dropped my pants on the ground and slid off my blood-soaked underwear.

I looked down. The short incisions formed twin, bloody half circles where the cuts made by the devil's upper and lower jaws had sliced into the top of my right and left thighs. Together, they formed a saucer-sized circle that really brought home just how devastating the bite could have been.

Aileen briefly glanced down at the bite marks before turning back to keep watch. "By the way, you are going to be okay," she said. "Unlike hellhounds, devils are not venomous. And he was already dead by the time he fell on you. Those cuts are shallow; the only reason it looks so bad is that there are so many of them.

Aileen was right. Though there were many cuts, they were all shallow and most had already stopped bleeding.

Jack returned, knelt down, and began to carefully clean the cuts with some ripped-up cloth. "There wasn't any first aid kit, so I had to rip up a couple shirts to make bandages." He had also brought a new pair of pants and underwear from my backpack. He helped me dress, wedging thin pads of ripped cloth between my pants and the cuts so that they acted as pressure bandages.

It's strange how it can be the little things that grab your attention in times of extreme stress. In this case, I couldn't help noticing that my husband had ripped up the brand-new, red-checked flannel shirt I'd given Mark for his birthday just three weeks earlier. He hadn't even had a chance to wear it yet. That in turn made me think about how men never seem to understand the emotional meaning of everyday things. Hell, they don't even seem to know the difference between nice clothes and clothes that used to be nice but are now stained and belong in the work clothes drawer. I knew those were rather silly things to think about considering the current situation. I kept my mouth closed and tried not to cry.

While Aileen continued to keep watch, Jack again headed to the back and returned with three bottles of water, a bag of trail mix, and several granola bars. It wasn't until then that I realized just how thirsty and hungry I'd become.

"Dr. Oswald," Aileen said. "Please get back in the car and start the engine; we may well need to leave at a moment's notice. Meanwhile, there's something I must do before we go. I will be right back."

Although clearly puzzled by the delay, Jack nevertheless shut my car door, walked around the car, and climbed back into the driver's seat. He started the car, while I looked out my window, curious about what could possibly be important enough to delay leaving when we had a pack of hellhounds chasing us.

Aileen walked over to the edge of the elevated gravel road and looked down, seemingly searching for something on the ground. Apparently finding what she was looking for, she reached down, picked up a rounded stone a little larger than her fist, and swiftly walked over to the body of the dead demon. She knelt down and raised the rock up over her head. Mesmerized, I watched as she swung the stone down, slamming it like a hammer onto the devil's skull. There was a dull thud and I flinched as droplets of the demon's black blood splattered outward. I watched in horror as she repeated the blow twice more before a sharp cracking sound indicated she'd fractured the creature's skull. Another two strikes and she'd completely smashed in the top of the devil's head.

At first, I thought she'd shattered the demon's skull to guarantee that it couldn't heal its self. But I was mistaken. She removed several large fragments of bone and tossed them aside before reaching her hand into the blackish-white pulp that had once been the demon's brains. Reaching around, she apparently found what she was searching for and pulled. Whatever it was, it was apparently stuck to the remaining bone. She pulled a couple of times more before it broke lose, enabling her to tug it free from its bloody hiding place. After wiping away some of the gore with her fingers, I could finally see what she'd removed from the devil's skull. It was a crimson crystal disk, the same size and shape as the one in her magic amulet.

Aileen was beaming as she climbed back into her car seat in front of me. I gagged as the strong stench of sulfur that entered with her.

"Dr. Menendez, are there any pieces of cloth back there that were not used for bandages?"

I handed her a couple of clean pieces as well as one that only had a little of my blood on it.

"Great," she said. She wiped the majority of the gunk off her hands with one of the rags. Then she poured a little water on another rag and used it to clean the crystal and finally used the last rag to finish cleaning her hands. "Ah, that is much better." Then, she rolled down the window and threw out the black-stained rags with their disgusting coating of demon blood and brains. Thankfully, the lingering stench of sulfur quickly dissipated now that its source was gone.

"You have no idea how happy I am to get that shit off my hands. The last time I had to remove a devilstone in the field, I had no way of cleaning my hands until several hours later. By then, they were stained black, and it took nearly a week for the stink to wear off."

"Devilstone?" I asked.

"Just a second," she said, looking over my shoulder. She pointed out the rear window. "Dr. Oswald, it is time to go. Our welcoming committee from the pump station is finally catching up with us."

Jack and I looked back up the road. There in the distance was the pack of hellhounds that had been following us. Jack took his foot off the brake and stepped on the gas, sending us southward and away from the demons as fast as he dared drive on that damn gravel-covered Dalton Highway.

"Okay," Aileen continued. "You wanted to know about the devilstone. Well, I guess there is no harm in telling you. My secret order can hardly remain secret now that the invasion has begun." She held up the red disk so that I could see it better. "This is a devilstone, so named because every devil has one attached to the base of its skull. Just the devils, mind you. Not the imps, gargoyles, or hellhounds."

She handed it back to me, and I was surprised to feel how warm it was to the touch. I held it up to the light and looked at it closely. Although the bouncing of the car on the gravel made them very hard to see, I could just make out that the ruby-red crystal was crisscrossed by several layers of tiny, nearly microscopic lines. The faceted front and back of the crystal were smooth, but its dark circumference was prickly as though covered by hundreds, if not thousands, of minute spikes.

Aileen held out her hand, and I reluctantly handed the devilstone back to her.

"It looks just like the stone in your magic amulet," I observed.

"Exactly. Devilstones are the foundation on which my Order's magic is built. For over three thousand years, we have been killing devils. At first, we simply burned their bodies and buried their ashes in the hope of banishing their evil. But during the twenty-first dynasty of Egypt, some three thousand years ago, a novice by the name of Bahiti failed to properly tend the cremation fire, and the devil's head was only partially consumed. Imagine her surprise when she picked up the charred skull and a devilstone fell out. She dutifully brought the stone to her master, who took it to his master, and so on until it eventually came into the hands of Irisi, a scholar of our Order who was destined to become the first demonologist. She studied the devilstone, and not wanting to be parted from it eventually had it made into an amulet."

Aileen paused for a second to take a drink from her water bottle before continuing. "Irisi wore her amulet on a necklace, hiding it under her dress so that it rested directly on the bare skin between her breasts. As time passed, the devilstone adapted itself to its new home and accepted Irisi as its master. It began to grant her control over its magic, and she learned to use it to cast a number of spells. Over the years, the amulet made Irisi ever more powerful until she eventually became the first female head of our Order. From that time forward, we have taken the devilstone from every devil we have killed, turning it into an amulet and using it to turn the demons' magic against them."

"You once said that demons only occasionally cross over from Hell," Jack noted. "And then only in small numbers. That must have greatly limited the number of available devilstones. Just how many amulets are there?"

"Far too few. Most of the time, devils remain in Hell, choosing instead to send their imps backed up by hellhounds or gargoyles. Only rarely do they cross over themselves, and they often return home before we can kill them. We have just a little more than one hundred amulets, and that has also limited the size of my Order. Each member is given an amulet upon initiation, and novices must sometimes wait years before an amulet becomes available. For example, I had to wait twelve years to receive my amulet, and that was only after another Curatrix had been killed. That is why devilstones are worth thousands of times more than their weight in gold."

The more I thought about the devilstone, the less strange it seemed. The layers of tiny lines in the stone reminded me of the lines on the surface of an integrated circuit, while the tiny spikes suggested the leg-like pins that connect it to its circuit board. Suddenly, the devilstone seemed less like the source of magic and more like a piece of advanced technology.

"Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law," I said.

"Who? What?" Aileen asked, completely puzzled by my epiphany.

"Arthur C. Clark," I replied. "The famous science fiction author and engineer who first published the idea of geosynchronous communications satellites. His famous third law states that Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"What are you saying?" Aileen asked warily, not liking the unexpected direction the discussion was taking.

"Aileen, if you'd have handed me that devilstone back at the University and asked me what it was without saying anything about magic or amulets, I would have said it looked like some new type of computer tech, maybe a prototype three-dimensional solid-state memory device. What I'm saying is that maybe we're not dealing with magic after all. What if demons aren't really magical after all? What if devilstones are really some form of alien cyborg technology?"

I looked at Jack in the SUV's rearview mirror. "Makes sense," he said, nodding his head in agreement. "More sense than magic anyway."

Aileen wasn't having any of it. "Nonsense. What about the incantations?"

"Voice interface like what I have on my phone" I answered.

"The demons' miraculous ability to heal from almost any wounds?"

"How about medical nanobots in their blood?" Jack offered.

"Nanobots?" Aileen asked, confused by the unfamiliar jargon.

"Microscopic robots programmed to repair damaged tissues."

"That's crazy."

"No, that's science and Occam's razor," Jack countered. "The simplest explanation is probably correct. Which is more likely: that magic is real even though it violates the fundamental laws of the universe or that we're dealing with an unknown form of advanced technology that obeys those laws, just in ways we don't yet understand?"

"Aileen, have members of your Order ever run any scientific experiments to see whether the stones are devices? For example, has anyone ever looked at one of the stones under an electron microscope? Or subjected it to a laser or other form of radiation?"

"What?" she exclaimed. "And risk damaging it? Not bloody likely. It is far too rare and valuable. You already know that they can be destroyed by a hot enough fire, and some have been accidentally cracked or crushed over the years. No, before a novice receives her amulet, she learns to keep it safe, for she is unlikely to ever receive another."

"Then you don't know whether it's magic or a device, not for sure," Jack declared. "And my working hypothesis is that it is a device. If we were only back in my lab, I bet I could easily find out."

"Not with my amulet, you won't!" she yelled. "And not with this other demon stone, either. The Order will need every damn stone we can get our hands on if we want to use the demons' magic against them."

"Okay, Aileen," I said, hoping to calm her down. "No one's asking you to give up your amulet. But now that we know they exist, we'll need to find out how they work. Otherwise, we'll never learn how to make our own. If we could do that, we'd have all the stones we need. Maybe, we could even learn how to make bigger, more powerful ones. Surely, you can see the potential value."

"Well... I will grant you this much. You can have the stone of the first devil you kill on your own without any of my help. That seems fair, and with the invasion, the Order may just end up with more devilstones than novices who need them."

"Deal," Jack and I agreed. Now all we had to do was kill another devil, all on our own and without anyone getting hurt in the process. Easy. Yeah, right!

...

A layer of low clouds rolled in from the northwest, and it started to drizzle. Several times, we saw the bloody carcasses of caribou in the distance. The somber scenes greatly increased the dreariness of the day and deepened the sorrow we felt for the loss of our friends and companions. We drove on in a silence broken only by the rumble of the tires on the endless gravel of the deserted Dalton Highway.

"Did you know this stretch of the road is called Happy Valley?" Jack asked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Not much of a valley," I remarked, looking out over the gently rolling tundra. "And it doesn't strike me as a particularly happy place, either."

"I think that was the point," Jack said.

Less than a minute later, not fifteen feet from the road, we drove by a trio of gargoyles feasting on the carcass of a caribou. One paused just long enough to stare at us malevolently as we drove by. He gave a deep-throated roar that ended with a hair-rising howl before turning back to continue his bloody feast.

"Happy Valley indeed," Aileen observed, her voice thick with irony.

For the next few minutes, the sound of that gargoyle call reverberated in my head, driving chills down my spine and setting my heart racing. It made me feel as though all of the scientific understanding that I'd spent decades building was crumbling down and slipping away. I felt incredibly ignorant about everything I'd witnessed since arriving at the hell hole, and I didn't like it. I slid over to the empty seat behind my husband so that Aileen and I could see each other better. "Aileen," I said, "We need to talk."

Our sorceress and guide turned back to face me. "About what, Dr. Menendez?" she asked.

"About everything," I answered, unsure where to start. "You know I'm a climatologist, a scientist. Ever since high school, I've put my trust in science, in careful measurements and experimental data. I came to believe that if you ask nature the right question in the right way, she would answer you with a logical and trustworthy explanation. For over thirty years, I have never been given a single reason to doubt that science would fail me."

Looking me in the eyes, Aileen nodded, encouraging me to continue.

"As a climatologist, I've been forced to waste far too much of the last decade dealing with climate change deniers. Before we left Fairbanks, I thought the only true evil north of the Brooks Range was the greed, lies, and willful ignorance of the oil industry. For me, the greatest evil was Big Carbon's lies designed to sow doubt and ensure the world remains addicted to fossil fuels, consequences be damned. Had you told me that a worse evil existed in the form of demons, I would have dismissed you as a gullible religious nutcase. No offense."

"None taken," Aileen replied. This was not the first time she'd had this conversation with someone who equated the supernatural with superstition; that much was obvious.

"Since then," I continued, "we've watched hundreds of hellhounds, gargoyles, and imps pouring out of hell holes. I've sat next to a naked devil and saw only a normal man. Hell, I've even seen you cast honest-to-goodness spells with a magic amulet."

"True," she acknowledged. "And now you don't know what to believe and whether you can even trust what you see with your own eyes."

"Exactly," I agreed. "I know you're a member of a secret order called the Tutores Contra Infernum, but right now, I couldn't care less about you keeping its precious secrets. If Jack and I are going to survive the next few days, then we need to know a hell of a lot more about what we're up against and how to protect ourselves. You can't just keep us in the dark; you need to teach us, and you need to start teaching us now."

"Where would you like to start?" she asked.

"Let's start with demons," Jack suggested. "Tell us everything important about demons."

"Dr. Oswald," Aileen replied, "I seriously doubt that we will have enough time for that. I must get you to safety as soon as possible so that I can return to my order and do my part in the coming war. The battles are just beginning, and everyone in my order will need to do their part. There will not be time to teach you everything important about demons."

"Then damn it," I said angrily, "teach us what you can in the time we've got."

"Okay, Dr. Menendez, I will teach you what I can. After all, I doubt that the existence of the Tutores Contra Infernum and the basics of demonology have remained secret since the invasion." She paused gathering her thoughts before continuing. "There are roughly a dozen different kinds of demons, which are classified as either high or low demons. The low demons, such as the hellhounds and gargoyles are merely beasts, animals with little intelligence. They are driven by instinct and hunger. Above them are the high demons, like imps and the devil that came close to killing you. The different types of demons form a hierarchy with the high demons ruling over the low demons."

I nodded and said, "The smart high demons rule the dumb low demons. Got it."

"Their mere appearance makes it obvious that all demons are biologically related," she continued. "All demons are covered by a clear membrane so that from a distance they look as though they have been skinned. They seem impervious to both heat and cold, which is probably the source of the legends that describe Hell as a place of fire and ice. The fact that they enter our world through underground portals is undoubtedly the reason why people used to believe that Hell was at the center of the Earth."

"That's all very interesting," Jack interjected, "but what I really want to know is what's the best way to kill them without getting ourselves killed in the process."

"I'm getting to that. As you've already seen, demons have a seemingly supernatural ability to heal themselves, making them very difficult to kill. Unless injuries involve the brain, most will heal in a matter of seconds to minutes. A highly effective way to kill a demon is to cut off its head, though that only rarely happens now that guns have replaced swords. Personally, I much prefer casting a killing curse, which is effective, if tiring."

"Yes," Jack said. "I've been meaning to ask you about that. I've noticed that casting spells seems to exhaust you. Several times when you've used spells to kill demons, it seemed like you'd have collapsed if I hadn't been there to support you. What's that all about?"

"Well, Dr. Oswald, it's really just a manifestation of the scientific law of conservation of energy. All spells take energy to create and maintain, and some spells take more energy than others. Although spells get most of their energy from a place outside of this universe, the person casting the spell still needs to supply sufficient energy to create a hole for that energy to flow into our universe. The more powerful the spell, the more energy is needed. Does that make sense?"

"I'm following you, though the idea that you're using a magic amulet to create a wormhole between universes is pretty hard to believe."

"And yet it is true, nonetheless," she replied. "Do you remember when I wove the barrier that protected us from the hellhounds when they first came out of the pit?"

"Of course," Jack said.

"And do you remember what I said once the hellhounds had left and I let the barrier fall?"

"Not really," I admitted.

"I said that I was much older than I looked," she continued. She took out her amulet, held it up to at her face, and said, "Conspicuam!" The beautiful young woman who had become the leader of our team vanished, replaced by a deeply wrinkled, white-haired woman who looked like someone's great-great-grandmother. "Devils are not the only ones who can glamour themselves to look as they wish rather than as they are."

My husband and I were dumbfounded by the change.

"And that is not the half of it," Aileen continued. "I was born during the reign of Constantine the Great and initiated into the Tutores Contra Infernum at age twelve. Next November, I shall be celebrating my seventeen hundred and fourth birthday."

"I see it, but I can't believe it," Jack said, staring open-mouthed at the sorceress beside him.

"So, my children (and you see, everyone under a hundred seems like a child to me), it is no wonder that casting the most powerful spells make me feel my age. Potions can only delay the inevitable so long, and we all grow weaker as we approach the end of our days."

"That's amazing," I exclaimed. "But I don't understand. How can you justify keeping such a medical miracle from the world? Think of the millions of lives that could be saved."

"The potion is extremely difficult to make, requiring some very rare ingredients and impossible to mass produce for billions of people. And can you imagine what such long lifespans would do to the Earth's population? The unprecedented rate of growth would lead to a precipitous depletion of our world's resources and a massive increase in the burning of fossil fuels. As a climatologist, you will certainly understand the catastrophic consequences that increased longevity would have on global warming."

She was right, of course. I hadn't considered the logical consequences of a massive decrease in the death rate.

"Now if you don't mind an old woman's vanity," Aileen continued, and once more held her amulet up to her face. "I think I shall return to my youthful persona. Looking younger makes me feel younger, and besides it amuses me to turn men's heads, even if I have no desire for anything more. Apparent iuvenes!" With that, the old, or rather the young, Aileen O'Shannon returned.

"Aileen," I said. "If you joined Tutores Contra Infernum back in Roman times, how long has it existed?"

"The actual date of the founding of my order has been lost in the depths of time. We know that it existed in ancient Crete during the Minoan period from roughly 2000 BCE to 1500 BCE, when the Santorini volcano erupted, creating a giant tsunami that drowned the Minoan culture and thereby giving rise to the legend of Atlantis. There is evidence that it may have existed during the third dynasty of ancient Egypt. There are even legends that it already existed during the first dynasties around 2900 BCE. Suffice it to say that small numbers of demons have entered our world for a great many years and that we have fought them for nearly five thousand of those years."

"Wow," was all I could say. To have such a powerful organization exist for that long, and yet remained secret, spoke well of their ability to remain hidden. "One thing I don't understand," I continued, "is why the demons are doing what they're doing. I mean, why invade us like this? Why be so damned bloodthirsty? I had hoped that if we were ever to meet another intelligent species, we would find a way to work together for everyone's benefit via an exchange of knowledge and ideas. Then again, I also thought that contact would come through the SETI project and the aliens would be safely separated from us by tens of lightyears."

"That is because you are a scientist," Aileen answered, "Academics like you naturally think in terms of information sharing and the collaboration of researchers from different universities and even different countries. You tend to think internationally rather than locally, and so you find it relatively easy to expand your view of what constitutes a person to include intelligent animals or artificial intelligences. So why not expand it a little bit farther to include alien intelligences?" She looked at me and shook her head. "Throughout history and even today, your point of view is actually quite rare. Sadly, your viewpoint is also naive in this case. Over the centuries, we have interrogated captive demons and learned to translate their writings. What we have learned is sobering. Theirs is a hunter-warrior culture. To them, we are weak and therefore inferior and unworthy of life. They consider us mere beasts, less deserving of respect and consideration than hellhounds and gargoyles, which they admire for their prowess as hunters. As such, we have no rights, neither ownership of property (such as our planet) nor even a right to life. To them, we are food and our death merely entertainment."

And so, Aileen spoke of demons, magic, and her order, the Tutores Contra Infernum. The next twenty miles passed quickly and without incident, although we now and again saw a heavy truck or car that had been run off the road. It wasn't always clear whether the vehicles had been attacked, broken down, or merely run out of gas and been abandoned. Sometimes, they were just too far off the road to see any damage or blood.

"We're almost to Pump Station 3," Jack said, breaking the silence of the last few miles. "It's the station that pumps oil up and over the Brooks Range. More importantly, it's an active station, and Kowalski said that these stations are typically operated by a staff of about two dozen. Maybe we can stop there and pick up some supplies and gas. We only have a little over three-quarters of a tank."

"Stopping so soon might not be the best idea," Aileen said in a worried tone. "We are still seeing the occasional sign of demon attacks. The last thing we want is to pull into a place where we can be trapped. We lost too many people escaping from Pump Station 2, and I do not intend to lose any more."

A couple of minutes later, we saw two large oil storage tanks positioned squat and wide on a slight rise to our right maybe a mile down the road. As we approached, the decision of whether to stop was made for us. Several gargoyles circled over the station. As we came even with the buildings, we saw two packs of hellhounds loping up the slope as they converged on the station. If they hadn't already left, we knew that the crew was doomed.

We left Pump Station 3 to its fate and continued south along the Dalton Highway as it followed the course of the Sag River to our left. The drizzle slowly turned to rain during the next half hour. The road made a big bend to the southwest, and we left the Sag behind.

"Another twenty miles and we should be coming up on Toolik Lake," my husband said, glancing over at Aileen. "Our university has a small research station there. Maybe we should stop for a few minutes and see if they have anything we could use."

"We haven't seen any signs of demons since Pump Station 3," I added hopefully.

"Can we get gas, food, and water there?" Aileen asked.

"Maybe," Jack answered. "There won't be any gas. Researchers typically take what they need with them, both when they go there and when they return to the university."

"Then it doesn't matter," Aileen said. "There's nothing there we truly need, and stopping would only slow us down and might even allow the demons to catch up with us."

The road, which had been heading directly for the lake, made a wide bend to the left. We passed by Toolik Lake on our right and continued on, driving south towards Fairbanks and safety.

Another nine miles and we came to Galbraith Lake, the largest lake we'd seen so far.

"Jack," I asked. "I don't know about anyone else, but nature has been calling for some time now, and she's getting fairly insistent that I take her call."

"There's a camp site with toilets on the far side of the lake, but we passed the turn-off a few miles back. We'd have to turn around, and it'll take at least ten minutes to get there."

"Hey," I said. "Isn't there an airport near the lake? Maybe we can fly back to Fairbanks."

"It would be a miracle if there was a plane there. The Galbraith Airport is nothing but a tiny gravel landing strip. There aren't even any buildings, just the strip. If there was a plane there before all hell broke loose, it's long gone by now."

"Well, there's still the little matter of me needing to pee," I said. "I think you're just going to have to pull over to the side of the road, and I'll make do with what little privacy I can get squatting behind the car."

"I am afraid I have to agree," Aileen said. "All this talk of needing to find a restroom has got me needing to go too. Pull over, and let's see just how fast we can get this over with and get back to driving."

"I have a better idea," I said. "Pump Station 4 is just at the south end of the lake. We should be there in a minute or two. Let's stop there."

"Okay," Jack said reluctantly. "I really wanted to get farther south before we stopped, but if we have to, we have to. But we can't stay any longer than absolutely necessary. We don't know how close the demons are. For all we know, they could be here any minute now."

"Agreed," I said. "We stop, we use the bathroom, find out if they know what's happening, and then head out again."

"What the..." Jack exclaimed, staring down the road. "Take a look at that."

Half a mile ahead, we could see a line of a dozen cars and trucks rapidly streaming out of the road leading to the pump station. They were all filing onto the highway, turning away from us, and speeding south towards safety as if the very demons of hell were on their heels, which of course, they were.

"I think we're too late," Jack replied. "I don't exactly feel good about pulling into the pump station right after everyone's evacuated the place. There's just too big of a risk that they know something we don't."

"Okay," I said. "But for the love of Pete, pull over. I'm going either inside or outside of the car. You pick."

As the convoy from Pump Station 4 sped out of sight, my husband finally pulled off the side of the road and stopped. I think I had my car door open before we actually came to a complete stop. I crouched down behind the car and gasped in pain as the mere act of squatting stretched the skin of my thighs, reopening the cuts left by the devil's teeth. I could feel a warm wetness as the cuts began to bleed into the thin bandages my husband had made from his ripped-up shirts.

My husband and Aileen studiously scanned the sky for gargoyles, giving me a modicum of privacy while I did my business as fast as I could. I carefully reentered the car as Aileen and then Jack quickly took their turns. In less than five minutes, we were back on the road.

"I'm going to try to catch up with the crew from the pump station," Jack said as he pulled the car back onto the road. "Maybe we'll be safer as part of a large group."

"Maybe," I conceded. "On the other hand, as the last car in the convoy, we are going to have to hang quite a way back from the vehicle in front of us or we'll be driving the whole way with dust and rocks being flung up onto our windshield. We could lose a tire or break an axle if we can't see the road enough to miss the potholes. Besides, maybe we'll make less of a target if we're by ourselves."

"Perhaps," Aileen said. "On the other hand, we may end up being the wildebeest the lions have separated from the safety of the herd; easy pickings."

"As long as we're comparing analogies," Jack added, "how about this one? A person being chased by a bear doesn't have to be able to run faster than the bear. He only has to be faster than his slowest companion. Driver picks. I'm going to catch up with the convoy, find a way to pass several of the cars, and not be last in line."