by Donn Cortez
“Same with an investigation: collect first, then analyze. But there’s generally less time pressure when your vic is already approaching room temperature.” She saw the look on his face and shrugged. “Sorry. Warped sense of humor is an occupational hazard in our line of work. It’s easier to make jokes around a corpse—you don’t have to worry about offending them. But I’m hoping Theria Kostapolis is still alive.”
“If she is, I wouldn’t tell her. It might hurt her feelings.”
Catherine blinked.
Ray smiled. “You think CSIs are the only people with a bleak sense of humor? Try attending a pathology conference. I guarantee it’s the only place you’ll hear a knock-knock joke with a punch line involving necrophilia.”
She smiled. “I’ll see you later, Ray.”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
* * *
Ray Langston found the “demon” Bannister had fought by checking police reports of disturbances at hotels within the last twelve hours. The doorman at the Sand Dollar Hotel described the man who attacked him as having one arm bound in a sling, with a woman who matched Theria Kostapolis’s description accompanying him. Ray drove over to the Sand Dollar to talk to the victim.
Teddy Galloway was a big man, broad of shoulder and wide of gut, but the two black eyes and bandaged nose he now sported made him look like an oversize panda that had been mugged. He cradled a cup of tea in both large hands, seated on a bench outside the casino, and nodded glumly. “Yeah, he really caught me out. Looked like he was havin’ some kind of squabble with his lady, and I guess that’s between them and all, but I don’t need that kind of stuff going on inside my crease.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ray. “Your what?”
“My crease. It’s a hockey term, for that area around the goal. That’s how I think of my job, like a goalie—gotta stay sharp, keep my eyes open for anythin’ trying to get through that don’t belong here. These two, they were already inside, but just because something’s behind the net doesn’t mean you ignore it, right?”
“I suppose not.”
Galloway took a delicate sip of his tea, wincing a little at the temperature. “Anyway, I was keepin’ an eye on them because they seemed a little off, but I sure wasn’t expecting what happened. I mean, the guy was in shape and all, but he was walking with a limp and had his one arm in a sling. Last thing I thought was he’d get physical.”
“What exactly happened?”
Galloway shrugged with one shoulder. “The guy was getting’ more and more upset, arguing with the lady. She seemed—that was the weird part, I guess. She just seemed really. . . I don’t know. Down in the dumps, I guess, but that don’t really cover it. Like her best friend just died or something. And when the guy grabbed her, I thought I’d step in, defuse the situation—and then pow!” He shook his head ruefully. “Guess I shoulda remembered goalies wear face masks, right?”
“And then they ran off?”
“Yeah. I didn’t see which way—all I was seein’ was stars.”
“Thanks for your help.”
They run.
They run through the zombie crowds, back under the harsh glare of the burning sun. They run between rows of black hearses driven by vampires, while crows with glowing yellow eyes chase them and scream obscenities in the voices of dead relatives.
They stop at last in an alley, a dark canyon of featureless gray concrete that stinks of garbage and urine. They crouch behind a Dumpster and try to ignore the rats that giggle like insane children.
“John,” says Theria. “This can’t go on.”
“It won’t. It’ll be over soon, I promise.”
“Listen to me, John.” Talking causes her pain; he can see it in her face. “They won’t let us go. We can’t escape.”
“Yes, we can. We got out of that place we were locked up in, didn’t we? They’re not all-powerful.”
“But there’s nowhere to go. We’re in hell, remember? Every place will be just as bad as the last.”
“Not every place.”
John knows that even in hell, there’s a hierarchy, and the being perched at the top of the heap won’t be suffering at all. In fact, he’ll probably be enjoying himself.
“We need to talk to the one running this place,” he says.
He has never heard Theria laugh, but she manages the ghost of a smile now. “That would be Mephistopheles, John. I don’t think he’ll be interested in helping us.”
“Maybe he’ll cut us a deal. He’s the Devil, isn’t he? Isn’t that what he does?”
“What could we possibly offer him? We have—we are—nothing.”
“That’s not true. We have our freedom, our ability to think. We know where we are, what’s happening. None of the lost souls around us do. We can make that work for us.”
“How?”
“We find something the Devil has, and we take it away from him. Then we bargain.”
She reaches up to touch his face. Her hand should be cold, but it’s feverishly warm. “You fight for me,” she says. “Even here, where all hope is gone. I wish I had known you, before.”
They huddle for a while, while John tries to think of a plan. He comes up with one after a while, a crude, unsubtle thing, but at least it gives them a direction, a reason to keep moving.
They leave the alley and go in search of Satan’s palace.
John knows he’ll recognize it when he sees it. It will embody more than just decadence or cruelty; it will radiate authority, age, permanence. Amid the bright crimson bloodiness and razored silver, it will seem as ancient and implacable as a mountain.
As soon as he sees the castle, he knows.
Weathered gray tombstones mortared together into a towering wall. An immense iron portcullis, guarded by metal dragons. A constant flickering thunderstorm looming overhead, replacing the glare of the sun with the flash of thunderbolts.
“This is it,” he whispers to Theria. “Can’t you feel it? Whoever runs this place does it from here.”
She nods, but does not speak. Her previous words have all but exhausted her.
He leads Theria across the wooden drawbridge, his stiffened leg thumping with every step. His bound arm is trembling like a branch in a high wind. The dragons—one gold, one bronze—watch them with eyes like burning emeralds, but let them pass.
The interior is a dungeon, a vast, sprawling torture chamber lined with medieval devices. Screaming prisoners are pinioned to upright wheels that spin endlessly. Row after row of victims are lined up in front of iron-bound, head-high chests; all of them are chained like galley slaves to oars, shackled by the wrist to the long, heavy wooden lever projecting from the side of each chest. The slaves pull down on their levers, grunting with effort, hypnotized by the spinning sigils in front of their eyes. Hunchbacked women stomp by at regular intervals, carrying trays of steaming acid that they pour down the galley slaves’ throats.
Bannister knows the place must be heavily guarded, but he can’t spot them until he looks up. Red eyes gleam from ledges high up on the walls; gargoyles track their every movement, stone claws flexing with barely restrained violence, ready to swoop down on batlike wings and tear Theria and him apart.
Bannister keeps looking. Most rulers are arrogant or proud, and the one who sits on the throne of hell must surely be both. Like all kings, he will be wealthy—and some of that treasure will be on display, not only to glorify the ego of its owner but to make the rest of hell that much worse by contrast.
And then he sees it.
It’s on an elevated platform that turns slowly under bright spotlights. Only a velvet rope around the platform itself stands between it and him.
It’s a car.
But like no car Bannister has ever seen. Its long, aerodynamic body looks like a cross between a Maserati and a rocket ship. It has razor-sharp fins on the back and a tangle of pipes jutting from the sides of the exposed engine like chrome intestines. The paint job is a black so deep that looking at it for too long gives Bannister
vertigo; there are stars and galaxies and nebulae whirling around in there, buried beneath the glossy skin of the chassis.
The wheels look like snakeskin. The interior’s a plush, obscene pink that almost throbs. It’s a wet dream mated with a nightmare, a phallic monstrosity radiating lust and death; just looking at it makes Bannister think of smashing into a girl’s boarding school at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
And then he notices something else.
* * *
Catherine leaned forward and peered at the monitor. “Hold it,” she told the security guard sitting beside her. “Right there. I think that’s them.”
Catherine had been looking at surveillance footage in the security center of the Orpheus for almost an hour before she spotted John Bannister and Theria Kostapolis. The pair were standing near the hotel’s south entrance, staring at a display.
The guard, a black woman named Amanda with a close-cropped afro, froze the image. “They seem real interested in the Compensator,” she said.
“The what?”
Amanda grinned. “Sorry. That’s what we call it around here. It’s some kind of high-powered prop for a new movie coming out. The hotel’s got a big promotion going, going to give it away as a prize. We have to wipe the teenage-boy drool off it every night.”
“Not the kind of thing I’d expect them to be interested in,” Catherine murmured. “Wait. Did you see that?”
Amanda swore. “I did. I can’t believe nobody caught that.” She backed up the image and watched it again. “Aw, damn. Things are about to get ugly around here . . .”
“He just stole the keys,” said Catherine. She turned to the guard with a look of disbelief on her face. “Why are the keys even in it?”
“They’re not. I mean, they’re just a prop with a shiny keychain from the Orpheus attached. But nobody should be able to just yank ’em out and walk away, not on my watch.”
But that’s exactly what Bannister had done.
* * *
The only reason he’d gotten away with it, Bannister knew, was that the king of hell thought no one would ever dare.
But he had. And now the small piece of metal with its attached bauble is deep in his pocket, while he walks back to Theria and tries to ignore the gargoyles he knows must be staring at him.
“What now?” she asks on his return. “We steal Satan’s chariot? Go joyriding?”
“Now we find a place to hide the keys. And then—then we open negotiations.”
“You’re insane,” she murmurs, but there’s something like fondness in her voice. “And what are we negotiating for? Do you honestly think he’ll let us go?”
“No. But I might be able to persuade him to leave us alone.”
Bannister doesn’t believe that, any more than he believes he can trust a deal made with the prince of lies. But he thinks there’s a chance, a very small chance, that he can sacrifice himself and give Theria the peace she craves.
No matter what it costs him.
Catherine watched Bannister and Theria leave. “Why would they take the keys?” she said aloud.
Amanda shrugged. “A souvenir? Or maybe he was planning on coming back later and taking it for a spin.”
Catherine thought about that. “You know, you just might be right. I need to look at some more footage.”
Bannister and Theria returned less than an hour later, though they didn’t behave the way Catherine expected. They gave the car a wide berth, spending some time wandering around the casino before finally going next door to the large restaurant attached to the complex. It featured medieval-themed entertainment, including jousts and a royal banquet.
Where, apparently, they requested an audience with the king.
Pawn shops in hell, Bannister thinks, prove that no matter how far you’ve fallen, the pit is deeper still.
He and Theria move slowly down an aisle packed to the rafters on either side with every sort of object: musical instruments, toys, furniture, art. There are more personal possessions, too: hands, legs, hearts, eyes. Bannister wonders what sort of twisted economy hell supports, what the denizens who traded away these things got in return—a few minutes’ respite from agony? A cool drink of water? Or perhaps these items belonged to people still living, some sort of marker exchanged for success or riches in the material world, a little piece of someone’s soul instead of a contract signed in blood.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is getting the owner to make a deal with them.
The man at the front of the shop is difficult to look at. His head is an enormous spider, with thick, hairy legs hanging down on either side like dreadlocks. His eight eyes swivel to focus on them as they walk up.
“Can I help you?” he says.
Bannister places an item on the counter. It’s an ornately carved antique music box, with a headless ballerina that twitches spastically when you turn the handle. Bannister stole it from a souvenir shop full of useless junk, all of it designed to remind the patrons where they were trapped: T-shirts with sayings like “Go to. . . here,” and “What did I do to deserve this—oh, right.”
“I’d like to pawn this,” Bannister says.
The spider clerk picks the box up and examines it. His mandibles twitch in a very unimpressed way. “I don’t know. Don’t really handle much like this.”
“Make me an offer.”
“Well. . . I guess I could give you five bucks for it.”
“Done.”
Bannister doesn’t know why hell even needs money—though he supposes that it might have something to do with it being the root of all evil—and doesn’t care. It isn’t the money that’s important.
It’s what he’s hidden in the base of the music box.
“Your Highness?” said Catherine.
The man in the makeup chair turned around. “Hmmm? Not backstage, darling. Once I take off the crown, I rejoin the proletariat.”
The king bore no resemblance to the Vegas performer usually associated with the name; this monarch was closer in appearance to Henry VIII, complete with ermine-lined robe, bushy beard, and large belly. His full title was King Oswald V, liege of Orpheus.
Catherine glanced around. Backstage at a theme restaurant looked pretty much like backstage anywhere—plenty of props, costumes on rolling racks, lots of little tables crowded with makeup and lit by a circle of bulbs around the mirror. She was used to more half-naked women and fewer men in tights, but that was the only major difference. That, and the smell of horse manure.
“I’m Catherine Willows, Las Vegas Crime Lab,” she said. “I need to talk to you about one of your subjects.”
“Humor me and call them fans. I haven’t had subjects since I flunked out of community college.”
“All right—two of your fans, then. A man and a woman.”
“You’ll have to narrow it down a bit. I get a lot of couples, especially on the weekend. All the men want to be knighted. Well, so do the women, but they mean something else.”
“I think these two had something different in mind.” Catherine showed the actor a still she’d pulled off the security feed.
The ersatz king’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, those two. I should have known. At first, I thought they were Ren Fair types—you know, the ones who take this whole shtick way too seriously? Stay in character no matter what, usually ramble on for far too long in what they think is Shakespearian dialect? Sometimes I just want to pull out my cell phone halfway through and call nine-one-one—hello, I’d like to report a tragedy, this person’s life is a train wreck—but those people usually dress like an explosion in a pirate’s closet. These two at least looked fairly normal—though the guy with his arm in a sling was kind of twitchy. After listening to him for a minute, I decided they were both just high.”
“What did they say?”
“Let’s see.” The king began to peel off his beard as he thought. “He wasn’t as toadying as many people are. In fact, he didn’t so much ask me for a boon as suggest a trade.”
Cath
erine nodded. “I think I can guess what he offered.”
“Really? Then you’re doing better than I did, sweetheart.” He frowned and rubbed his now bare chin. “He claimed to have something I wanted—‘a key of great value’ is how he put it. When I asked to see this key, he said he wasn’t stupid enough to have it on him—he’d hidden it somewhere I’d never find it, but he’d tell me where it was if I gave him what he wanted. I tried not to show how disappointed I was.”
“What did he ask for in return?”
“Peace.”
“That’s it? Peace?”
The king sighed. “If only it were that easy. . . you’d be surprised how many people ask for that. I used to say that my kingdom hadn’t declared war on anyone recently, but that’s just not enough for some people. So I sent them on a quest.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, no, quests are very popular. I just make them up on the spot. Some of my friends say I should have little maps printed up with clues and whatnot, but who am I, Long John Silver? Kings assign quests, not scavenger hunts. Besides, I enjoy the creative aspect. I told this one couple to—”
“Where did you send them?”
“I didn’t send them anywhere, exactly. The point of a quest is to accomplish something, not just go somewhere. Let me try to remember what I told them . . .” He frowned at himself in the mirror as he picked up a cloth and began to clean the makeup off his face. “Ah, that’s it. I said that peace is a precious commodity, but I would grant it if he could prove his heart was true, yadda yadda yadda.”
Catherine shook her head. “I’m afraid I’m going to need more than yadda yadda yadda.”
“You want details, huh? Let me see, let me see. . . I told him he had to do three things—I usually ask for three things, it’s so Grimm’s Fairy Tales—and the first one was to demonstrate his faith. In a completely nondenominational way, of course; the last thing you want to do is offend the clientele. Anyway, I said he had to demonstrate his faith in her, which is always a big crowd pleaser.”
“Demonstrate how?”
“I always leave that up to them—it’s show biz, you don’t want to get bogged down in details. Next was, let’s see . . .”
