by HP Mallory
“Ah will try tae bring ye what ye desire,” I said firmly. “Boot Ah make nae promises as tae when.” I nodded my thanks to her and started to depart.
“Remember me,” she called out, making me stop in my tracks. “And be careful. Alaire ssssssent a number of hisssss agentsssss down here sssshortly before you arrived.”
I turned around to see her cold smile, so worthy of her reptilian features. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d sssssay he not only knows you’re here, but he has no intention of you ever leaving.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Ye think, lass?”
***
Leaving Margreet, I skirted the desk until I could circumvent the clutter surrounding it. Then I headed into the hallway she indicated. As I walked under the threshold that was labeled “EAST WING” in oxidized bronze lettering, I paused and turned back toward the mist-covered desk.
“Thank ye kindly, Margreet. Ye can be sure that Ah’ll remember this always.”
With a dismissive hiss while waving a desultory hand in my direction, she returned to scratching on a piece of paper. Taking the hint, I pushed on.
Almost immediately, the people confined in the cells greeted me. Both sides of the hallway seemed to go on forever with padded rooms that were sealed by rusty doors made of ice-covered iron bars. The people’s souls were crammed together and covered with ice. In some rooms, the ice only reached their ankles or shins, and the souls shivered in their freezing nakedness. In other cells, the souls were encased in ice, their pain unimaginable as their bodies suffered the effects of undergoing freezer burn for all time.
Knowing who these souls were in life did not ease the difficulty of beholding their torment as I looked upon them now. Nor was it was lost on me that long ago, when I called myself the Master of the Underground, I had no cares or concerns about anyone here. Empathy was rightly considered a weakness for any man who occupied my position.
Strange to see the necessity for that emotion now.
Drawing from memory, I would soon approach one of the numerous guard shacks. In times past, the rooms would have been occupied by a few Watchers and occasionally, a greater imp in training. The imp would torment all souls with promises of warmth before throwing buckets of ice water over them. Afterwards, the imps would throw warm water over the ice water, effectively allowing the souls to thaw out before gradually freezing them again.
The Watchers would be easy to overcome. Even at my most human, they posed no true challenge. Brittle as a sheet of ice, they broke just as easily. However, a greater imp was a far more troubling opponent. But using my innate speed and natural skill, I knew I could dispatch any of them. If two or more imps happened to be in the guards’ quarters…
The chilly mist cleared away as I approached an intersection. In the frost covering the ground, I noticed a set of tiny prints trailed by a curving line that seemed to be drawn into the ice. No doubt, the markings belonged to my sword and its thief. I crouched next to a crumbling wall beside a room that had collapsed onto itself. Half frozen limbs jutted out of the snow-covered rubble. The limbs still twitched and the fingers grasped at nothing but the frozen air. I peered around the corner to get a better glimpse of the guards’ quarters.
I spotted several Watchers wearing tattered male nurse uniforms, as I expected. But it was not those peons that snatched the breath right from my lungs. It was the three greater imps lounging around a card table in the room that gave me pause. Were it not for their overbites and fangs, along with the fur on their bodies, and their grating voices that seemed to bubble out of their throats, they could have passed for human.
Damn ye, Alaire. I thought to myself. Margreet was nae lyin’ when she spoke o’ yer agents bein’ afoot.
The imps were the closest thing to a standing army the Underground City had. All were demons that originally hailed from the City of Dis. Thanks to changes Alaire made after my time, each level within the city now had its own particular set of imps. The ninth circle’s imps were something akin to the Yeti from the old legends. Even the little bastards I was chasing were stronger than most human men. And I was currently observing three full-sized ones. Curse my bastard luck!
If I entered the middle of the hallway, they would be on me in a matter of seconds. I looked around for anything with which to defend myself. A lengthy piece of rusty rebar stuck out of the collapsed room. Above it, I could see the next floor of the building. All at once, an idea hit me. Mayhap I could travel over the room rather than through it.
Pulling back from one corner, I tested the stability of several lower chunks of rubble from the immense pile standing just before me. Looking around to ensure no one saw me, I put a foot up and hoisted myself halfway up the pile. I took several steps before something caught my leg. One of the hands, frostbitten and raw from the cold, latched onto my ankle. I tried to shake it loose but was not immediately successful. A wailing moan emanated from the rubble. It was loud enough for me to worry that someone would hear it and come down to investigate.
As my terrible luck would have it, something around the corner grunted with puzzlement. No Watcher ever made such a noise which meant an imp would soon be coming my way. I jerked away from the hand, ripping off two blackened fingers as I did so. Scrambling up the pile with haste, I began batting away several other grabby, bloody hands along the way. Something below me snarled and I froze, only moving my eyes far enough to catch the movement from the corner of my peripheral vision.
One of the furry beasts was crouched at the base of the rubble, sniffing the air and making noises. The hand that I escaped from wiggled in its prison, flexing its three remaining fingers. The imp moved closer to the forearm to which the hand was still attached, sniffing it loudly.
I moved slowly toward the loose piece of rebar, intending to arm myself with it. While it would not kill the demon, I could surely incapacitate it long enough to make my escape. The creature shifted along the base of the rubble, sniffing and occasionally flicking out its greasy, black tongue as though it were trying to catch a bit of falling snow.
I pulled a leg up, then my other foot. I was close enough to the top now that I could see down both directions of the hall. No guard shack here, just more cells as far as the fog allowed me to see. I was on the second level’s frosty floor.
The imp howled, making me stop dead in my tracks. Jerking my head down, I fully expected to see the demon charging up the rubble, while breaking or slicing any limbs in its way.
To my relief, the beast only howled in excitement when it found the severed fingers I broke off the hand that grabbed me. As I kept climbing to the relative safety of the second level, the greater imp nibbled on the gangrenous fingers with savage glee. Off in the rubble, someone groaned for their lost digits.
I took the second floor’s bare hallway as slowly as the first. Again, room after room of frozen souls lined both sides. Several times, I passed branching hallways that led to dead ends but my memory of the place kept me on the right path. Still, I’d never entered this place as a mortal and that knowledge kept me looking over my shoulder more often than I was accustomed to.
Ironic that I only ever wanted to rid myself of Donnchadh but now I wanted nothing more than to join him again, if only so he could protect me in this hellish place. Dame Fortuna seemed to have a wicked sense of humor.
I eventually found a grand staircase that led back to the first floor. The staircase was also close to the entrance of the basement, the perfect hiding place where that little imp could crawl in with its ill-gotten loot. As I tiptoed down the rotten, frozen steps, I could hear a creature approaching. This time, I was truly stuck in place. There was nowhere for me to go but back up. There was no other way to get down into the basement.
Heavy, ice-crushing steps approached from the darkness and fog. I crouched against a banister, tightly clutching the rebar I had found in the rubble earlier. As anticipated, a greater imp materialized from the mist. It was dragging a half-frozen corpse beside it and using what looked like a fem
ur to pick its jagged teeth. I needed to move past it and quickly.
I could see a nondescript door that was no more than a few paces away. I needed to reach it and quickly. I could just make out the little footsteps in the snow and the blade-drawn line behind it leading me down.
My attention was fastened on the beast as it began to climb up the stairs, with the corpse in tow. I calculated the distance, taking into account its great height. If I could hit the beast with the rebar on the exact spot of its pudgy nose, my blow would throw it off balance long enough to shove it down the stairs. Which, in turn, would allow me enough time to make it to the door.
I took several deep breaths, and the cold air chafed my throat.
For Lily, I thought before standing up.
“Och Aye, ye bloody codger!” I howled as I launched the rebar at him like a javelin.
The imp looked at me with a blank expression before the metal hit home. The rebar flew straight and true, striking the demon squarely in the middle of its gnarled face. With a pinched growl, the imp staggered back, teetering on the edge of the stair. I seized my moment and leapt off the steps. My legs flexed as I bounded toward the beast, putting my shoulder low and tucking my head in. Throwing my entire body into the creature’s hefty gut, I propelled myself at him, without allowing him any possible chance of regaining his balance.
We tumbled forward together, the imp’s arms and legs flailing as it fell, its corpse snack lost and forgotten on the steps above. The imp hit the ground with a shattering crash. Panels of wood and chunks of masonry exploded everywhere from under it, propelling shards of sharp ice in every direction. I rolled off the furry thing and jumped to my feet, sprinting for the door. A faded exit sign hung above it and as I threw open the door, I noticed everything past it was bathed in black.
I could hear the imp staggering to its feet. It bellowed at me loud enough to shake loose a row of knife-like icicles above the doorway. Diving through the red metal door before it slammed shut behind me, I found myself plunged into eternal darkness.
“… and now strikes full upon my heart…”
- Dante’s Inferno
TWENTY-TWO
Bill
When you’re a genu-wine guardian angel like me, ya get ta know all there is ta know about bad situations ‘cause you’re forever tryin’ ta rescue some dumbass human from one. Hey, it’s in the job description… ya don’t like it? Do something else. Can’t say I ever loved bad situations, ya knows, but I ain’t gonna grouse about them neither. Still, there’re bad situations, and terrible situations, and fugazi situations, and fubar situations… and then there’s the situation I landed in after Lils left with her care package of grub.
That care package of grub wasn’t exactly ample and I had to rebuild my strength. Yeah, my flabs (fat-abs) looked like a crossed section of a deflated volleyball and a crushed beer can. An’ as for the backside o’ me? I was now definitely in the lack-o’ass camp. No way could I restore my former dad bod on the few breadcrumbs Nips left for me. But the meager eats kept my stomach quietidy for the first time in… damn! How long ago had things gone south for the hell-winter again? Don’t matter anyway. Point is: after pumpin’ some groceries inta my stomach, I could finally start to think straight again.
First thing I thought about was breakin’ out. Yeah, I know it’s pretty obvious that’s what I’d be thinkin’ about: when you’re on the inside, alls you can think about is gettin’ out. So, lying there on the table like I was still strung up, even though I wasn’t—Nerdlet liked to keep up appearances until it was time to bail—I got ta lookin’ up at the window above my head.
I’d peg the window early Spanish Inquisition mixed with a dash o’ modern Cook County Lockup. You could barely make out the dark sky past it and the glow musta been the lumenospecificity comin’ from Dis. Still, out there wasn’t in here, which automatically made it a little better… if youse was out there instead of in here, that is.
After a while, I noticed something. I couldn’t tell what it was at first but I knew my eyes weren’t comin’ down with a case of tricksiness after I saw this thing for the third time. It was flyin’ by the window on a regularish basis. Didn’t have a watch or my phone—and fuck me, I really, really missed Instagram—but whatever I saw swept by every few minutes. I think it was the… fifth or maybe the sixth time that it swung by, when it made a sound. Then I knew what I was seein’ outside… Furies.
Sure, they probably had their own reasons for comin’ by on the regular but I didn’t give a shit about that. Nah, all I saw was my ticket outta here.
Normally, I’d never had a chance to get to third base with that window, never mind makin’ proper introductionations. You’d have to be at least Tido’s size to even reach it. But that torture table was good for one thing: givin’ me a boost in the height department. And that Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition routine they put me through seemed to have flattenated me enough that I could squeeze between the bars. Which left me with one last, teensy-weensy-eensy problem: timin’. I had to time this whole thing right. I had to get through the window just in time for my feathered, fugly, anti-friend to swing by. And just for giggles, I also had to time my dive when nobody was watchin’. Least of all them spaghetti-faced shits.
So I started timin’ the flybys. After four of ‘em, I figured I’d gotten the patternavigation down. At the halfway mark on my latest count, I got up on my feet, turned to the window, and squeezed my new skinny-ass body through the bars before takin’ a flying leap. Somehow I tripped over my shoelaces so my leap became more like a hiccup. Throwin’ my arms out, my fingers grabbed onto something really rough which hurt like a son bitch but I figured it was better than endin’ up squashed on the ground outside.
I dunno how it happened but my flabby ass was left hangin’ on the edge of the window by the dick end of my fingernails. That’s when it’s like what they say—you’re whole life passes right in front of your eyes. Whiles I was hanging on that ledge, I thought about how my biggest regret was my sausage fears—meanin’ I never really got down to tellin’ the Yeti how close we truly was. ‘’Cause I was afraid o’ showin’ any o’ my emotions… guess it was due to my toxic masculinity. Then I considered the platonic jealousy I harbored towards Nips about Tido an’ I resolutionized myself that if ever I got outta this shitheap, I’d stop bein’ a jealous prick in general. My next thought was about that nasty stuff that drips out of the ketchup bottle before the thick stuff flows (ketchup drool), and then I thought about how I would never get to have intimate time with my “todger” (like the Yeti called it) ever again. At that thought, sadness overcame good ol’ Bill ‘cause all this was too much to handle and I started to ugly cry.
Until I heard the voice. I don’t know who the voice belonged to. But it was like “No, you ain’t goin’ down like this, angel Bill. You got too much left in your life still to do. I mean, you ain’t never tried earlingus, for chrissakes!” Then I remembered I couldn’t die anyway but I figured I’d go with whatever the hell that voice was tellin’ me. Sometimes alls we need is a pep talk, right? Anyway, that damn voice did something to me. My tears dried up and I like channeled the ghost of King Kong when he was hangin’ off that building an’ swatting at them helicopters. In no time flat, I was yankin’ myself up to the window and scalin’ that rock wall like I was Spiderman himself only better. Like I was Super Spiderman. Maybe ten seconds went by before Mrs. Big Bird swung past me.
I could hear the feathered bitch glidin’ close. So I dove again, aimin’ right for her! An’ as I was droppin’ through the air like a motherfuckin’ cannonball, I reached out and grabbed the first thing I touched. It turned out ta be Birdzilla’s neck.
Boy, was she pissed! She rose-bombed up to get me off her, like we weren’t already a lot higher than I wanted to be without any magic mushrooms bein’ involved. She gave me some new slices and cuts like she was tryin’ ta outdo the injuries Queen Slut had adorned me in. But the screams had to be the worst. An air raid siren blastin’
full or a boombox compressed into a hearin’ aid couldn’t have been any louder.
True dat—I was wayyy stronger than before Lils brought me food but I’ll never be no Tido. We all got our pros and our cons, right? Well, in no time, Bitch Bird hurled me back down onto the castle tower’s top deck before the ugly thing landed on top of me like a steel stamp presser. It felt like she brokenuked every bone in my body. I figured I was about ta be rewarded with an all-expense-paid round trip back to my cell after that… if I was lucky.
That’s when the feather boa constrictor did something that totally threw me. Here she is, screamin’ in my face like I didn’t take out the trash and she’s fuckin’ mad about it. Then she starts sniffin’ me up and down, probably checkin’ if I was fit to eat. All of a sudden, the ugly bird stopped sniffin’ me and its eyes got wide, like I just squeezed out the world’s biggest fart. But I didn’t have enough down there to even toot, so I knew that wasn’t it. And yeah, I smelled like month-old garbage, but she musta been sniffin’ that on me the whole time I was ridin’ her an’ she wasn’t actin’ all put out or nothin’. Next thing I know, she let outs one last eardrum-shredderatin’ blast in my face before she flies off.
“What… the actual… fuck?” I groaned when I got back on my feet. That was when I realized I was free. But not wantin’ to leave my comrades, I decided I’d go find them.
***
Guess somebody figured out the escape gag I pulled while I was gallavartin’ up in the air. ‘Cause the second I got back inside, I was playin’ hide-and-go-suck-it-up through the hallways with Alaire-the-dickhead’s whole minion brigade. Sure, this place was protectorated but these asswipes didn’t do that much trollin’ unless they was given a reason. Most of ‘em were Watchers, and couldn’t have found their own asses if you gave them a detailated map and instruction manual. There was also this aggravatin’ ogre fuck. He was making the rounds and I’m pretty sure woulda been stumped over what one plus one adderated up to. But he wasn’t causin’ me ta shake in my pants. No, the scariest bastards were the invisibles. I could only listen for those see-through saps, which wasn’t that easy especially after the audi-bludgeonin’ my ears had to endure from that bird.
