by Tad Williams
“Everyone? What about poor Holly? She was the pitcher on our company softball team.” He took a few steps back toward the window and looked out and down again. “Ah, the police are here. Looks like somebody noticed her body.” He turned around and smiled at me. “What’s your name, angel? Who is it I’m going to see dragged down to the deepest pits of Erebus?”
“I’m not telling you my name unless you tell me yours.” There are rules about these things, you see. “But I don’t care that much about you, really. I just want to know about the Magians. Now hurry up, Ken. If your guards get here you’re going to be in more trouble than I’ll be in, remember?”
He sighed and shook his head, then spread his arms in a gesture of amused resignation. Something I can only call an aura of power began to radiate from him, strong as the heat of the sun on a hungover morning, strong enough to make my eyes blink and my head ache. The master of Five Page Mill was golden and self-assured as a lion on the veldt. “Tell you my name? You mean you really don’t know? Do you think that if you find out you’ll wield some kind of control over me?” He laughed like he truly was enjoying himself, as if I had shown up just to please him. “I’m Eligor the Horseman, you wretched upstart-one of the Grand Dukes of Hell.”
Oh, shit. That was all I could think, over and over like a skipping CD. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Eligor was one of the really big ones. I had tossed in my little baited hook, and I had snagged Leviathan.
“I fought beside the Lightbringer at the walls of Heaven.” His voice seemed to get louder with every moment. “I was cast down when He was cast down. I have shared His exile since the beginning. But you-you’re nothing. A fly.” With that he began to grow, shadows of both glaring light and total darkness stretching around him, his face blossoming into something grotesque and horrifying beyond description, until he towered above me crowned in flames and cloaked in shadow and the room itself seemed shrunken to the size of a grave.
“And do you know what else?” His voice pressed in on me from all sides, louder even than my heart’s blood as it rushed through my veins. “I don’t believe your story, little angel. I don’t think you’ve made any arrangements at all. No, I’d guess you’re the improvisational type-that you’re here by yourself without any backup plan at all. And that’s how you’re going to die, too. Alone.”
He stretched out his hand toward me. I couldn’t move. Dimly, dimly through the thundering of my arteries I could hear the guards banging on the office’s outer door, breaking in, but I couldn’t turn, couldn’t see anything but Eligor’s triumphant, terrifying face.
fourteen
friends in low places
Eligor’s long, icy fingers wrapped my head. Again I was in the presence of something that could tear my mortal body apart like bread dough, but this time it had already caught me. The founder of Vald Credit lifted me at arm’s length until my feet were kicking several inches above the floor and my neck felt like chewed taffy.
“Go ahead,” I told him, determined not to go out begging. It probably sounded a lot like Grrruhrhrdd, since his hand was crushing my features into a shape they weren’t meant to take. “Kill me.” Krrrmrr.
“Oh, definitely. Sooner rather than later.” He smiled. There were sharp things in his mouth that didn’t even look remotely like teeth. “But first, I’m going to call up a couple of hard, pipe-hittin’ Nergalis and we’re going to go to work on you until we find out who you are and why you came storming into my office with this Magian Society bullshit.”
Still dangling me in mid-air like a prize trout he muted his glamour and shrank back to looking like Kenneth Vald once more, but his eyes remained distinctly goatlike, pus-yellow with horizontal slots for pupils. This was about as bad as things could get. Eligor may not have been Old Scratch himself, but he was high in the Hellish nobility, with strength and abilities to match. They don’t really have a firm hierarchy down there, but I couldn’t kid myself-he was a member of the All-Star Team and I was one of Heaven’s lowliest bench-warmers.
The demon lord fluttered the fingers of his free hand and the nearer office door abruptly sprang open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a half-dozen or more armed guards dressed like SWAT commandos tumble through and into the office. One was so surprised by the door’s sudden unlocking that as he fell he discharged his M4 with a deafening rattle. Bits of ceiling rained down around us for several seconds as the guards scrambled to their feet and surrounded me with a ring of automatic weapons, although it scarcely seemed necessary since I was still hanging helplessly in midair and no threat to anything except my own dry underwear.
Several of the plainclothes security guys shoved in after the armored men. The leader of these had his gun in one hand and a phone in the other. It was Howlingfell. “Boss,” he said, “-I mean Your Grace-we got a problem!”
“I’ve got the problem right here,” said Eligor, bouncing me gently up and down. I swear I could hear my neck vertebrae popping like popcorn. “I want you to get me some of those nasty Shahr-e Sukhteh fuckers who like to play with needles and fire. We’re going to find out who this little winged rat is and who sent him.”
“Oh, shit,” said Howlingfell. “I think I know that guy.” He pushed his way through the ring of guards and got right up in my face, standing on tiptoes so he could examine me as I struggled in Eligor’s unbreakable grip. Even in his human body he was no prize: not only was he ugly, he had breath like rotting dog food. After a moment he showed his teeth in a tongue-lolling grin. “Yeah, that’s Bobby Dollar. I met him a coupla times-he’s one of those advocates.” If he remembered me, I was pretty sure he also remembered my foot on his windpipe.
I smiled back, then spat at him, hoping he might go for me despite his boss’s presence and accidentally kill me (this definitely seemed like one of those situations where dying had to be better than the alternative) but although the gob of spittle landed on his cheek, Howly never had the chance to do anything but step back, because suddenly Eligor roared like a wounded lion and flung me to the ground.
“Bobby Dollar?” his master bellowed. “You mean this is Doloriel? The little pimp who stole from me?”
This shit was just getting worse and worse. So that thing I was supposed to have (but didn’t actually possess) belonged to one of the Grand Dukes of Hell? To the same archdemon who had just captured me with the ease of a man scooping up an escaped hamster and had decided to set some sadistic Middle Eastern demons on me before he even knew who I was? This was just fucking peachy.
“Tell me where it is, punk. Right now.” Eligor leaned down and yanked me back into the air, this time with hands clamped on each arm, and held me in front of his face. He smelled a lot better than Howlingfell, but for a moment I could see into the endless abyss behind those black-slot eyes, and it nearly stopped my heart. Eligor wasn’t Hell’s only grand duke, but there aren’t many and they are all horrifyingly dangerous. Like the stupid dick I am, I had started a bar fight with a stranger who turned out to be a World Heavyweight Champ. “If you tell me right now,” he said, “maybe I’ll just peel your face off and let you live like that for a while, chained to my desk.”
“I c-can bring it to you. I swear I can-if you let me go. Otherwise you don’t get shit out of me.”
“Oh, I’ll get everything out of you, you little winged pimple.” The demon lord was having trouble keeping his Kenneth Vald face on: it was rippling as if it might get too hot and just melt away. The experience was a bit like sitting in the control room of a nuclear power plant in mid-disaster-fascinating in that you only get to watch something like that once in your life, and it’s probably also going to be the last thing you’ll ever see. “Sweat, blood, shit, and piss to begin with,” Eligor snarled, “-oh, a lot of blood. Then eventually every cell of your body will slowly be turned into liquid and squeezed out onto the floor of my recreation room.” He dropped me again. I fell hard but managed to crawl back up onto my knees. Might as well die with my head above floor level, I figured. (Don’t ask me why-it jus
t seemed better somehow.)
“But, Master,” said Howlingfell, “you can’t-I mean, not now!”
Vald/Eligor turned toward him, head pivoting slowly like a king cobra gauging optimum striking distance. “I can’t…?”
Howlingfell went pale and began squirming. I thought he was going to throw himself to the floor beside me and show Eligor his belly. “No, it’s because of the cops! There’s about forty of them down in the lobby.” He waved his phone. “They said there’s a fugitive up here-they must have meant this Dollar guy. He’s wanted for murdering Grasswax, the prosecutor-I mean Grazuvac. They were afraid he might have taken you hostage. It was all I could do to get them to wait five minutes and let me and my men check things out!”
Eligor snorted. “Cocksuckers. As if some minor-leaguer’s going to…” He shook his head in irritation. “Look, just tell them we killed the little shit already, and they can come pick up the body pretty soon. That’ll give us time to-”
Astonishingly, Howlingfell interrupted. He had bigger balls than I thought, although judging by the look on Eligor’s face he might not have them for long. “But it’s been more than five minutes, Master. They’re already on the way up. Talk to the guy in charge of them, Your Grace-he won’t listen to me!”
“Give me that fucking phone.” Eligor reached out and snatched it from Howlingfell’s hand. “Is someone there? This is Kenneth Vald speaking. Officer, I don’t know who you are, but I demand you contact Deputy Chief Bryant and he’ll tell you…” He paused for a moment. “Bryant? That’s you? What the hell is going on? How dare you enter my building without…” There was another kind of anger in his voice now and, for at least this moment, he had forgotten about me. I stared blearily around the room but didn’t see any immediate hope of escape. My revolver, which might or might not have been empty, had fallen to the ground when the Grand Duke grabbed me, then had been kicked aside somewhere by one of his guards. Unlike the window in the outer office, the one in here was still whole, and without a gun I had doubts I could break the safety glass, even if I could somehow get through the ring of guards pointing their assault rifles at me.
“What do you mean you’re outranked? I don’t care!” Duke Eligor was beginning to look a bit bothered: his hair and whiskers were still the same pale, pale gold, but his skin had gone the color of new brick. “Well, screw you and your higher authority, Bryant! I’m going to cut the little bastard to pieces, and you can have what’s left when you get there. So? I don’t care if this is a public frequency! Anyway, who’s even going to know if you tell them the guy was already…” He frowned, listening, then pointed at Howlingfell. “Go look out the window.”
The minion went to the window. “What do you want to know?”
“Are there guys with sniper rifles and cameras on the roof of the Courier Building?” Eligor asked. “Looking in the window here?”
“Yes, Master,” Howlingfell said. “A lot of them. Do I have to keep standing here? What if they think I’m him?”
Eligor raised the phone again. “Who did this shit to me, Bryant? Because that’s a pretty damn big coincidence. I want a name.” His slotted eyes narrowed. “Oh, really? All right, you can take the suspect. Bring your men in and I’ll have my boys stand down.” He clicked off the phone and turned to Howlingfell. His expression could have removed paint from a battleship hull. “We’re going to let them have him. Too much shit to clean up, otherwise.”
Howlingfell scuttled over. As he dragged me up off the floor he gave my arm a not-too-friendly squeeze just to let me know he remembered our previous meeting. I swear the bones squeaked as they rubbed together. “But if you want to question him, Master, can’t we just take him Outside? Then you’ll have all the time you want. As long as he’s alive and still breathing when we turn him over to the cops….”
Eligor cursed, or at least that’s what I assume he did. I couldn’t understand the words, but at the sound of his sharp exclamation a wind suddenly rose that made the windows shudder and several of the papers on his long teak desk caught fire. “Did I advertise for stupid? Because that’s the only way you could have been the top candidate.” He glared. Howlingfell cringed. “You can’t take one of our kind out of Time unwillingly without turning the whole apple cart upside down. That’s a major breach of the Conventions-it’ll set off alarms from the top floor of Creation down to the basement, alert his overlords and mine, and probably start a war. Do you think that’s a good idea, you fucking idiot? Do you?”
“No, Master!”
I would have sworn the security chief was about to urinate submissively.
“And you, angel,” said Eligor, turning to me. “Don’t think you’re safe even with the police. You can guess how many friends we’ve got in prison.” He laughed, but he sure didn’t sound happy. “You’ve got something of mine and not only am I going to get it back, you’re going to suffer like you never even imagined suffering. You thought you could treat Eligor the Horseman like some kind of street bitch, did you? I’ll see you again…real soon.”
And before I could even reply to any of his charming promises he kicked me in the balls and then in the head as I crumpled forward, sending me somewhere that even angels go if you hit them hard enough.
I won’t bore you with the details of being dragged across the San Judas Hall of Justice parking garage, half-stupefied, handcuffed, and throbbing painfully between my legs, then being tossed into a holding cell to wait, bruised and bloody, without benefit of either a lawyer or medical attention. Stronger than normal body or not, I was in a world of serious hurt. About half an hour later, when I was able to sit upright on my own without puking, two SJPD officers came and led me to the booking desk. The cops there might as well have been processing a shadow-they barely looked at me, spoke to me only enough to direct me through the required photos and fingerprinting, then dumped me back into the holding tank. It was odd that I had a cell to myself in the middle of the day when the San Judas County Correctional System was so notoriously overcrowded. It was also strange that someone being arrested for a newsworthy murder should have been walked into the Hall of Justice without a single reporter present, especially when a police tactical squad had been staked out on the roof of the San Judas Courier, a building full of journalists, while everything went down right in front of them in the penthouse office of one of the richest men in America.
At first I had been relieved just to be alive and out of Five Page Mill Square, but I was beginning to wonder if I had simply been helped out of the frying pan and into something a little warmer. Not to mention that my groin and my head still ached so miserably from Eligor kicking me that it felt like the best possible solution would be separating the two wounded areas as far as possible, by decapitation. I banged on the door and demanded a lawyer or a telephone call (of course they’d confiscated my phone) but was thoroughly ignored.
At last, just when I was imagining they’d have to feed me something soon and wondering if I could hold it down, a quartet of cops in full riot gear came in to get me. Somebody had apparently decided I was dangerous, which was precisely why I went with them like the sweetest lamb you ever saw. Never do anything expected is my motto, especially when you don’t know how much trouble you’re in, which I didn’t, except I knew there was a lot of it. Eligor, one of the Opposition’s major beasts, thought I’d been stealing from him, and somebody with even more clout than Eligor had just had me arrested. Oh, and in case I didn’t explain earlier, those Zippers we angels use don’t lead anywhere except out of normal time., so you’re still in the same place. I wasn’t getting out of jail that way.
The cops led me across the facility to a part I’d never seen before. (Yes, I’ve been in the Hall of Justice a time or two. “None of your business” is the next answer.) It was an interrogation room, but although there was a single heavy steel table bolted to the floor in the center, there were no two-way mirrors for observation, nor, in fact, anything on the walls at all except an old poster about how to perform CPR.
The walls themselves were chipped and pitted, the paint scraped away in spots by what might have been fingernails, which didn’t bear much thinking about. I decided a few off-the-record interrogations might have taken place there back in the day, or maybe even earlier that week, and my stomach began to curl up into a hard knot. I was wordlessly directed to a folding chair on one side of the metal table, then the cops retired to the back wall, inscrutable as robots in their plexiglas face masks and helmets, and for about three or four minutes we all just waited in silence. I spent the time imagining impressive ways to escape, but I knew that none of them would work. I’m pretty tough but I’m not going to beat four cops with body-armor, tasers, and batons if they’ve had any training, especially not after the punishing way Kenny Vald and the ghallu had knocked me around recently.
Suddenly the door opened and the cops all straightened a bit, although they had been pretty much at attention already. The tall, dark-haired woman who walked in was not someone I immediately recognized, though she had one of those semi-familiar faces I felt I ought to know. She was maybe in her early fifties, wore a very boring, very serious dark business suit, and had a handsome, intelligent face with a strong nose.
“Robert Dollar?” she asked, looking down at a sheaf of papers in her hand, then up at me, as if I was different than what she’d expected.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “At your service.”
“Spare me anything cute, Mr. Dollar.” She slid into the chair across from me, then handed me a package of wet wipes. “Clean yourself up. I’m Congresswoman Jennifer Taccone. And you are a lucky man.”
