by Matt Turner
“Now just hold on,” Simon snapped. “We’re not your lapdogs, Prophet.”
“No?” Salome’s eyes flickered over to Vera. “If I can convince Signy to work for me, I’m sure I can convince you four. Go on, name your price.” She sarcastically dropped her voice to a breathy whisper. “I’ll even give you a kiss. Now wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Signy?” Vera asked. “You know Signy? Signy Crecy?”
You knew she’d respond to that, Simon angrily thought.
“Know her?” Salome laughed. “Hell, she’s doing a little job for me right now.”
20
Even by the standards of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, the Eighteenth Legion’s War Train was a behemoth. It must be a mile long, Signy thought as she carefully surveyed the war machine from the little nest that she had carved out on the top floor of a partially demolished factory. She counted a score of artillery batteries mounted on the train’s roof, several dozen armored stiltwalkers patrolling either flank of the train, and too many machine gun nests and flamethrower racks protruding from the steel boxcars to count. An entire nation’s worth of firepower, able to travel across half of Hell in less than a week. And somewhere deep in that great armored snake hid her prey. Must be overcompensating for something, she decided.
“Please…” her captive moaned. “Please…just let me go…”
Signy ignored him and re-counted the arrows in her quiver. Thirty-five. Not for the first time, she considered just turning tail and running, but there had been an unspoken message in the lady Prophet’s voice. You can’t do this, Salome’s eyes had seemed to say. Prove me wrong.
“Which carriage holds the imperator?” she asked.
“Fourth from the front,” the soldier she had caught whimpered. He and his friends had been part of a patrol wandering through the streets; he had been the only one she had left in one piece. “B-but Imperator Sisera likes his security. The only way in is from the locomotive… He even has a contingent of P-Praetorian Guards with him…”
She’d have to fight her way through a solid third of the train then. Lots of soldiers, lots of guns. This was just about the textbook definition of a suicide mission. But Signy was tired of being chased across Hell, tired of being taken captive by others. It had been far, far too long since she had tasted the pleasure of the hunt. She slipped her tongue between her sharpened teeth and licked her lips.
Good thing I like a challenge, she thought wryly as she slipped her quiver back into place. “What’s your name, friend?” she asked the captive she had dangled from the ceiling.
His face was flushed from all the blood rushing to it, but he managed to croak out, “P-Private M-McClain, ma’am. P-please don’t skin me.”
If he were alive and I hung him like that, he’d be dead by now, Signy thought. Odd. It was one of the downsides of Hell; people were literally impossible to kill. She would have to alter her shots for pain instead of raw lethality. It was fortunate that she was a master at both.
“Stick around, P-Private M-McClain.” She couldn’t resist whipping up her hunting bow and unleashing an arrow that pierced his ribs. He cringed and whined like a dog as it buried itself into the wall. “Be a good boy or I’ll be back for you later.”
“Yes ma’am!” he dumbly shrieked, but by then she had already slipped away.
The vast majority of Richard’s life had been made up of a series of thankless, arduous tasks for other people, most of whom had usually ended up betraying him anyway, so he was particularly suited for the rigors of working as an engineer for the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. He did not have the foggiest idea of how a train actually worked, but he had found that most of the job came down to yelling at others until the work resolved itself. By the standards of Hell, it was one of the best existences that a damned soul could hope for—and yet he absolutely hated every second of it.
I could have ruled Europe, he sulked. Changed the fucking course of humanity… Is this really what the Good Men have come down to? Working on Thomas the Tank Engine?
He glanced at his two co-conspirators suspiciously. They had found each other in the depths of Lower Hell and stuck together for centuries, even through that disastrous revolt some time ago… Yet he knew it was only a matter of time until Baxter and Sir Babin tried to knife him in the back. That’s how it always goes. If there was only some way he could just reach into their tiny little brains and mold them to be like miniature versions of himself…
Fuck, I hate other people. He turned back to the project that he was trying to conduct in the train’s cramped compartment. If there was ever a time ripe with opportunity, this was it. Dis was nothing but ruins, the legions would be at one another’s throats…now, if he could just make the damned ritual work…
Meanwhile, the other two continued their insipid little game. Sir Babin gritted his teeth in utter concentration as a bead of sweat crept down his furrowed brow. “Six of clubs,” he finally said after a long silence.
The look of triumph in Baxter’s eyes was unmistakable, even though he briefly pretended to frown in disappointment. “All I have to say is—GO FISH!” he called out mockingly. His braying laughter echoed around the compartment, bouncing off the walls and giving Richard an irritating headache.
“Bastard,” Sir Babin muttered under his breath as he reached for another card. He would have been handsome, but his neck had been violently twisted around so that his head now faced in the wrong direction. He awkwardly had to shift his arms around to get to his intended target, and his hand clumsily brushed up against the deck, knocking it over and spilling cards everywhere.
“Now look what you’ve done, you fucking owl,” Baxter yelled.
“Will you two shut the hell up?” Richard demanded. “I’m working here.”
Baxter rolled his eyes. “Sorry, boss,” he said in a singsong voice.
It’ll be imperator one day, Richard thought. “Keep an eye out that window,” he snapped. “The imperator thinks there may be some survivors out there.”
Richard turned his attention back to the small pile of bones piled before him. Hell is at our fingertips, he thought angrily, and these two morons still just want to play their fucking cards.
The infuriating thought gave him all the motivation he needed to slam a rock down into the bones again and again. The process of reducing them to dust was painfully slow; not for the first time, he wished that George were around to do the job for him. But the big dumb bastard had left decades ago to serve in the Praetorian Guard. His exit had not been a peaceful one; Babin’s twisted head was testament to that.
Fucking traitor, Richard fumed, but he took solace in the fact that George had probably been eaten by Legion. That was all that other people were in the end: nothing but sniveling little sycophants who constantly whined and complained about their precious little feelings, right up to the moment until they slit your throat. All they had to do was shut up and follow my orders—was that too much to ask?
Apparently it was. But the others would get what was coming to them soon enough, then all Hell after that. And then…Guy de Bocqueville. I’ll find him one day. The warmth of the train’s engine was nothing compared to the pleasant feeling Richard felt in his heart at the fantasy of his revenge. Now, all he needed was a plan.
“What are you doing?” Babin asked skeptically.
Imperator Sisera liked his collection of freaks—the fact that he had the backward-headed Babin working as one of the engineers on his War Train was testament to that—and one of them, a sour-faced old cow, had once given Richard the recipe for a so-called “magic potion” approximately an hour before the imperator had gotten bored with her and had her tongue torn out. Richard was almost certain that the self-proclaimed sorceress was full of shit—she had been from the Circle of Fraud, after all—but he had nothing else to do for the moment. If Hell is real, then why not magic? he tried to ask himself. His feeble attempt at optimism did not work.
“A waste of fucking time,” Richard cursed, and wit
h that, he knocked the pile of bone dust aside. Where the hell was I supposed to get the other ingredients? he angrily demanded of himself. A newt’s tail? How the fuck am I supposed to find a newt in Hell?
“Hey, don’t waste that,” Sir Babin argued. He clumsily leaned over and dipped a finger in the spilled dust. “Makes for good salt,” he said as he licked it away. “You know…” His face took on a cunning look. “There are more efficient ways of getting this…”
“Don’t you say it,” Richard groaned.
“C’mon, just grab one of the slaves! The overseers won’t care if we take just one,” Babin whined. “I’m starving.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“I’m fucking sick of wormflesh and maggots,” Babin spat. “It’s just meat, goddammit. The Church of the Fallen Father does it all the time! Why, when I had my hounds with me…” His voice started to trail off wistfully. “Biter always liked the liver, yes, she did.”
“Dogs don’t go to Hell,” Baxter said gleefully. “You’ll never see your ‘family’ again, Babin.”
Babin’s eyes narrowed with cold hate. “Aye, dogs don’t go to Hell,” he agreed between gritted teeth. “But bitches do. What’s that make you, Baxter?”
“The one to twist your fucking ugly head back into place,” Baxter snarled, and within seconds, both men jerked up to their feet. Babin reached for the sword at his hip and Baxter started to yank his crossbow off his back, and for a brief instant, it seemed that they were on the verge of a complete bloodbath.
The sudden knock at the door came as a relief. The two of them paused, halfway on the verge of drawing out their weapons, and slowly slid them back into place.
“You got lucky, owl,” Baxter warned as he made his way to the steel door that led to the city outside. He pressed his face up against the eyehole and frowned. “It’s Captain Grese.” He slid open the narrow latch, letting in a blast of cold air. “What’s the password?”
“Captain Grese?” Richard echoed. Something about that didn’t sound right. “Wait—”
He glanced out through one of the portholes in the tiny compartment. The train was moving, but only at a walking pace—the tracks ahead were still being cleared by the small army of slaves that the Eighteenth Legion had sent ahead, so it was possible that the captain had chosen just now to board the train, but—
Captain Grese is supposed to be overseeing the prisoners, he remembered. It was one of the captain’s great joys; rumor was that she and Fritz the Prophet had bonded so much over such things that they had been lovers at some point. So what’s the Hyena of Auschwitz doing back here?
“Open up, you stupid fucker, or I’ll bite your fucking throat out,” the woman who claimed to be Captain Grese hissed through the latch.
Richard caught just a glimpse of her pale face; there was a single droplet of blood that stood on her cheek like a beauty mark. It was Captain Grese’s features, but there was something wrong—had her skin been so loose and flabby before?
“Yes, ma’am.” Baxter sighed. He reached for the bolt, ready to draw it back.
Captain Grese’s eyes sparkled in triumph, and it was at that moment that Richard remembered that the Hyena’s eyes were not brown—they were blue. Oh sweet Jesus, she’s wearing her face, he thought; the concept seemed so abstract and ridiculous that he would have laughed had there been more than a single iron bolt between him and this terrifying presence.
“Baxter, down!” he shouted, and he desperately reached for the pistols at his hips.
“Wha—” Baxter asked, but it was too late, for the woman on the other side of the door suddenly plunged her hand through the latch.
Time seemed to slow down; Richard could actually see the bones of her hand twist and dislocate as her iron grip latched around Baxter’s throat. He screamed out something, begging for mercy, and somehow the iron bolt became warped by the sheer force behind it, and suddenly the door crashed open and the devil came soaring through.
Baxter screamed out, but his voice was lost in the pounding blood that roared through Richard’s eardrums as, at last, he managed to wrench out his pistols and opened fire. With one blast, the entire compartment was overcome with gun smoke, so he spaced his shots apart, gambling that the intruder would try to dive for cover. The smoke and explosions of sound were utterly disorienting within the confines of their metal prison, but Richard the Demon did nothing by half-measures, so he kept on blindly squeezing the triggers.
He only stopped firing when his two empty magazines clattered against the floor.
Behind him, Babin coughed up a lungful of smoke and lowered his hands from his ears. “Holy shit.” He gagged. “You get her?”
A dark figure began to emerge from the smoke. Babin raised his sword, ready to strike it down, but hesitated when the flickering light revealed that it was Baxter, somehow still standing. Richard’s bullets had torn enormous holes in his guts and chest, but the most horrifying wound was the great chunk of flesh that had been torn out of his neck.
The woman ever-so-slightly cocked her head from behind Baxter’s and grinned at the two men. The mask she had made of Captain Grese’s face now hung on only by a few congealed bits of blood, revealing the tan, gaunt features below it. She spread her sharpened teeth apart, revealing the mouthful of blood and bone that she had bitten out of Baxter’s neck, and spat it on the floor with a wet splat.
“Goddammit,” Richard groaned as the woman buried her teeth back into Baxter’s neck, easily holding him up. She raised a clenched fist and slammed it against the side of his skull. There was a snap as the bones in her wrist relocated, followed by the slam of the crossbowman’s head against the steel floor when she opened her jaws to release him.
She tore away the last few pieces of Captain Grese and gave the two of them a bloodstained smile. “The name’s Signy Crecy.” Pop-pop-pop went the knuckles in her right hand as she seized her fingers and snapped them back into place. She neatly unslung a bow from around her back and experimentally fiddled with the bowstring. “I’m here to speak to your boss.”
“The imperator is not seeing visitors,” Richard said automatically. As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized the horrible mistake he had just made.
“I wasn’t asking.” Signy chuckled. She took a step closer.
“Oh shit,” Babin moaned.
Richard raised his guns, but her bow was faster.
21
The bastards from the Kingdom drove a tank over Lao’s torso, completely crushing his guts and chest to a pulp beneath the machine’s mighty treads. If he raised his head—not that he had the ability to, with what felt like a god of pain eating him alive—he would have been able to see through the gaps in the machinery to where the lower half of his body poked out on the other side of the treads.
“Oh God,” he wheezed out with what remained of his lungs. He could feel the tissues and fibers within his chest re-assembling themselves, constantly straining against the mighty pressure that had him pinned to the ground—but the sheer weight of the iron beast was too much, and once again the remnants of his internal organs would turn to pulp, only to try to rebuild themselves once more. Somehow, it seemed to hurt even more every time his body passed through the cycle.
When will it end? he thought in despair. Surely there was some limit to the Master’s gift and his body would exhaust itself eventually… No, not a gift, he realized. This was a curse even worse than damnation. Just finish me, you bitch.
One of the soldiers perched on top of the tank leaned over the side and gave him a nasty smile. “You feeling okay down there, Judeccan?” he asked in a voice ripe with faux worry. “We didn’t crush your balls too, did we?”
“Fuck,” Lao hissed between gritted teeth. He tried to raise his arms, but his body was in too much agony for him to do anything but weakly flop his hands against the ground.
The soldier seemed to find this endlessly hilarious. “Tell ya what, buddy.” He giggled. “We’ll shift over for you, how about that?�
�� He popped his head back over the side of the tank to shout something into the driver’s compartment. “Lieutenant! Move a little for our friend!”
No, no, no, Lao tried to scream out, but the treads of the tank suddenly jerked forward, tearing up a swath of dirt and pavement…and his body along with it. He felt half of his vertebrae stretch and then shatter as the tank slightly rotated, now crushing his left arm and half of his face with it. Somewhere in the tank’s bowels, the driver paused, and Lao wept in relief—and then the tread churned against the ground. It stretched him and dragged him until most of his body was nothing but a five-meter-long smear against the ground.
Master, save me, Lao silently begged. He could feel the pressure building in his head, like a cap about to burst, as the remnants of his blood and guts surged up his esophagus into his skull. Something warm and pulpy pressed up against the back of his teeth, pushing with greater and greater force as it struggled to escape into the cool air.
He won’t save me. He did this to me.
Lao was just on the verge of opening his mouth to scream—and to release the contents that greedily swelled up his throat—when he caught a glimpse of a dark shape against the skies above. Bat-like wings, a massive tail— The Beast, he thought in wonder. He’s here! The Master is here!
A mighty roar pierced the air, and the soldier glanced up in confusion just in time to be engulfed by a blast of flame. Droplets of melted steel flew off the tank’s hull, spattering the ground around Lao’s ruined head. Through his one good ear, he heard the claxon of a siren go off, and the echoing of gunfire pierce the air.
“Lord Prophet!” someone screamed out. Thud-thud-thud went a grenade launcher, making Lao’s teeth rattle with each impact. The tank’s treads rolled backward as its main gun suddenly fired, briefly relieving some of the pressure on Lao’s chest. He found that both of his arms were now free, and so he reached out and awkwardly grabbed the edge of a scrap of pavement.
“Take it down!” Salome bellowed through the surrounding chaos. “Take it down!” There was another echoing roar as a hundred more weapons joined in on the commotion.
