by James Hunter
One table was positively littered with torture equipment. Iron manacles, pliers, meat hooks, scalpels, hacksaws, pruning shears, and heavy-duty nails.
And the other table? The other table displayed body parts—hands, feet, loops of gray intestine.
I lay frozen, body rigid, hands trembling, lungs struggling for air as I stared at those god-awful tools, gleaming with bloody red light. For an instant, I was back in Haiti, strapped to a metal gurney, paralyzed by zombie powder, but awake and aware. For a moment, Pa Beauvoir loomed over me, his deranged, grinning face filling up my vision as he dropped a rubber-handled melon baller toward my face. No, no, no. I pressed my eye shut tight, breathing in slowly—in through the nose, out through the mouth—as I pushed the awful memories away.
I couldn’t afford to be distracted by this. Not here. Not now. Too much was on the line.
Even if I couldn’t see him, I knew Levi was down there—the lump of clay in my pocket was wiggling like mad—and the big ugly bastard needed me.
SIXTEEN:
Unholy Exorcism
I shook my head, focused, and edged forward another few inches so I could get a better look at the room below.
I almost passed out again when I did—the place was a friggin’ horror show. The floor was all gleaming stainless steel, sloping slightly toward a circular drain in the center. Perfect for easy cleanup after a bloody, gore-drenched torture session. Just spray the damn place down with a hose, no muss, no fuss. Levi was pinned down next to the drain; heavy black manacles, covered in wicked barbs and glowing with cancerous green runes, secured his feet, wrists, and neck. I’d never seen anything like those bindings, but I had a gut suspicion they probably dampened a mage’s power.
They were torture tools designed to keep my kind from drawing on Vis or Nox.
That was only the beginning of the shitshow, though.
A crude binding circle decorated the floor around Levi, slathered on in thick red paint or, more likely, blood. Jagged angular script, which wriggled and writhed in the flickering firelight as though it were a living thing, sandwiched the binding circle on both sides. I couldn’t read the markings, but a few of the symbols stood out from ancient grimoires I’d studied a handful of times—mostly texts on demonic summoning and ritual exorcism. Around the circle, pinned out like the points of an inverted pentagram, were bodies. Notice that I didn’t say corpses.
Five Skinless slaves, metal collars encircling their throats, were nailed to the floor—giant spikes driven through their hands and feet in obvious, gory homage to the crucifixion. One moaned and thrashed, a few others whimpered softly, while the last simply lay there, gazing vacantly at the ceiling overhead. Five Derby girls—all members of the Cobalt Lily Rollers—stood watch over the slaves, staring down at them with crossed arms, ugly grimaces of disgust and superiority on their faces.
Once again that flicker of rage in my chest went from a dull burn to a bonfire. This was the sickest, most profane bullshit I’d ever seen, and the lady running this Horrorfest was gonna pay in a big, big way.
A heavy steel door creaked open a second later.
A woman strutted in, and I knew without a doubt this was Tezrian.
She was smaller than I’d expected, maybe five-five, without an ounce of fat on her and with skin as creamy and flawless as a pearl. Her face was sharp and angular, her ears pointed and studded with earrings from top to bottom, her mane of raven-black hair floating around her head like a dancing flame. Instead of fishnets, thigh-highs, and roller skates, she wore black plate mail covered in spikes, golden rivets, and dried blood—crusted on and forgotten. Her wings, huge things covered in glossy blue-black raven feathers, protruded from her back, naming her as the demon she was.
She was armed, the pommel of a long sword poking up from her back and the hilt of a strangely curved dagger, not much bigger than a hatchet, in one hand. I eyed the weapon, wondering if maybe that could be the scythe we’d come looking for, but thought it unlikely.
“So good to have you back,” she said, her boots ringing on the floor as she walked. “I know what you must think of Azazel. I know why you’re so desperate to be free of his control, but you’re wrong about him. You should feel honored to be his vessel. You’re an insignificant earthworm.” She eyed Levi up and down, a contemptuous sneer on her face. “A bug, wiggling around in mud and shit, your life short and dumb and meaningless.”
She paused, one black talon-tipped finger tracing over the edge of her bottom lip, then shook her head in disbelief. “You’re barely a sentient dirt speck. And then, when you finally had a chance to leave behind your insignificant squalor—to become something of value—what do you do?” She let the question hang limply in the air, before wheeling around, her eyes bright coals of hate. “What do you do?!” she screamed, spittle flying, lips pulled back, revealing pointed teeth.
That’s when I knew this lady wasn’t working with a full set of hardware. She was batshit crazy, insane from the tip of her ebony hair to the soles of her heavy boots.
She straightened, face suddenly smooth and placid. “Why, you fight and kick and scream, eager to root around in the mud again,” she said, absently inspecting her nails. “You should be honored to serve as the vessel of Azazel. He marshaled the armies of Hell in the Great War. He commanded legions upon legions of the winged-damned and stormed the Gates of High Heaven, contending against Mikha’el until God cast him down. He’s the single greatest warrior of Hell and trusted advisor to the Lord of the Morning. He is the most vicious, pragmatic murderer the world has ever seen.”
She sounded proud of the achievement instead of revolted.
“And you”—her lips pulled back in a rictus of fury and hate—“you shitstain, you maggot, you worthless meat-sack, would try to contain him?” She paused, throwing her head back as she cackled, one hand clutching at her armored belly. “No, no, no, no,” she finished when her mad laughter subsided. “I don’t think so, mortal. I’ll flay your soul and put things to right. Then Azazel will finish the work he started. He’ll murder Asmodeus, that conniving, back-stabbing, petty, jealous little fuck. He’ll strip his soul bare, burn it to a cinder, and reshape Pandæmonium.
“But first, we need to set him free.” She stepped forward, her hips swaying as she walked around the outside of the circle, casually stepping over the nailed down slaves as though they were dead cockroaches beneath her notice. “Prepare yourselves, ladies,” she said, eyeing each of the Derby girls in turn: Mama Murderwheels. Rapunchel. Lady Bones Sally. The Deep South Riot. Machoman Candy Savage. Her inner circle. Each nodded, drawing bronze daggers, near identical to the ceremonial blade I’d seen in Azazel’s office, from leather sheaths.
They began to chant. A slow, discordant thing that set my teeth on edge.
Tezrian joined a moment later, her voice deeper and as raspy as gravel crunching underfoot.
Slowly the demon wound her way around the circle, her curved blade whipping through a complex series of rehearsed motions, like a martial artist performing a kata, while awful words in some ancient tongue spilled from her mouth, buzzing in my ears like a swarm of angry bees. So far, I’d been able to understand every word spoken in Hell, but I couldn’t understand this. It was a jumble of nonsense gibberish, which somehow conjured nightmare images inside my head.
Glimpses of clawed hands and giant, terrible jaws.
Of broken bones and torn flesh.
Of humongous bodies covered in great chitinous plates slithering through burbling lakes of sulfurous magma.
Round and round Tezrian went. The hand motions coming faster and faster, the blade soon blurring through the air. Her chant built in intensity like a manic prayer coming to a crescendo as energy coalesced, rippling through the ethereal plane. Through the vent, I could see the dark energy gathering like a gray storm cloud moments before a lightning strike.
The energy swirled, roiled, and pulsed in time to Tezrian’s incantation.
Shit, shit, shit. What the hell should I d
o here?
We still hadn’t found the scythe, and that was the only damned reason we were here—without getting the prize, this whole thing was a friggin’ bust. But if it wasn’t in Azazel’s office, then the next most likely place was with Tezrian herself. And even if she didn’t have it on her, maybe I could beat an answer out of her, though I sure as shit didn’t want to pick a fight against a war goddess and a room full of Derby girls. Not with Skinless Jim as my only backup.
Hell, I would’ve rather jumped into a piranha tank buck-ass naked and slathered in blood. At this point, though, I didn’t have many options left. Shit. I glanced down again and saw Levi looking straight up at me, his jaw clenched tight, his eyes squinted, his forehead creased. There was no way he could see me through the vent, but if the chunk of clay in my pocket could guide me to him, it was a safe bet he could probably feel it too.
On my mark, he mouthed to me, a mere twitch of the lips, his fingers flexing as the muscles in his forearms rippled unnaturally.
Shit, shit, shit, I thought again, repeating the phrase like a mantra to center myself. This was it, the moment of truth. Time to shit or get off the pot.
I shooed Skinless Jim away with one hand, before double-checking my shottie. Check. With a grunt and a shimmy, I awkwardly fished out a flashbang from the grenade pouch on my vest. Good to go. Next, I opened myself to a trickle of sweet, delicious, life-giving Vis before calling out to Nox, letting corrupt power wash over me like an oil slick. Drawing on the deathly energy left me as nervous as a piggy in a bacon factory, terrified that Tez would sense my presence. With all that other juju floating around in the air, however, I was hoping no one would notice the subtle addition.
Carefully, I pried up the vent grate and placed it over to one side, muttering a silent prayer under my breath that no one would look up. With that done, I prepared the weaves for a down and dirty force construct, holding them half-formed in my mind, before turning my attention back to the ceremony unfolding below.
Tezrian made another pass around the binding circle, her voice taking on a new rhythm. The words came faster now, filling the air like the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire as her blade bobbed and weaved through the air, hooking and slashing in elegant patterns, leaving faint purple afterimages in its wake.
She stepped over the red line on the floor, towering over Levi like an angry priestess before the sacrificial altar. Her eyes widened, and her lips pulled back in fervor as she uttered an incomprehensible word of power and lashed out with her dagger. She dropped to a knee, driving the curved tip of the weapon into Levi’s gut, sinking it all the way to the hilt. The Derby girls edging the circle followed suit, plunging their bronzed blades into the sides of the five crucified slaves. A flash of brilliant emerald power filled the air as the reverse-exorcism, meant to set Azazel loose, landed like an artillery round.
After a long beat, the emerald light faded and died. The ritual knife protruded from Levi’s belly like a cancerous growth, and Tezrian stood over him with her arms crossed and a smug look plastered across her angular features. She looked as pleased as a cokehead backstroking through a swimming pool of blow, but that smugness slipped from her face in a flash as she surveyed Levi, who lay unchanged in the center of the circle. His face and body were still a perfect mirror of my own.
It was impossible to say what she’d been expecting, but this obviously wasn’t it.
Her brow furrowed and her hands dropped to her hips, the grin morphing into an angry frown. “What is this?” she hissed after a moment, the words as chilly as an arctic blizzard. “What. Is. This?” she asked again, squatting down on her haunches, extending one finger to poke at Levi, who lay unmoving in the circle. The second her finger touched down, pressing into the meat of his shoulder, Levi burbled and rippled. Fat, ropy strands of gray clay strained upward from Levi’s gut, wrapping around the blade jutting up and drawing it down like quicksand.
Tezrian fell back onto her ass in mute shock, scrambling away, her armor clanging on the steel floor. In an instant, a blink, the weapon was gone, vanished into Levi’s body. His fingers flexed, his muscles bulged, and his clothing melted away as gray flesh surged outward like a rockslide. The black shackles, covered in thorns, might’ve been the bee's knees at stopping magi, but Levi was no mage. The metal clasps groaned and screeched, fighting to contain his massive wrists.
They quickly gave way, buckling under the strain, bursting open with a renewed squeal. Levi lurched to his feet, spinning toward Tez, while the demon goddess and the Derby girls looked on completely dumbfounded. Sorta hard to blame them. I’d already seen Levi do his little shapeshifting trick, and it was still jarring. My doppelganger vanished, and all that remained was Levi the murder-machine. His lips pulled back from blunt teeth like uneven tombstones.
“Only problem is,” Levi said, his voice the churning rasp of a cement mixer, “I’m not Yancy Lazarus.” As he spoke, he glanced up at me.
Time for the big reveal.
I pulled the pin, depressed the spoon, hooked my arm into the room, and tossed the flashbang in with a flick of my wrist. Every eye shot toward the vent and my dangling limb—big mistake, right there. I pressed my eye closed tight as a brilliant burst of light and a jangle of awful noise filled the room. Flashbangs weren’t lethal, so Levi would be okay, but they put out a metric ass-ton of light and sound, disorienting anyone unfortunate enough to be looking when they popped. Just enough time for a smart, savvy, shotgun-wielding badass to get the drop on a room full of deadly enemies.
SEVENTEEN:
Ambush
I gave it a quick three-count, waiting for the ringing to dissipate, then pulled myself forward, dropping through the vent as gracefully as braindead chipmunk. Further, I landed like a geriatric gymnast, my left ankle twisting painfully beneath me, dull pain radiating up my leg. Heroics at its finest, ladies and gentlemen. I managed not to break my neck, though, so I was counting it as a win. I pushed the pain in my ankle away, ignoring it as hot-blooded fear and white-knuckled adrenaline surged through me in a wave.
I raised the shottie to the ready, tucking it tight into my shoulder pocket, and took a quick sweep of the room.
Levi was barreling toward Rapunchel—the biggest, blockiest, trolliest Derby girl—like a runaway semi, his fat legs churning, his arms outstretched, one hand already transformed into a thick-bladed meat cleaver, the other a spiked mace. The rest of the Derby girls were staggering around like a gaggle of shit-faced college freshmen during rush week, rubbing at their eyes or groping at the stone walls to steady themselves. Even Tez was down on one knee, her eyes squinted, a furious scowl splitting her face. Yep, that’s right, even uber-tough, supernatural shit-kickers are susceptible to modern human badassery.
Just one of the reasons humans are ruling the earth even though most people aren’t tough enough or bright enough to fight their way out of a wet paper bag with a compass and a chainsaw. That and humans multiply like bunnies compared to most Outworld critters.
Strength in numbers, baby.
With that said, I knew a shotgun slug wasn’t gonna do much damage to Tez—she was a demonic godling—so the best play was to take out the cannon fodder first.
I swiveled, turning my sights on the nearest Derby girl, Lady Bones Sally. She was a slight Latina woman with pigtails and armored shoulder pads made from cobbled together bits of bone and rusty lengths of razor wire. Without a thought, I dropped the barrel and squeezed the trigger; the gun bucked against my shoulder and belched out fire and hot lead. Her left knee exploded in a shower of gory bits and putrid brown flesh, and down she went like Humpty toppling from his perch.
She howled, hands flying toward her leg, and for a second I hesitated.
She was a woman, which shouldn’t have mattered, but did.
I don’t like killing women, or even hurting them—not if I can help it. Then I glanced at the Skinless slaves writhing on the ground, hands and feet nailed to the floor, bronze daggers poking up from their sides. Yeah, screw �
�em all sideways. I stood, chambered another round with a quick pump, and took off her other leg at the thigh. It wouldn’t kill her, but she’d have a helluva time fighting or following us with those kinds of wounds. I pumped the shottie again and spun, aiming at Deep South Riot, who’d managed to draw a chromed-out 1911.
I pulled the trigger again, blasting the heavy pistol from her grip and taking everything below the wrist with it. For a moment, she stared dumbly at the stump, confusion and anger waltzing across her face in turns, but then I placed a round in her throat and put an end to that bullshit. She pitched over with a gurgle, her remaining hand grasping at the ragged hole in her neck, fingers pressed down tight, as though that might do something. Again, I didn’t think I could kill these ladies, but that would put her out of commission for a hot minute.
I pumped in a new shell, the old one cartwheeling away from the chamber, and hooked left, searching for Mama Murderwheels or Machoman Candy Savage. I needed them gone ASAP so that I could focus my metaphysical efforts on Tez without fear of interruption. Rapunchel was on the floor, now, nearly cleaved in two—a ragged slice ran from collarbone to pelvis. Levi had taken care of her nice and neat, but he was in a bad way, too. Several fingers on his left hand were gone, revealing a jagged hole that leaked golden ichor while a series of ugly bullet holes peppered his chest.
He was fighting his way toward Machoman Candy Savage, but the Derby girl was doing a damned good job of keeping him at bay. She used her skates and superior speed to outmaneuver the slow-moving hulk while lighting him up with a boxy black MAC10.
This time, I didn’t even bother to fire the shottie.
With a wave of one hand and a thought, I unleashed the half-formed force construct, swatting her off her feet and slamming her into the wall with bone-breaking force. She’d be easy pickings for Levi now—thinking about that left me a little queasy. A beat later, a javelin of Nox broadsided me like a dump truck doing fifty, hammering into my ribs, pushing the air from my lungs, sweeping me into the air, and blasting the shottie from my hands.
