by Hunter Blain
“What do you want?” I asked, getting to the point.
“Where are your manners, John? I am a guest in your lands.”
“I’m not beholden to the notion of hospitality. Come to think of it,” I said, looking to the side with a confused expression, “I don’t think any supe is. I mean, the Fae seemed to attack me just fine when I was there.”
“Whether or not you are obligated by the rules of Sacred Hospitality is a moot point. I am simply trying to convey that this should be an amicable conversation.”
“No offense, but you tried to fry my sweet ass. I don’t take kindly to strangers who try to fry…m-my ass. You know what I’m getting at.” I waved my hand in a circle as I finished.
“I am but a humble servant to my master, and he wishes you dead.”
I leaned forward, placing both elbows on the table as I stared intently at the man.
“And do you know why he wants me dead? Hmm?”
“To open the gates of Hell, of course.”
I leaned back abruptly before asking with obvious agitation, “And you’re cool with that?!”
“Have you ever met God, John? Has He ever spoken to you?”
I thought for a moment. “No, but have you ever met a gladius-wielding angel who speaks on behalf of God?”
“Yes.”
I wasn’t expecting that.
“And you, ah, still fight for the other side?” I asked, cocking my head and narrowing my eyes.
“I ally myself with the side of power,” he told me. But it wasn’t boastful. There was something in his eyes as he spoke that I found familiar.
“You,” I started, unsure but still taking a shot in the dark, “you think you would have been able to save your son. Had you been a warlock back then, I mean.”
Grand Master Silver looked at me with assessing eyes, the flame of our table’s candle dancing in his dark eyes.
I leaned backed, taking his silence as admission.
“Look, I’m sorry about Benji—” A fist slammed on the table, knocking the candle over, which rolled and tumbled to the ground, spilling clear liquid that solidified into white wax.
“Do not speak my son’s name as if you were familiar with him. Am I understood?” Silver demanded quickly, keeping his fist on the table. Though the candle was gone—extinguished and underneath a nearby table—flames still danced in his eyes, but they were green and purple now.
Raising my hands placatingly, I spoke. “I get it, man. I get it. If you know me, then you probably know my story is similar to yours.” I was sympathetic to his situation, which was a dangerous thing.
Grand Master Silver relaxed, letting his hand slide off the table to rest back in his lap, his other hand still holding the pipe that I hadn’t noticed was glowing.
“Your pipe is also a wand?” I asked, pointing at the wood.
“Very clever,” he said with the weapon still in his mouth. He inhaled, drawing in a lungful of the expensive-smelling tobacco, and exhaled a long cloud that swirled around us with impossible volume. I sat up straight, looking around as the smoke enveloped us.
“Relax, John. I only want to show you something.”
Still unsure, I let the events unfold but remained ready to spring to action.
The smoke coalesced into a scene from a memory. Burnt bodies were stacked in funeral pyres within a small village’s meager walls. Glinting broken glass lined the upstairs windows like the teeth of horrific deep-sea predators. Brass casings littered the ground, along with decimated bodies that no longer billowed steam from their grievous wounds. I knew immediately that the bodies not on the piles had to be soldiers, judging from the outlines of rifles still clutched in cold hands. Snow had covered most of them, leaving behind figures that seemed to be made out of the white stuff. It was as if someone had used nothing but the palms of their hands to push the snow into the semblance of men, only lacking the finer details such as fingers, clothing, and facial features. The image of unfrosted gingerbread men on a baking sheet sprang to mind. Some were missing limbs, heads, or even entire sections of the corpses, tinting the crisp white snow a bright crimson. For some reason, the thought of a freshly made sno-cone being drizzled with cherry syrup flashed before my eyes.
Apparently, Silver had gotten up and was shuffling through the ankle-deep snow to a small body on the ground. His leg appeared to be hurt, drawing a look of confusion from me as I knew the warlock had been fine moments ago. His clothes were also older and ragged.
A sigh came from beside me, and I jerked my head to see Silver was still sitting at the table in the middle of the scene. My eyes flip-flopped back and forth between the Silvers like a frantic pendulum. He hadn’t aged a day in a century, though the man sitting across the table from me was clean and well-groomed, on top of being covered in fancy robes.
A cry of immense sorrow broke me from my shocked state, and I saw the Silver in the memory fall to his knees. He gingerly placed a small child’s head onto his lap, lovingly brushing the snow from his pale face. Only his lips showed color, and that color was the blue of absolute death.
My hand shot to my gaping mouth as I watched Silver’s trembling hands work feverishly to get the rest of the snow off of his son, Benji.
“Oh, Lilith,” I mouthed through an exhale, unable to give the words full strength.
“I make myself watch this so I remember why I took the path less traveled,” Silver spoke from beside me. “It also reminds me that God,” he spit the word out as if taking a bite from a rotten apple, “doesn’t care about His flock, content to reside in Heaven above, contemplating His own self-importance.”
My eyes drifted from the Silver at the table to the man holding his dead son. As he moved, I saw the bottommost layer of snow was stained crimson. The child was missing both his hands. Remembering the story Depweg had told me, I shifted my focus to the pole that still held one of the hands inside the metal cuffs. The other presumably lay at the base, already swallowed by the falling snow.
I shot my head to the man sitting at the table beside me and pleaded, “Depweg didn’t mean to. It was a trap! A Nazi werewolf hunter set him up! He-he didn’t know!”
Silver peeled his eyes off of his former human self to lock onto mine with a hate that could fuel a hundred suns for eons.
“Do you think I care? That-that beast killed my boy—my sweet, innocent boy.” There were no tears leaking from his eyes, only rage.
“Wh-what do you want? Why are you showing me this?” I asked, fearful of the answer.
“I want you to give me the wolf,” he stated in a flat tone that felt like ice-cold water being thrown onto my back, sending shudders through my limbs. I knew he deserved his revenge, but I also knew that Depweg was a good guy and hadn’t meant to hurt Benji.
The scene around us abruptly faded to black as the smoke dissipated, leaving us in Valenta’s Saloon, alone. My eyes remained on the spot inside the bar where the man holding his son had been.
In a voice that lacked strength, I said, “You know I can’t do that.”
“But you can stand aside and let me have him. Give me that at least!” the man demanded in a pleading tone, becoming more animated.
“What do I get in return?” I asked, simply curious as to the offer.
“I won’t deliver you to Satan if you let me have the revenge that I desire.”
“You would defy your master…just to have Depweg?”
“Absolutely. That wolf is why I sold my soul in the first place. I care not what happens to me after I avenge my child.”
His plight was all too familiar and understandable to me. I empathized with him, dangerously. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a completely reasonable request.
I realized what I was thinking, and it pissed me the fuck off.
Changing my tone and letting my eyes flash red, I leaned forward and growled, “And if I don’t? What makes you think you can beat me? Countless before you have tried, warlock, and all have failed.”
&nbs
p; Grand Master Silver nodded his head as he let his eyes fall to the table, unfocused. He seemed to expect my answer but was still disappointed by it.
“If you don’t, you will bring about the end of times. If Hell wins, your soul will be forever punished by vengeful demons. If Heaven wins, the angels will strike you and every damned soul down. You will cease to exist, and will spend an eternity in the black abyss of overwhelming nothingness.”
“That’s assuming you can kill me,” I warned, willing a blooddagger into my hand, which I had moved to just below the table.
“A demonstration, then,” Silver said, taking me completely by surprise. Silver’s own hands had moved under the table without me noticing, and his shoulder moved forward as something bit into my foot.
I screamed and fell backward, but something wasn’t right. I fell through the chair and onto the floor. I quickly hoisted myself onto my butt and hands as wide eyes shot to my body, which remained in the chair, frozen in time. Under the table was a staff tipped with the freaking Spear of Destiny that ended inside my foot, piercing the leather of my boot like it was one-ply toilet paper.
The floor rumbled underneath me, and chunks began falling away. I rolled to my side and watched in horror as the mouth yawned hungrily, steadily revealing a tunnel that lead down to a monstrous pit I couldn’t see the bottom of. Red-and-green flames climbed up the tunnel, like a dragon belching fire.
“NOOOO!” I shrieked, knowing exactly what was happening. There was an ethereal echo that answered my cries. I scrambled away from the hole as it finished collapsing, and jumped at my body, passing right through it to land on the ground on the other side of the table. I jumped to my feet and looked at my frozen, corporeal form. My face was frozen in a painful scream.
“You sonofabitch!” I screamed at Silver as I punched through his face, throwing myself off balance. My arms cartwheeled, and I regained my balance.
I recognized this place from when Lily had drugged me in her car.
“LILY!” I screamed, almost deafened by the echo.
An unseen force wrapped first around my waist, then my neck, and finally my ankles, drawing my legs together. I fell on the ground like a fish in a net and was terrified to see that I was being pulled toward the hole.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no, please no, no, no, no, no, nooooooo!” My wide eyes shot around the room frantically, desperate to find anything to hold onto as my body writhed erratically.
My feet crossed the threshold, and multiple skeleton hands reached up from the pit to wrap around my feet, then ankles and calves. As more of me passed from wood floor to empty air, additional hands reached from the pits of Hell to grab onto me, squeezing painfully tight. I was reminded, then, that even the soul could feel such exquisite pain, but without the benefit of breaking. When a mortal suffered indescribable agony, the brain went into shock to allow the person a reprieve from the torture. There would be no such luxury in Hell. I knew, without knowing how, that I would never pass out from the pain. Blackness would never wash over me like a warm blanket, shielding me from maddening torments. I would feel everything. I would experience everything. Suffering would become all too familiar, but my ethereal body would never break. I would endure for an eternity. I couldn’t say the same about my mind.
I screamed with enough force that I was sure I would have burst capillaries and shredded my vocal cords if I had still been in my body. My body tilted at my hips like a seesaw, and I thought my sockets were going to break in half from how wide my eyes were open. Then I was falling.
I gasped as a familiar scene rushed up to meet me. Air escaped from my human lungs, and I curled into a fetal position, willing oxygen to expand the shriveled, convulsing sacks in my torso. Fire grew in my chest and my throat constricted from how hard I was trying to draw in air.
After what felt like minutes, my diaphragm relaxed, and I sucked in enough air that a reverse scream sounded in the small dungeon I was in.
Still in a fetal position, I twisted until I was resting on my knees and hands. I coughed from how hard I had inhaled over and over, forcing away plumes of dust that had collected on the dungeon floor.
The stones were cold under my hands, and I curled my fingers into fists, snagging a fingernail as I did and bending it backward. I barely felt it as my heart raced at the familiar smell drifting in from the single window.
Knowing exactly where I was, I shot to my feet and ran to the wall opposite the one with the small barred window, and punched with all my might at the stone. I didn’t want to see out the window on the other side of the room. Not again. Not ever again.
Pain lanced from the bones in my hands which had exploded into a fine sand, but I didn’t stop punching the wall. Warm blood splashed my face with each fruitless impact, accompanied by desperate yelps through grinding teeth. My jaw popped from the strain of clenching my teeth together as spit streamed over my tight lips and into my beard. I was vaguely aware that frantic madness was already setting in and I hadn’t been in the situation for more than a minute or two.
The smell of cooking flesh hit my nose and paralyzed my body as if the floor were a conduit connected to a generator.
“No,” I exhaled, refusing to let the army of tears loose from their prison. I was not going to give Satan the satisfaction of seeing me weep. “No!” I barked as I looked at the ceiling. “You’re going to have to do better than that, asshole!”
“John,” an apparition whispered from behind, and I whirled to find myself inside the bull next to my mother.
My throat tightened as if I were being choked, refusing to let anything but a whimper escape.
“Mom?” I mouthed wordlessly, reaching out with a trembling hand. I saw the plump, bruised, and bleeding hand that had been shattered against the wall, and switched to my other, reaching out to touch her skin. She looked at me, recognition flashing in her features.
My fingers inched closer, terrified of what the exploring hand might find if it touched her flesh.
When my fingertips were almost caressing the skin on her arm, she jerked in surprise and began shrieking in wild agony. I yanked my hand back, scared I had hurt her, before I saw her exposed skin start to bubble.
“MOM!” I cried out, desperation making my pitch high. I moved to envelope her in my arms, not feeling any of the heat myself, and she bucked and writhed. I pulled her on top of me so none of her flesh was in direct contact with the brass of the bull, and she stopped screaming. Her pained moans accompanied my galloping gasps as we sang our duet of torture.
White eyes without pupils or irises locked onto mine as she pressed our faces nose to nose.
“Save me, John,” she pleaded in her soft Irish tone. Goose bumps exploded down my body at hearing her voice. At that moment, I realized I had never heard her beautiful voice as a vampire, which meant I couldn’t remember it with the perfect recall of a preternaturally enhanced eidetic memory. I missed it, and hadn’t fully comprehended so until that moment. “Save me,” she repeated.
I wrapped her in my arms and began hammering on the door with my good hand, belting out a long scream that pulsed with each pound of my fist. The brass was warm against my fist, refusing to budge while increasing in temperature.
My mother began screaming as the air inside heated. She wriggled on top of me and started clawing at the metal walls of the bull, breaking fingernails in her desperation to escape. I watched in wide-eyed horror as bloody fingers left streaks on the walls like a prison inmate tallying the days.
Leveling her face with mine again, she cried out, “Don’t let me die, John! Please, don’t let me die! Not like this!”
I froze, unsure of what to do as I watched the skin on her arms start to split open.
“It hurts, John! It hurts so much! PLEASE! PLEASE, STOP THE PAIN!”
“O-okay…Mom,” I whispered hollowly before I reached around her back to grasp her shoulder with my busted hand, then her chin with the other, and jerked, snapping her neck.
Her yelp of surprise w
as abruptly cut off, and she rag dolled on top of me, lifeless. I stroked her hair as a current of sorrow wracked my body in heaving sobs. Snot bubbled out of my nose and my tears boiled and evaporated against the scalding brass of the bull as they fell from my face.
My mother jerked her head with the sickening grinding sound of bone on bone to stare into my eyes again before she screeched in pain. Her skin resumed splitting open as muscle separated from the bone.
“PLEASE, JOHN! STOP THE PAIN! HELP ME!” As she cried, her voice deformed and stretched from the heated air that burned her throat and lungs.
I let out a long, horrified scream from sheer helplessness, realizing this was exactly what Satan wanted to show me. I would never be able to save her, forced to watch her die over and over for eternity, or until my mind snapped.
The door on the side of the bull opened, and I was relieved to see Locke’s face peering inside. A scowl was etched on his features.
“Locke! Help me!” I cried, holding out my hand.
In Commander Godwin’s voice he drawled with a smile, “Not dead yet. Close the door and resume the cleansing.”
“Lo-Locke?” I stuttered, confused.
“Hello, John,” Godwin said, shifting his voice to Locke’s. “How could you forgive me so easily for murdering both of your parents? I just pulled your father’s intestines out only moments ago after I lied to him about releasing his family.” He then closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Great, now I’m hungry.”
“This isn’t real. This isn’t real!” I growled between my teeth while squeezing my eyes tight.
A long hand gripped my cheeks and pulled my face to the side. I opened my eyes and saw my friend, Locke, staring at me with a shit-eating grin.
“Welcome to eternity, John, where pain is a currency and you’re going to be the richest man in all of Hell.”
I fell back in my chair, tumbling to the floor and rolling to my feet while frantic eyes shot around the bar. Grand Master Silver stood, holding his staff in hand as he watched me with a stern face. There was no delight in what he had done to me. My chest heaved with breaths that would have caused a mortal to hyperventilate as wide eyes looked all around.
