by Peter Clines
St. George leaped forward, his weapon raised. He’d never used a sword before, but he figured between the cutting edge and his strength he could do a fair amount of damage with one.
He’d forgotten how fast the demon was. It had been fast as an ex. It was a blur now. The sword came down and Cairax was three yards away.
The monster’s tail lashed out and parried the blade, almost knocking it out of his hand. St. George tightened his grip and felt the hilt crumple under his fingertips. He swung again, but the sword sliced air. The demon was behind him.
It laughed.
St. George spun and let the weapon swing wide. Cairax sidestepped, this time moving slow enough for him to see how easy it was. The demon glared down at him and its tail shot forward like a striking rattlesnake. It shot past his guard to punch him in the chest. The world blurred and the last panes of the pet store’s plate glass exploded against his back. He managed to hold on to the sword.
Behind the demon, Max leaped from the rooftop and drifted toward the ground. Clouds of light billowed off his hands like steam. His lips were moving, but St. George couldn’t hear the words.
Cairax Murrain stalked forward and St. George threw himself at it. He thought of every Conan and Beastmaster movie he’d watched as a teenager and brought the sword down with a roar. The demon put up its arm and the blade bit into the flesh. It felt like cutting into a tire. The hero pulled back and swung the blade again. It cut into the meat of Cairax’s forearm and hit a bone that could’ve been solid rock.
Something snapped in the sword’s handle. St. George felt the twang of breaking metal and the blade rattled against the guard. He pulled his arm back and the sword fell apart in his hands. The pommel and guard dropped away. The blade tipped and fell back over his shoulder. They all clattered on the pavement.
He stood there for a moment holding the hollow hilt.
The demon let out a deep laugh. “You face me with toys, little hero?” it rumbled. “You dishonor your namesake.”
There was a blur of motion, a hot rush of pain, and St. George was hurtling through the pet store. He shredded his way through two sets of shelves, smashed some glass terrariums, and plowed into a checkout counter. He hit the wall, felt the cinder blocks crack, and dropped to the floor. His chest was wet, and a few spots of blood spread across his tattered shirt.
The floor was trembling, like a low-level earthquake, and by the time he recognized the rhythmic tremor as footsteps Cairax had grabbed him by the head and hurled him back out into the street. He struck the rear of a car. The bumper wrapped around him, the trunk collapsed, glass shattered, and St. George found himself in the backseat.
The ground shook again. He pushed himself free of the wreckage. He grabbed the loose bumper and swung it like a bat. It hit Cairax in the side of the head with a shriek of metal on bone, tore in half, and sent the demon stumbling back. St. George leaped into the air, pulled back his fist—
—and plunged back to the ground. He hit hard, and the confusion of it dropped him to his knees. He tried to push off, to get himself moving again, and the ground pressed up against him. His body was too heavy to move. His head settled against the ground and he heard Cairax Murrain moving behind him. It was chuckling.
Max stepped into his line of sight. The sorcerer pressed his palms hard against each other, his fingers tickling his wrists. A crackle of static surrounded his hands, like the St. Elmo’s fire that marked doomed ships.
“Told you to watch your back,” said Max. He walked over to stand by the demon. “You’re not going to believe me, but I’m really sorry it had to go down like this.”
MY FIRST THOUGHT is “No.”
Just “No” over and over again. I end up shouting it. Not that anyone can hear me. When you’re dead, people tend to ignore you.
Of course, I’m not really thinking or shouting. I have no language in this state. Barely have consciousness. Just enough to know how screwed I am. The image of Burgess Meredith with broken glasses appears and vanishes before I can understand why it’s relevant.
This can’t be happening. It’s stupid. It’s ridiculously stupid. I planned for everything. Broken wards. Magical interference. Demonic vassals. I even took precautions against my death. Only an amateur wouldn’t.
I didn’t think about undeath, though. I mean, why would I have planned for a zombie apocalypse? The whole idea of it’s ridiculous.
This can’t be happening!
I died. I know I died. The death shudder, the last breath, the silver cord parted. I even pissed myself. I’m dead. I should be free, but
I’m trapped in here.
No. No. No. No. No.
The Marley’s gone wrong. I can feel it. It’s like a door that opened enough to let you see out, but not enough to fit through it. I’m bound here. Right here.
I’m trapped in a zombie. Stuck inside the reanimated corpse of a demon. A scrap of consciousness in the back of a dead brain. At least until one of these trigger-happy soldiers decides to …
Oh. Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. I’m bulletproof. They can’t shoot me in the head. I’ll be trapped in here forever. No, no, no, no!
No, be calm. No, I won’t. Stealth had the Dragon putting down all the superhuman types who changed. He’ll find me—find Cairax—break his neck or crush his skull, and that’ll be that.
Of course … we fought once before and it’s not like he hurt me. Hurt Cairax. He won the fight but only because I backed off.
I realize I’m much more conscious than I should be. Enough so that I can understand that I shouldn’t be able to think about why I can think. Something has changed in the dark corners of the mind. Something has been added to the mix, something not-me I can differentiate myself against.
And then I realize what it is. I realize what’s just woken up in here with me. Oh, no, no, no, no, this can’t be happening. This cannot have gone so wrong. It just can’t.
The Marley’s trapped him in here, too.
Trapped him in here with me.
I scream for a month. Or maybe two.
If I was using vocal cords to scream, they would’ve gone hoarse ages back. They might have snapped. But this is a silent scream. It goes on and on.
Again, I have no language, because I’ve been blinded to everything except the pain. Now that we’re alone at last, Cairax Murrain is making me pay for binding him in the Sativus. Lacking his usual tools, he’s forced to use what he has at hand to torture me.
My memories. Memories of every scrap of physical, emotional, or spiritual pain I’ve ever suffered. Thirty-three years of agony.
I’m hurled across the room during an exorcism and my elbow breaks as I hit the far wall. I find the letter from Marie-Anne saying she’s left me for Anselm. A tooth cracks as I bite down and the cold air hits the nerve. The flu wrenches my stomach and my throat convulses from food and bile going the wrong way. An excruciating hangover at nineteen. The bitter cold outside the womb. A sharp kick to the testicles six months before I die, followed by a rifle butt to the jaw.
And of course, again and again, the feeling of my flesh turning inside out when I use the Sativus medallion to take possession of Cairax’s body. Every muscle in my body spasms. Horns tear through my forehead. New teeth shred my gums and lips. Talons rip open my fingertips. He appreciates the irony in this. What was torture for him is now torture for me. After my death I make the transformation tens of thousands of times more than I ever did in life.
After two months of screaming, or maybe three, he stops. I don’t know why. When he talks to me, it’s with the voices you hear in the back of your head. He speaks with the sound of imagined conversations and half-remembered dreams.
It shall give me great pleasure to destroy you for this disgrace, little soul.
I shout back, “No.” My voice only sounds different because I want to be heard. In this place, in the state we’re in, neither of us has a real voice.
To make one such as me a mortal plaything is a dishonor beyond measure. To
sully the unholy titles of Cairax Murrain with acts of selflessness and charity. To make mortals cheer my name when they should shriek and cower and beg. Such a painful insult must be returned in kind.
I manage another “No” before he begins again.
My screams are the chorus for a symphony of pain that goes on for another four or five months without interruption. Almost half a year with every agony of my life on a loop. The tattoo needles stab down again and again. A kneecap shatters on my twenty-eighth birthday. Three fingers burn on the stove when I’m four. An absolutely gorgeous dead woman bites down on my tongue and tears it away. My skin crawls with infection while the straps bite into my wrists and ankles. My dog, Muggsy, hit by a car and dies in my arms when I’m nine. A broken nose in a bar fight. Marie-Anne tears away a clump of my hair for the doll and leaves my scalp bleeding.
Cairax stops again. The pauses let him enjoy the torture even more. He’s a gourmand of agony, making himself wait so he can savor each sweet morsel of my pain. He breathes in my suffering.
You shall long for the feeble torment of this imprisonment. You shall look back at our time here together with such pleasure and happiness. These shall be the happy memories that sustain you.
My head is spinning from the lack of torture. It doesn’t know how to work with the constant agony, but it’s hit the point I’m having trouble without it. Part of me wants to give up and just accept it. On some level, I always knew this is how I would end up. Despite all my attitude and style, I knew nobody beats the house in the long run.
I don’t beg. Begging will just make it worse. I don’t know how it could get worse, but I know it will. “We both know this wasn’t supposed to happen,” I say. “This isn’t my fault!”
Only the worst of craftsmen blame their tools for their failures.
But I sense there’s a puzzle piece in front of me, one of the edge pieces that tells you how everything fits together. And Cairax hasn’t seen it. There still might be a chance to get out of this.
Your cries shall ring out through the Abyss for ten times ten generations. My hands shall deliver unto you every pain and affliction and violation that has ever been known to man or beast. It will take you ten thousand years just to reach the brink of oblivion, and another ten thousand to fall in. And every moment of that time, my sole purpose shall be to make it worse for you.
I realize what he’s missed. Or maybe what he didn’t want me to notice. We’re still here. Still trapped in a mass of rotting tissue by a short-circuited spell inked into my skin.
I manage a chuckle and Cairax glares at me.
What aspect of your future is so pleasing to you, dearest Maxwell?
“It’s your future, too,” I remind him. “And we’re not there yet, are we? It’s been, what … six months? Maybe seven?”
I feel the smile on his face. It’s a terrifying expression, even when it’s just a mental construct. Did I miss something else? Some detail that slipped past me? I decide to press on.
“Over half a year since we died,” I say. “And no one’s shot us in the head or disposed of us somehow. We’re still both trapped in here. How long will you be able to keep this up? A year, maybe?”
He laughs. I want to drink bleach to clean out my head from the sound. His laughter just gnaws away at my essence, at my fabric of being.
Dearest little Maxwell, he tells me, we have only been here together for a day now.
And then he makes me start screaming again.
I don’t know how long it’s been. The rest of the day? Weeks? Months?
The only things left in my mind are memories of pain, and memories of memories of pain. There’s no space for anything else. I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t constant agony racking every inch of my body and mind. I’ve lost all concept of what order my life happened in, because it’s all dependent on the pain.
At some point, Cairax gets bored and decides to let me breathe for a few minutes. It’s like pulling a burn victim from a fire and leaving them sitting on the ground. I’ve hit the point the lack of torture isn’t any better than the torture itself. Even with the pain gone, I writhe and flail from a thousand aftershocks. I have an excess of agony to process before I can think.
Ahhh, the exquisite torture you have to look forward to in the Abyss. The eons we shall have together before your soul is rent and fed to the lesser reavers. And then …
“And then what?”
Cairax Murrain turns to me.
I’ve said the words without thinking. Now I need to think fast. “Then what?” I say again, trying to buy myself an extra moment or two.
And then I see it. It’s like magic. Magic isn’t on the surface, it’s the ninety percent below water. I know how I’m going to get out of this.
“There isn’t going to be anyone else,” I say. “I’m the last soul you’ll ever get.”
His spines rustle like a buzzard ruffling its wings.
“I was right before. We’re still in here. No one’s put us down. And considering we’d be pretty damned dangerous as one of the walking dead, I think it’s because there’s nobody to do it.”
Cairax stalks around me. He’s angry, but the anger’s not directed my way for the first time in … well, a long time.
“If we ever make it out of here,” I say, “you’re going home to a dwindling kingdom in the Abyss.”
Your prattling tires me, dearest Maxwell. Your screams are such better company.
He raises a claw to begin again.
“Wait!” I shout. “Wait! What if we made a deal?”
Your gall is beyond measure. The jailer is willing to bargain when his prisoners free themselves and rise up against him. What could you possibly offer that could serve as compensation for the dishonor you have brought upon the name and title of Cairax Murrain?
But he’s amused now. Interested. He thinks it can see where I’m going, but it wants me to say the words. That’s how these things always go. Even when the deck’s marked and they’re holding all the cards, demons want it to seem like you’re the one with the strong hand, you’re the one controlling the game.
“The world,” I tell him.
And there it is. A steel wheel, five-high straight flush. I can’t think of anything he could have to beat this. This is how desperate I am. That I’d try this game with these stakes.
Cairax is caught off guard. At this point, most losers are promising to sacrifice six hundred and sixty-six people or some such idiot payment. It’s where some of the world’s best serial killers have come from. The demon’s annoyed and interested I’ve offered him something else. Considering the circumstances, I hope he’s more interested.
The rustling spines settle down. His talons tap together.
The world, as you have pointed out, is empty. It is devoid of all but the soulless ones.
“It’s not empty,” I say. “You and I both know that. There’ll be survivors. Only a few millions, but they’ll be there. And they could be all yours. Every living soul on Earth. It could be the Black Death all over again.”
He makes a dry sound like the death rattle of a snake. He’s sighing with pleasure at the memories.
And, assuming your terms were pleasing to me, what would we need to do for this, dearest Maxwell?
“Once this body is destroyed, the Marley will operate correctly. You’ll return to the Abyss, I’ll remain on Earth as a bound spirit. I can begin working to prepare a body for you. Depending on who survives, I may have the perfect one for you.”
Or perhaps you will flee and try to avoid your debts.
I shake my head. “I can’t flee. You know that. The Marley leaves me bound in spirit form. I can either stay a spirit or find a new body and die, which brings me right back to you.”
We talk. We talk for a long time. I know how the game goes. If I leave anything to chance or miss one loophole, this could all go wrong for me.
Eventually we stop talking. The demon mulls things over. I’m just starting to think he’s goi
ng to reject my offer when he speaks.
This would seem to be a beneficial contract for both of us. Your terms are accepted.
I breathe a sigh of relief. I’ve done it. I’ve beat the devil.
And your offenses? How shall we balance the books on those?
“I’m offering you the world, Cairax Murrain. The goal of every fallen one and demon since the beginning of time. Surely such a gift makes up for any inconvenience I’ve caused you in the past.”
No. It does not.
“I … I don’t have anything else to offer.”
Oh, but you do, dearest Maxwell. You can entertain me until this body is destroyed.
And now I’m screaming again.
ST. GEORGE COULD lift almost seven tons under perfect conditions. Fourteen thousand pounds. He was strong enough to pick up a car if he could balance it, and move a semitrailer when he had the right leverage. He could snap steel aircraft cables without breathing hard. His fingers could crush brick and concrete and pavement.
He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and pulled.
The glistening red cords that held him weren’t much thicker than shoelaces. They had no knots or fasteners. The lines looped around his wrists and ankles, barely tight enough to touch his skin. Max and the demon had him strung up between a streetlight and the signpost for a Trader Joe’s on the north side of 3rd Street.
Smoke whistled out between his teeth. His eyes watered from the effort. His shoulders burned and his wrists screamed with pain but the thin lines didn’t budge. He took a few deep breaths and tensed his shoulders again.
“Flex and strain all you like, my dear little hero,” said the demon. Cairax’s legs raised a little too high and reached a little too far, like a huge spider. It stalked across the road to stand face-to-face with him. “These are blood ties. They cannot be broken.”
This close St. George could see the scaly texture of the demon’s skin. The burning blue eyes locked on his, each one the size of his palm, and dared him to look away. It felt like a staring contest with a rattlesnake. The slitted nostrils trembled as Cairax sucked in air and exhaled on the hero. The monster’s breath was hot. It reeked of disease and meat.
