Hell Is Empty

by Travis E. Hughes

  “Maybe we should go with them,” Hattie said with a shrug.

  “Let them take us inside?” Roslyn asked. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing who you’re protecting.”

  “No,” Frank said. “That’s not a good idea. Best we all go our separate ways tonight.”

  “Can’t do that, boss,” Tallest said. “You don’t get to point a gun at a Red Scarf and walk away.”

  “I’m going to beg to differ on that one,” Roslyn said. “Let me see your hands.”

  Tallest slowly brought his hands up, looking someplace between amused and enraged. In his right hand he held a cheap transponder. It relied on radio waves instead of laser coms, but it would be in range enough to broadcast something to the others inside.

  Roslyn dropped Tallest with a stun bolt. A split second later, Frank dropped the two to this right. But the one on the left had drawn and aimed at Hattie.

  “I see you stunned us,” said the one standing. He had Hattie dead to rights.

  “Time for a mind fuck, Hat,” Roslyn said with a wink. But Hattie shook her head. She used up her energy trying to astral project.

  “For that, I won’t kill her when you drop your guns,” Red Scarf said. To assure the tide had drastically turned, a group of five more Red Scarves entered the alley from behind Roslyn and Hattie.

  “Shit,” Roslyn said, lowering her pearl handled Kirkland Nine.

  “Take ‘em off,” said the man wearing the purple scarf; the Ed. “Holsters to the ground. Any smaller pieces we’ll collect as well. Zed, go ahead and take their guns.”

  Frank’s eyes told Roslyn he was seriously contemplating fighting back, but she met them and convinced them otherwise.

  Ed pulled up his radio transponder and pressed something on it. A few seconds later the back door of the club opened and a broad shouldered Red Scarf held it for them to ascend the back stairs. It took Roslyn a minute to realize there was a back entrance to the VIP lounge. Or was it more of an exit? Before she realized it, a couple of the Red Scarves took Frank down a side hallway to a storage room and locked him in. The others ushered Roslyn and Hattie up the stairs.

  The lounge proved opulent to say the least. Velvet curtains hung over walls and windows alike. A large chandelier sparkled the dim lights into tiny fragments. Roslyn counted several scantily clad sexbots and human women as well, milling about. Bottles of booze and wine and champagne sat on small tables. She also counted twelve Red Scarves among other tough looking men.

  She nearly laughed out loud when she spotted the guest of honor playing roulette with a beautiful woman on his arm. She assumed the woman was named Silvia. The blue feather in his bowler bobbed back and forth when he threw the dice down the velvet table and everyone cheered.

  But then she froze when a group of people moved by and opened the view of a man seated in a corner booth. Next to him sat two enormous Amazon bodyguards. He’d lost his Lycan and now he used Amazons as muscle. Roslyn’s brain struggled to comprehend what she was walking into.

  “My, my, looky what we have here,” Rex Omnious said doing his best Dogg Holly. “You know, it is always so awkward when old friends meet new ones.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  There were too many questions for Roslyn to focus on any one in particular. She tried to focus on what she did know.

  Rex stared at them with a glassy, feral look in his round, black-outlined eyes and that boyish smirk on his fat lips. Had he somehow orchestrated all this? It didn’t make any sense.

  “Don’t you look like someone just shat in your straw basket,” Rex said, clamping his hands together in one loud, sharp pop. This caused Hattie to jump beside her. Roslyn was proud she only blinked.

  “The hells are you doing here?” Roslyn managed to ask.

  “Oh, I do business in New Vegas,” Rex said, taking a sip of bug juice, the translucent liquid sparkling momentarily on his upper lip. “I own the bank. Well, that is to say, I own several, but the New Vegas bank is also mine.”

  This caused Roslyn to suddenly feel like she was falling. Like the floor had given way. The implications of it were staggering and horrifying. How far did this bastard’s hand reach? Why was he around every corner they turned?

  Rex leaned back in the booth and licked his lips. There was something reptilian about him and for a moment Roslyn imagined small goat horns extending from his head.

  “What’s he doing here?” Roslyn asked, pointing her obscenely long thumb across the room to Kidd Wylie throwing dice. The woman, who Roslyn assumed was Silvia Sood, kissed them before he tossed the bones again. He was on a roll it seemed. The gathered crowd cheered.

  “Why, that’s Kidd Wylie,” Rex said with a sly expression. “Watch yourself around that one. He’s notorious.”

  “How do you know him?” asked Roslyn. She gave Hattie side–eyes hoping to convey a signal, pleading with her to do her thing and read this asshole’s mind. At least tell her if he’s lying.

  “I just officially met him tonight, actually. But if I must confess, I knew who he was from long before,” Rex said, leaning his chin forward to get a better look at what was happening at the craps table. “He took down an entire gang of thugs, all by himself. Isn’t that something?”

  “I’ve heard the story,” Roslyn said with a frown and quick nod of her head. “You’re seriously telling me this is all just a coincidence? Come on.”

  Roslyn turned to Hattie, trying to hide her annoyance at her lack of Bird magic. But her expression immediately softened when she noticed the lost look in her friend’s eye and the trickle of blood pooling in her nostril, and finally down her lip.

  “The hells the matter with you?” Roslyn asked, putting her arm around Hattie. Hattie leaned toward her.

  “You see that feather in his cap?” Rex asked, pointing toward Kidd Wylie.

  “Hattie? Look at me.” Roslyn continued worrying about her friend over whatever mind game the cattle baron turned banker was trying to pull. Hattie slumped and Roslyn found a chair for her to sit. Hattie leaned forward putting her head in her hands.

  “What is wrong with you?” Roslyn asked.

  “Oh, well, I was trying to explain,” Rex said, then held two fingers over his mouth and waited until Roslyn looked up at him again. When she finally did he continued.

  “I asked if you noticed the blue feather in our guest of honor’s hat?” Rex said. Roslyn turned and watched the long feather weave and bob with the kid’s movements.

  “Sure,” Roslyn said with a sigh, then returning to Hattie.

  “Would you believe me if I told you that was a feather from a bird named Kadmiel of the white sands of Shiva?” Rex said looking pleased as a father might about his favorite son’s greatest achievement.

  “What are you saying?” Roslyn asked taking a closer look at the feather. It seemed flecked with streaks of orange. It was certainly the powder blue of the Holy Avians.

  “Kadmiel was a stern but loving creature, who was trying to help the homeless children of Chindown. Kidd Wylie over there, rewarded the bird’s kindness with a shotgun blast to the head,” Rex said, raising his eyebrows almost for comic effect.

  “What? Why would anyone do that?” Roslyn asked. She then noticed Hattie still slumped forward writhing in serious pain. “What does that have to do with…?”

  “Your pretty little friend, Hattie, isn’t the only one who has studied with the Birds, my darling,” Rex said, sticking an olive with a toothpick and plopping it into his puckered lips.

  “Are you saying, Kidd Wylie also studied with the Birds and is somehow blocking Hattie’s abilities?” Roslyn asked.

  “Not that foolish child,” Rex said with a dismissive frown. “I studied with them, my love. Yours truly, Rex Omnious. I may have picked up a trick or two during my time on Shiva, is the point I’m trying to make, here.”

  “Did you have something to do with Kidd Wylie killing that Avian?” Roslyn asked, trying to piece together his mystery. “You said before that you just met him.”

&
nbsp; “Oh, we didn’t meet when I was on Shiva, dear child. Not face-to-face,” Rex said, motioning for the Amazon on his right to let him out of the booth. “No, I just saw his potential is all and from the shadows I may have influenced him to end Kadmiel’s life.”

  Rex stood and straightened his jacket. The large rings on his fingers caught the light.

  “See, I was there studying under Lord Kadmiel,” Rex said approaching Hattie. Roslyn took a step between them. “But things had taken a foul turn between us, I’m afraid. He began to suspect I was nothing but pure evil. Can you imagine that?”

  “No,” Roslyn said, surprised by her own sarcasm. Did it embolden her or was she hiding behind it? The mole suggested the latter.

  “Well, the truth is, I have too much business in Chindown to be kicked off that world,” Rex said, and motioned for Ed to grab Roslyn from behind. She elbowed the purple scarf-wearing thug in the gut and then stepped on his foot. But the enormous Amazon beside Ed latched onto her and held her in a firm grip. There was no struggling free. Roslyn understood that instantly.

  “Let’s all calm down,” Rex said. “I only want to have a look at your friend here. She shows uncanny ability, I must say. I pray to the Birds that I didn’t break her.”

  Rex lifted Hattie’s chin with two fingers and he glared into her eyes. There was the illusion of sympathy on the devil’s face. A frown, suggesting concern, was followed by an exaggerated puffing of his bottom lip. Roslyn realized, to her shame and disgust, that she had become fixated slightly on Rex’s lips. She’d been attracted to bad boys in the past but this was repulsive.

  “Get your fucking hands off of her!” Roslyn shouted. The craps game had ended when the Amazon grabbed Roslyn, but she wasn’t aware of its terminus until she screamed and realized the room had fallen relatively silent.

  “You’re going to be okay, my pet,” Rex whispered to Hattie. He pulled from his inner pocket a velvet kerchief that most certainly must have belonged to Dogg Holly, and delicately wiped the blood from her mouth and nose.

  “What do you want with us? What do you want with Bill Talbert?” Roslyn asked from the midsection of the Amazon. She felt like a little girl throwing a tantrum and being restrained by an adult.

  “Devil Bill?” Rex’s eyes lit up. “He killed my best friend in the whole wide galaxy. Speaking of… You managed to put out a distress call before Ed grabbed hold of you, correct?”

  “No, sorry,” Roslyn said. “I thought I had the situation under control.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to send out one now and we’ll just have to wait,” Rex said, turning to Ed. “You have her device?”

  Ed, still wincing from the stomp to the foot and the gut check, felt around in his pockets and pulled out her transponder.

  “Can you put out a distress call for the young ladies?” Rex asked Ed, who fiddled to open the screen. But he needed Roslyn’s thumbprint or eye scan. Roslyn closed her eyes and made fists.

  “Oh, come now, Miss Fink,” Rex said nearly amused. “Let’s not be juvenile here. I just want to see my old friend again. Promise I won’t kill him or anything. Though he certainly deserves it after what he did to Mookab. Poor creature.”

  But this was interrupted by an alarm. Suddenly sprinklers came to life around the building. Downstairs the music stopped thumping and a large crowd screamed and rushed the exits. Smoke billowed up the stairs and rolled into the room from under the door and through the vents. Roslyn didn’t need the Birds’ magic to know Grace had figured out something had gone wrong. That girl loved to burn shit.

  “We should probably get out of here, boss,” Ed said as the room began to fill with white smoke. “This whole place is a tinder box.”

  “That is why the bank is made of brick,” Rex said, shaking his head. He seemed agitated and trying to conceal it only made him seem even more unhinged. He didn’t like not being in total control. “Grab the girls, let’s go.”

  The other Amazon scooped Hattie up and tucked her under one arm as they filed toward the backstairs. They moved briskly down the stairs as smoke rose up the hallway. Ed was right, this place was burning down in an instant.

  “Frank!” Roslyn yelled. “You can’t leave Frank to burn alive in the closet!”

  “I’m not the one who started this fire,” Rex said as they reached the exit door. “That’s who should be blamed for his death. Let the record show.”

  Roslyn appreciated the attempt, but she remembered clearly telling Grace to stop setting fires. The consequences far out weighed the benefits. The exit doors were kicked open and smoke filled the alley. Flames like forked tongues licked out of the windows of the club. Blue and yellow conflagrations climbed the outer walls.

  The party exited into the smoke. But through the white haze a blue laser bolt shot and hit Ed, knocking him to the ground. From the opposite direction another blue laser bolt fired and barely missed a Red Scarf. But then there came several more blasts of stun bolts from both directions. They were pinned down.

  Three hit the Amazon before she dropped Roslyn. In the chaos, the Red Scarves began firing back. Roslyn scampered low and re-entered the building. She hurried up the hall to the storage closet.

  “Help me!” Frank cried as she approached. He was kicking at the door. Roslyn looked around. Smoke burned her throat and her eyes. She coughed and tore off a piece of her sleave to cover her mouth. She spotted an empty keg of beer. Picking it up she began bashing it into the door handle. After four hard blows she was exhausted, but mustered enough strength for a fifth. This one was the charm and the door swung open. She dropped the keg and it rolled into a wall of flame.

  Frank hurried out, seeing her exhausted, put his arm around her and moved them toward the exit. The firefight was still playing out in the alley. It was difficult to see what was happening through the smoke and darkness. Bodies of several Red Scarves littered the alley.

  The Amazons fought back to back, shooting toward the direction the laser bolts were coming. A bolt hit the one that carried her in the arm and lightning sizzled up to the shoulder before dissipating. The Amazon hissed and shot again. She didn’t see Rex Omnious any longer. She wondered if he was one of the bodies passed out on the ground. She thought she recognized Kidd Wylie sprawled out against the back wall of the butcher’s shop. Before she could pick Rex out she was hit in the chest with a stun bolt.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When Roslyn came to, the world looked upside down. She watched the street pass below her, or it could have been above her. She looked at the ground and the backs of a pair of legs. The bottom of a jacket obscured the ass of the person carrying her over their shoulder. This, along with her closer proximity to the ground, told her an Amazon wasn’t carrying her. She tried to lift her head, but it ached. The man’s shoulders pressed hard against her ribs and each step felt like a tiny blow to the gut.

  She thought she recognized the boots and then she did.

  “I can walk,” Roslyn said to Talbert’s boots. “Put me down. I can…”

  The boots stopped walking and the man’s knees bent. She climbed off of his shoulder. Talbert touched the brim of his hat as she stood, catching her breath. She looked around at the group of agents, all accounted for. Then she turned to Grace.

  “We talked about you burning down buildings, right?” Roslyn asked, looking back to see the smoke rising from the center of town. Lights flashing suggested a fire brigade had formed and several people were working to put it out before it spread to engulf all of downtown New Vegas.

  “But you are free now, yes?” Grace asked with large dewy eyes and a wry smile.

  “But did we learn nothing from Phoenix?” Roslyn asked. “We have a good standing in this town. Let’s not blow that up, by burning it down.”

  “I am sorry. I panic and I make fire to get everyone out of the place. The rest of us coming to shoot them when they coming out,” Grace said, motioning at the other nine agents gathered around.

  Roslyn was joyfully surprised that they
had all made it out unscathed. But she was over the moon when she noticed the person Berry Gould and Sixter Windlestein carried between them. The blue feather gave it away before she was able to see the scruffy teenager’s face.

  “What happened to Rex Omnious?” asked Roslyn.

  “When the fight was over and we moved in, we only found Kidd Wylie and you lying amongst the other Red Scarves,” Siringo said. “Hattie was still awake but dazed.”

  “Rex and his Amazons were gone,” Talbert said. “Not sure how or where they vanished to.”

  “Did you see anything?” Roslyn turned to Hattie. Hattie only shook her head.

  “We need to keep moving,” Talbert said, motioning for everyone to return to his or her positions. Hassan Sardana took point again. Frank and Siringo took up the rear.

  “I texted Bat Matters and Earl Wyatt to meet us at the jail,” Talbert said. “Need to put him behind bars before the Amazons and that shit-heel can regroup.”

  Rounding the block they came to the jailhouse. Earl Wyatt was there, but there was no sign of Bat Matters. Wyatt explained that his boss was off chasing down a lead for another case in the hills.

  Kidd Wylie woke as they placed him in the small eight-by-ten cell and closed the metal door.

  “What’s all this?” asked Kidd as he looked up at the faces staring back at him through the bars. Hattie sat in the lotus position next to the cell, eyes closed and deeply entranced.

  “You are the subject of a warrant out of Yanker,” Roslyn said. “We are taking you back there for the bounty on your head.”

  “Oh,” Kidd said and shrugged. “That.”

  Kidd Wylie then locked eyes with Talbert. Recognition struck him and he grinned and nodded, like he understood something better now.

  A thought suddenly made Roslyn pull Talbert to the side. They crossed the office and he instinctively looked out the window as they talked.