Dust (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 3)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  PRAISE FOR SHAUN O. MCCOY AND THE HELLSONG SERIES

  "McCoy is a talented and bright young writer. Knight of Gehenna is a new kind of novel—a page turner in the truest sense—wrought from equal parts brawn and brain."

  —B. Butler, Author of Murder in Cairo

  "McCoy is a brilliant writer; insightful, intelligent, articulate, imaginative, and funny."

  —McKendree Long, Author of No Good Like it is

  "McCoy masterfully creates characters, scenarios and the Hell where they live. He writes with a passion, layering emotion on fantasy and science fiction, drawing in readers from beyond his genre."

  —Ginny Padgett, President of SCWW

  "Shaun is the real McCoy."

  —Laura Valtorte, Filmmaker, Author of Family Meal

  "McCoy again mixes freakishly paced action with deep emotion and a subtle plot. Soulfall blurs the lines between genres: one part Fantasy, one part Science Fiction, one part Literary Fiction—this sequel delivers."

  —Matt Michaelis, Author of Kids Summon

  "McCoy will certainly go to Hell for writing Soulfall . . . but it was probably worth it."

  —Justin Williams, Author of Blind Faith

  OTHER WORKS BY SHAUN O. MCCOY

  HELLSONG SERIES: ARTURIAN

  Even Hell Has Knights

  Knight of Gehenna

  March Till Death

  Book IV (2018)

  HELLSONG SERIES: INFIDELS: CRIS

  Affliction

  Soulfall

  Dust

  Convalescence (2017)

  Execution (2017)

  Wasteland (2017)

  Restoration (2017)

  NOVELLAS

  Electric Blues

  Binary Jazz

  Infidels: Cris

  DUST

  SHAUN O. MCCOY

  SISYPHEAN PUBLISHING

  This is a work of fiction. The damnation portrayed in this novel is fictitious, and similarities between it and any actual damnation are strictly coincidental.

  Dust

  Copyright 2017 © by Shaun McCoy

  All rights reserved.

  Editor-in-Chief: Gabrielle Olexa

  Associate Editors: Kitty Garner, Andrew Anderson, Justin Williams, Meredith Oliver

  Title art: Dusan Arsenic

  Title Layout: Kirill Simin

  A Sisyphean Publishing Book

  Http://hellsongseries.com

  ISBN-13: 978-0692856611 (Sisyphean Publishing)

  ISBN-10: 0692856617

  First Edition March 2017

  This book is for Alison Reeves

  FOREWARD/ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This was not an easy book to write. Nor was it a book I’d intended to write as Soulfall had been originally plotted with a different arc.

  Looking back on it now, though, this is the book I was supposed to write. Many thanks to Gabe for keeping me on track.

  I should also thank Carson, my Brother-in-Law, since one of his insights on parenthood made it into this book.

  Oh, also, if you’re into trigger warnings, this is it. I’m not sure how you made it this far, but stop now! Go read something else.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  From Neostoicism: Philosophia

  Pain is no wound.

  —Ares

  Beware of that man who truly believes they do not lie, for they have deceived themselves first of all. It is his destiny to become a slave of the narrative he did not realize he himself created.

  —Endymion

  My son is going to kill me.

  There Aiden crouches, his expressionless face half-illuminated in the violet haze, his eyes two perfectly black pits of soulless, murderous sadism.

  He’d found me first.

  I’m not sure how. El Cid and Q are certainly better trackers. Maybe Aiden was just closer. Maybe he just got lucky. Maybe Cid and Q have abandoned me.

  Blue light crashes into the chamber, strobing in and out with the intensity of an old world lightning storm. Only there’s no thunder, just the dull roar of the Erebus. It drowns out the purple light of Q’s sword, revealing the entirety of my son’s face. He is nothing if not patient . . . and why not? What have the dead but time?

  He approached me twice before. On both occasions I managed to raise Q’s sword, and he drew back—either because he bought my bluff of violence or because he was just biding his time.

  Is it a bluff, though? Can I bring myself to kill my own son? Am I strong enough to lift the blade a third time?

  The infidels haven’t abandoned me. I know they haven’t. They’re cruel sometimes. They make choices designed to cut their losses. They leave people behind. But they didn’t here, because . . . because . . .

  The blue light fades away.

  My son stares at me from the purple-lined darkness.

  “Do you dream?” I croak.

  Speaking awakens the fire in my throat.

  He doesn’t answer.

  In the old world, a man could die in relatively good spirits. Hell is not so made. As the body passes, the weight of its dying begins to rest on the soul—just as my dehydration bears down on me now.

  I feel a burning building up inside me. Perhaps it’s the burning of damnation.

  Without any water in my body to fight the blaze, it rages unchecked.

  My heart beats faster in my chest, pounding angrily against the dying of the blue light. Even my eyes feel dry, and the still air stings them. I would close them if not for my murderous son, crouching, waiting, brooding.

  “Do you dream?” I croak again. “What do wights dream?”

  The question is a trick. I’m trying to find out if he sleeps. If he closes his eyes, I’m going to crawl away—and I would have to crawl.

  I don’t know if my ankle is broken or just severely sprained. Either means death.

  Do I even have the energy to try?

  I stare at my son, fighting a losing battle with my delirium. Insanity swirls around me, just on the edges of my vision, crashing in upon my consciousness like the blue light, bringing with it soft dreams of peace and fire.

  He still doesn’t answer. The flames burn gently in my throat, in my body, in my mind. They lift me. I can feel the ground under my feet. I can walk toward the Erebus. Fire fills me so completely that only the black river can douse my soul.

  No.

  Not real.

  I force my mind back into my body, back into the present where I lay half-propped up against the cave wall.

  Clothes rustle as my son stands.

  His soft footsteps reach my ears, just barely, over the rush of the Erebus.

  I want to grab Q’s sword, but my arm will not obey my command. It twitches, like a branch popping in an intense fire.

  I try to tell Aiden to stay away. My mouth opens, but nothing comes out. The air is like sand in my eyes, and my vision is so blurred that my approaching son is merely a shadow.

  I feel him above me, and I wait for death.

  His cold, dead fingers press into the skin around my mouth. I can do nothing to
resist. Some foreign substance touches my lips, then my teeth and my tongue and my cheeks. Then the back of my mouth and my throat.

  Water.

  I swallow it like a man possessed. The fire in my body seems to make it steam, and for a moment, that steam is hotter than even my soul, but then the rush of the cool, cool liquid fights the inferno. Relief travels down, down, down into my belly where I feel the flowing waters quenching the fires of my damnation.

  God it feels good.

  Suddenly the water is gone, but the coolness remains. The beat of my heart slows. My breathing is rapid, but soon that too begins to calm. He’s not here to kill me. My son is not going to kill me.

  I’m starting to regain my faculties. I can see, I can think, I can focus.

  But there’s another sense I’ve forgotten, one which I would not have thought important. I can taste. And there’s something in the back of my throat, brackish and rotting.

  No.

  I look to my son, crouching back in his corner.

  “You can’t!” I shout.

  The taste is a new one, but slightly familiar. It reminds me of the corpsedust Hagar had poured down my throat in Maylay Beighlay . . . but it’s somehow smoother, purer. Not corpsedust, but wightdust.

  My son is smiling, blue light shining against his otherwise purple covered face. “You don’t get to die, Father. Not without permission.”

  How much wightdust does my son produce? How much does it take to turn a man? Does the fact that I’m nearly dead change this? If he kills me now, will I become a wight straight away, or will I become a corpse first?

  Patient, still unmoving, my son abides.

  He’s going to get a father, it looks like, one way or another. Can I blame him for wanting such a thing?

  I have energy now. Perhaps I’m strong enough to kill him. Well, physically I might be. Mentally, though, after everything I did to keep him alive . . .

  Does this quiet and brooding thing even count as my son? Maybe now is the time to make a break for it. I’m still only a few feet from the Erebus. I can try dragging myself to the cliff—but even if I somehow survive a fall, with this ankle, I will surely perish in the wilds.

  He speaks, “Are you in pain?”

  “This isn’t . . .” my voice breaks.

  He holds up the canteen.

  Jesus Christ. He’s going to keep feeding me that. Slowly but surely, I’ll turn. Everything I am, everything I’ve become, all my learning about Hell and its people, about its landscapes and its demons, all of that will be used against other human beings.

  I look back toward the Erebus.

  “Are you?” he asks.

  I turn to him.

  He cocks his head to one side. “Does it hurt you, when you think about killing Mother?”

  I cannot so much as hear Myla’s name without hearing her song picking up again.

  Sometimes, I feel . . . like a motherless child.

  The image of the dying workers in Maylay Beighlay assaults me. I’d killed them, virtual innocents, so I could get to Myla. Maybe Aiden doesn’t have to fill me with wightdust. Hell, you can pretty much leave me on my own, and I destroy everything around me. Friends, enemies, it hasn’t mattered.

  And sometimes, I feel . . . like a motherless child.

  I’ve got to be better than this.

  “Nothing?” he asks.

  “I had to kill her,” I say, ignoring the fire in my throat. “Aiden, she was destroying you.”

  “She?” He comes to his feet. “She was destroying me?” He is angry, terribly angry, but unlike the voice of an emotional human child, the voice of this wight does not quaver. “Mother and Xyn did more for me than you. They raised me. They taught me to survive in Hell. You didn’t do anything. You just killed them. You kept me on edge, in torture, for weeks!”

  A long ways . . . from home.

  Oh, son. I love you so much. “I had to.”

  “You had to torture me?” he asks. “I was in so much pain the infidels, the God damned infidels, wanted to mercy kill me. You killed the only people I ever—”

  “Look, you think that now. But Myla and the Archdevil, they were poisoning you, someday you’ll . . . you’ll . . . ”

  Someday—but it isn’t ever going to be like that, is it? Not now. I’d clung to hope. To the idea that things would get better for him. But he doesn’t want to be saved. He thinks the devils are the ones who love him. Someday is gone now, he’s a wight. There will be no someday. There will be no happy young man who will come to know and love his father. There will be no adolescent who, after a few years of growth, will understand how Myla wronged him. Who will understand that I rescued him. Who will understand why I did what I did.

  . . . in the Heavenly land. Way up . . . in the heavenly land.

  The inferno returns inside me, raging. Aiden better dose me fast or I’m liable to die right now.

  I open my eyes. He’s still there, crouching again in his corner. He’s got a canteen ready, held between both hands. I bet he’s got wightdust mixed in with it already. The brackish aftertaste of the last dose I received still lurks in the back of my flaming throat.

  His head inclines a little, and I wonder if those black eyes are focused on me.

  Then he speaks, “You hate God. Doesn’t that mean you have to side with the devils?”

  I look at the ceiling. After a moment, I push myself up so I’m resting against the stone wall. My swollen foot throbs from the motion.

  “No. I hate them, too.”

  Aiden nods. “I don’t think it’s safe to pick fights with both sides.”

  “I bet you’re fucking right.”

  I shouldn’t curse at my son, but really, as he’s already spiraled downward from problem child to monster, a few fucks are just a metaphorical spit in the bucket.

  “I am,” he says with the calm self-assurance of a religious demagogue, “and the more of me you drink, the more you’ll see that. I’m on your side, Cris. You’re going to understand why. You’ll see why the Devil wants people to resist. Why he wants people to be like you and fight Hell. I’m going to help you.”

  Help me? He’s right about one thing. All this shit he’s been saying about how I’m in the wrong, about how I shouldn’t have killed Myla and the Archdevil, it’s going to start making sense to me. Bit by bit, drop by drop, swallow by swallow, I’m going to start agreeing with him.

  I crawl for the ledge.

  “Stop!” Aiden cries.

  My right ankle is useless, but I don’t need it. Arm over arm, my left leg pumping, I head into the cave which opens to the Erebus. The river of darkness is a terrifying thing, a rush of evil pierced by stretches of snakelike lightning which worm their way through its dim clouds. I pause at the ledge, wind whipping at my hair, vertigo overcoming my senses. Those depths, they are infinite. How long can I fall before I hit one of those electric streamers? Would I be at peace for that long at least?

  “Please.” There are tears in Aiden’s voice. “Don’t leave me. Not again. You can’t leave me again.”

  My heart breaks. I look down the ledge and watch the rush of the black, mistmade river.

  “Don’t leave me all alone,” Aiden begs, inching closer.

  Something in his tone reminds me of the boy I’d known so long ago. The one who couldn’t tie his shoes. I don’t really want to die.

  “Okay,” I croak. “Okay. But only if you give me water. No wightdust.”

  He shakes his head. “Half portion.”

  I push forward, my torso now hanging over the abyss.

  “Wait!” he yells.

  I pause, inching back a little. “No wightdust.”

  “Okay, okay. And we’ll save people?” Aiden asks tentatively.

  Save people? The hell? Fuck if I understand what’s going through his mind. “Of course. We’ll save people.”

  I look back at him. He’s pondering this now.

  “Okay,” he agrees.

  He twists the cap off the canteen and
pours its contents onto the ground.

  Warily, I crawl away from the ledge.

  Aiden wakes me, and I feel water running down my throat. This time it’s pure. I can’t pretend to understand what’s going on. Maybe he’s smarter than me. Maybe this is part of his long con. Maybe this is the Devil preventing me from taking that suicide option so he can still use me as a weapon.

  After the water, Aiden hands me a chunk of some raw dyitzu meat.

  “I’ve taken your sword,” he tells me. “You were asleep, but you need more than water if you’re going to live.”

  I nod.

  “It’s right for you to stay alive and in pain, that’s good,” he says, his black eyes narrowed as if he’s working something out. “But I love you, so I want to spare you. Whenever it hurts too much, if you want to take the wightdust, let me know.”

  I need to figure him out. He doesn’t want me dead. He wants to hurt people, but he also wants to save them.

  I bite down on the raw meat. The devil’s blood fills my mouth as I chew.

  “As soon as you can walk, we need to find Mom’s body,” Aiden says. “We can be a family again. Even if she’s just a corpse.”

  I almost vomit up the water I just drank. “Are you fucking serious!” I shout.

  A wave of blue fills our room, lighting up his face. He stands, his black eyes wide.

  “No,” he breathes, but he’s not talking to me.

  Then I hear something, someone, a call in the distance.

  “You promised!” Aiden wails.

  Footsteps are coming this way. They sound booted. Neb maybe?

  Aiden darts away through the cavern’s exit.

  “Dammit!” I shout.

  But it’s too God damned late.

  He’s gone.

  Myla’s voice soars.