Dust (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 3)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  “Speak English,” Clement snaps.

  “If we fuck him up too much,” Keith translates, “we’ll have to carry his ass all the way to Tintagel.”

  “We might have to now,” Harris says.

  My skin crawls as if their eyes are on me.

  Clement clears his throat. “Now the Godslayer is bound to be smart. Torture will make a man say anything. What if he doesn’t know about Blood Pass? What if he just makes shit up?”

  Keith snickers. “It doesn’t matter if he tells the truth, as long as he says something. Igraine’s talked to Myla. If Igraine thinks he knows the pass, then we can use him for the trade no matter what.”

  “We should kill him,” Alec says.

  Now we’re talking.

  “And give up a chance to get our hands on that Angel?” Keith balks.

  “He killed God, Keith.” Alec’s voice is calm for once. “If we trade him away, he’s going to escape. He’s going to hunt us down and kill us. He’s—”

  “Watch your words,” Durgan says. “I believe the Godslayer is awake.”

  A shiver runs down my spine.

  I hear some shifting, and I open my eyes. Keith is standing over me, his face like a demon’s in the pale light of the smokeless fire.

  “Don’t worry,” Keith assures me. “Igraine wants an infidel pet whether or not it comes furnished with the information.” He turns, looking to his men. “Durgan, get out there and set up our cover. I don’t want his friends following us. When you come back, let’s move as far as Lukehold. You can begin torturing the Godslayer there.”

  I awaken to see Fin hovering over me in the darkness.

  The fire has gone out, but there’s enough ambient light from the stones of Hell for me to make out his features. There is genuine caring in Fin’s eyes. He’s the new guy, of that I’m sure. He’s a young man, maybe twenty, who hasn’t quite yet reached equilibrium age. His eyes are close set under thin eyebrows, and his light hair is curly.

  This man shouldn’t be in the Order, he’s too young. He shouldn’t even be in Hell. Or maybe his looks are deceiving and this motherfucker is the most sadistic of them all. Hard to tell.

  He’s offering me some water. “Drink slowly.”

  “Fuck your mother, Fin,” I say, getting up to my knees.

  He chuckles and holds up a bladder of water, not a canteen, mind you, but an actual bladder. Now is it a dyitzu’s, a hound’s? A human’s? I have no fucking clue, but right now I wouldn’t care if it was St. Pete’s bladder, I’m thirsty enough to drink diarrhea.

  God that’s disgusting. Only I would make myself vomit while nearly dead from dehydration.

  I look around to the other hyenas, who for once aren’t focused on me. It looks like Durgan isn’t back yet.

  “Lean your head back when you need a break,” Fin says.

  He puts the thing’s nozzle up to my lips and squeezes. The water fills my mouth and I gulp it down. More’s coming, and more after that and more after that. When I lean back to take my lips away, I realize I’m breathing heavily, as if drinking had exhausted me.

  “A little more, Godslayer,” Fin says.

  “I take back everything I ever said about you,” I tell him.

  And he lets me drink more. I think I like this guy.

  Great, I’ve been captured for one night, and I’m already suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.

  “I’d spare you more,” Fin says, “but I’m not sure how long it will be until we find water again.”

  I give him a grin. “Sorry about your God, kid. I didn’t mean it.”

  Well, if I was trying to make a friend, I just ruined the moment. His close-set eyes fill with sorrow. He turns away.

  To say religion isn’t really my strong point is an understatement on the level of saying there was a slight mix-up on the Hindenburg, so it’s hard for me to empathize with this guy. I know there were people back in the old world who loved God truly, like he was another person or something. They had a relationship with the guy. They would see him every Sunday, and call him every night before bed. God was there with them through thick and thin. They’d be overcome with love and emotion and adoration and the light. That religious zeal and ecstasy, it had never been for me—to me, God was that strange aunt who you only remembered on Christmas when she sent you a twenty dollar check enclosed in a Hallmark greeting card—but it must have been for this guy.

  Right up until I fucked it for him.

  I feel bad, but I don’t have an apology left in me.

  “It’s your own fault, you know,” I tell him. “A man’s got no business worshiping a devil.”

  And then, I shit you not, he slaps me. Like he was some kind of bitch. I’m so shocked I must have forgotten to react.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face,” he says, overcome by emotion, his voice high pitched enough to nail home the illusion that I was talking to a slighted woman from a sixties flick, “Xyn was not evil.”

  “Right,” I say. “Maylay Beighlay fell apart from his holiness.”

  “He destroyed evil institutions.” Fin’s voice is now loud enough to make me fear he might call in some devils.

  “And replaced them with . . .”

  He slaps me again, and this time I can’t help but laugh.

  Suddenly Harris is there, pistol whipping me.

  It’s a bit harder to laugh that one off.

  “You fuck with anyone you want,” Harris warns me, nostrils flaring, “but you fuck with Fin again, and I don’t care how much you’re worth to Keith, I’m going to slaughter you.”

  “Easy, tiger,” I say, “I didn’t mean to disturb your lover, and torturing me is Durgan’s job, remember.”

  He flips off the safety.

  Please.

  Do it.

  I can’t live anymore.

  But dying won’t save me from life.

  It won’t save me from the fact that God sent me to Hell to protect Myla, and I had accomplished the very opposite. In this moment, staring into the gun, I remember when she and I had sat together so long ago on the banks of the river by the brineberry bushes, the both of us crying, holding each other, sobbing as one because of the damage we were doing to ourselves. How can two people want to love each other so much and not be able to?

  Durgan’s soft voice washes over us all. “He wants to die, Harris.”

  Harris, sweat droplets on his forehead reflecting the dim light of the chamber, looks toward the marble man.

  “I don’t know why,” Durgan’s gravelly voice continues. “Maybe his son died. Maybe his lover.” How close Durgan is to the truth scares me. “Maybe it’s something else,” the wight goes on, “but that man, he wants you to shoot him.”

  Keith pushes Harris aside, and then pulls away Fin.

  “Can you walk?” he asks me.

  Harris is literally shaking. No one here is doing well. I knew the Order would be unhealthy, but I didn’t think it would be like this. They really are fucked . . . or wait.

  Keith’s blue eyes look dead inside.

  Oh my God.

  “You went to Soulfall,” I say aloud.

  I think of what happened to Neb, of how that place almost destroyed him. Of how it nearly broke Cid. Of how it stole Aiden from me.

  These people, they’re not just evil and unbalanced, they’re soulfucked.

  “You did!” I say quickly. “You idiots, you followed us there? You couldn’t have just waited for us to come out?”

  “We didn’t know,” Fin moans. “We didn’t know.”

  Alec begins to cry. Clement starts to console him, putting an arm around his shoulder, but Alec shoves him away.

  Durgan’s black eyes bore into me.

  “Keith,” I say, and I’m surprised by how honestly I mean this sentiment, “you had no right to do that to these people.”

  This evil superman was hurt, and hurt badly. I sense it somehow from his expressionless face, but unlike the others, Keith’s too tough to show it.

  �
�I asked if you could walk,” he says calmly.

  He kneels down beside me and works diligently at the knots on my wrists. The sudden rush of blood into my fingers feels pretty gnarly. It’s not so much that it hurts—well, I mean, it does—but the tingling sensation is so different from anything else I’ve felt that it’s hard to classify the feeling as pain.

  I stand on my good foot, using the wall for balance. The uneven black rock rubs open a wound I have on my shoulder, but I really can’t force myself to care about it. Gingerly, I try putting weight down on my right foot.

  It’s a lot better than I thought it’d be. I just feel like falling to the ground and collapsing from the unearthly agony rather than being forced to. The joint bears my weight. Whatever is fucked up down there isn’t going to stop me from walking—and I’m unsure whether that’s a blessing or a curse.

  Keith cocks one eyebrow.

  Tears well in my eyes. “It hurts, but it’s stable. Let me wrap it, and I should be able to walk for a few hours.”

  “Good,” Keith says. “Now I know you want to get to Igraine as badly as I do, if only to get out from under my thumb, so I want you to make good decisions about your injury. Don’t overwork it, don’t underwork it. Can I have your word on that?”

  I nod. “You have my word.”

  Keith’s brief smile is meant to convey his understanding of our pact and carries in it no joy or satisfaction. “We’re going to retie you in a minute, but we’ll cut you loose and arm you if we’re attacked, understand?”

  I nod again.

  “Alright, Fin.” Keith hands me a roll of heavy gauze from his pack. “Keep an eye on the Godslayer while he wraps his ankle. When he’s done, I want to watch you tie him up. Let’s make sure your knots are sound. The last thing we need right now is to go chasing after an escaped infidel with a death wish.”

  The pain is vaguely intolerable. Each step makes me want to rip into Fin’s weak emotional underbelly, but the fucker won’t even look at me.

  I’d not traveled through these dark halls before, but the natural stone and the sudden strobes of the Erebus’ blue lightning gives me a sense of déjà vu.

  I look behind me often, hoping against hope . . . but Hell’s the wrong place for hope.

  Fortunately our progress is slow because I don’t think I could keep up otherwise.

  We stop in a small black chamber with red crystals emerging from the rock. My foot throbs incessantly into the tight gauze, and it sucks, but it sure as hell beats walking. I prop my leg up on a rock jutting out from the wall and hope like hell elevating my ankle will help.

  Keith and Durgan kneel, whispering to each other. I close my eyes and do my best to listen.

  “Too many,” Durgan is saying.

  “He’s not slowed us up so far, but I doubt he’ll be able to run,” Keith says.

  I keep my eyes shut and face impassive. I hear a whistling in my mind, strong enough for me to think it might be hellsong. It’s the whistle a boy might make as he walks nonchalantly away from a broken vase.

  I’m not eavesdropping, Keith, just keep on talking.

  “A lot of your men probably can’t,” Durgan says coldly. “I’ll leave you at the far end of the falls. The noise from the water should give you camouflage from the senses of the devils. I’ll find a free path, and we’ll attempt to cross.”

  “And you’re sure the infidels won’t be able to follow us?”

  “Correct. Even Ares’ huntsmen would have difficulty breaching such a widespread pack of dyitzu.”

  “But not you,” Keith says, and I hear amusement in his voice.

  “But not me.”

  I open my eyes, hearing movement beside me. It’s Ryan. I’m not sure what to think of his mental state. He was completely lucid in their earlier conversation about me, but now he seems dazed somehow. Maybe lost. In any event, while he’s quiet, he appears not to care about what’s going on. Maybe he’s in some kind of shock, some kind of disassociation triggered by the horrors of Soulfall.

  As he passes I notice some of the skin on his right cheek is peeling, mute evidence he’d gotten a little too close to a dyitzu fireball.

  The whole group is moving, so I shuffle back to my feet, de-elevating my leg. The blood rushing down into my foot presses my wounded ankle fiercely back into the gauze and Jessica’s boot.

  Mother-fucking-mother-fuckity-fuck-fuck.

  The next couple rooms are an agony, but as we move my extremity loosens and the pain becomes merely a fuckity-fuck-fuck.

  There is a low rumble I begin to feel as much as hear, and I wonder if perhaps it’s another form of hellsong. But no, now I recognize it. It’s the river, the Northern Lethe, traveling in a rush above our heads.

  If I could climb up a few hundred feet, I could follow that river back to Portsmouth, Dendra and Maylay Beighlay.

  But why? Why would I bother.

  There is no one left for me there.

  In the next couple rooms the rumbling gets louder, and I feel the moisture in the air. The dark, natural stone becomes slick with condensation, and the dewy drops of water give the shine of the embedded crystals a little extra zest.

  Ahead, a passage beckons, the blue of the lightning calling us forth, mixing its illumination with the red crystals and filling the tunnel with a purple color that reminds me of Q’s sword. Aiden has that sword, my lonely and lost Aiden. The son I could not save.

  The rush of the Lethe becomes deafening as we enter the low passage. The ceiling is only four feet tall, so we have to duck as we make our way through. I’m right behind Fin, and Clement is right behind me. I consider trying to fight them, bound hands be damned, in the tight confines. But I’m injured, and tired, and outnumbered, and . . . broken.

  I hear Keith talking up ahead, but the sound of the river is so loud I can’t make out his words.

  Then the passage opens up, not to the Lethe, but to the Erebus.

  It is perversely beautiful.

  The ledge we’re standing on is tucked into a ravine on the eternal cliff which marks our side of the river of darkness. It’s perhaps twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. I see and comprehend this twisted river of Hell— made of evil air rather than water—as it rushes between the two infinite rock faces. Streams of slow lightning form tangled webs of blue energy, pulsing and writhing in the effervescent flow of ire. The view, so mighty, is framed by the rising rock around me, but the obstructions lie at the very edges of my vision, so it doesn’t seem to lessen the grandeur of this terrible hellscape.

  I limp forward, peering across the dim river, seeing through its miasma to the far cliff. Between these two cliffs, of course, I can see Soulfall. The sight of the place sends a shiver up my spine. Of all my friends, I had faced the least mental damage from the nightmarish realities that echoed our own fears and insecurities. That was okay though, I’d brought my own mental doom to Soulfall in the form of my son.

  Sometimes I feel . . . like a motherless child.

  The rushing sound is coming from what is perhaps the largest waterfall I’ve ever seen. I’d forgotten the river Cid led us down was merely an offshoot of the great Northern Lethe. This is the real beast. Its wide waters, thicker than Niagara, rocket out into the river of darkness as an ancient sailor might have imagined the oceans doing at the end of the world.

  Down, down, down the waters plummet into the infinite abyss of damnation. There is no lake where they fall, though the river has dug wide juts into the bedrock beside us, laying bare abandoned beds of whetstone where its previous courses must have taken it.

  “Get a lasso around the Godslayer,” Keith shouts above the torrent of water. “And keep him away from the edge.”

  Obediently, Fin gets a rope around me and guides me to the wall.

  Durgan and Keith share a nod, and the wight heads back into the passage.

  I hate that wight. I want to kill him. To kick him off the cliff so he can fall forever. But right now, and just for right now, I wish him luck. If he fails
to scout well, then we’ll be set upon by masses of dyitzu.

  I realize that’s not really what I want. Why? Why don’t I want to die? Is it because I fear Sheol? Is it because some part of me is too stupid to realize I’ve nothing left to live for?

  I decide to stop letting my brain itch at these thoughts. It’s better that way because at the end of this hall of questions, I’m sure, is the knowledge that truly, fundamentally, I don’t want to live.

  Using my bound hands to help me, I lower myself to the floor and again prop up my wounded ankle, trying hard not to think how badly it’s going to hurt when I stand again.

  I want to close my eyes, but the brilliant blue light doesn’t really care if they’re shut or not. For a while, I try covering my eyelids with my forearm, but eventually I just stare at the river and let its hypnotic flow take my mind along with it.

  “Holy shit,” Clement shouts above the rushing waters. “Oh fuck, man. Look there! On Soulfall.”

  “Keep away from the edge,” Keith shouts back.

  Harris moves to grab Clement.

  “Look!” Clement shouts back at Harris, pointing toward Soulfall.

  Harris grabs Clement’s arm—but then stops.

  “Keith,” Harris says. “You better come take a look at this.”

  Whatever it is, I have to see it. I get up slowly, cursing inwardly as I lower my ankle. It’s so stiff I’m forced to use the cliff wall to keep my balance.

  Fin, holding the rope he’d tied around my waist firmly, follows along, giving me less slack than you’d give a disobedient dog—but at least he’s letting me go look.

  Fin doesn’t let me get any closer than five feet or so from the ledge, but I think I can see what Clement is going on about.

  There’s a room on the side of Soulfall who’s wall is made of glass. Inside, there’s a man beating furiously at the window. It’s hard to get much detail from this distance, but that man is frantic. My heart goes out to him.