Hell Cop

by David C. Burton

  I fired. The shot hit him just below the knee, throwing him off balance. The sword swung down. I blocked it with the gun. The shock of the impact almost knocked it out of my hand. I scrambled away from him, surged to my feet, determined to finish it. I kicked him when he was half way to his feet. He blocked the kick. One foot slipped over the edge. He grabbed for me. The gun came up on its own, pointed at his ugly, vulnerable head.

  “You can't kill me, Getter,” he said with a confident, toothy grin. “I'm already dead.”

  “I can try,” I said back. The distraction was enough.

  On his knees, he lunged forward with the sword. I jumped back. He lunged again. I jumped back again. He reversed the blade, and I had to jump before I had my balance. I stumbled backwards, tripped, and landed on my pack which forced my back into a painful arch. In an instant he stood over me. He pressed the sword's point into my arm till I dropped the gun. It skittered over the edge and vanished.

  “You are mine, Getter,” he assured me.

  At that moment I had to agree with him.

  A Skyhook appeared behind Mephisto. It glided silently toward him, hook down, ready to skewer the, officially, second most powerful demon in Hell. The security chief was having none of it. With perfect timing, with a smooth circuitous sweep of his sword, he severed the Skyhook's head and then its hook. The point of the sword pressed into my chest before I could even think of moving. Spraying black blood, the headless bird slowly fell into a steep dive.

  “I must take your life force now, Getter. You have distracted me long enough.”

  He raised the sword with both claws.

  “You have forever,” I said. “What's the hurry?”

  “My destiny awaits.”

  Gregory on his Skyhook came into sight behind Mephisto. Gregory looked hard at me. When he caught my eye, he raised his right hand with index finger extended, pointing at me. As the bird banked and slipped below the bridge level, he lowered his arm and pointedly pointed down.

  His meaning was clear, and I had one second to decide—fall or die. I took the full second, raised my middle finger to the looming giant, and rolled over the edge.

  Time stopped. Mephisto grew smaller in instant leaps of eternal time. His cry of anger and frustration filled 155, maybe all of Hell heard it. I floated in the sound; thought I heard rocks shaken loose from distant cliffs; thought I heard all the demons in the Tree cry out in alarm; thought I felt a collective shudder from every soul in Hell. I experienced my worst fear—falling, falling, falling. Yet, my heart was calm, my thoughts serene. It was almost soothing, the rush of the wind, the weightlessness. Death was inevitable; don't worry. Be happy. Some sweet sadness intruded: Would Brittany make it to Heaven? Poor Christine, losing another loved one to Hell. Never to see Sneaker again in the light of real life. Ah well, as my mother used to say, everything will work out in the end—so, fall, fall, fall forever.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A voice interrupted my floating thoughts. “Getter,” it said, a sweet singing sound. Was it an angel come to rescue me?

  “GETTER!”

  My mind jerked back to reality. I fell! A flash of movement on the right, another on the left. Gregory's face coming fast. Bang, I hit something. Then I fell again. A dark shape intercepted me, and I landed on the hard feathery back of a Skyhook. Little hands grabbed me. Clutching at the surprisingly soft feathers, I felt the power under me as the huge bird fought the extra weight. I breathed in the sharp, gamy, not unpleasant smell of the beast.

  “Are you all right, my friend?” Gregory yelled from his own mount, flying next to me.

  “Am I alive?” I called back.

  “Aye, you are, and a right miracle ‘tis.”

  “Then I'm okay.”

  “You won't be if he gets ahold of you again.”

  “We're safe now, aren't we, Mr. Getter?” Brittany asked. Her partially substantial hands gripped my arm.

  “Safer, anyway.”

  I looked back. The gray stone of the bridge blended into the mist. Mephisto stood huge, arms akimbo, seemingly suspended in midair. I was sure I could see his eyes glowing like dull, never forgetting embers. Minions, dark silhouettes against the gray, ran to him. His voice boomed and fireballs rained down on us.

  “Hang on,” I shouted.

  My Skyhook twisted and dove to avoid fire balls. There were too many. One hit him on the shoulder. The wounded bird screamed and lurched, almost threw us off his back. I reached across and swatted at the burning ball till it fell away. The feathers burned around the wound, and I beat them out. The bird squealed with each flap of its wings so it held them still and went into a shallow glide that took us closer and closer to the Tree.

  Gregory descended to fly at my right.

  “It's hurt bad, Greg. Is there anything I can do for it?”

  Gregory took a small brown pouch from a leather bag attached to a harness. He tied it to my gun and then flew above and a little ahead and threw it to me.

  “Rub that on the wound. It will stop the pain. His name is Ixsess.”

  I unwrapped the Fire Moss Balm and spread it over the wound. I swear I felt the bird's sigh of relief.

  “We will follow you,” Gregory called. “Ixsess will have to land soon.” I waved my understanding. Gregory said, “Getter, do you know somebody named Dimitri?”

  I was so surprised by the question I had to think before answering. “Yes. How do you know of him?”

  “The one who told us about you said to tell you he is where the three rivers come together. Look out!”

  A huge branch appeared out of the thickening fog. Ixsess dove under it. Smaller branches tugged at me as we passed under. I looked for Gregory. He flew higher, occasionally obscured by cloud.

  Another branch loomed, and another and another. Ixsess made a valiant effort to gain height, but the wound had done damage to the muscles. We continued to lose altitude, dodging branches with only a few seconds of warning. I had to clear my ears twice. Brittany and I talked to the bird, urging him on, complimenting him after each miss, telling him we could land soon. I thought of the Abyss somewhere below and wondered if we might drop into it and glide forever.

  I held on with one hand and with the other worked my Find to figure out where in Hell I was. I didn't have much luck. The Find is necessary for plotting routes through the Nexus. Once through the entrance it taps into the network and tells it where you want to go. However, it's not much good when flying blind. We were changing location both horizontally and vertically so the Find was having a hard time getting a fix. It told me the Nexus was directly behind me and that I was in 155. It couldn't tell me where we were headed.

  The branches stopped appearing. Brittany and I lay flat on Ixsess's back, my arm over her. I lost track of time. I might even have dozed. I could barely see Ixsess's wing tips slice through the fog. One second I envisioned us flying smack into a cliff—the next second the fog vanished and we flew into light.

  A long forested valley stretched out under us. The valley walls were steep cliffs of gray rock shot with glistening black and deep purple. Mist shrouded the end of the valley. A river ran out of the mist and meandered through twisted trees.

  I didn't know where we were until the valiant Ixsess banked over the river. No water flowed between the rocky banks. I'd seen it before—The River of Bones, one of the three rivers—Flesh, Bones, and Blood—that flowed together to form the River of Souls. If Gregory had his information right, I'd find Dimitri at the confluence of the three rivers.

  Ixsess was fading fast. His head drooped, and I could hear his labored breathing. He circled toward a spot, close to the mist, where the cliff jutted out, forming a tiny natural landing place about halfway down. With a last mighty flap of his great wings, Ixsess touched down.

  We immediately slipped off the Skyhook's back and hugged the cliff face to give Ixsess room to lay down. Instead, he staggered and tumbled off the rock.

  Brittany screamed. I forgot how high we were and rushe
d to the edge. Ixsess fell a couple hundred feet before he spread his wings. He screamed, too, at the pain he must have felt. He settled into a long glide that carried him into the mist, out of sight. A jumble of thoughts, which weren't mine, rushed through my head. Then there was silence.

  Stunned, at a loss for the moment, I sat against the cliff face. Brittany scrunched next to me, gripping my arm.

  “Will the big bird come back?” she asked.

  “I don't know,” I said. “He's hurt. I don't think he can fly anymore.”

  I punched buttons on the Find.

  “Where are we?” Brittany asked.

  “It appears that we're nowhere. This section has no number. There are no souls or demons here. Probably because the source of the River of Bones is here.” I punched more buttons. “There is no Nexus here. The next section has one somewhere. I guess that's where we're going. Hope you packed your hiking boots.”

  I crawled around the perimeter of the outcropping, resolutely focusing on the first twenty feet of rock and not the four hundred feet to the valley floor. I found a spot with natural looking steps leading down. I almost convinced myself that after the cavern, climbing down into the valley would be a piece of cake. It wasn't, but I made it anyway.

  Once on the valley floor, we went to the river. There were no souls in the valley, only their bones. When a soul was dismembered, buried, eaten, or otherwise destroyed his soul body emerged in three places: The River of Bones, The River of Flesh, and The River of Blood. The souls were made whole again in the River of Souls.

  I'd never seen the convergence or the headwaters, if that's the correct term, of any of the rivers. My curiosity got the better of me, so, accompanied by the crunching and grating of bones, we turned right and followed the low bank into the mist.

  The fog was fine and wet with the strong smell of an open sewer that got stronger as I carefully, on full alert, made my way over the rocks. The clack and rattle of the bones grew louder. The way steepened quickly, and I had to help Brittany scramble over and around rough, slimy boulders. I stopped to catch my breath and that's when I heard the voices.

  I couldn't distinguish the words, but bitching and moaning are universally recognizable. Already sweating in the ninety-nine degree temperature and humidity, I didn't need something else to sweat about, though my curiosity didn't seem to understand that. The dry rattle of bones falling covered our too noisy approach.

  The mist parted, and I looked down on a scene that took me back to a Halloween when I was seven. Usually, the kids walked on the opposite side of the street from the old cemetery. That was where the houses and the candy were. Macy Lunt dared me to walk inside the block long, high, sharp tipped cemetery fence from gate to gate. I said I would if he walked with me on the outside of the fence. Reluctantly, he agreed.

  It was one of those classic Halloween nights: a full moon witnessed all, a chill wind blew, dry leaves skittered down the dark street, occasionally a scream stabbed the night. I stepped over the thick chain that hung between tall stone gateposts. We walked slowly, no chickens here, whistling and giggling with false bravado. Halfway to the next gate some joker in a very good skeleton costume jumped up with a shriek and danced around the gravestones.

  I froze to the spot, as if invisible hands from underground held my feet. The skeleton looked at me with empty eyes and in a voice very like the ones coming from the mist, called out, “Hey, little boy, I want your BONES! HA, Ha, haaa. Don't be scared. Let me take them now. I'll get them eventually, I always do. I always do.”

  The skeleton leaped around the stones while I stared mesmerized with horror and fascination. The skeleton turned back toward me; its unchanging facial expression somehow changed from one of gaiety to one of meanness and greed.

  “Give me your bones NOW, little boy.” He reached out with a bony hand and took a giant step toward me. “Or I'll yank them out of you before you're dead. Give them to me!” And that's when Macy leaned through the fence and punched me in the back. “Run! Run!”

  I ran, my feet hardly touching the ground, Dracula cape trailing straight out behind.

  The voice followed me, “Come back. I'll get them in the end,” it cried out. “I always do.”

  I leapt the chain at the gate and didn't stop running till I rounded a corner a block away. Little chests heaving, Macy and I finally peeked back around the corner. The cemetery was quiet, no dancing skeletons in sight. It wasn't till later that I wondered how I saw the streetlights right through its body.

  The twins to that graveyard skeleton worked below us. Their familiar gravelly voices grumbled a chant.

  Bones, bones. Dry old bones.

  The souls want'em

  But we got'em.

  Bones, bones, we got the bones.

  Two skeletons stood in a pocket empty of mist. In their bony hands they held pitchforks. Bones—toe bones, hip bones, arm bones, skulls—flowed out of a rock face as from a Nexus, down a stone ramp and into the very beginning of the River of Bones. The skeletons used the pitchforks to pick up stray bones that slid off the ramp. They were perpetually busy.

  Bones, bones, cracked and broke,

  If the souls don't get'em

  They'll be stiff as smoke.

  Bones, bones, we got the bones.

  I'd wondered about the sources of the three rivers. I suddenly had no desire at all to see the headwaters of the Rivers of Flesh or Blood.

  Brittany was suitably horrified and fascinated. She made to speak. I put a finger to her lips. Pitchfork wielding skeletons might not like being spied on.

  We backed off and made our way out of the mist and followed the river the length of the valley to a steep narrows. We passed through on a foot wide path cut into the rock and came out into a wide forested valley. Nothing but a few minor nuisances inhabited the upper valley. The lower valley was more dangerous.

  From the creature roars I heard I knew the valley held a number of the feline equivalents to Hell Hounds. Chameleon Cats weren't much different from Lifer cats except they stood five feet tall at the shoulder, could change color, and had long, sinuous bodies. They could be wounded, but I'd never heard of one being killed. They were usually easy to avoid, their purring could be heard a quarter mile away.

  My Find confirmed what I already knew. I was in 306. There wasn't anything special about 306. A heavily treed valley about a mile wide, vacationing Demons went there to hunt souls. They used flammers mostly. Specialized ones that shot tiny concentrated flameballs that burnt through a soul like a laser. Some demons used a bow and arrow and some preferred to use only a knife to get that up close and personal feel of slitting skin and spurting blood. The vegetation was mostly benign, though there were deep muskeg pits, Jaw Flowers, and of course the ubiquitous Noose vines.

  We kept to the river bank when we could. Though more exposed, we made much better time than forcing our way through the brambles and brush just inside the tree line. I thought about Dimitri.

  He hated his real name, Zale Thanos, especially when he found out it meant “power of the sea.” Dimitri had no use for the sea. Women, he definitely had use for, so when he became a Hell Cop, he picked Dimitri which meant “belonging to the Greek fertility goddess, Demeter.” It was an appropriate name. With his tousled black hair, blue eyes radiating charm from his round face, and an enthusiastic grin, he had little problem in his attempts to fertilize every woman he met.

  This attraction to women carried over into his work as a Hell Cop. He had an uncanny ability to find female souls. He barely had to use the Find. He just knew. Hell Cops, as with regular cops, out of necessity, were supposed to remain dispassionate about the souls they worked with. Dimitri had a problem with that. The soul he was after when he disappeared was a beautiful young woman. Just the kind he could get muddle-headed about. I hoped he hadn't done something silly.

  We walked/jogged for awhile without any serious incidents. I told Brittany about Dimitri and that we were headed toward where he was supposed to be. Without any pr
ompting by me she said, “Well, if he's your friend you have to rescue him. Maybe I can help.” Something I'd hope my own daughter would say.

  I have to admit my guard slipped a bit because the traveling was so easy. After an hour or so I stopped and went on full alert, and not because I'd stepped into a Jaw Flower and barely snatched my foot out before it snapped shut. I'd only been in 306 twice before, briefly each time. Yet, I knew it well enough to know that I should have been hearing the sizzle of flammers, the painful screams of souls, and the triumphant yells of demons bagging their prey. There didn't seem to be any demons in 306, or souls for that matter. That's what put me on alert.

  I sat by a boulder and listened. I'd become used to the continuous low scrape of the bones. I listened beyond that. Almost imperceptible in the distance ahead, I heard a branch snap. I thought maybe voices. Brittany heard them, too. Wary, I proceeded. I stopped every hundred yards or so to listen. I concentrated so hard on listening, I didn't notice the Chameleon Cat till it was a hundred feet away.

  Ordinarily, that would be a bad thing.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The Cat regarded us from behind several trees, its sleek, sweptback head looking like a supersonic jet with teeth. Its serpentine body, twice as long as a regular big cat, flickered against the woodsy background. Chameleon Cats had three-sided fur they rotated to blend in with their surroundings. Usually their color changes were subtle, but this one was nervous. It looked like the side of the Goodyear blimp with a short in its wiring.

  With no substantial cover anywhere close, the cat would get us in two and half leaps. I looked to the river. I looked at the Cat. Its right front paw came out from behind a tree and tested its footing before setting down. I looked at the river again. What would happen if I grabbed Brittany and jumped in? Would the bones support me, suck me under and strip the flesh from my own bones? I had a feeling I was about to find out.

  I looked back to the Cat. It flowed like a snake into the open, its enigmatic cat eyes locked on us. We weren't running, and I think that confused it, giving us a few extra seconds to take the slow steps we needed to get to the edge of the bones.