by Edward Lee
“Run!” Via yelled, and then the entire room was a frenzy. Three Trolls, seven feet tall and dressed in tidy three-piece suits, had burst into the room, wielding hatchets. Before Cassie could even react, she, Via, and Hush were cornered.
The manager stood before them, chuckling snidely.
“Who the hell are you?” Via demanded.
“You silly bitches sure are dumb. This is too easy, ain’t it, boys?”
The three Trolls chortled and nodded. Then the “manager” placed his hand on his bald head, and his fingers seemed to be pulling the skin up off his scalp.
“Bi-Facer motherfucker,” Via muttered.
The man pulled up on the skin of his scalp and in a moment his face began to move upward, until it was replaced by the other face he’d kept hidden under his collar. The first face hung in a loose flap, and now he was grinning through his real face.
“Nicky the Cooker,” Via revealed.
“Had ya going there, didn’t I? When my stoolies on the street spotted you, I about shit my pants. It’s been a long time, Via, and a long time that you and that punk boyfriend of yours have owed me money. Nobody rips off Nicky the Cooker. Nobody.”
“I can pay you back,” Via stammered. “We just need a little time. I know it sounds like bullshit but it’s true, I swear.”
Nicky laughed out loud, gesturing his crew. “Can you believe the balls on this silly bitch? Huh, boys? She rips me off and now she thinks she can deal her way out!” Then his true face turned dark. “I got a reputation to maintain, and you and that punk embarrassed me. I’m Nicky the Cooker, not some pissant chump you can hoodwink.”
“Let us go. I swear you’ll get your money.”
Nicky just shook his head. “It ain’t even about the money now. Don’t you read the papers? Ain’t you seen the TV? The Constabs got a dragnet out for you, and they already got that punk boyfriend of yours.” His steely eyes darted to Cassie. “That Goldilocks little friend of yours there is an Etheress, and I’m gonna get the reward for turning her in.”
“Cassie?” Via said.
Cassie trembled. Her fear was paralyzing her. She tried to project a violent thought at the man but ... nothing came out.
“Uh, Cassie? A little help?”
Cassie tried again.
Nothing.
“But you and that little mute bitch,” Nicky said to Via, “you two don’t count for shit. My boys’ll chop your arms and legs off, then we’ll put the both of ya in a couple of drums. See how you silly bitches like being cooked alive in a sulphur pit for a thousand years.” Nicky crudely rubbed his crotch. “But, ya know what I’m gonna do first? I ain’t had me no nookie in a white—” and then he grabbed Via by the hair and threw her squealing onto the bed. Chuckling, he crawled on top of her, grabbing at her belt—
That’s when Cassie’s fear turned to rage.
The room glowed with silver light—so bright, the three Trolls stepped back, shielding their inhuman eyes. But then, one by one, those same eyes popped out of their sockets. One roared, blindly raising his hatchet, and when Cassie focused her gaze on his arm, the arm flew off before a geyser of ill-colored blood. “Fuckers!” she yelled. She looked at one’s abdomen, and the abdomen popped open, spilling entrails. The third Troll loped sightless about the room. Cassie focused on his waistline and then suddenly the creature was on the floor, cut in half.
In less than five seconds, Cassie’s Ethereal rage had butchered all three Trolls and left them bleeding to death on the filthy floor.
Now your turn, she thought.
Nicky the Cooker was already off of Via, cowering against the wall.
“My name’s not Goldilocks,” she said.
“Look, look, wait a minute,” he pleaded, his second face flapping behind his head like a rooster wattle. “I can give you money, a lot of money.” He feebly thrust out a stack of bills. “Just let me walk out of here, and you can have it all.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Cassie told him. “You can walk out of here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. ON YOUR HANDS!” she shouted, and then cut both of his legs off with one swipe of her gaze.
Nicky screamed and fell off the bed, legless.
“Damn, girl!” Via celebrated. “You’re already getting the hang of it!”
“I-I guess so,” Cassie said when she took a closer look at all the carnage she’d produced. “Jesus, did I do all that?”
“You sure did. You’re a walking meat-grinder!”
Cassie felt less than flattered. Next, Hush was pointing across the room, where Nicky the Cooker was indeed trying to walk out of there on his hands.
“What about him?” Cassie asked.
“Oh, I’ll take care of him. It’ll be a pleasure.”
Via stepped over a Troll corpse and picked up one of the hatchets. Then she got down on her knees and shoved Nicky against the wall, pinning him there with one hand.
With her other hand, she swung the hatchet.
“We—” she said, and hacked off one ear. thwack!
“—are not—”
She hacked off the other ear. thwack!
“—SILLY BITCHES!”
Blood sprayed outward as the last thwack of the hatchet cleanly divided Nicky’s head into two halves.
Via stood back up and grinned at Cassie and Hush, blood flecking her face like freckles. “Think he got the message?”
Chapter Eleven
(I)
Bill had no way of knowing that he’d been hexed. How could he? The harder he tried to focus on what was wrong, the weaker he became. Some sort of energy of opposites had overtaken him, some mental parasite of the dim night. Bill Heydon was a sensible modem man with a keen perception of reason but something, now, had taken hold of his 21 st Century common sense and retarded it to the most primitive stratum.
A sexual impulse and nothing more.
No, it was not Mrs. Conner’s voice that had issued out of Mrs. Conner’s mouth. It was a feminine vox inhumana, the voice of some diabolical thing.
A thing that was, essentially, raping him.
He lay spread out, immobile, as if invisible fetters had bolted his wrists and ankles to the hardwood floor. Mrs. Conner seemed silently delirious, sitting on his hips, riding him like some mindless beast over a fast, rocky trail. She was ravenous, frenzied and intent in this cryptic pagan lust. Her plush white body was a slow blur in the moon-tinted dark. Her breasts rose and fell, rose and fell, with each impact of her loins against his. She was savaging him. She was impaling herself on his genitals. Bill’s body was the inanimate object that she was using for her own pleasure. But he experienced pleasure too, a stark, terrifying pleasure that mingled with his utter helplessness. He was the rocking horse that raced along with his frantic heart.
His climax paralyzed him. He lay locked in rigor, gasping open-mouthed while his suitor purred in the dark. His testicles pulsed, blazing raw lumps in his scrotum. His nerves felt like a thousand hot wires twisting through every fiber of flesh. By now he was sopped in sweat, and so was she. Their bodies shined like heavy lacquer in the musk-scented darkness. Bill’s sheer exhaustion was dragging him over the edge of consciousness, but as his eyelids drooped to slits, he heard the course, throaty chuckle—a sound like rocks being ground together—and his hips were flinching, his raw sexual nerves being accosted yet again.
She was fellating him now, demanding more of the impossible—and she was getting it.
No more.... I can’t go on....
The arcane ministrations of her mouth had him erect again in moments, erect but numb, ready to be re-used, re-violated by the monstrous need.
Still chuckling, she sat back on his groin and began again.
The coitus hurt now, searing hyper-sensitivities blazing, forcing his teeth to clack together in the fidgety agony. Her sex was a devil’s maw intent on devouring him until there was nothing left.
Bill was being drained.
The next round drew on for what seemed an h
our, an hour of her body throttling him, an hour of her steepening lust with no release in sight. But Mrs. Conner’s own climaxes were clear: first rising animal pants, her nails digging into his chest, the channel of her sex clenching, then her abominable shrieks exploding all around the room.
Then silence, as she rode on for more.
Bill could only stare glassily upward, a piece of meat with eyes that couldn’t close against the atrocious coupling. And that’s when he began to see....
His thoughts barely held together:
What is ... that.... THING ... behind her?
Yes.
Some ... figure seemed crouched immediately behind Mrs. Conner—a lissome figure only half-real, an amalgamation of shadow and flesh.
Not a figure. A woman.
A woman made of night.
Her movements traced Mrs. Conner’s exactly, a macabre puppeteer, and as the brutal thrusts drew on, this spectral consort—this Night-Whore-seemed to grow minutely more whole. And now the woman’s face was peering back at him, over Mrs. Conner’s bare shoulder.
It was the face of a phantasm, the visage of sex and death.
A slender black arm—half-substance, half-ghost—reached around Mrs. Conner’s body, reached out and down, the elegant obsidian fingers of which stroked the side of Bill’s face. The contact felt nauseating, like slugs on his skin. Then the loathsome hand opened flat on his chest as Mrs. Conner’s body began to ride him faster.
Bill’s heart was thudding, banging like a gavel deep in his chest. His breath grew thin; he was wheezing, shuddering.
The half-felt hand pressed down harder, and the spectral grin sharpened.
“You’re killing me,” he croaked.
The unholy mouth opened, mimicking Mrs. Conner’s, and the Night-Whore hissed, “Yessssssssssssss....”
Bill’s heart began to miss beats, and as he lay there, with no recourse, he knew he was about to die.
(ll)
Cassie, Via, and Hush dragged the corpses—and the pieces of corpses—into the revolting bathroom and closed the door.
“Out of sight, out of fuckin’ mind,” Via commented.
Cassie would have agreed in slightly more delicate terms. “How did he manage to get two faces?”
Via plopped down on the bed; she looked at her blood-and-gruel-covered hands and wiped them off on the sheets. “It’s an expensive trick. We call them Bi-Facers. The Constabulary uses them as spies and confidential informants, and half the humans in the Mob are already in cahoots with the police. The Surgeons at the Office of Transfiguration cut your scalp off and stitch another face on. Then you pull it down like a stocking mask and—presto—you walk the streets and nobody knows who you really are. But you can spot them if you look close; the original face’ll be kind of bunched up below the collar. That’s how Hush caught on that Nicky was a Bi-Facer.”
Bi-Facers, Cassie thought. Yuck. What else might they have in store for her in this city?
She didn’t want to think about that.
“So what is it we’re doing now?”
“There’s this thing we can do called an inversion hex,” Via explained. “With all the excitement going on lately, it completely slipped my mind. If we do it right, we can rescue Lissa.”
That was all Cassie needed to hear. “Then what are we waiting for?”
“We need this special thing called a Power Relic—it’s one of the most ancient talismans—and because you’re an Etheress, there’s a good chance that we can get one. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that we have to go back to your house to get it, which means we have to get all the way back to Pogrom Park and take the train, without getting caught by the Constabulary.”
“You heard the guy on the television. They’re on the lookout for us. The Constabulary’s everywhere.”
“You ain’t kidding,” Via agreed. “You can bet that those sons-of-bitches are searching every street and alley in the district.”
Cassie’s zeal popped. “So how can we possibly get out of the city and all the way back to my house without being caught?”
“No pun intended,” Via said without much enthusiasm, “but there’s only one way I can think of, off hand.”
“What? Some spell or something?”
“Not quite....”
Hush and Via looked melancholy, then Via picked up one of the hatchets off the floor. She went to the small table by the window.
“What are you—”
“We have to make a Hand of Glory. Unfortunately, in Hell, you have to use your own hand to do it.”
“What?”
Via leaned her left hand on the table, raised the hatchet with her right.
“Don’t!” Cassie exclaimed. “Use Nicky’s hand, not yours!”
“Won’t work. It’ll only work when you’re motivated by the same thing.” Via raised the hatchet higher, squeezing her eyes closed.
“Wait!” Cassie gulped. Then she grabbed the hatchet from Via. “This whole mess is because of me. It should be my hand.”
She didn’t know if she could bring herself to do it, but to her it was the only acceptable alternative. Why should Via be the one to have to maim herself?
This whole mess is my fault, so it has to be me....
Now it was Cassie who was raising the hatchet, over her own hand.
“But you’re an Etheress, Cassie. Don’t—”
Cassie wouldn’t hear of it. She grit her teeth, struggled to summon the courage and prepare for the pain but—thunk!
She and Via glanced aside.
The matter had been settled before Cassie could do it.
Hush, frowning, flopped her own severed hand onto the table, and dropped a second hatchet to the floor.
“Thanks, Hush,” Via said.
Cassie winced at the sight. “It should’ve been me,” she lamented. “I’m sorry, Hush.”
Hush shrugged, a gesture that said No big deal. There was little bleeding—human hearts didn’t beat in Hell—but the wound would never heal. Cassie and Via tied a piece of cloth around Hush’s stump.
“Poor Hush,” Cassie murmured, a tear in her eye.
“You’re an Etheress,” Via reminded. “You need your hand. And if we’re lucky and our plan works, we can get an unlicensed Surgeon to sew Hush’s hand back on later.”
It seemed like a terrible consolation.
“Let’s get on with it,” Via said.
A wooden match was struck. Via held the hand as Hush ran the lit match back and forth under her former fingertips. Via incantated something in Latin, then finished with: “... and let slaves be barons and stone be cloud and blind all eyes against us, so mote be it.”
Magically, the fingertips of Hush’s severed hand burst into five tiny flames.
“There....”
“What’s this going to do?” Cassie asked.
“It’s an Eclipsion Rite,” Via said. “Come on. Let’s grab the first subway back to Stalin Station. We’ll be at your house in no time.”
Cassie expected something bombastic, something spectacularly occult. She didn’t understand, and pointed to the fiery hand. “How is that going to protect us from the Constabulary?”
“Easy,” Via answered. “We’re invisible.”
(lll)
And invisible they were.
At first, Cassie didn’t believe it, but as they walked down the busy street toward the subway stop, no one seemed to notice them. Via simply held the severed hand up as they walked. The wanted posters they’d seen previously for Xeke had all been replaced now, with this:POSTED BY ORDER OF THE AGENCY OF THE CONSTABULARY (ALL DISTRICTS)
WANTED
FOR ETHEREA, AND FOR CRIMES AGAINST LUCIFER’S TYRANNY
REWARD
OF ETERNAL WEALTH AND TRANSFIGURATION TO GRAND DUKE STATUS
The detailed composite of her face looked exactly like Cassie, but as she stood next to the sign, passersby, be they human or demon, didn’t see her.
Even with this proof, though, she
wanted more. She waltzed right up to a nine-foot Golem, jumped up in front of it, waving her hands before its dead clay face. The Golem merely stood there, looking on. She waved even more vigorously at a group of winged Conscripts flying down the street in a low-level formation.
No reaction. They just flew right by.
Through a steaming park riddled with vermin holes, an entire Mancer Squad marched in ranks, their standard mission clearly redirected for the search. Cassie ran up to the homed squad leader and marched alongside of him, sticking her tongue out right in front of his deformed face.
The squad leader didn’t see her, nor did any member of the squad.
She stopped and let them march by.
“Enough fooling around,” Via whispered. “The subway terminal’s right around the comer. Let’s get moving.”
It wasn’t a long wait; if anything, mass transit was far more efficient in Hell than it was in the nation’s capital. They hopped invisibly over the rusting turnstiles and then rushed into the first open car. Citizens of every variety stood grasping the overhead handles, completely oblivious that the city’s most wanted fugitives were on board with them.
Cassie was used to it now. What a cool trick. She contentedly baked in the heat, standing on top of Hush’s boots, as the infernal subway took them back to the outskirts of the city, and soon after that, they were back on the clattering train, chugging back across the noxious River Styx.
Heading back to the Living World.
Chapter Twelve
(I)
The darkling sighed.
She was called many things:
Lilû, Lilitu, the Goddess of Ardat, the Mother of Harlots and All Abominations of the Earth.
But her real name was Lilith.
Opportunities such as this were few and far between; for the first time in decades she breathed in earthly air. It intoxicated her, almost too rich a luxury compared to the familiar mephitis of her home. It gorged her, made her happy and light-headed.
