The Road to Helltown_An Urban Fantasy Thriller

by SM Reine

  “I’ll never do it,” Fritz said.

  “No?” She shoved her leering face into his. Her nose was round and red, between the sagging pillows of her bruised eyes. Her semitransparent skin bared skull underneath. “Want to bet?”

  Fritz’s eyes flicked to the window. He could almost see things from Cèsar’s perspective if he tried hard enough. Both of them were awash with enough fear that the bond peeked open, and panic flooded through.

  Cèsar was trying to keep demons away from the Focus. He shot again and again. His aim was shit, of course. Even if Cèsar possessed the technical ability to aim and shoot—which he certainly should have after his many hours training with Fritz and Suzy—that didn’t mean he wanted to kill. Even when killing others might save his own life.

  The Apple currently held the advantage over the Focus. That witch with strawberry-blond hair was trying to get it out of the perimeter. Cèsar was fighting those nightmares to defend her.

  “Looking through the eyes of your aspis?” Proserpine asked. “So you know he’s surrounded by my nightmares. You know that they have orders to kill him.”

  She had a pair of demons closing in on Cèsar at the moment.

  Fritz would have leaped onto Proserpine if he hadn’t been tied to that damn chair. He still jerked instinctively, arm going taut within the remaining ropes. “If you put a finger on my aspis—”

  “Then give me your blood,” she said.

  Cèsar was lifting his gun, firing, absorbing the recoil as best he could. He was freaking out. His panic seeped through the bond until Fritz could feel nothing else.

  Yes, Cèsar was in the Apple.

  Yes, he had been lying to Fritz.

  And yes, Fritz wanted him to be safe.

  “I’ll do it,” Fritz said.

  Proserpine settled into her semi-amorphous form in front of him. She had given up the semblance of corporeality and was little more than a leering face in the shadow. “Go,” she breathed.

  He closed his fist around the blade of the knife. Blood welled between his fingers.

  His cousin extended the vial toward him. She only caught a couple of drops before tucking the vial somewhere inside of herself. Presumably in the equivalent of a pocket rather than somewhere more ghastly and biological.

  “Let me go,” Fritz said. “Now.”

  “That wasn’t part of the agreement.” Her ghostly hands traveled over his face. “You look just like Hans. Exactly like him. He was a man with eyes that seemed as though they should have always been surveying battles, watching people die and doing nothing to save them. So very Friederling of you.”

  “So sayeth the nightmare spawn of the same family.”

  “I’m doing what demons have always done. You’re a kopis, but you’ve given the House of Belial and its slaves to me with barely a thought. Exactly like Hans.” Her lips were so close to his cheek that he felt flecks of ichor on his skin.

  Fritz couldn’t bring himself to respond to her. He wasn’t sure what he’d have said even if his body had been capable of continuing to speak.

  “I have places to be.” Proserpine flicked her fingers, and the nightmares by the Fissure dissipated. Fritz felt Cèsar’s confusion and relief. “I can’t kill you, Fritz. But this house here? It’s in Silver Needles territory. They’re also my cousins, many generations down from the incubus side of things, and they can kill you all they want.” She wiggled her fingers at him. “I’ll see you in Hell, Fritz.”

  Proserpine vanished.

  Once she was gone, Fritz could hear the Needles partying elsewhere in the house, as they were wont to do. It wouldn’t be long before they decided to come looking at Fritz for whatever entertainment he could provide.

  And there was only one kind of entertainment that the Needles were interested in extracting from a human.

  Fritz had saved Cèsar—hopefully.

  Now it was time to save himself.

  Chapter 13

  Nobody knew exactly what happened between Fritz’s abduction and the moment Cèsar stumbled out of Helltown, ash-caked, shell-shocked, and missing several OPA agents.

  But Isobel had theories.

  She’d obsessed over Cèsar’s last days with the Office of Preternatural Affairs for the last two years. She’d built an entire narrative surrounding that missing hour leading to the missing months.

  The last verifiable information on Cèsar’s whereabouts came from Fritz. He had seen Cèsar through that window, felt Proserpine’s wisps dissipate. Cèsar had been left in the middle of an OPA circle with agents on one side and the Apple on the other.

  What happened then?

  Isobel suspected that they had struggled over the Focus. They had stuck around in that area for at least a short time, so it was likely they had been struggling over something. Demons were a possibility, but Isobel believed that it was all about the Focus.

  Stephanie Whyte of the Apple had procured the Focus. According to Suzy, that witch hadn’t been a physically strong woman. She would have been easily overcome by force. Isobel imagined Agent Bryce diving at Stephanie to grapple over the Focus.

  Cèsar would have interceded at some point. He’d have stepped between them, trying to stop the women before they tumbled over the Fissure into Hell. Cèsar absolutely would have tried to rescue them.

  It wasn’t his fault that Agent Bryce fell.

  She was one of the agents who hadn’t returned from the operation in Helltown. Fritz had been casual in mentioning this to Isobel, as though it were a matter of routine to lose people in the field, but she knew it bothered him more than he was willing to say. He uttered the names of employees lost when he was tossing with nightmares in his sleep, and Agent Bryce’s was among them.

  If losing Agent Bryce troubled Fritz, Isobel could only imagine how Cèsar must have felt. He would have been standing on the precipice with the heat stinging his eyes and seen it happen firsthand. He’d have reached out a hand to save the woman who couldn’t be saved. And Cèsar would have felt responsible.

  In retrospect, now that Isobel had spent two years in the Breaking, she thought that those who’d died in the beginning—those like Agent Bryce—were lucky.

  Agent Bryce hadn’t watched America crumble into a wasteland. She hadn’t seen other countries struggle to accept American refugees. Hadn’t witnessed the darkening sky, the cooling air, and demons spreading across the planet.

  Was that how it all happened? The struggle, the fall? Isobel didn’t know. Nobody knew.

  But she could so clearly imagine such a moment where Cèsar’s heart shattered beyond the point that he no longer cared to reassemble it.

  He was nothing but shards after what he walked through in Los Angeles. That missing hour had changed Cèsar forever.

  Isobel believed that was why he’d made the choice he had.

  Why he ultimately left them.

  Isobel wasn’t the kind of woman who could sit at home, waiting for men to return from battle. She also wasn’t the kind of woman who could strap on a bandolier and follow her husband into the battle.

  But dammit, she didn’t have to be a fighter to have utility.

  Hence the tracking charm.

  It hung stiffly underneath her RV’s rearview mirror as she gunned it through the ruined streets of Los Angeles. Where the charm pointed, she drove. It was connected to Fritz by the blond hair tied around its cord. It would point her directly toward her husband.

  “Damn you, move it!” Isobel slapped a palm against her windshield. “Get out of my way!”

  The streets were packed with people trying to escape. The impact of having literal hellfire spawn on Earth had far-reaching effects, though. The Fissure intersected with little of Los Angeles, but everyone was panicking as they tried to get out.

  Nobody seemed to realize that there was no “getting out.”

  She was one of the only cars rumbling southbound on the Five. Everyone else was clogging up the streets that led out of the region. Folks were trying to drive over bar
riers, cutting through parking lots, taking out entire lawns. It did no good.

  She followed her tracking charm’s glow all the way to the edge of Helltown, and she only needed to run over a few other cars to do it.

  Isobel screeched to a stop at the Wal-Mart opposite Helltown’s entrance. It used to be that the streets of Helltown were invisible from this side, protected by the wards. But now she could see the smoke, the nightmares, the twisted buildings.

  And Cèsar Hawke staggering through it all.

  She leaped out of the RV to meet him halfway across the shattered street.

  Cèsar fell to his knees, and the people he’d been carrying fell from his arms, his back. Isobel could tell that one of them was an OPA agent based on the ballistic gear. The other was nobody she recognized. She still hadn’t known Cèsar had joined the Apple, so she assumed that he was a random human rescued from Helltown.

  “Oh my God,” Isobel whispered as she sank in front of Cèsar, holding his face in her hands, trying to get him to focus on her. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He looked all wrong. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  He gently cuffed her wrists to lower her hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “Fritz hasn’t been answering his phone,” Isobel said. “To preserve my sanity, I’ve been assuming that it’s because of how busy the cell phone towers are, but—”

  “He’s kidnapped,” Cèsar said.

  Isobel’s lifeless heart was fully capable of shattering. The pieces sank into her stomach and boiled in the acid of an empty digestive system. If Cèsar hadn’t been holding her arms, she’d have fallen over.

  Instead, he pulled her against him in a tight, fierce hug. It hurt. Cèsar had momentarily forgotten how strong he was. She didn’t care. She dug her fingernails into his back and pressed her forehead into his throat and wished that she could have wrapped herself in Cèsar’s skin like an infernal symbiote.

  “I don’t know where Fritz has been taken. I don’t know why he’s been taken,” Cèsar said. “I had to get people out of Helltown.”

  A couple more agents limped toward them, carrying a third on a makeshift litter fashioned out of an awning.

  Isobel’s eyes pricked with heat. Silly to get so worried about Fritz. He was a kopis, and being kidnapped by enemies was a normal Tuesday. If anyone could fight their way out, it was Fritz. “I’m sure it’s something simple. He’s a powerful man, and—”

  “He was taken by this big nightmare bitch with a clown face,” Cèsar said.

  Isobel lost control of all attempts to be rational. “Oh, fuck me. Not Proserpine.”

  “Proserpine?”

  Isobel wasn’t familiar with most of Fritz’s family, since he preferred to have as little to do with them as possible, but he’d put special effort into warning her about Proserpine.

  For the sake of full disclosure, Fritz had rattled off a list of things that a nightmare like Proserpine might do to him—and to Isobel—if she got her claws on them. Isobel didn’t dare recall any of the methods of torture he’d listed.

  They couldn’t save Fritz until they saved the other, non-kopis humans who’d survived Helltown.

  “What do we do, sir?” asked an agent, leaning heavily against the light post. He was coated in orange dust.

  Cèsar looked at him as blankly as he’d looked at Isobel.

  She dug her keys out of her pocket, held them out. “Get everyone to the OPA campus. Take my RV.” The agent didn’t immediately move. “I’m Undersecretary Friederling’s wife. Take the RV and go, dammit!”

  “Do what the lady says, Agent Wallace,” Cèsar said. “And take the surviving members of the Apple too. Get everyone medical care. Or at least get them away from Helltown.”

  “Yes sir, yes ma’am,” Agent Wallace said.

  Isobel gripped Cèsar’s shoulders as they began piling into the teal RV. “The Apple is involved?”

  “Not really,” Cèsar said.

  “We have to get a new unit together,” Isobel said. “We have to save Fritz.”

  “There is no unit,” he said quietly. “Nobody is left available.” He pulled her into another embrace. “I’m sorry, Izzy. I’m so fucking sorry.”

  The feeling of Cèsar’s breath in her hair was better than she remembered. Shame that it was no time to appreciate it. “Why?”

  “Because Cèsar Hawke is a traitorous piece of shit who thinks he can play both teams without getting fucked up.”

  That blunt voice did not belong near Helltown.

  Suzy Takeuchi had pulled up using a car Isobel didn’t recognize. Unless Suzy now drove a Saturn, she’d probably stolen a car that someone ditched with keys in the ignition.

  Isobel scrambled to her feet, positioning herself between Cèsar and Suzy. “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean, Hawke?” Suzy asked, hands planted on her waist. “What just happened in there with the Focus? Why are we suddenly missing most of the Half Moon Bay Coven?”

  Isobel looked between Cèsar and Suzy, waiting to see who would respond first. They were sharing an inscrutable look.

  The Half Moon Bay Coven were old frenemies of Cèsar’s. Isobel had heard nothing about them being in town. Suzy wasn’t supposed to be in town either, for that matter. Fritz had been generous enough to pardon Suzy for her crimes against the OPA, but she was still said to be having a long-distance relationship with Cèsar, since she never seemed to be in Los Angeles.

  She felt like she was watching the third season of a TV show without having seen the first two, and she didn’t like it.

  “Agent Bryce fell,” Cèsar said.

  Those three words sucked all the color out of Suzy’s face. “Oh no. Cèsar, I’m—”

  “Fritz is gone,” he went on, “but he might still be alive. He’s captive somewhere in Needles territory.”

  “Fuuuck,” Suzy said.

  Cèsar turned to Isobel. “Do you know enough about Proserpine to guess what she’s done with Fritz?”

  Isobel leaped toward the RV. The engine growled to life, so Agent Wallace must have been about to leave. “I have a tracking charm.”

  She only ducked into the RV for a moment.

  When she jumped back out again, Cèsar and Suzy were holding each other tightly. There was no room for Isobel anywhere around them. She clutched the charm in her hand so tightly that it cut into her palm.

  Cèsar wrapped his jacket around Suzy. It was about ten sizes too big, but it would protect her delicate mortal flesh from the winds of Malebolge.

  “Let’s go back into Helltown,” Cèsar said. “Let’s find Fritz.”

  Chapter 14

  Fritz managed to escape Proserpine’s bindings. Unfortunately, Proserpine was very good at tying people down, so he only managed to liberate himself ten seconds before a Silver Needle walked into the room.

  This incubus looked like anyone else in his gang. Or his species, for that matter. His flesh was the color of moonlight and his inky irises matched his hair.

  Later, if someone asked Fritz to pick out his first aggressor from a lineup, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. One member of the Needles looked effectively like any other.

  Fritz told the incubus, “Stop right where you are.”

  The demon went motionless. “Why?”

  “Because I am of the House of Belial, and so are you, and you have to stop if I tell you to stop.” At least, Fritz hoped that was the case.

  Proserpine was only a distant progenitor of the Needles. The ongoing alliance likely relied upon leverage supplied by the House of Belial. Until Proserpine used Fritz’s blood to destroy the wards in Malebolge, Fritz was capable of overruling Proserpine in all family matters.

  The fact that the incubus remained frozen in the doorway for so long was an encouraging sign.

  “I need a gun,” Fritz said. “I also need a knife. And my path to the front door of this house should be cleared.”

  The demon just looked at him.

  He stared long enough that Fritz doubted
his powers as heir. Everything should have passed on to him when his father died. But he couldn’t help but grow concerned at the silence.

  Then the incubus stepped aside, giving Fritz access to the door.

  “Excellent,” Fritz said. He held out a hand. “Weapons?”

  The incubus’s face twitched as he passed over a gun and knife. “You’re with the House,” the Needle finally said. He sounded more respectful than Fritz would have expected. “You must be the heir, huh?”

  “I’m in charge of many things,” Fritz said.

  He lifted the gun that the demon had given him, pressed the barrel against the incubus’s forehead, and squeezed the trigger.

  Brain erupted from the exit wound and splattered on the wall.

  “Hmm,” Fritz said, standing over the body to survey the damage. There was a lot of ichor splattered against the wall. It sizzled where it had landed on the toe of Fritz’s shoe. He wiped it off on the incubus’s jacket.

  Fritz felt heavy with nausea as he headed downstairs.

  He didn’t encounter Proserpine on the way. As a semi-corporeal nightmare demon, Proserpine could shift between planes more easily than most demons. She was long gone.

  Her many lackeys from Helltown were not.

  Fritz encountered a half-dozen of them on the second-story landing. They looked surprised to see Fritz and moved to attack him.

  Fritz said, “Freeze.”

  And they did.

  Proserpine had said Fritz looked just like Hans Friederling. She was right.

  She’d have cackled with delight if she’d seen Fritz ordering the Needles to turn their guns on each other.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  One by one, the demons dropped to Fritz’s feet.

  “Damn,” he said, looking around the landing at all the dead bodies. Fritz had honed his body and mind so that he would be the sharpest of swords. Even with a prosthetic leg, he was a better fighter than most Union kopides.