* * * *
When he reached the Great Hall, Phrandex pushed and shoved his way between spawn, soulwrights, gaunts, and lesser demons until he stood at the back of a large group of devils who were all older and larger than him. Since he preferred giving pain to receiving it, he didn’t dare try to muscle his way past them. Frowning thoughtfully, he looked around until he saw a spawn standing three feet up on a pillar, its foot jammed into a deep crack. He smiled and headed that way. By the time he reached the pillar the spawn already lay dead at its base. Berferd, a devil who had been Phrandex’s nursery charge ten years ago, and now his part-time assistant, had his foot shoved deep into the crack.
Grinning at his half-brother’s vulnerable back, Phrandex shoved his claws in the young devil’s behind and hoisted him down. “Find someplace else to perch.”
Berferd spat poison on the ground. Rock bubbled. “You’re not my nursemaid anymore.”
“But I am your brother,” Phrandex pointed out, “and I’m older than you.” He climbed up the pillar, shoved his toes in the crack, and made himself comfortable before looking down at Berferd. “Go away.”
Berferd growled, but he left. Dismissing the impertinent sprat, Phrandex turned his eyes toward the main show and cursed when he saw Zorce’s favorite general standing beside the Hell god. The last being Phrandex ever wanted to see was his mother.
Zorce and Sulya stood inside a large chariot decorated by precious and semi-precious jewels. A polished ring of skulls, sitting atop the chariot’s edge, acted as a macabre handrail for the occupants to hold onto as they rode. Hellhounds nearly as big as arvids, their eyes fiery as a pit in Hell, served as the dark god’s grim beasts of burden.
Belthethsia, a blue skinned succubus of uncomely affections and great bounties, stood below where Athos watched from the dais. Softly whimpering, a ragged, skinny woman with dirty long hair sat crouched at her feet. Belthethsia held clumps of the woman’s hair in her right hand, but the succubus’s attentions were not on her prisoner. She looked cautious and more than a bit nervous as she stood before the two gods.
Zorce was thirty feet to her left. Ten feet in front of her Athos sat on his throne. The two gods seemed evilly pissed. Then again, Phrandex reflected, the gods of Hell seldom looked anything but pissed. Still and all, there were different degrees of pissed ranging from only wanting to rip a being apart to desiring the destruction of everything everywhere. Their present moods seemed to be at mid-level and dropping fast.
Not good. It might be wise to leave before the gore flew, but if he left now he might never learn who had been killed unless, hopefully, it was his mother.
Athos’s eyes burned bright red. His skin, normally bone white with mottled patches of old scars, was flushed slightly ochre. God energy coursed wildly around the four horns jutting from his head. The energy danced and flared and flowed around him, caressing his naked body in a delightfully obscene dance which pushed his horrid member more than a yard high, pulsing red and black with his anger. Poisonous secretions glistened along its length and dripped off its barbed hooks. Eying the horrendous thing, Phrandex felt glad he wasn’t born female. Athos’s need for sex was legendary. So far, Belthethsia, Phrandex’s half-sister, was the only surviving female capable of enduring Athos’s attentions, though this fact did not win her any special favors since it sometimes took her weeks to re-grow certain parts of her anatomy when Athos became a bit enthusiastic.
“You saw the spawn,” Athos said gently to Belthethsia. “You saw it wearing my hook. Why did you bring me this woman instead of the spawn?”
“She has a voice like the world has never heard,” Belthethsia desperately answered. “Thingy used the hook to put another woman’s voice in her. The result is—”
“Silence!” Energy shot from Athos’s third horn. Crackling wickedly through the air, it sliced into Belthethsia’s gut, cutting it open. Screaming, she fell to her knees and held loops of spilled intestines in her cupped hands. Moving with frantic haste, she barely had time to shove the intestines back into her belly before the wound healed.
Phrandex fought back a giggle. This was proving to be far more entertaining than he had hoped.
“I care nothing for this singer, this Maggie,” Athos said once Belthethsia regained her feet. “I have owned her before and soon became bored. I want the spawn. I want my hook.”
Zorce chose this moment to speak from the chariot. He did not raise his voice, but it was clearer than any other voice Phrandex had ever heard.
“The spawn and the hook will be mine. Whoever brings them to me will receive my son’s entire domain when I rule the upper world.” Zorce’s dark face split into a feral grin as he looked again to Athos.
Phrandex clutched the pillar tighter. Had Zorce just put Athos’s job up for grabs?
With his face purplish-black and splotchy, Athos surged out of his throne with a roar. “How dare you! Hell will be mine! All of it! No one will take your challenge! They don’t have the horns to face me.” Athos’s head swiveled around as he roared out among the gathered hellborn. His eyes became fiery holes set deep in his horned head. “Try it,” he warned the watchers, “and you’re ash.”
“I promised you my section of Hell,” Zorce said. “I never said you would have everything.”
Phrandex thought about Zorce’s offer. If he stepped forward and accepted the challenge Zorce might finally notice him. This would be more attention than Athos had ever given him. On the other hand, Phrandex had no illusions he could rule this section of Hell for long. He was too young, too inexperienced. The greater devils would be fighting over his remains within hours. Then again, if he returned the spawn and was rewarded with this section of Hell, he could gift it to Athos. Athos would make him a favorite, allowing Phrandex to finally leave the nursery behind.
Would Zorce be offended? Athos might be the son of all evil, but Zorce was the source. He had, after all, been the co-creator of the blessed nano that infected all of mankind and destroyed the first planet. If not for the nano infection there would be no demons, devils, or gods.
Phrandex shrugged. He supposed the details of his offer could be worked out after he succeeded, but first he had to succeed. Accepting the challenge meant he would have to go above ground with all the humans. The thought made him shudder. He didn’t like humans. They smelled bad, didn’t operate by the correct rules, and many of them had pointy sticks, or so he had heard.
He started to climb down from the pillar when a thought popped into his head. If he succeeded he would become more important to Zorce than Sulya. She couldn’t berate him if he outranked her.
Phrandex’s head snapped upward. He looked at Zorce and imagined himself standing in Sulya’s place.
Emboldened by the prospect of having his mother under his thumb, Phrandex decided he would take the quest as soon as he found a way to safely leave Hell.
He was about to leave his pillar and push his way to the front so he could volunteer when a commotion rippled through the crowd. Berferd pushed between two devils and stood before the gods.
“Atta' boy,” Hellnost, Berferd’s father called out. “That’s my little devil.”
“I accept your offer,” Berferd said
Zorce’s face twisted with amused surprise. “Who are you?”
“I’m Berferd and—”
“He’s a baby sitter!” Athos laughed. “He watches after the baby demons.”
Scowling, Berferd refused to look at Athos.
Others began to laugh as well. “Yeah, he’s a boob mother!”
The laughter became louder.
Spinning around, Berferd glared at the crowd, searching for the speaker. “Bejou is the boob mother! I’m— I’m—”
Phrandex watched Berferd reach for the proper word, but his tongue didn’t seem able to wrap around the damn thing. This wasn’t surprising since Phrandex often had trouble remembering the proper term.
Berferd improvised. “I’m a ninny, thank you, and proud of it.”
&n
bsp; The crowd laughed louder. Damned beings held their sides and stumbled over one another. Phrandex heard a loud groan over the laughter. Turning his head, he saw Hellnost’s furious glare land on Berferd. Hellnost shook his head slowly and shouted. “Nanny, you idiot! Nanny!”
Phrandex actually heard Berferd grit his teeth.
“I have successfully taken care of our young for over ten years,” Berferd shouted over the bedlam. “In all that time I’ve never once lost or eaten one. My powers have grown to the point I’m being wasted down here. I should be in the upper world, causing havoc and fear instead of running about tending to the replacement boobs my brother finds for us.”
“You might have killed some of them with laughter.” Athos sneered. A grin cracked across his face.
Zorce raised a huge, taloned hand, twice the size as Phrandex’s head. The laughter subsided. “Why are you still in the nursery? Devils are only required to watch our young for one or two years.” He looked slowly toward Athos.
Athos glared at his father, barring serrated teeth. “He is a mixed breed, a cur child from a defective mother. I hear his brother, one of your castoff sons, is just as bad.” Athos stared at Sulya, as if challenging her to say something.
At first Phrandex thought the insult would go unanswered, but in a red blur of motion, Sulya hurled her battle-ax at Athos’s head.
Athos’s eyes narrowed, and his upper lip curled with contempt while he watched the ax fly toward him. He gestured, and the ax dissolved into vapor three feet from his nose. Athos gave Sulya a contemptuous smile, but his eyes blazed fury.
“You would dare attack your god,” he said, low voiced. A new ball of crackling energy formed between his horns.
“I have only one god,” Sulya snapped. “He is far grander than you can ever hope to be.”
“You have death,” Athos said. He gestured. The ball of energy dancing between his horns crackled and shot toward Sulya. Sulya started to stumble back but was stopped by Zorce’s grip on her arm. When the energy reached them it fizzled into harmless sparks.
Disappointed, Phrandex frowned. He would have been glad to be rid of his mother.
“Have a care, seedling,” Zorce admonished his son. “Sulya is my most prized possession. In fact, she’s currently doing better than you at furthering my plans. She practically delivered Anithia and her daughter to your door, but you bungled their capture without even an apology. Worse, even after we spoke on the matter, you took less than adequate care of the hook, one of our most potent tools, my gift to you as a sign of trust.” Zorce’s smile seemed almost friendly, but foam spilled from his lips. “Now I find you not only let the hook slip into the hands of a lousy fucking spawn, you allowed the spawn to escape. On top of that, you have kept two devils in the nursery during a time when they should have been preparing for the invasion, one of them my son and your brother, all because you feel petty? These games might have been acceptable in the past but not now. Tell me, how many more of my subjects aren’t allowed to grow because you value your pride more than your position in Hell?”
The air around Zorce seemed to fill with a hot, prickly, suffocating power. Phrandex wanted to cringe but didn’t wish to appear weak. Besides, Berferd still stood his ground, and he was much closer to the action. In fact, Berferd didn’t look like he was having any trouble being near the center of attention, a strange thing considering Athos had a reputation for killing off siblings who pissed him off.
Throwing his head back, Zorce screamed his rage into the cavernous hall. Solid rock trembled, split, and crumbled, making Phrandex fall when he lost his hold on the pillar. Around him, hundreds of other hellborn dropped to their knees. Delicious fear tingled in Phrandex’s veins when he pulled himself erect. Zorce’s black skin boiled and rippled like lava. The dark god’s muscles bulged, popping with the strength of his fury. Holding tight to his delicate courage, Phrandex climbed back on his now insecure pillar.
Athos didn’t appear affected in the least by Zorce’s display. Phrandex knew the lesser god dared not show fear to his father or to any of his subjects or slaves. Any weakness on his part would put his position in jeopardy from devils like Belsac or Mercktos, who were almost his equal.
Zorce quieted, smiled, and stepped down from his chariot. Looking toward his mother, Phrandex saw she also remained unaffected by Zorce’s rage; irritating woman.
“You are out of time,” Zorce told his offspring.
Zorce walked toward Athos. The underworld shuddered with each step. Castoff diamonds and solid rock exploded beneath his heavy tread. Stopping in front of his son, Zorce stood a head taller, exuding an aura twice as evil. Casually picking up the lesser god by his neck, Zorce shook Athos like he was a recalcitrant hellhound. Even so, Athos refused to yield. His face, petulant and angry, turned a unique shade of purple.
“You have tried my patience for the last time,” Zorce growled, giving his son’s neck a hard squeeze. Phrandex heard tendons pop.
Zorce contemptuously tossed Athos to the floor and strode forward to strike Belthethsia with the back of his hand. Bending beneath the blow, her body sailed six feet backward before she hit the ground in a loose heap. Left behind, the singer, still in a huddled mass on the ground, looked up into Zorce’s horrible face and whimpered. He grabbed her.
The woman tried to pull away. She whimpered again when his grip visibly tightened. “Please— please let me go. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll sing any song. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Can you turn back time?” Zorce demanded. “Can you remove your gifts from the spawn?”
“I-I can’t.” The woman hung her head and silently cried. “Please don’t hurt me.”
Zorce tilted her chin up with an inexorable finger. He gave her a gentle smile. “Of course I’ll hurt you.” He struck her with a casual flick of his hand. She fell to the floor and lay unmoving, though Phrandex saw she still breathed. Better yet, he smelled her blood on the cavern floor.
Effortlessly lifting the singer, Zorce gestured toward his general. “Sulya.”
As if by magic, Phrandex’s mother stood by her god’s side. Taking the woman from him, she threw the singer over her shoulder.
Zorce turned to Belthethsia. Panting, she knelt on one knee, having enough sense not to rise. Fresh blood dripped from a wound in her head, staining her dark green hair black. Her wound closed slowly, until it was gone.
“And you.” Zorce did not look as unhappy with her as with his son, but he was obviously angry. “The singer has displeased me by aiding the spawn. She is now mine. You will go to the surface and join the search. If you value that blue skinned body of yours, I suggest you don’t come back empty handed.”
Sulya smiled wicked glee at the sight of her most hated foe’s humiliation. Phrandex suspected the look on his mother’s face didn’t bode well for the succubus. Any time Sulya looked devious, she had something unpleasant planned.
“As you wish, my god and father,” Belthethsia said.
When Athos growled low and deep, Zorce smiled. Phrandex shook his head at Belthethsia’s stupidity. It was a mistake to try and serve more than one god, and she had just declared Zorce her second master. Her blue skinned ass was in deep trouble now.
Zorce walked back to his chariot. His hellhounds snapped and clacked their teeth together while eying the unconscious Maggie hungrily.
“Turd, you have my permission to leave Hell and search for the spawn,” Zorce said to Berferd.
Berferd scowled. “My name’s Berferd.”
Stopping, Zorce turned his head to glare at Phrandex’s brother.
“But turd is fine,” Berferd hurriedly said.
Sulya’s smile oozed wicked pride when she looked at Berferd. With the human still draped over her shoulder, she stepped onto Zorce’s chariot.
Pulling his whip from his belt, Zorce snapped it in the air above his hound’s heads. They leapt forward, snarling and snapping at the air. The god did not spare a glance to his shamed son as he rode away.
Disappointed, Phrandex sighed. Nobody had died. He almost climbed down from his vantage point, but stopped when he saw Berferd try to leave. Athos stood before Phrandex’s half-brother like an angry dark cloud. His bone white skin pulsed with lines of grey.
“You will not claim my realm, turd. I’ll find the escaped spawn and regain my father’s blessings.” He turned his head slowly to take in the crowd. “Do you hear! The spawn will be found! Every one of you will search. None will reenter Hell until the spawn is returned to me. I’ll flay and spit any being who tries to give the spawn to my father.”
“I’ll find the spawn,” Berferd insisted. “I’ll give it to Zorce.”
Athos nodded. “Goodbye, turd.”
Energy shot from his horns. Berferd exploded.
Phrandex waited until the god turned and disappeared into a tunnel before wiping gore off his face.
“Disgusting,” he heard an older demon say as it licked a bit of Berferd from its chin. “Why does Athos always have to explode them when he’s pissed? Wastes good food.”
Phrandex climbed down his pillar and started to leave when he found his way blocked by Belthethsia. She wore a curious smile on her face, one which made Phrandex acutely aware neither of them wore clothes. She stepped closer. He stepped back. She stepped closer. He tripped and landed on his butt.
“Your brother is dead.”
“Half-brother,” Phrandex corrected. “We have different fathers. I never liked him much.”
The succubus’s smile widened. “I have a proposition.”
Phrandex thought about getting up, but staring into her big beautiful eyes and looking at her big beautiful dusky-blue breasts made him not want to lose his vantage point. Things definitely looked better from where he sat.
“I want to gain one of the gods’s favor— I don’t care which— and so do you.” The succubus walked closer. Standing directly before him, she planted her feet on either side of his legs.
Phrandex had the terrible urge to lean forward and run his tongue along the inside of her thigh, but he resisted. The succubus was trying to seduce him, her own half-brother, and that would not do. The last thing he needed was another woman giving him orders.
“If you help me,” the succubus said, wrapping her hand around one of his horns and gently stroking it. “I’ll help you. All you have to do is tell me what your mother knows.”
Phrandex shuddered. Belthethsia’s voice caressed like sweet blood being rubbed all over his body. He tingled, and things down below started to react. In sheer panic he scrabbled backward and staggered to his feet, determined she wouldn’t use him in her games. Besides, he was still a young devil, relatively powerless when compared to most of those around them. Nothing he could do would give her an advantage so she spun lies for something else— something harmful to his mother. Not a bad idea, in itself, but he doubted Belthethsia’s plan included the possibility of Phrandex continuing to breathe.
“No, I’m leaving here of my own accord and of my own free will. Besides, the last thing I need or want is to be caught between you and my mother. That is a fate worse than Hell.”
Brushing himself off, Phrandex turned to leave. He wouldn’t venture out into the world on his own until he completed the unnamed chore his mother wanted to saddle him with. Afterward, before his leave-taking, he would make sure his nanny was still armed and capable of caring for the children. After all, an armless ninny wouldn’t survive long now that the children were teething and Berferd was dead.