“I don’t want to go down there,” she sobbed. “And none of you can make me.”
“We wouldn’t want to,” Caz replied.
There was a raw chorus of birds overhead.
Harry looked up to see that the noise was coming from the longer of two species of winged creatures that were circling above the city. They had congregated with remarkable speed, attracted either by the promising din of agonies from the streets or by the smell, which only now became apparent. The aroma was complicated. There was the twinge of blood in it but also the fragrance of old incense, and another smell that was impossible to fix and for that reason far more tantalizing than the others.
As he sat on the summit, his thoughts still stirred up by the exchange of enigmas (it could scarcely have been called a conversation) he’d just had with a potentially crazy southerner, Harry took in the mingled glories and grotesqueries of Hell. He wasn’t any less exhausted than he’d been when he left his apartment in New York, he wasn’t any less in need of a ten-year vacation in Hawaii—just him, a hut, and a fishing pole—but if he was going to get there then he was going to have to finish this first.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
13
Being in the fog had very little impression on Norma. The Hell Priest had done as she had asked him, and whatever protection he was using to seal himself off from the fog’s effects he had extended to her. She heard, all too clearly, however, the ghastly noises behind her made by those who had been subjected to the fog’s influence. Some were simple grunts made by creatures in pain, others begged more articulately for help, but most pitiful of all were those who—upon seeing the Hell Priest’s imposing figure emerge from the muck—requested with as much civility as they could muster that he please put them out of their misery.
Suddenly Felixson began to shout. Norma, who had clutched at his garments, felt the fabrics torn from her hands.
“Oh God in Heaven, no!” he shrieked. “I can smell the fog. It’s getting in my eyes. My mouth! Lord! Master! Help me!”
Norma stopped dead in her tracks.
“Hello? What happened? I thought Felixson was protected?”
“He was,” the demon said, near to Norma’s ear. She jumped at the sound of his voice. “But I’ve stopped.”
“What? Why?”
“His story is at its end. His service to me is complete. I have, in you, all that I need.”
“You can’t! I beg your mercy, on his behalf.”
“You do not want to assume such a debt.”
“He eased my pain.”
“Because he did not wish to carry you.”
“I know. I knew even then, when he was doing it. But still, he did it.”
“Very well. All he need do is ask. Do you hear, Felixson? Ask, and ye shall receive.”
There was an answering sound from the magician, but it did not resemble any words known to Norma. Norma reeled in the direction of Felixson’s gasps.
“Speak!” she said. “Felixson, listen to me! Your Lord called your name! Answer him. That’s all you have to do.” She took a step in the man’s direction, her arms extended. The tip of her right shoe came in contact with him first.
“Can you hear me?” she begged, bending forward and searching for the magician.
A gaseous grunt was all she received by way of reply.
“Felixson! Speak the words.”
She heard pitiful sounds indicating his final attempts. Then she heard nothing.
“Felixson?” she whispered into the darkness.
“He can’t hear you,” the Priest said.
“Oh Lord in Heaven,” Norma muttered. Her fingers, not yet believing what her mind was still only realizing, continued their search for Felixson’s body. She had taken a knee when her fingers made contact with something hot and sticky. Instantly she pulled her hand back, her mind’s eye already painting an unwelcome picture of flesh ravaged by the carnivorous fog.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “This man was loyal to you.”
“What have I to gain by feeling anything?”
“Isn’t there anything you care about?”
“All is death, woman. All is pain. Love breeds loss. Isolation breeds resentment. No matter which way we turn, we are beaten. Our only true inheritance is death. And our only legacy, dust.”
So saying, he turned and walked on, leaving the dead man behind. Norma said a short prayer for Felixson and quickly followed after the Cenobite for fear that if she faltered he would decide she too was no longer worth protecting. Despite her age and sightlessness, it wasn’t difficult for Norma to keep up. Whatever protection working had been thrown over her, it seemed to lend her body strength, and she followed in the demon’s wake without undue effort.
14
It was called the Bastion of Tyath now, though it had gone by many names before that, each one chosen by the newest ruling despot. But however the interior of the Bastion changed to suit the metaphysical or potential ambition of its occupants, the exterior remained unaltered. It was an uncompromising tower of stone, the blocks of which had been so precisely measured and chiseled that it was virtually impossible, unless you had your face to the Bastion wall, to discover where one stone ended and another began.
Many legends had accrued around it, chiefly regarding its creation, the most popular and probably the likeliest this: that it had been the first building raised in the vicinity, its commissioner, architect, and sole mason an urdemon called Hoethak, who had built it to protect his human wife, a woman called Jacqueline, who was pregnant with a quintet of hybrids—the first fruit of the mating between the sublime angelic, fallen or not, and the ridiculous humans. All had survived—father, mother, children—and from their five dynasties had descended increasingly contaminated bloodlines and swelling lists of vendettas.
Of the eight members of the present regime, only three were in the Bastion tonight. Their enthusiastic general, Augustine Pentathiyea, an unrepentant lover of war and its rapturous cruelties, sat in the high-backed chair where their regime’s noticeably absent authority, Catha Nia’kapo, was usually seated.
The others in the room—Ezekium Suth and Josephine L’thi—were not able to conceal their agitation.
“If Nia’kapo were here,” Suth began, “we would have this situation under control by now.”
“It is under control,” General Pentathiyea replied. He wore his hair long, as did all of the members of the regime, though Pentathiyea’s hair was gray, and his purple-black brow ritually scarred with three downward cuts, each the thickness of a finger. They had been coaxed with repeated cutting to stand proud of his forehead. The marks gave him an expression of perpetual fury, though his voice was measured and calm.
“How do you figure?” Suth asked.
“I’d like to hear your theory as well,” L’thi offered. She was standing against the far wall of the chamber, her waist-long white hair unkempt, her eyes closed as her detached gaze searched the fog outside, below the Bastion, looking for the felon. “He murdered all but a few of his Order. We should have him arrested and executed.”
“A trial would be better,” Suth opined. He was by several centuries the oldest in the room, though he did much to conceal the fact, his hair dyed an unnatural intense black, his brows plucked, his skin white where it wasn’t rouged. “Something showy to distract the populace.”
“Distract them from what?” said Pentathiyea.
“From the fact that we’re losing control,” L’thi said. “Isn’t it time we were honest? If not now, when?”
“L’thi is right, General,” Suth said. “If we made a real example of the Cenobite, a long public trial followed by some form of crucifixion, we’d have back the love of our citizens, and—”
“Our enemy is at the gates,” L’thi said, interrupting Suth’s soliloquy. “And he has a follower.”
“Another Cenobite?” Pentathiyea asked. “I thought you said they were all dead.”
“I said most
. But it’s not a Cenobite. It’s a human woman.”
“Then Hell’s most wanted villain is at our doorstep. Ezekium. Do you have anything prepared for this fiend?” Pentathiyea wanted to know.
“As it happens, I do, General! I have devised a metal blanket, which has a lining that will be filled with ice. We’ll burn him at the stake. Eventually, of course, the ice will melt, and the fire will have its way, but I’ve repeated the experiment eleven times now, using men, women, and even infants, just to be certain my calculations were consistent.”
“And?”
Ezekium Suth allowed himself a barely perceptible smile. “He’ll be fully conscious while the skin is burned off him as his muscles fry in their own juices. Indeed we’ll judiciously arrange the fuel for the fire so that he isn’t smothered by the smoke, which is too easy a death. Instead, he’ll be cremated systematically. But I discovered that this method draws the victim up into a pugilistic pose, so I’ll bind him with chains to prevent the posture. It’ll oblige his bones to break while they cook inside his flesh.”
“You’ve been thinking about this quite a lot,” Pentathiyea said with a hint of distaste.
“One has to dream, General,” Suth replied.
“Until a few minutes ago you didn’t even know we had the bastard at the gates.”
“No, but it was only a matter of time before somebody challenged us, wasn’t it? Have faith. The Cenobite won’t carry the day. He is one, and we are—”
“—fewer than we should be,” L’thi said. “Hasn’t anybody wondered why our glorious leader isn’t here today? Absent without explanation on the very day that a killing fog comes out of the wastes, and that … that thing out there, with his face of nails, comes to pay a visit?”
“What are you accusing him of?” the general inquired.
“Who? Nia’kapo or the Cenobite?”
“Buggar the Cenobite! I’m speaking of our leader, Catha Nia’kapo.”
“I’m accusing him of being dead, most likely, General. And Quellat, and probably Hithmonio too. All of them missing without explanation on this, of all days? Of course they’re dead! The creature outside made it his business to murder as many in power as he could.”
“And then what?” Pentathiyea said.
“Aren’t you the general here?” L’thi asked. “All you’re doing is sitting atop the leader’s throne and asking inane questions. This should be your field of expertise.”
“It is,” Pentathiyea said, rising from his post. “I have led whole armies against the divine horde and seen them beaten back. I once had a place at Lucifer’s table. I was Hell’s general when it was still a mud pit. And I know exactly what’s going to happen next. That demon is coming to kill us. When he’s torn the meat from our bones, he will continue his mad quest, wherever it may lead him. In short, we had better depart—no, not just from this chamber, but from Hell itself—if we value our lives at all.”
15
As the members of the council discussed their future, the Cenobite who had been the subject of their conversation caused the three triple-bolted iron gates that sealed the Bastion off from the city streets to be thrown open, their locks shattering like ice.
At the same time, the group of weary travelers led by Harry D’Amour entered the city by the easternmost entrance: Janker’s Gate. There were watchtowers to the left and right of the compound, but the towers were deserted and the right-hand gate open.
Janker’s Gate offered them the least impressive view of the city they had thus far seen. It lay close to the river—the same one they had crossed on a solid iron bridge—and therefore was occupied chiefly by those whose business was with the river: demons who labored to keep alive the damned souls who’d been buried up to their chins in the adjacent mudflats, powerless to protect themselves from the birds that stalked the grounds looking for worms and leeches and finding easier nourishment among the screaming bulbs, eating away their faces peck by peck, eyes, tongue, noses, and nerves, until the short-beaked birds could get no further and left the remaining rations to the infernal varieties of heron and ibis who were better equipped at piercing the empty sockets to reach the fatty and plentiful brain tissue.
But none of those creatures, damned or damning, were now found on the street that led from the Gate. There was plenty of blood, however, to mark their recent presences, the cobbles shiny and the air filled with the fat Doxy Flies that wove around as though intoxicated. They weren’t the only life-form feasting here. On the walls, where there were numerous bursts of blood, creatures that possessed the shape and gait of lobsters had emerged from between the bricks and had gathered around these stains, their busy little mouthparts greedily scooping up the bits of blood.
“Is this what the fog did to people?” Caz said.
“I just wanna know where they went,” Dale said.
“Was this not in the dream?”
“No,” Dale said, his voice falling below a whisper. “And I don’t like that one bit.”
Lana was doing her best to keep the blood-drunk flies from landing on her, but they seemed immune to her flailing and happily settled in her hair and on her face.
Harry had wandered ahead of everyone, staring on at the street ahead toward the larger and more architecturally ambitious buildings that were visible beyond the modest two-story dwellings of the neighborhood through which they traveled.
“D’Amour?” Dale whispered.
“What?”
“I think we should stick together,” he said.
The observation had barely left his mouth when a figure appeared from the alleyway behind him. It caught hold of Lana, who was perfectly able to deal with her attacker; a blow to the throat, a kick to his lower belly, and, as he bent double, an uppercut to his chin and the attacker was down, sprawled on the cobbles.
“What the fuck is that?” Harry said, approaching the unconscious demon.
“I don’t want to alarm you, Harold,” Caz said, “but that is a demon.”
“But what’s wrong with him?” Harry said.
For the first time, Harry got a close look at what the fog had wrought. The creature was a demon, Harry saw, well fed and well muscled, dressed only in baggy trousers held up by the ornately decorated belts that younger demons seemed to favor, his prehensile tail emerging from a small slit in the back. Around his neck were several lengths of leather or cord, each of which bore some keepsake. In all of these regards he resembled most of the demons belonging to minor orders whom Harry had encountered in the past.
But Harry saw that the fog had worked a change in this demon, and it was not pretty. At the corners of his mouths and eyes, in the folds of his arms, or between his fingers—wherever, in short, the fog had touched him—it had apparently planted a seed, germinated not by producing same infernal vegetation, but by taking its cue from the spot in which it had been sown and growing a new life-form that was ordained by the place of origin. Thus, the seed lodged between the demon’s fingers had brought forth a crop of new fingers, all of which possessed their own beckoning life. And the seed beside the demon’s mouth had created new mouths, all of which gaped, many-toothed, within his cheek and his neck. All these anomalies were humbled, however, by the work a seed lodged in his left eye had done, multiplying the number of eyeballs so that from his brow to his cheek were bunches of wet, lidless eyes, their yellowish corneas dissected up, down, and sideways.
The demon reached out suddenly and caught hold of Caz’s ankle, his many jointed fingers easily locking around it. Despite the demon’s agony—or perhaps because of it—the grip was viselike. In his efforts to free himself, Caz lost his balance and fell back and landed hard on the bloody cobbles. Before anyone had time to react, the maddened demon crawled atop Caz’s body, his motion disturbing the flies that had come to rest on his anatomy and creating a ragged, shifting cloud around them both. The demon was a big-bellied creature, and his weight was easily sufficient to keep Caz pinned to the ground.
“Jesus! Fuck! Someone help me
!” Caz yelled.
“Where’s that damned machete?” Harry said.
“I’ve got it,” said Lana.
“Give it to me!”
Lana tossed the machete to Harry. No sooner had he caught it than the demon—perhaps dimly sensing that he was about to be opposed—reached out for Harry with one of his many-toed feet and caught hold of his throat, new gnarled toes sprouting as he tightened his grip and cut off Harry’s oxygen.
As the demon dug his nails deep into the flesh around Harry’s windpipe, Harry took a swipe at the demon and buried the blade in the creature’s thigh. Shock and pain made the thing loosen his throat hold on Harry, and Harry pulled away. The seeds continued to offer proof of their fecundity; the demon before him was still transforming. The bunches of eyes were swelling, the mouths spreading down the creature’s neck and out of his chest. They were all, by some elaborate reconfiguring of the demon’s internal anatomy, possessed of health enough to loose a chorus of screams and pleas. Harry intended to grant the thing the only mercy he had on hand.
“Caz! Now!” he said.
As though they had done this a thousand times before, Caz instantly pushed the demon away from his body at the same time Harry swung the machete through a one-hundred-eighty-degree arc. The blow sliced through a third of the demon’s neck before it stuck into the creature’s vertebrae. Harry worked the blade free, hot blood gushing from the massive wound and into Caz’s open mouth.
“Aw. Fuck,” said Caz, through liquid coughs.
Harry swung at the demon’s head a second time, hoping for mercy’s sake to deliver the coup de grâce. But there was too much crazed life in the creature, and he moved away as Harry swung the blade. This time the machete cut through the burgeoning bunch of black and yellow eyes and sank deep into the demon’s skull. Thirty eyeballs or more dropped from the cluster and rolled around Harry’s feet. The demon’s mouths were letting out a single sound now: a long, sustained funereal lament.