Harry took it as a sign that the creature was readying himself for death, and the thought put power into his third swing. It went, more by accident than intention, exactly where the second blow had gone and took off the top half of the enemy’s head. The demon lurched, and the severed crown slid off and landed on Caz’s chest, several eyes popping from the pressure as it struck. The rest of the pitiful thing sagged for a moment or two in Caz’s arms, then keeled over dead.
It took the combined strength of Lana, Harry, and Dale pushing from above and Caz pushing from below to roll the corpse away, but when they finally did Caz pushed himself up into a sitting position, where he paused to wipe some of the blood that had spewed on him and then got to his feet.
“Thank you,” he said to Harry. “I thought that was it, man.”
“Nobody’s dying on this trip,” Harry said. “Especially at the hand of some underling. Understood? Lana? Dale? You follow? We’re going to get through this—”
Lana was staring down at the corpse of the demon Harry had brought down. “Do they all look like this?” she asked. “Too many eyes? All those mouths?”
“No,” said Harry. “That’s what I was saying before the bastard sprang back to life. I think that’s what the fog did. This isn’t normal. Not by a long shot.”
“I think we left normal back in New York,” Lana said.
“Honey. We left normal long before that,” Dale said.
D’Amour nodded in terse agreement. “We’ve probably got a nice little window to move freely through the city, though, so I suggest we go while the going is still good.”
Everyone agreed and they proceeded up the shallow incline that led from Janker’s Gate, continuing through the city at a steady pace. They were being watched, Harry knew, every step of the way. At first he only felt it—that tingling sigil on the back of the neck, the ever-trustworthy UI—but soon there were more obvious signs: doors that had been opened a slit were closed sharply when his gaze chanced their way, crude curtains or drapes were dropped back into place, and now and then he heard voices from inside the houses—cries and arguments and sometimes what might have been demonic prayers, offered up in the hope of some fiendish salvation.
At every intersection they crossed, Harry glimpsed figures skipping out of sight into doorways or alleys; a few were even spying on them from the rooftops, risking whatever was left of their lives as they stalked the four earthly life-forms. Suddenly Harry’s tattoos went wild. He said nothing, but, out of reflex, his hand went to the place on his neck where the tattoo sang its warning cry.
“Ah Christ,” Caz said. “I know what that means.”
“What what means?” Dale said, his voice barely audible.
“Shit,” Harry said. “My tattoos. Caz, I forget you can read me like a book.”
“I wrote that book,” Caz said.
“Yeah, well. I’m being warned to proceed with caution.”
“Harold, we’re in Hell. Caution is a fucking given. I put that fucking tattoo on you. And the way your hand shot to that bit of ink tells me that caution doesn’t even come close.”
“Fine. You want the hard sell? We’re not alone, and I think we’re fucked. Happy now?” Harry said, walking on.
“Very,” Caz replied.
As if on cue, from somewhere near the sound of feet on stone was heard, from another direction a short cry loosed. Seemingly in response, Harry and his friends heard an unholy, deafening din arising from every direction. The loosed sound hadn’t been a cry at all. It was a summons, and it was answered in the multitudes.
A horde of terrible voices suddenly punctuated the air with madhouse noises—shrieks, and sobbing, and joyless laughter—all varying imitations of the previous sound, so that within the space of less than a minute the city was no longer silent but filled completely with this cacophony, its source steadily closing on the intersection where Harry and his friends now stood.
16
“Listen,” said the Hell Priest.
“What in God’s name is that?” Norma said.
They had stumbled together up the Bastion’s ninety-one steps, which led them to the massive front door of the regime’s sanctuary. It was there now that the Priest attempted to gain entrance.
“I used to live in Los Angeles,” Norma said. “Off a winding road called Coldheart Canyon. At night sometimes you’d hear the yipping of a coyote, then a whole chorus of them joining in as they came to share the kill. That’s what that sounds like: a bunch of damned coyotes, howling with happiness because they’re about to eat.”
“That’s exactly what it is.”
“Oh Christ,” Norma said. “Harry…”
“He should consider himself lucky if he dies here and now,” said the Priest, raising one hand and laying his palm flat against the door. “The regime’s assassins are afraid. I can hear them weeping on the other side of this door.”
She could too, now that she paid closer attention. It was more than simple tears that escaped them. There was terror in their cries.
“They’ve never seen the void,” the Cenobite said, raising his voice so that they could hear him. “They are like children now, waiting for me to come inside and show them the way.”
A voice rose above the sobs, its owner doing his best to sound sure of his sanity: “Go back from whence you came, demon!”
“I heard you have troubles, friend,” said the Hell Priest.
“The Denials at this Threshold were laid by Lucifer himself. You’ll never gain access.”
“Then I shall waste no more of your time.” So saying, the demon waved his hand over the door and muttered an incantation so soft, Norma wasn’t quite sure she heard anything at all. Whatever rite the Priest had issued, it worked its magic, but quick.
“Oh. Oh no! Oh damnation!” said the same voice from behind the door. “Wait—”
“Yes?” the Hell Priest asked.
“Don’t go!”
“As you’ve said, you are safe within your walls. You have no need of me.”
“We are under siege! There are things! In here! With us! Terrible things! It’s too dark to see! Help us, please!”
“Hallucinations? You don’t really think that’ll work, do you? They’re demons. They know—” Norma said.
“Stop talking to him,” a second voice said from within. “He’s playing tricks on us.” And then, “You’re stupid for coming here, Cenobite. The regime has plans for you.”
“See?” Norma said, her question answered.
“Wait,” the Priest said to her.
“Be quiet!” said the first voice. “Let him in. He has powers. He can help us.”
“Yes! Let him in!” said another, his assent taken up by half a dozen others.
“Turn off the Denials, Kafde,” said the first guard. “Let the Priest in.”
“It’s a trick, you damned fool—” the dissenter broke in.
“Enough,” the first guard said. There was a sound of ragged motion and then the thump of a body being thrown against the door.
“No! Don’t—”
The dissenter never finished his sentence. In place of words came the sound of a violent impact, and then that of his dying body sliding down the door and hitting the floor.
Norma’s mouth hung open in shock. “I don’t believe it,” she said.
“And our journey has not yet even begun,” the Hell Priest said.
“Messata,” came the voice of the first guard, “get this carcass out of the way while I turn off the Denials. Priest, are you still there?”
“I am,” said the Cenobite.
“Step away from the threshold, and be careful.” There was a resonant click, and the door swung wide. A large yellow and orange demon greeted him at speed. The soldier was easily twice the Priest’s height and dressed in a golden armor. He ushered the Cenobite into the chamber, gesturing frantically all the while. The Hell Priest, followed by Norma, entered the small antechamber occupied by a dozen soldiers, all clad in the same war v
estments.
“They’re everywhere, these monsters,” the guard pleaded. “You must help—”
The Cenobite made a tiny nod and said, “I know. I came for the regime. They are in danger. Where is their chamber?”
The soldier pointed toward a staircase that branched off into dozens of differing directions. “I will lead you. The tower is a vertical labyrinth. You will go mad before you find your way to the second floor. This is the first chamber. Theirs is the sixth. We will fight this scourge together, brother! These fiends will not carry the day. The remaining chambers are each one thousand soldiers strong.”
“Then I have much work to do,” the Hell Priest said. He then reached into his robe and took out of its folds a Lemarchand Configuration and handed it to the guard. “Here,” he said.
“What is that?” the soldier inquired, taking it in hand.
“A weapon. I have several.”
He took out another three and passed them to the demon, who then passed them to other soldiers.
“What do they do?” one of them asked.
“Open them,” the Hell Priest said.
17
Harry might have taken some comfort at the belief that all but the soul was a human illusion, but there was nothing in his present circumstance that looked illusory. The street at the intersection where he, Caz, Dale, and Lana stood was a nightmare with no foreseeable escape. Each of the humans stared down a different street, but all saw the same unwelcome sight: the monstrously transformed citizens of the unholy city coming at them.
The terrible multiplicities had sprung up from the places where the fog’s seeds had lodged themselves, rendering each beast a horror unto itself. All had stripped themselves completely naked, and to add injury to insult, their already-transformed anatomies brought forth strange blood-sopped blossoms and from those blossoms further generations of seeds were now sprouting.
They had all too clear a vision of the seeds at their fecund work; new victims convulsed as their outgrowths swelled and burst, spitting juices in all directions, the flesh they had wetted instantly casting out nets of ripe red veins that were moments later nurturing the creation of new multiplicities.
The second generation’s growth was more confident than the first, and more ambitious; the third and fourth, exponential. The forms that they brought into being weren’t simply siblings of the anatomy where they’d landed; they were aberrant and fantasized.
And again, as with their predecessors, the urgent need to be naked, to expose every niche and fold to seeding, so that in the space of a minute or two the number of appendages had tripled, the newly infested still shrieking as wave upon wave of agony overtook them.
Strangest of all among the new recruits to this unspeakable regiment were the demonic children, freed from the constraints of hearth and home, their bodies, for all apparent vulnerability, more eager even than those of their parents to reinvent themselves. They wanted to be new species: the seeding providing the perfect reason to unleash every heretical thought the day could make flesh.
Even as their parents reached the limits of their disorder, their children were overtaking them, giving their bodies to the grand experiment with an abandon their elders had tried in their flesh too long to control. Hence the boy with thirty arms or more reaching out from the roots in his back, or the adolescent girl whose sex had split her all the way up to her breastbone, her wet wings undulating as it opened to invite the world to do its worst, or the infant even, seeded into its mother’s arms and riding the saddles of her milk-fed breasts, its hand a blistered ball swelled to three times or more its natural size, so that it eclipsed its mother’s face completely. As for its limbs, they had quadrupled in number and became in the process little more than bone and sinew, their joints defying nature and turned backward to embrace the mother’s body like the many-jointed legs of a spider.
There was nothing of pity here, nor, needless to say, of love, simply the unrelenting hurt and horror of tomorrow’s hell being born on the bed of glass and nails where yesterday’s hell was in the long, messy process of dying. And the occupants of New Hell had blocked the streets from one side to the other. There was nothing to be done, nowhere to go. The circle of the enemy was around them, complete.
“What’s the plan, Harold?”
“Die?” Harry said.
“No,” Dale said more in defiance than fright. “Fuck this.” And he pressed on toward easily the most crowded of the four directions.
“Dale! Get back here!” Harry shouted.
Dale didn’t listen.
“And then there were three,” said Lana.
Dale stopped when he reached the first swarm of damned and distorted.
“Oh, just go away,” he said.
So saying, he raised his cane and jabbed its pointed tip into the belly of a demon boy. The young demon shrieked, beating a hasty backward retreat on many of his feet. There was a mark, Harry saw: a small black circle that was growing exponentially and quickly becoming a mess of black lightning bolts shooting through the villain’s veins. The demon lost his balance and went sprawling down among his comrades.
A female demon charged toward Dale. He was waiting for her, cane in hand. The silver tip pricked a cluster of sapling breasts, and her dozen eyes bulged from their loose-hanging sockets. She unleashed a howl and her skin too quickly became a maze of poisoned flesh. Harry watched everything and was beginning to understand. The flesh from the demon boy’s wound had begun to fold back upon itself like blossoming flower petals, exposing the shiny wet muscle beneath.
His skin was retreating with great precision, the square growing, its symmetry spoiled only by the blood that was spilling over as the patch of exposed flesh grew steadily larger.
The same process was happening on the female demon’s breasts, where some kind of miracle had left its mark. But the speed at which the square was growing had increased fivefold or more, her multitude of teats all but stripped of skin, her blood-matted chest hanging on the drapes of her breastplate.
Dale jabbed at another demon. And another. Each victim was seized in agony as the place where they had been pierced opened and unmade itself.
“What the fuck is going on?” Lana asked.
“Dale. You’re a goddamned genius,” Harry said. “I could kiss you.”
“Promises, promises,” Dale said, impaling another demon. Harry tightened his grip on the machete and headed toward his own beseeded hoard.
“New plan,” Harry said. “Grab whatever weapons you have and start cutting.”
“Are you sure about this?” Lana asked.
Harry looked back at her and smirked. “Dead sure.”
“Probably not the best choice of words, but—” Saying all she had to say, Lana pulled out two knives, gripped them, wrists crossed with elbows out, and walked straight at the oncoming swarm.
“I guess that means me too,” Caz said.
He pulled out his weapon and followed suit. Caz took a swing, slicing the seventh forearm of an enormous granddaddy of a demon. The beast clutched at the wound with four of his hands, but the gauze was not enough to stanch the wound. From underneath the cluster of fingers, the demon’s flesh unfolded itself, devouring muscle and bone from top to multilayered bottom.
Harry and his group of Harrowers hacked and slashed their way through the bulbous throng, needing only one wound to stop each adversary. There were none among the demons who were granted immunity. They all went down, young and old alike falling, their bodies wracked with spasms, reaching with desperation to catch hold of the killing mote but never far enough to seize the enemy at its work. In a short time there were dying demons lying everywhere, a dozen deep in some places, sprawled over one another: a mass of bodies in the process of self-skinning, pools of blood rising between them all.
Harry glanced back at Dale, Lana, and Caz. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said.
Caz, panting, stared at his comrades expectantly. “Does anybody want to explain to the big dumb queen w
hat the hell just happened?”
“You forgot to mention gorgeous,” Dale said.
Caz looked down at Dale and smiled coyly as he brushed a severed nipple off his shoulder.
“I don’t give a shit how it worked,” Lana said. “All I need to know is that we’re still breathing.”
“Clearly,” Harry said, “something was causing those poor bastards to sprout multiple pieces of anatomy.”
“Clearly,” said Lana.
“Whatever was making that happen, it didn’t seem to care whether it multiplied appendages, or wounds. Its mission was simply to divide and conquer. The second we opened a hole in those things, the working did the rest for us.”
“Got it,” Lana said. “Good enough for me.”
“Dale, did you know that would happen?” Caz asked, stepping over a small mountain of bleeding cunts.
“I hadn’t the foggiest,” Dale replied. “I just knew we had to find Norma and that God wouldn’t allow us to be stopped now.”
“Do me a favor, Dale,” Harry said.
“Yes, dear?”
“I know this one went well. But next time you put my life on the line because of what you think God will allow, leave me out of it.”
“Spoilsport,” Dale said.
“Let’s move,” Harry said by way of reply.
“I can’t wade through all this,” Lana said.
“It’s just a little blood,” Harry remarked, catching hold of Lana’s arm. “Come on.”
Muttering something under her breath, Lana went with him while Caz and Dale brought up the rear. Together, they stumbled over the mass of bodies, only to find that many of them still had some measure of life in them, the skinning process as yet incomplete.
“That was something,” Caz said, watching the continual undoing beneath his soles.
“I’ve seen stranger things,” Harry said.
“You say that about everything,” Lana said.
“Not everything.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
Harry pointed past her, toward the end of the city. Lana turned. The last shreds of fog had cleared away, and for the first time they could see all the way down the street to the impossibly tall black marble building that stood at its end.