Happy Hour in Hell

thirty-five: hounds

WHEN THE gray finally dissolved, I found myself back in the conference room. There weren’t any donuts this time, just the moldy ruin of the box in the middle of the table where it might have sat for years. The coffeepot lay on its side, shrouded in cobwebs and covered with a thick film of dust. The table and carpet were filthy with dust, too. It was a bluff, I felt sure. Well, fairly sure.

Eligor had changed his outfit. Instead of his Count Richelieu drag, he’d opted for something a bit more like a male Victoria’s Secret model, if you can imagine such a thing: blue jeans, bare chest and bare feet, and beautiful, spreading white wings.

“I was an angel once, remember,” he said when he saw my expression. He was still wearing the Vald face. “And a bit higher up the ladder than you are.”

“Yeah, but I heard you got downsized.”

For a moment I saw a little of the white-hot anger beneath his achingly handsome, golden-haired disguise; a ripple through his entire being as though a stone had dropped into a pond. “I fell.”

He’s not hurting you at the moment, Bobby, I reminded myself. So why don’t you shut the fuck up and stop making him angry?

I stayed silent while he stared at me. He stared for a long time, as though I’d grown several new and interesting features since our last meeting. At last he extended his hand and an instant later Doctor Teddy was standing beside him, no taller than Eligor’s waist and cute as a wind-up abortion doll.

“I have a proposition for you, Doloriel,” said the grand duke.

“I’m listening.”

Eligor sat down in midair. “Here’s the problem, troublesome angel. You make me uneasy. Not because you’re as smart as you think you are, but rather the reverse. You’re so stupid that I don’t trust you at all.” He frowned as he considered. A lot of Renaissance painters, and not just the gay ones, would have burst into tears at the sight of such beauty. “You might think you’ve successfully hidden the feather from me and everyone else, but I can’t trust your idea of successful. Knowing that you’re all that stands between me and an infernalis curia makes me . . . well, if I was a delicate little thing like you, I’d say ‘nervous.’”

He wasn’t hurting me, but he wore a very strange expression, so I swallowed my natural tendency to crack wise at the dumbest possible time. “So?”

“So I’m going to offer you a bargain. I’m going to let you go back to Earth and get the feather. If you turn it over to me, you stay free. I have no reason to go after you once I’ve got it back, anyway.”

I couldn’t believe it. Could this really be happening, or was it just a trick? Eligor was actually bargaining?

I did my best to stay calm. “No. I take the Countess with me. If we both get back safe, I’ll give you the feather.”

He laughed. It was nearly a pleasant sound, which just goes to show you how powerful he really was. “You’re joking, of course. I could just erase you both right here and right now, then take a chance that wherever you’ve hidden the feather, it’ll stay there.”

“Then why don’t you?”

Again the long, considering look. It was only when he was doing such small, human things that I could really see how inhuman he was, because there wasn’t the faintest glimmer of emotion on that perfect face. It was like trying to stare down a marble Michelangelo. “All right, angel. My last offer. I will let you go. You will return to Earth and retrieve the feather. Then you will trade it to me for the Countess, if that is really what you want most from me.” A sly smile. “I would have chosen a better harvest of the riches of Hell if I were you, but we won’t belabor it. In return for the feather, I will give you the whore and promise you both immunity.”

“Don’t call her that.”

The smile widened. “Believe me, compared to what I could accurately call her, that is a compliment that would make a maiden blush with pleasure. But never mind. That is my offer, my only offer. Give me your answer now.”

I was desperately trying to see the trick. I knew there had to be one. “How do I know you’ll keep your promise?”

“Little angel, the entirety of what you call reality only exists because of the promises of things like me. I cannot break my word any more than you could dismantle the sun or turn time backward. Also, you have no choice.”

“And if I get the feather and give it to you, you’ll let the Countess of Cold Hands go free? Casimira? You’ll release her and bring her to me and we’ll swap? Right? Then you’ll leave us alone? No revenge?”

“Exactly.”

“Say it. I want to hear you say it.”

He shook his golden head. “My, you are demanding for someone in your situation. Very well. I, Eligor the Horseman, master of Flesh Horse and Grand Duke of Hell, promise that if you return the angelic feather you’ve hidden to me, I will exchange this she-devil you call Casimira, Countess of Cold Hands for it.” He gestured lazily and suddenly Caz stood beside him, bound in chains and still gagged. Her eyes widened when she saw me, and she shook her head violently. I knew she was trying to tell me Eligor couldn’t be trusted.

Like I didn’t know that. But no matter how cool I was playing it, I also knew I had no other choice. “All right. I’ll make your deal. And then you’ll leave us both alone? Wherever we are? Forever?”

Eligor nodded. “Once I have the feather, I will leave you two alone forever, wherever you are, as long as you keep silent about what you know. But if you try to sell me out later in any way, our bargain ends, and I’ll do things to you that will make your time in the conference room seem like the games at a children’s party. Agreed?”

I took a breath, looked at Caz, who was still struggling. What choice did I have? “Okay. I agree. Now, take those chains off her, will you? If you hurt her, you’ll never get what you want from me. Never. I’ll just call Heaven and hand it over.”

A moment later Caz was gone. “She is free, but of course she is still in my . . . care. She’ll stay that way until I hear that you have the feather, and you’re ready to give it to me.”

I felt like Sky Masterson, putting my entire bankroll and my immortal soul on a single roll of the dice, but like I said, what other choice did I have? “Am I free to go, then?” I asked.

Eligor nodded slowly. “Almost. But if I were you, I wouldn’t hurry off until you’ve heard what else I have to say. You see, somehow my old friend Prince Sitri discovered that you were my guest. You remember Sitri, of course.”

I remembered the monstrous creature very well. “Oh, yeah. He’s a charmer.”

“He’s a jealous, interfering fat turd,” said Eligor with just a trace of rancor. “He’s informed the Senate that the prisoner I borrowed from Murderers Sect’s custody is, in fact, an angel—a heavenly spy.”

“What?”

“Because of that, a bit of . . . controversy has erupted. And because I have supposedly corrupted the guards of the Murderers Sect, Sitri and the others have sent the Mastema’s Purified to my house. They answer only to the Adversary, so bribery is not going to work this time.”

“Sent? You mean they’re on their way?”

The grand duke looked bored. “I would guess they’re probably already outside, being stalled by my household staff. But that won’t work for long.”

“So you had no choice. No wonder you made a deal with me! If you didn’t, they were going to take me anyway!”

Eligor shook his head. “No. I would never turn you over to the Senate alive. But if I give them your remains, there’s still the chance that someone will find that feather. I don’t want it . . . hanging over my head, if you see what I mean.” He fluttered his pure white wings. “Thus, our little bargain.”

“But how am I supposed to get out of Hell?”

“Not my concern. You found your way in, you can find your way back out, little angel.”

“But you said that if they catch me, they’ll make me tell them where the feather is, tell them what you did, everything . . . !”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Yes, there is one more arrangement to be made.” He pointed and the teddy bear monster was suddenly dressed in hospital scrubs. “Did you bring along our little friend, Doctor Teddy?”

“Of course, Master,” said the toy bear in his gruff little voice. He produced a sphere about the size of a golf ball from the pocket of his smock and held it out in a furry paw. The thing was partially transparent, like a cloudy bubble, and I could see something sliding wetly inside it, something with very little room to move.

Eligor took it from him and held it out for me to see. It had too many teeth and too many scrabbling legs, and its eyes watched me through the filmy sphere as if it were already thinking about drilling into me and laying eggs or something. “Do you recognize it, Doloriel? You’ve seen more than a few.”

I leaned away from the hideous thing. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s an intracubus, our version of one of your guardian angels. These are assigned to every human born, to keep track of all the things they do that will eventually bring them to us here. On Earth, intracubi are insubstantial, but here they’re quite real, quite . . . physical. In fact, to implant this one, Doctor Teddy’s going to have to do a little surgery on you.”

“Surgery . . . ?”

Eligor smiled and gestured. The hotel conference room disappeared, instantly replaced by the chamber with the rusted, stained table and cutting tools. A moment later, without anyone touching me, I found myself facedown on the table and unable to move. I felt little Torture Me Elmo climb up onto my back, then move forward until he straddled my neck. Worst of all, I could feel that he had a little furry erection.

“It has to go in at the base of the skull,” the grand duke said. “That way, if you talk to anyone in Hell, I’ll know about it, and if the Mastema catches you—well, our little intracubus will just eat his way out and we won’t have to worry about your saying something you shouldn’t.” He chuckled. “But if you do somehow make your way out of Hell and back to Earth, Mister Dollar, the intracubus will disappear with the demon-body you’re wearing now. And I’ll be waiting to hear from you. You know my office number. Call me when you have the feather, and we’ll arrange our little swap.”

Then Eligor was gone. I could feel his absence like a flame suddenly extinguished. It was just me, the thing in the sphere, and the furry monstrosity who promptly began to gouge a hole in the back of my head with what felt like a rusty screwdriver. Anaesthetic? In Hell?

I had really hoped I was done screaming for the day.

You would have thought that after all the terrible things that had happened to me lately, after all the attacks, torments, violations I’d suffered, this would have been just the latest and the least, a small price to pay for escaping alive or, at least, being given the chance to escape. You’d have thought that, but you’d have been wrong. The hideous sensation of having my skull gouged open paled into absolute insignificance next to the thing that Doctor Teddy pushed into me until it nestled against the meat of my brain. It felt like a hermit crab made of razor blades forced into far, far too small a shell—a shell that just happened to be attached to my neck. Then those legs and teeth closed on my nerve stem, anchoring the thing, and worse by far than the pain was the feeling of its connecting itself to me in a thousand horribly intimate ways. I’ve talked with spirits and demons and guardian angels, and I’ve met things that would make a Green Beret wet himself and never even notice, but I swear I’ve never felt anything as disgusting as having that thing get comfortable inside my head.

When the toy doctor was finished with the skull-rape, he took a few brisk moments to close me back up, sewing the wound with what felt like baling wire, then Doctor Teddy and the conference room suddenly swirled and evaporated, as though a drain had opened up and let it all flow away.

I found myself standing outside on the grounds of Flesh Horse, hidden in an ocean of shadow. The great tower loomed so that it blocked even the light from the highest beacons. Still, enough light filtered down to the great house’s main entrance to let me see the host assembled at Eligor’s gate. Any one of the huge, fierce, mounted Purifier soldiers could probably have crushed me by himself, and there were dozens of them, armed to the teeth with strange guns, long spears, and axes with oversized, jagged blades. Their horses were carcasses, skin tattered to reveal yellow bones and drying organs. But what really made me uneasy were the tracking beasts that slavered and pulled impatiently at their harnesses. They were smaller than the horses, although not by much, but so strong and so eager to be after their prey (me, remember?) that several times they yanked bulky handlers off their feet and had to be dragged back by many hands pulling together, as though they were drifting four-legged zeppelins.

In the middle of one such struggle, one of the animals lifted its malformed head and howled, a noise that turned my bones to water. The others chimed in, until the grounds beneath Flesh Horse rang with their chilling cries. I’d heard of hellhounds, but this was the first time I’d ever seen them in their native element, and suddenly I felt more sorry for Robert Johnson than I ever had. As I stood there, my heart beating so hard I could barely stand, I heard the old bluesman’s mournful, doomed voice singing for me and me alone.

And the days keeps on worryin’ me

There’s a hellhound on my trail

As if sensing the hopelessness of my thoughts, the intracubus tugged at the strings of my mind like an impatient driver racing the accelerator, making everything that was in me turn cold. I reached up and touched the back of my head where the unspeakably nasty thing had been inserted. Doctor Teddy’s stitches felt big as shoelaces, crudely knotted, and the incision was still oozing. A little bit of Eligor was going with me, whether I liked it or not.

Bad as it all was, I didn’t really have any options left. It was time for me to run for my life and my eternal soul.