Lucifer's Lottery

All that . . . against little old me . . .

He homed the Monocular in on the Demonculus’s chest, noticing the protective plate bolted into it. Two more Security Balloons floated to either side, to discourage a sneak attack. Krilid just laughed and laughed, knowing that Ezoriel’s plan meant certain death.

Oh, well. What else do I have to do?

A third balloon seemed to be disengaging from the others about the chest plate. Krilid’s eyes narrowed—from that particular Skiff an Imperial Flag was flying from the balloon net. Krilid quickly checked his folder of vellum sheets containing target identification diagrams . . .

The flag’s insignia showed an emblem of a bat with a fanged skull-head, while the bat’s dripping talons grasped hammers, ladders, and shovels.

The Master Builder’s regimental colors! Krilid knew. He focused the Monocular further and saw the crowned, withered-faced Human in the rearmost seat. The shimmering surplice of spun lead told all. It was the Supreme Master Builder himself, the acclaimed Warlock Joseph Curwen . . .

I can’t have this pressure! Krilid’s thoughts exploded. His gnarled hands snapped up his rifle, fixed the Monocular on the barrel; and then he dumped his powder cartridge and rammed a ball. If Ezoriel’s Clairvoyants are so great, how come they didn’t know Curwen would be in the Skiff?

Krilid brought his rifle to bear, cocked the hammer, and lined up his sights right on the Master Builder’s head . . .

He took in one full breath, let half of it out, and began to depress the trigger—

The sudden headache hit him like a ball bat. Holy shit! Krilid dropped the musket and landed flat on his back on the Nectoport deck, cringing from the pain like a dentist’s drill boring straight into unanesthetized nerve pulp, only the pulp wasn’t a tooth, it was his entire brain.

NOT NOW, KRILID, Ezoriel’s static-ridden voice slammed into his head. THE TIME IS NOT YET AT HAND . . .

“But I had him right in my sights!” the Troll bellowed, hands clamping his warped skull.

THE PLAN WILL MOST CERTAINLY FAIL UNLESS IT IS EXECUTED ON PRECISE SCHEDULE—

“The evil scumbag was right there! I had a perfect head-shot!”

The Fallen Angel chuckled through more corroded static. YOU’RE A ZEALOUS GODLY SOLDIER, BUT FAR TOO IMPATIENT. YOU MUST WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE GIVEN A DIRECT FIRING ORDER.

“Nobody ever told me that!”

THAT IS BECAUSE WE MUST DISCIPLINE ALL OUR INTELLIGENCE. REVEALING TOO MUCH AT ONCE MIGHT ONLY INCREASE THE CHANCES OF INTERCEPTION. KILLING CURWEN PREMATURELY WOULD RUIN EVERYTHING.

“Now you tell me!” Krilid griped and sat back up when the headache receded.

PATIENCE, KRILID. NOW RETREAT TO SAFE DISTANCE AND EXTINGUISH YOUR HAND OF GLORY. CONSERVE ALL RESOURCES UNTIL THE FINAL MOMENT.

“All right,” Krilid sputtered. “But when is the final moment, Ezoriel?”

No reply was made, as the Fallen Angel’s telepathic signal had already crackled out.

(II)

“You must be a veteran,” said the short, overly tan woman behind the counter. Her voice was as craggy as her face.

Gerold sighed. “Why? Just ’cos I’m in the chair? I could’ve been driving drunk, or fallen off a balcony or something.”

The woman—whose ’70s-styled hair was blazing white—tittered almost like a witch. Her redneck accent replied, “Well, son, first off, you’re young. Second, I can tell by your face you ain’t dumb enough to drive drunk or fall off a dang balcony—”

Wow. I guess that’s a compliment.

“—and third, your buttons are all buttoned up.” She pointed a sun-withered finger. “That tells me you was in the army or marines.”

“You got me,” Gerold admitted. “Army. Got out a year or so ago and put in physical therapy.”

When Gerold had gotten off the Greyhound, he’d taken a cab to Lake Misquamicus, having flipped himself into the cab seat while the cabbie stowed his wheelchair in the trunk. Upon arrival, he wheeled toward the dock, marveling at the sight of the silverish lake. This’ll kick ass! Over the great reflective expanse of water, not one other boat could be seen. Privacy . . . So the Fates had granted his wish after all. He’d be able to kill himself here and no one could interfere.

The bait shop proprietor was probably in her late fifties but looked ten years older from being in the sun for—more than likely—her entire life. She was very slim, tattoo-dotted, and still bore some vestige of bygone good looks even with the wrinkles, sun blemishes, and veininess. A far cry from the young and spritely bikini girl in the ad; however, this woman was wearing a bikini—a raving, metallic candy-apple red—that was absolutely minuscule. She’s almost too old to be wearing it, but . . . more power to her for doing it anyway, Gerold reasoned. Her perfectly straight hair shined perfectly white to the small of her back; the bikini top satcheled a sizable bosom, obviously implants dating back to the ’70s.

“And you’ll be pleased to hear this, hon,” she said, grinning behind the counter. “Here, there’s no charge to veterans for bait!”

“I appreciate it,” Gerold said, managing not to laugh. Now THERE’S a gesture for servicemen. Free worms, chum, and dead shrimp.

“And rod rentals and Jet Skis are half off,” she added. “But I don’t suppose you’d be able to Jet Ski by yourself.” Then her eyes glittered. “But I’d be happy to take you out myself and you can hold on to me.”

“Thanks, but I came here to rent a rowboat and drop a crayfish trap, that’s all.”

“Oh, dandy!” She slapped a frozen bag of shrimp on the counter, then rang up Gerold’s other purchases: a small wire crayfish trap, a Sterno cooker and stand, and a metal pot. “Crawdads in Lake Misquamicus are the best in the state, some of ’em almost big as lobsters.”

“That’s what I’m looking for.”

“How long you wanna rent the boat till, sweetie?”

“Um, well, probably till late if that’s all right.”

“Sure is. Some folks rent a boat and fish all night and through to sunup.”

“Ring me up for that, please,” Gerold said.

“Oh, you don’t gotta pay for the rental till ya come back in.”

Gerold felt a twinge of deceit. He wanted to pay in advance, now, so he wouldn’t be gypping her. After all, he wouldn’t be coming back, would he? Not in the rental boat at any rate.

It would probably be the county sheriff’s department that brought his body back in . . . if they ever found it.

“Aw, just let me pay it all up front, keeps things easier. Oh, and some bottled water and a cooler.”

The woman winked. “Comin’ right up, handsome.” She hitched up her overly burgeoned top and retrieved the items; then he paid up and wheeled himself outside.

A long wooden dock reached out into the silver ripples. At the end, several rowboats rocked in the water; the white-haired woman jumped down into the last one and snapped in a special seat with a back on it.

“What’s that?” Gerold asked.

“A seat for folks so afflicted. Ya can’t row if ya can’t sit up straight, and you can strap yourself in. Makes it safer.”

“Cool,” Gerold approved, not that safety was an issue now.

“Now lemme help ya get in, hon—”

“I got it,” he said and expertly flipped himself out of the chair. His arm muscles bulged when he lunged forward once on his hands, then shimmied himself into the handicapped chair.

“You’re one strong fella!” the lady exclaimed.

Yeah, but only from the waist up.

The woman stowed his cooler and other items, her zero-body-fat physique exemplified each time she bent over. When one of her implants slid up, Gerold marveled at the briefly betrayed tan line: a patch of lambent white blocked off against the iced-tea-colored tan. Within the white patch, the tiniest pink sliver of nipple could be seen. Wow, Gerold mused. Suddenly he found the vision of the lissome older woman densely erotic, and it occurred to him that such a sight—one of his last among the living—was a wonderful thing.

Had she caught him looking? At once her grin seemed sultry, and when she noticed that a wedge of breast had slipped out from the bra, she seemed to take her time correcting it.

“I guess I’m all set,” Gerold said.

“Not just yet,” she corrected, then startled him when she walked right over to him and leaned over. Suddenly her top-straining implants were nearly in his face. “Just lean forward a bit, sweetie.”

Now her barely covered crotch was nearly in his face, but he understood when she put his arms through a life vest and tightened the straps. “Misquamicus ain’t a very big lake, hon, but a good wind can cause a mighty rough chop.”

The ironic fact amused Gerold: She’s putting a life vest on a guy who’s going to commit suicide.

She placed a small object in a side bin. “And here’s an emergency radio just in case. I’ll check in with ya so often, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“You’ll find the best crawdaddin’ right dead center of the lake. It’s deeper and there’s lots of crannies down there where they like to hide.”

“Dead center. Gotcha.”

Her tanned legs flexed when she climbed back on the dock. She put on sunglasses, grinning up to the sky, her perfectly flat stomach beginning to shine with sweat. “Nice slow, sunny day like this? I think I’ll lay out here a while and catch some rays—”

Gerold gulped.

—and then she took off her top, just like that.

Holy moly . . .

She stretched out in a lounge chair facing Gerold’s position in the seat. All at once, the flawless snow-white breasts centered by dark nipples blared at him within the demarcation of tanned skin.

She grinned, Gerold’s own astonished face reflecting in her glasses.

“Uh, oh, sorry,” he murmured after another moment of staring.

“Hon? A gal my age’s got no problem bein’ looked at by a nice fella . . .”

Gerold raised his oars, tried not to continue staring, then just thought, To hell with it, and kept looking. “Um, I have a question, though—”

She giggled. “Yes. They’re implants, I gotta admit.”

Gerold laughed. “That wasn’t the question but . . .” He tried to focus his thought. “A minute ago, you said Lake Misquamicus wasn’t a big lake.” He shrugged and glanced behind. “Looks big to me. Real big.”

“Aw, there’s at least a dozen lakes in Florida bigger’n this. The biggest, a’course, is Lake Okeechobee, second biggest in the whole country. You never been there?”

It was impossible not to keep stealing glances. “No, but I’ve heard of it.”

“Over a trillion gallons of water in Okeechobee—”

The statement snapped Gerold’s stare. “A trillion? That’s . . . unimaginable.”

“Lotta water, sure. Hard to even reckon that much water.”

I better start rowing, Gerold told himself. This woman’s hooters are wringing me out. But the sudden question snapped to mind. “Any idea how many gallons in this lake?”

In painstaking slowness, the woman began to rub suntan oil over her belly. “Oh, yeah. Department’a Natural Resources says that Lake Misquamicus contains just about six billion gallons . . .”

(III)

Howard walks you back onto the parapet facing the inner wards and courtyard. Soft, fragrant breezes blow. You take in the scape of the fortress and beyond, more and more awed. This place makes Bill Gates’s house look like an outhouse . . . and it could all be mine . . .

But—

“Wait a minute. What good’s all this money and luxury when I don’t have friends to share it with?”

“Ah, there goes your good side shining through once more,” Howard replies. “But I’ll remind you that you had no abundance of friends in the Living World, and were quite content with that.”

You think about that. You’ve always been a friendly person but you never really needed a lot of friends. Your faith was your ultimate friend, and the opportunity to serve God. “Well, that’s true but looking at this whole thing now, I’d need some friends . . .”

Howard shrugs. “I’d like to think that I’m your friend, Mr. Hudson. I’ve delighted in your company, and I truly admire your earthy resoluteness and magnificently refined goodwill.”

The comment makes you look at him. “You’re right, Howard. You are my friend. You’re actually a pretty cool guy.”

“I’m grateful and touched.” And then Howard leans closer. “And not to portray myself too terribly mercenary . . . were you to accept the Senary, you’d easily have the power to relieve me of my laborious onuses at the Hall of Automatic Writers and have me reassigned as, say, your personal archivist and biographer? And during any free time you saw fit to afford me . . .” Howard sighed dreamily. “I could forge on with my serious work.”

“If I accept the Senary, Howard, then I’d do that—”

“Great Pegana!”

“But,” you add with an odd stammer. Something abstract seems to tilt in your psyche. If I accept the Senary, you repeat to yourself in thought.

Would you really do that?

“I-I-I . . . I don’t think I’m going to accept . . .” Yet even as the words leave your lips, you can’t stop thinking about all this luxury, all this money, and of course all these women at your disposal.

“Alas, our time is nearly done,” Howard tells you. He turns his pallid face back to the courtyards. “But I seem to have digressed yet again, with regard to your previous concerns. Besides myself, you would have some direct friends and acquaintances.”

“What?”

“Behold, sir.”

Suddenly you smell a simple, yet delectable aroma:

Burgers on the grill?

And once again your unnatural eyes follow Howard’s gesture where a small congregation mingles. Several men and women chat happily about a barbecue, and sure enough, they are cooking hamburgers and hot dogs.

“Wait a minute,” you object. “How can there be hamburgers and hot dogs in Hell? They must be fucked up, like dick-burgers or some shit, right?”

Howard puts his face in his hands. “Mr. Hudson, please. The profanity. I regret this peculiar acclimation you’re experiencing. Hell’s influences can indeed be quite negative. But ruffian talk bespeaks only ruffians. Men such as ourselves are hardly that.”

“Sorry, I can’t help it for some reason,” you say, still mystified by the instantaneousness with which you cussed.

“But to render an answer, Mr. Hudson, I’ll assure you of the contrary. It’s true, there are no cattle nor swine in Hell, at least none that would taste the same as what you’re accustomed to, yet through the marvel of Hexegenic Engineering, our Archlocks can produce foodstuffs that taste identical to any food on Earth.” Howard’s brow rises. “If one is so privileged.”

“Privileged as in a Privilato, you mean.”

“Quite. But, please. Be more attentive.”

Next, you take closer note of the actual people at the barbecue, and the recognition jolts you.

You know everyone there.

“My father and mother!” you rejoice. “My sister, too!” They had all died years ago but now you deduce the direction of their Afterlife. Manning the grill itself is Randal, who glances upward and waves.

“And Randal! My best friend where I live, but . . . wait. He couldn’t be here. He’s not dead.”

“Regrettably, he is, Mr. Hudson,” Howard tells you. “As I’ve been properly informed by the so-called powers that be. He was killed just hours ago by an unstable intruder at his convenience store, apparently a quite obese homeless loafer.”

Homeless. Obese. The image pops into your gaseous brain. The schizo in the stained sweatpants who threw up in the Qwik-Mart! You consider the situation and nearly chuckle, though there’s nothing funny about it. He must’ve gotten sick of Randal throwing him out of the store, so he . . .

“Evidently this inauspicious derelict got hold of a ball bat and, well, introduced it with some vim and vigor to your friend Randal’s knees, groin, and skull.”

It’s ironic at least. Your monstrous eyes squint harder . . .

There’s a third man there as well.

No, you think dully.

The man’s attire is shocking enough—black shoes, black slacks, and black shirt, and a Roman collar—but when you recognize his face?

“Not Monsignor Halford!” you exclaim.

Howard seems surprised. “Your reaction sounds troubled, Mr. Hudson. I’d think you’d be pleased to find your mentor here.”

“What’s he doing in Hell?” you yell. “He’s a fucking monsignor!”

Howard winces at your next implementation of foul language. “It is with great regret that I must inform you of Monsignor Halford’s recent demise—some manner of coronary attack. As for being here, I hardly need to explain.”

“He’s a priest, for shit’s sake. Why didn’t he go to Heaven?”

Howard’s brows rise in a scolding attitude. “I should think the answer would be clear. Priest or not, he didn’t live his faith as you do. He didn’t practice as he preached, so to speak.”

That’s bullshit, you fume, but then . . . Well, at least he’s here. He’s someone I like and know.

“And the two more . . . provocatively dressed young ladies I’m sure you’ll recognize as well. They were killed last night, in an aspect of mishap I’m told is known as a ‘drive-by.’ ”

You blink, and see them.

The two trashily attractive women turn and wave as well. Tight T-shirts cling to impressive bosoms, and they read: DO ME TILL I PUKE and NO GAG REFLEX.

“The hookers from the bar!” you exclaim.

“Indeed, and, look, here comes one more.”

Across the yard a beautiful girl-next-door type strides toward the congregation, pushing a wheelbarrow full of iced-down bottles of beer.

“Marcie! My very first girlfriend!” you instantly recognize. “We never had sex but . . .”

“Accept the Senary, Mr. Hudson, and you shall be presented with that opportunity forthwith.”

You stare. You’d forgotten all about Marcie. Your first kiss, and in fact the only girl you’d ever made out with. The combination of her beauty, intellect, and demeanor had made her the only person to tempt you not to become a priest.

“We both loved each other but . . . decided we loved God more,” you drone, remembering through a fog of heartbreak. “So we parted. I went to college to prepare for the seminary and she went to a convent . . .”

“Well, the lady’s convent days were short-lived. Convent day, I should rephrase.”

“She quit after only one day?”

“I’m afraid so, whereupon she immediately pursued avenues of life quite sexual. Whenever she was with another man, however, she always pretended he was you . . .”

First you gulp, but then frown. “You’re just saying that, Howard. To get me to accept!”

Howard’s pallid finger rises. “I’ll remind you, Mr. Hudson, that as the Trustee, I am not allowed to lie or to exaggerate. It must be your untainted free will that prompts your ultimate decision.”

You shake your gourd-head and sigh. “So . . . how did Marcie die?”

“I’m told she suffered a calamitous misadventure involving a steamroller, but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is that she’s here, now, in the flesh. She as well as the other Human Damned who mean the most to you.” Howard offers you a stern look. “And you’d be doing them all an immeasurable service by accepting the Senary, Mr. Hudson.”

“How’s that?”

“Because there’s no purpose in Lucifer keeping them here if you chose not to take up residence in the castle. Your friends and family would be redelegated back into Hell’s mainstream, where they wouldn’t fare well at all, I’m afraid.”

Your gaze at him shifts. “So it’s blackmail?”

“Lucifer has no qualms in revealing his motives. He wants something from you very badly, and he will go to great pains to urge you into giving it to him. By offering you the prize of all your dreams and all your fantasies, which you will be able to enjoy forever.”

“Sex, money, and luxury . . .”

“Yes, and let us not forget envy, for you will be envied, by everyone in Hell. The gift Lucifer wishes to bestow upon you—in exchange for the gift you will give to him—represents the distillation of what all Humans desire most.”

Now your eyes drift back to the sky. “I still don’t see what Lucifer gets out of the deal. Another soul? From what I can see, he’s got plenty of those.”

“Plenty, yes, but, lo, not yours. Not the Soul of one who willingly says no to God’s promise of Salvation. For someone so entirely on the plus side of the Fulcrum, to cast God aside in favor of Lucifer—that, Mr. Hudson, is the only satisfaction Lucifer can ever truly enjoy.”

Your vision reels again at the sight of the castle and its spectacular grounds, your friends and family, as well as the sheer carnal pleasures that await.

Carnal pleasure that you’ve never experienced . . .

Like a crack of mental lightning, you know.

You know what you are about to do . . .

CHAPTER NINE

(I)

Master Builder Curwen watched wide-eyed from his observation minaret. Thus far, the Sputum Storm appeared to be confined beyond the official limits of the Mephistopolis, its sickish green clouds leaving no doubt of its existence. From so far away, it looked like a mere phlegm-colored streak along the bottom of the scarlet horizon, but as Hell’s most dangerous type of storm, one could never rest assured. They’d been known to sit still and hang for extended periods, then suddenly move off with no warning at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Curwen wasn’t certain, but he believed the storm was sliding over the Outer Sectors, probably the Great Emptiness Quarter.

Pray Satan, let it stay there.

For such a storm to move here, over the Pol Pot District, there was no telling what damage might be inflicted upon the Demonculus.

Below on the field, the ancillary sacrifices continued, to keep the Electrocity Generators roaring and the Hell-Flux well charged. The boiled corpses of sacrifants were wheeled away in barrows by slug-skinned Ushers, only to be replaced by more. A wonderful sight, yes, but then Curwen gazed upward at the colossal form of the Demonculus.

Nothing can jeopardize my creation. Nothing.

Footsteps could be heard winding up the minaret’s spiral steps, and, next, a figure rose into the small open-windowed chamber: the project’s official Psychic Security Minister, a Kathari-grade Diviner.

“Master Builder Curwen,” the man-thing’s voice etched, and then it bowed. “It is my honor to be in your presence.”

Yet not mine to be in yours, Curwen thought. Curwen was Human, and therefore distrustful of all that was not, especially creatures like this, things that could supposedly see the future. Additionally, the Satanic Visionary was hideous to behold: it was bald, emaciated, and brazenly naked. The sucked-in skin and stringlike muscles were repulsive enough, but even more repulsive was the Clairvoyant’s skin tone, a bruising blue beneath which maroon arteries throbbed. Even more unsettling was the psychic being’s eye—not eyes, eye, for it possessed but only one, set hugely in the middle of its gaunt face. An eye the size of an apple. The Diviner’s bald head shined, tracked by various suture scars from multiple telethesic surgeries; its ears were holes, and its genitals . . .

. . . were best left undescribed.

“What tidings do you bring me, Seer?”

The Diviner’s voice keened like nails across slate. “Great Master Builder, I know that the distant Sputum Storm rests gravely on your mind, but it is with the joy of serving the Morning Star that I tell you to put your fears aside. I foresaw this very storm, and I have foreseen, too, that it shall not venture here.”

The aftereffects of hearing the Diviner’s awful voice left Curwen’s skin crawling, yet it was with relief that he sat down in his jeweled seat. “Praise the Dark Lord.”

“Yes.”

“But I pity those now in its midst. Is it the Great Emptiness Quarter?”

The visionary’s bald head nodded. Scarlet veins beat beneath the shining skin.

Curwen began, “I’ve heard—”

“So have we all—that something of grievous import is taking place there, but what it is, I’m not privy to, via my training and indoctrination.” Then the massive eye blinked once, clicking like the snap of a twig.

Curwen squinted out again, in the vicinity of the storm. What a ghastly thing to happen, even in Hell. A deluge of snot . . . But he must not worry over projects not his own.

Only the Demonculus and the success of its animation were his personal concern.

I must succeed.

Curwen’s gaze turned to his guest. “Diviner—”

The cadaverous figure smiled, showing black teeth. “Is there something you wish for me to divine, Master Builder?”

Of course, it could read his mind. But now that the very Human question had occurred to him . . . he was afraid to ask.

The Diviner’s voice screeched as the thing went slowly back down the spiral steps. “The answer to your question . . . is yes—”

The Diviner continued to descend.

“—and of this you can be sure, for I have foreseen it . . .”

Curwen sat semiparalyzed for some time—paralyzed by euphoria. He stared at the Demonculus’s immobile form through the master window, and the question he’d thought but dared not ask was this: Will the Demonculus be successfully animated?

(II)

The wind gusted from multiple directions, each gust resounding like the caterwauls of ravening beasts; and it was a pall of a diseased green that seemed to have lowered in churning layers over the entirety of the Vandermast Reservoir as well as a sizable portion of the Great Emptiness Quarter itself. The Sputum Storm raged, just short of breaking. Since the alert all lower-echelon Conscripts were ordered to tie themselves to the security lugs along the ramparts, while the Golems (much heavier and therefore less likely to be blown over the side) continued their foot patrols, on watch for signs of attack and also physical breeches that the storm might incur upon the black basilisk walls of the perimeter.

Favius watched from his own security barbican along the rampart.

The storm is spectacular but also deadly, he thought. During his entire Damnation, Favius had never seen a genuine Sputum Storm, he’d only heard of them. The black clouds would begin to congeal from the force of the wind, and then turn green in a hue like moldy cheese. His training apprised him the potential of a storm like this—whole Prefects had been destroyed by Sputum Storms, it was said, and in low-lying urban areas, the incessant rain of phlegm would bring mucoid floods that rose stories high and drowned residents in an oatmeal-thick, viscid horror. Favius eyed the grotesque clouds that now moiled above the Reservoir: he thought of an upside-down whirlpool of crud-green sludge. Any minute, he feared, the storm will break and those clouds will POUR . . .

All the while, though, the mammoth Main Sub-Inlets continued to roar as they siphoned still more of the Gulf’s horrific Bloodwater into the pit . . .

For as far as Favius could see, there were only the flat layers of storm clouds pressing down. The wind gusts picked up, and one actually caused the rampart wall to nudge . . .

Favius latched onto an astonishing moment of self-awareness. For the first time in my existence . . . I am afraid . . .

Perhaps a mile in the distance, over a conjoining rampart, the rain began to fall—the rain of phlegm.

Here it comes . . .

The sky, essentially, began to vomit.

The dark green sputum began to fall in sheets. Favius watched the splattering line of phlegm-fall move across the Reservoir’s scarlet surface; it was louder even than the sounds of the sub-inlets filling the pit. When it finally reached the Legionnaire’s own rampart, the 900-pound Golems wobbled in place in the gale force. Several merlons cracked in the macabre wind and fell into the Reservoir. A rising, whistlelike shriek now encompassed all.

The rampart walls shook again; Favius thought he even heard the very stone crack.

This storm may destroy the entire site . . .

Favius lurched when the barbican door banged open. He reached instinctively for his sword—

“Lucifer in Hell, Favius!” the sudden voice exploded in complaint.

“Grand Sergeant Buyoux!” Favius exclaimed. “It’s dangerous for you to have come here, sir!” He bulled against the door to reclose it; then he threw across the bars. “You should’ve summoned me, and I would’ve come to you—”

The Grand Sergeant stood dripping residual green muck; his helm and most of his plate-mail smock was en-slimed with it. “Help me off with this, Favius,” the commander groaned, and then the plates clinked. Favius removed the metallic garment and hung it in the stone corner to dry. Buyoux sat exhausted on the bench, now dressed only in a wool tunic emblazoned with the Seal of Grand Duke Cyamal. The Grand Sergeant brought scarred hands to his scar-badged face. “I’ve never witnessed a storm like this—ever.”

“Nor have I, Grand Sergeant. I have concerns about the physical integrity of the site—”

Buyoux laughed mirthlessly. “A Sputum Storm of this magnitude could knock the ramparts down—it could ruin the entire project.” He looked at Favius with his appalling face. “Whatever happened to the luck of the Damned, hmm?”

Favius peered back out across the Reservoir. The rain poured over everything, and then a sudden wind gust blew one of his Golems over the side, into the foaming pool.

“Impressive, yes,” his superior said. “At least the Golems are expendable. If only we can see to it that no men are blown into it as well.”

Now the stone barbican itself began to creak in the wind. “The rain seems to be letting up, Grand Sergeant, but the wind—”

“—is increasing in velocity, yes.” Buyoux rose and looked likewise through the small window. “The Channelers predicted as much; they’ve even predicted a rapid conclusion to the storm but . . . as you can see . . .”

Favius stared. Was it letting up even as they spoke? The sky’s green tinge seemed to be lessening . . . but then the wind shook loose several more merlon abutments and blew them into the Reservoir.

Buyoux was smiling. “My good Favius. Aren’t you even going to ask why I braved this dismal storm to come here?”

Favius stood at parade rest when addressed. “It is not for me to ask, Grand Sergeant.”

Buyoux sat back down, seemingly at ease even as the stone floor was shifting minutely. “I came to see you, Favius—to . . . tell you something.”

“I exist to follow your orders, sir.”

Buyoux shrugged. “In the midst of a storm that may well destroy us . . . you needn’t be so formal. The truth is, you’re the only one I trust on this entire site. I don’t even trust my own commanders. I only trust you . . .”

“Grand Sergeant, I am duly honored by your praise, and unworthy of it.”

The Grand Sergeant picked at one of his self-inflicted facial scars. He seemed to be reflecting inwardly now. “We’re the Human Damned, Favius—yes, we’re humans. Regardless of the extent to which we’ve been modified, no matter how much amplification surgery we’ve had, no matter how many demonic transfusions . . . we’re still human.”

Favius stood, trying to comprehend. Was his superior having a breakdown?

“That’s why I’m here, friend. It is my human frailty that brings me.” Buyoux’s voice lowered in a secret excitement. “I have to tell someone. I feel as though I’ll burst if I don’t . . .”

“Grand Sergeant, in my utter inferiority, I do not understand.”

The barbican rocked from another gust. Outside, someone screamed.

“You’re the only one I trust,” Buyoux repeated but now was staring off into nothing. He was smiling. “Not too long ago—just before the storm, in fact—I received a coded cipher, as did every Grand Sergeant on this reservation—”

Favius tensed up. He yearned to ask . . . but knew that he couldn’t.

“It was a cipher from the Ministry of Satanic Secrets, Favius, and they finally disclosed the true nature of this project—the reason for the Reservoir’s construction, and everything else . . .”

Favius cringed. Why would Buyoux brave a deadly storm to come here and say this? Unless it is to tell ME, because he cannot contain his excitement . . .

The drone of Buyoux’s voice seemed to gleam. “It’s for a Spatial Merge, Favius,” came the whisper. “Do you know what that is?”

“Yes, Grand Sergeant. I learned about the process in one of my Clandestine Sorcery classes.” Favius had to stress his ancient memory. “It’s a secret technology whose goal is to substitute a finite perimeter in Hell with an equal perimeter in the Living World. Objects and even living beings in Hell are then able to occupy space on Earth, but it requires a massive Power Exchange, and the Merge is only temporary.”

The scar-tissue mask that was Buyoux’s face continued to beam as he shook his head. “They’re not temporary anymore, my friend. After eons of research and repeated trials, the De Rais Academy has perfected the process. Theoretically, at least, a permanent Merge can be effected—”

Favius froze. “But, but, sir . . . Such a feat would require an unthinkable transfer of Deathforce—”

“Unthinkable no longer,” the Grand Sergeant intoned. “The technology exists. Exactly what it is . . . I’ve not been apprized, but what does it matter? All that matters is this: it will work. Every Soothsayer in the City has foreseen it.”

The prospect made Favius’s head spin. He was just a simple soldier, not a scientist. Nevertheless, the information granted him goaded a simple deduction. “A permanent Spatial Merge, Grand Sergeant, and then . . .” His jaded eyes returned to the window.

“Yes,” Buyoux croaked.

All this hellish Bloodwater and infernal sewage, not to mention the atrocious creatures within . . . His voice sounded parched when he voiced the observation. “They’re going to transfer six billion gallons of this to the Living World.”

“Indeed, they are, Favius—permanently.” The Grand Sergeant tittered. “Like dumping one’s garbage into the yard of a neighbor—the very idea is thrilling.”

“But a Merge requires a target of equal volume, Grand Sergeant. When the contents of the Reservoir is sent there, something from there must then be brought here.”

“You remember your lessons well, astute killer. It’s an interesting swap, to say the least.” Buyoux pointed to the churning scarlet slop within the massive Reservoir. “We’re exchanging six billion gallons of that with six billion gallons of fresh water—”

“Great Satan!” Favius exclaimed.

“What a slight to God and all that’s holy, yes? There’s never been fresh water in Hell, so Lucifer will simply steal it from God’s green Earth, and with it he will make his own oasis . . .”

Favius reeled at the implication.

Buyoux’s corrupted voice reduced to the slightest whisper yet. “And we will be the first to see it, my friend. And we will even be allowed to drink of it . . .”

This, Favius could not even conceive.

“So be on your guard, warrior. Nothing must go wrong now. The Reservoir is nearly filled.”

Favius’s gaze jerked out. “And, Grand Sergeant! The storm has passed!”

“Just as the Channelers predicted. Good omens abound!” Buyoux returned to the window. During their guarded talk, the Sputum Storm has indeed abated, the green clouds were now black again and dissipating before their eyes. Even the infernal wind had died.

Favius and Buyoux went out on the rampart. The Golems were already at work squeegeeing the noxious rain off the black flooring into the Reservoir. Favius immediately ordered a damage report from his underlings.

“The rampart is secure, Grand Sergeant. We only lost three Golems—”

“And Conscripts?”

“None lost, sir.”

“Splendid!”

“But, sir, if I may ask . . .”

The Grand Sergeant gave a modest nod, but his eyes said quietly.

“When . . . will the Merge take place?” Favius whispered.

“When the Main Sub-Inlets gush no more and the Reservoir is filled to capacity.” And then they both looked out over Hell’s first man- and demon-made lake.

The fluid level had risen so high that only the uppermost fringe of the Inlet could be seen and therefore only a fringe of the atrocious inflow.

But they both knew this: the Vandermast Reservoir would be filled very, very soon.

Favius ordered a work detail of Imps to clean the ill-colored muck from the Grand Sergeant’s armor; in the meantime, the Grand Sergeant himself strolled closer to the rampart’s edge, hands on hips, to marvel at the sight of the pit’s filling.

It was Favius, not Buyoux, who noticed several jagged cracks in the basilisk stonework.

Alarmed, Favius rushed forward. “Grand Sergeant! Step back, sir—the storm seems to have caused some stress fractures in the foundation—”

Buyoux glanced down, shrugging. “Oh, I don’t think that’s anything to worry ab—” But before the dismissal of caution could be finished—

“Grand Sergeant!” Favius bellowed.

—the black stonework beneath Buyoux’s feet gave way, and then an entire wedge of the flooring fell out of the rampart and tumbled into the pit’s roiling scarlet ooze. Grand Sergeant Buyoux had no time to even cry for help as he fell into the ooze, too.

“Man the wall!” Favius commanded at the top of his lungs. “Ropes and ladders! Now!” And then—

SPLASH!

—he dove unhesitantly into the churning, bubbling, and creature-infested Bloodwater, but even before his feet had left the retaining wall, there’d been no sign of Grand Sergeant Buyoux . . .

CHAPTER TEN

(I)

Gerold laughed to himself when, after hours on the lake, he realized he was still wearing his life preserver. With my luck, I’d fall in BEFORE I’ve had my fill of crayfish. He was on his fourth pot now—and that lady was right, they were almost the size of lobsters. Gerold’s last meal was everything he’d hoped for and more.

By nine, the sun began to sink, a spectacular sight from his vantage point in the middle of the lake. The molten orange light slowly turned pink behind the endless range of westerly trees. Gerold stared.

It seemed strange that he would only notice the world’s intense beauty on this final day of his life.

But beauty it was—a delirious, sharp-as-cracked-glass beauty that he’d never been aware of until now. It’s easy to take things for granted until you know you’re about to lose them . . .

The Sterno can was lasting longer than he’d expected. He dropped the trap for another haul—why not?

I’m not exactly in a rush, am I?

He leaned back in his safety chair, half dozing and half staring at dusk’s shifting cornucopia of light playing on the lake’s mirror-still surface . . .

When will I do it? The question kept popping up in the back of his head. I really AM going to kill myself, right? But he knew that he was, he was positive. Even now, with the beautiful evening, the gorgeous lake, the delectable food, and the utter peace and quiet—he still wanted to do it. He yearned for it.

For some reason, he was suddenly thinking about that guy he talked to at the church. What did he say his name was? Hudson? He’d read Gerold like a book—He KNEW I wanted to kill myself. What was it like to be a guy like that, Gerold wondered. The center of his life was his faith—he was even going to become a priest. That was some sacrifice.

And, shit, I promised the guy I’d be in church Sunday, he recalled. Looks like I’ll be breaking that one.

But what Hudson didn’t understand was that things worked different for different people, and so did the world. Gerold wasn’t a bad guy, so would he really go to Hell for offing himself? If there really was a God, Gerold felt sure he would understand.

Life just isn’t for me. It’s that simple. No sour grapes, no regrets. It was great while it lasted but now it’s time for it to end. Period.

He lounged back and smiled.

He looked at his watch. Midnight seemed as good a time as any. I’ll fling myself over the side at a couple minutes of and who knows? Maybe I’ll die exactly when the clock strikes twelve . . .

The idea seemed kind of . . . neat.

Every so often, a fish would break the surface and flip. Schools of smaller fish seemed to spiral into one another and form fascinating shapes. When Gerold stared up at the coming twilight, birds roved silently across the water. Not once today had another boat come near him. Just after the sun sank, crickets began to throb en masse.

What a PERFECT day to die . . .

Gerold drifted in and out of sleep.

He dreamed of walking, of being with women, of pursuing his goals and succeeding. He dreamed of all the things he’d lost . . .

Something like a grating sound in his head dragged him awake. His eyes fluttered open, and what he noticed first was how the pulsing cricket sounds had ceased, leaving the lake completely absent of all noise. It was full dark now . . .

What was that grating sound? he wondered, leaning up, but then it came again—

A hard crackle, like static.

Then a voice: “Hon? You there? Aw, jeez—”

The walkie-talkie, he realized. It was the woman from the dock with the outstanding implants. “Hi, I’m here,” he answered into the device, imagining her sitting on the pier just as topless as before.

Her Florida drawl crackled over the line. “Oh, gracious, thank God. I thought . . . well, you didn’t answer so’s I thought somethin’ happened, hon.”

“Sorry. I fell asleep. But I’ve had great luck catching crayfish,” Gerold said. “They’re delicious—” Something cut off the rest of his words. He sniffed.

“Is everything . . . all right out there? You notice anything . . . out of kilter?” the woman asked next.

Out of kilter . . . Gerold noticed something not right about her voice, even over the static. Did she sound distressed? But then he sniffed again, flinched, and also realized his ears felt funny, like when flying on an airplane while descending.

“Now that you mention it . . . My ears are clogged up, and . . . I smell something.” The faintly metallic odor seemed just as faintly familiar.

“Like an electric motor sort’a thing?” she asked.

“Yeah! That’s it. Ozone, I think it is. Like before an electrical storm—”

A long pause drew over the line.

“Hey, are you okay?” Gerold asked.

“Well, hon, I feel like a horse’s heiny but, well, I’m kind of . . . scared.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I ain’t sure but—and this’ll sound nutty—but all my hair’s standin’ right on end, like it’s floatin’ up off my head—”

Well. That DOES sound nutty, Gerold reflected but at the same moment he saw that the hairs on his forearm—

What the hell?

—were standing on end. Then he slowly raised his hand and discovered that all the hair on his head was sticking up, too.

“This is weird but the same thing’s happening to me,” he told her.

“Must be a ’lectrical storm comin’—”

“But that’s impossible,” he replied. Overhead stretched a cloudless expanse of flickering stars, deep twilight, and a radiant white sickle moon. “The sky’s clear.”

The woman’s voice quavered nervously. “Then it’s heat lighting or somethin’, hon—I don’t know! Somethin’ don’t feel right in my gut. I’d feel a whole lot better if ya’d come in—”

I can’t come in! he could’ve shouted. I’m gonna KILL MYSELF in a little while! But then the woman actually croaked a tiny sob over the line.

Wow, she really is scared, Gerold realized. He sighed. Fuck. What difference did it make, though? I’ll kill myself tomorrow. “Look, don’t be afraid, I’ll row myself in right now—”

“Oh, thank you, sweetie! Somethin’ just don’t feel right, and I am beside myself with the jitters.”

“Just hang tight, I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Gerold said. He signed off, then pulled the crayfish trap again and found it empty. Well that’s strange. First empty pull all day. And nighttime was the best time to trap.

No matter.

Gerold grabbed the oars and began to row. It felt good being needed, though. Paralysis notwithstanding, the woman was scared and didn’t want to be alone. This can be my last good deed, and who knows? Maybe I’ll get to see her boobs again . . .

He estimated that it would take him about twenty minutes to row back in to the dock, but what he didn’t estimate—what would’ve been impossible to estimate—was that he would never get there.

(II)

Krilid glided the Nectoport high over the green-black clouds. Watching the immense Sputum Storm had been something. All that hock raining down on the evil bastards. He’d seen them over urban areas where the winds had toppled skyscrapers and the mucoid rain had caused flash floods. Good for them, Krilid thought.

But the storm’s moving off made his own job easier.

A moment of directional thought in his warped head collapsed the distance of over a thousand miles and—

Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

—in an indivisible sliver of a second, he’d relocated the Nectoport high over the Pol Pot District. This second part of his mission, he knew, would be much more difficult to pull off, if indeed it could even be pulled off. I’ve got no choice but to trust Ezoriel, and if his intel turns out to be bad?

Shit happens, he reasoned. But it had been a lot of fun whizzing around carte blanche in a Nectoport. How many Trolls get to do that?

How many Trolls, Imps, Demons, Humans—whatever!—got to see the Mephistopolis from this high up? It’s a privilege, I guess, and it must be worth SOME brownie points. Down here everything is good against evil, and good almost NEVER wins, but I’m on the side of good.

Krilid supposed this fact made him either very unselfish or very stupid.

He took no chances of being detected, slipping the Nectoport in and out of clouds. All of the scaffolding around the Demonculus had been taken down, and he spotted very few Balloon Skiffs floating about the unliving thing’s colossal body. That means all the maintenance duties are finished. They only have a few more things to do before they bring that disgusting thing to life . . .

However, there were a few more things for Krilid to do as well, before he could hope to pull this off.

He pulled the Nectoport off with a simple thought, and then found himself hovering high above one of the Torturaries in the Pogrom Park District. This particular compound specialized in Cage Roasting as its mode of slow torture, and it exclusively housed Human Damned who—like Krilid—had defected to Ezoriel’s Contumacy or some other anti-Satanic sect. From this range, the compound looked like a typical prison yard, with towers manned by armed Conscripts, and a nearly impenetrable Blood-Brick fence resistant to not only impact but also Breech Spells. The rolls and rolls of “barbed” wire did not sport barbs but instead invisible needle-teeth from exterminated Bapho-Rats.

Krilid loved coming to the Torturaries—they were perfect places for target practice.

Slug-skinned Ushers stalked the grounds to supervise the Torture Attendants, and as for Cage Roasting? Sulphur beds were kept sizzlingly hot by various Crossbreeds forced to constantly pump foot-operated bellows systems. Above each bed hung a cage, quite like an iron maiden, which contained one very unhappy subject. The cages were lowered very slowly, and when the occupant began to burn, the cage was raised, to protract the unassuagible pain. Agonicity terminals were implanted into each subject’s brain, to provide the compound with all the power it needed.

Krilid groaned as he watched the machinelike process below: the systematic raising and lowering of the facility’s hundreds of Roasting Cages. Eventually a captive would be roasted down to a crisped twig but since almost all prisoners here were Human Damned, those twigs never died. They’d be thrown into trenches where they would twitch, shudder, and think for eternity.

Krilid figured he was half a mile up when he sighted his matchlock rifle. The sounds that came from below could’ve been a diabolic song. Screams intensified as cages were lowered, then diminished when they were raised. It was a pipe organ in Hell, with Human throats as the pipes.

BAM!

Gotcha! Krilid rejoiced after the rifle’s delayed discharge. The horrific head of an Usher in the center of the field erupted like a large, ripe fruit. Consternation ensued after that first shot, Conscripts coming to alert in the towers, Torture Attendants being called back to barracks—

BAM!

The head of a Captain of the Guard burst next. Krilid chuckled as he reloaded. Now alarm sirens were sounding. When an Air Viceroy took off on a saddled Gryphon—

BAM!

—Krilid waited till the winged beast had ascended to a sufficient height before he shot its beaked head off. Spiny feathers dispersed, and the Viceroy fell straight down and landed in one of the sulphur beds.

Yeah!

Krilid knew his time was short. Now that the Torturary was under attack, an Archlock would be summoned to determine Krilid’s position. If detected fast enough, Krilid could be blinded or paralyzed via the Psychic Sorcerer’s telepathy, but—

I’ve never killed an Archlock before, he realized.

It was a foolhardy chance he was taking but Krilid felt lucky today. He squinted from the Nectoport’s egress. An Archlock wouldn’t expose himself on the open field but he would have to make a visual assessment of the scenario . . .

Windows, Krilid thought. No Archlock could psychically scan the sky without at least looking out a window.

And Archlocks all gave off auras . . .

Don’t dillydally, Krilid ordered himself, his shooting eye wide open behind the sight.

It was in one of the tiny tower windows that Krilid thought he spotted the tiniest flash of liquid-black light, like a wavering luminous vapor. It was a long shot, but he aimed, squeezed the weapon’s rickety trigger, then bucked backward when the sizable projectile rocketed out of the rifle barrel.

Krilid kept his gnarled fingers crossed. Then—

You gotta be kidding me!

—the prison tower exploded as if demolitioned, not from the impact of the bullet, of course, but from the spontaneous release of cabalistic energy caused by the bullet’s entrance into the Archlock’s skull. Bricks, Conscripts, Ushers, blood, guts, and limbs all flew violently into the air, then rained back down. Bolts of black light like stygian lightning cracked in the wake of the Archlock’s assassination.

Krilid chuckled when he zoomed the Nectoport out of the vicinity. I guess that’s what you call a hole in one.

But his amusement and satisfaction didn’t last long. True, he’d done a good job, but it was only target practice. Very soon, he would be faced with the Real McCoy—and have to score a similar head-shot on Master Builder Joseph Curwen . . .

(III)

Howard turns around, with you on the stick. Suddenly you’re facing all sixty-six of your personal concubines, standing beautiful and nude, in formation, the six Pamela Andersons right up front.

My God, you think. I can’t believe what I’m about to do . . .

“Well, Mr. Hudson?” Howard asks.

You don’t even hesitate now. “I accept the Senary.”

Howard’s pale face seems to flush with relief. “Great Pegana! For a while I truly feared you would turn it down.”

So did I . . . You sigh. “So what happens now?”

“Well, I hope you’ll pardon the cliché, keeping in mind, however, that clichés are actually quite powerful Totems of classicism here.”

“Cliché?”

Howard nods. “You’ll have to sign a formal contract.”

“In blood, I suppose.”

“Yes. Your own.”

Then it strikes you: “I can’t sign a contract! I’m a pumpkin! I’ve got no hands!”

“Not here, Mr. Hudson. Remember, right now you are still in fact an inhabitant of the Living World. Once I displace you back to the Larken House, the Senarial Messenger will have your contract prepared.”

The deaconess, you remember. “So then what? I sign and then kill myself?”

“Goodness no! You still have the rest of your life to enjoy, and you will be able to do so in grand style.”

“I don’t get it,” you tell him.

“Upon putting your commitment into writing, Lucifer will grant a so-called ‘signing bonus,’ in the sum of six million dollars—”

“Six million! In cash?”

“Cash money, sir, this for you to suitably finance yourself until your physical life does, in fact, end. You will die painlessly in your sleep, Mr. Hudson, six days after your sixty-sixth birthday.”

Your demonic eyes bloom. And I’m still young! I’ve still got more than HALF MY LIFE left to live! And with six million bucks to boot!

“There’s only one point I need to make, though, Mr. Hudson, and I cannot overemphasize its pertinency.” Howard looks at you quite seriously. “Once you’ve signed the contract, no amount of repentance can reverse its terms. Once you’ve signed the contract . . . you’ve abandoned God forever.”

The words sink deep.

Howard shrugs. “But with all you’ll be given here, in a lock-solid guarantee? What real man would ever want to repent?”

As you stare once more at all those beautiful women and demons, you can think of nothing—absolutely nothing—to counter what he’s just said. I’ve believed in God my whole life. I’ve done everything in my power for as long as I can remember to SERVE GOD. My faith was so strong that I was going to become a PRIEST. But-but—

“You’ve got a deal, Howard,” you say.

“And so do you, Mr. Hudson. You have Lucifer’s untold gratitude for the victory you’re allowing him to score over God.” Howard takes your Snot-Gourd off the stick. “We’ll all be waiting for you. And I look forward to an eternity of friendship with you.”

“Ditto,” you say.

“And now? Until that wondrous time . . .” Howard removes the pulpy plug in the back of the gourd, and the gas of your Ethereal Spirit slips out like air from a popped balloon . . .

PART FOUR

MACHINATION

CHAPTER ELEVEN

(I)

When Favius’s muscle-girded body dove into the pit, he felt as though he’d landed in a morass of scarlet sewage. He’d done this, though, with no hesitation. The Grand Sergeant may well have already sunk to the bottom, or been consumed by some atrocious seaborne monstrosity that the Pipe-way had transferred to the Reservoir, but—

It is my duty to Lucifer to try to save him.

At once the appallingly thick currents turned him this way and that. The chunky Bloodwater remained turbulent from the winds of the passing storm; alternate currents tugged him farther from the force of still more Bloodwater surging through the sub-inlets. His inhumanly strong arms and legs stroked in the hot red slop. Small things nudged at him, scenting his presence and also his fear, but then some larger things nudged him, too, Divell-Eels, probably, and Gut-Fish. Favius thrashed them away, knowing all the while that much bigger creatures would be scenting him as well, things that could swallow him whole. He knew he had precious little time to find the Grand Sergeant and drag him out.

Holding his breath, he thrust himself down . . .

At the time of the Grand Sergeant’s fall, he’d not yet redonned his plate-mail armor—a good thing, for he’d be easier to drag up. But the bad thing was that Favius still wore his armor, and in spite of his superiority of musculature, he needed twice as much strength to navigate in this living stew. During his desperate motions, he managed to slide off his helmet, and unsnap his breast plate, and this helped minutely. Then his hands groped out as he plunged deeper, feeling for anything that might be his commander, but he knew that his energy would dwindle in moments.

Satan, help me, I beg you . . .

It wasn’t death he feared—as one of the Human Damned, he, like the Grand Sergeant, could not die—but to be swallowed by a Gorge-Worm, for instance, or to have a Gigapede slip instantly down his throat and begin to feed would be far worse than even the grisliest physical destruction. Blind in the Bloodwater, Favius howled bubbles when a Spirochete-Fluke wrapped about his face. He tore it off with one hand, then shredded it with several maniacal swipes of his sword.

A lost cause, he knew as his energy waned. His hand kept lashing out, hoping to grab something that might be the Grand Sergeant but all he came up with were fistfuls of waste, rotten flesh scraps, or body parts.

One last plunge downward, then—

—and he grabbed an arm still connected to a body. The arm moved . . .

The prospect of hope doubled Favius’s strength. Yes, a living arm was now in his grasp, and then his columnlike legs kicked, and he was propelled upward—

splash!

Favius broke the surface, hauling in breaths; and moaning in his grasp was Grand Sergeant Buyoux.

May the Prince of Darkness be praised!

The Grand Sergeant was still conscious. He heaved in vile breaths after hacking up much Bloodwater.

“Grand Sergeant! Hold on to me!” Favius yelled over the churning din. “I’m losing my strength—”

Even in his terrified stupor, Buyoux looked astonished at the man who’d saved him. “In the name of all things unholy, Favius! You hurled yourself into the maw of almost certain destruction only in the tiniest chance of saving me—”

Favius’s muscles raged in pain from the exertion of breast-stroking through the thick liquid horror. “Try to kick with me, sir! My strength is ebbing from this current . . .”

They managed to splash a sluggish course back to the wall of the rampart, where a rope ladder awaited them.

“We made it!” Buyoux shouted.

Not quite yet, Favius realized. While they remained in the Bloodwater, they were still easy prey; and what might’ve been worse was the fact that the back current at the wall kept forcing them off. Conscripts above dropped more rope ladders; Flavius lunged—

Got it!

—and grabbed one.

What little strength remained was used to shove Grand Sergeant Buyoux up.

“Grab the rung!”

Buyoux’s enfeebled hands barely managed to do so. “It should be you on this ladder, not I—”

“Climb, Grand Sergeant!”

Favius used his own weight at the bottom to steady the ladder. It was the back current along the wall that made it almost impossible. Meanwhile, one rung at a time, Buyoux clawed his way up—

“You’re the bravest man in Hell, Favius—”

“Climb!”

Feet from the top, several Conscripts grabbed Buyoux and pulled him safely over the wall. The troops cheered—

Favius’s muscles spasmed as he doggedly began to climb the ladder.

“Get him up!” Buyoux bellowed.

Another rung, then another. Then—

snap!

The rung broke. Favius fell back into the Bloodwater.

He began to drift backward in the current.

“No!” Buyoux screamed above.

I’m not going to make it, Favius knew. His strength was gone now—he was helpless to fight his way back against the current, but then—

Silence slammed down over the entire Reservoir. The roar of the Main Sub-Inlets . . . ceased.

And the current died.

“Favius! Swim!”

It must have been by the grace of Satan that Favius was able to find more strength and stroke his way back toward the wall where a dozen rope ladders waited for him.

But even in his terror, he didn’t understand. What’s happening?

“Faster!” Buyoux shouted. “The pumps have been turned off, which can only mean the Reservoir is filled!”

Filled? Favius continued de-energized strokes toward the ladder. The silence stifled him, but now he thought he smelled something very sudden and not characteristic of the heinous Reservoir and its six billion gallons of Bloodwater; and when, on his next stroke forward, he happened to glance up—

Several unhelmed Conscripts seemed . . . out of sorts.

Their hair was standing on end.

“For Satan’s sake, Favius! Swim faster! The Merge is about to take place, and if you’re in the water when that happens—”

Favius didn’t hear the rest. Just as his hand would grab hold of a ladder rung—

The ladder disappeared, and so did the retaining wall and the ramparts and the bloodred sky and the black sickle moon and everything else in the rest of Hell.

(II)

Dorris felt dizzy; she felt terrified. What was happening? When she’d first looked at herself in the bait-house mirror, her blazing white hair—feet long—stood on end and stuck out like an aura. Initially she’d thought she was being electrocuted but her rubber flip-flops stood on a perfectly dry wood-plank floor.

When she’d rushed outside, the dizziness—and her terror—quadrupled. That smell! Like an electric motor overrunning, and then the simple feel of the lake and its surroundings. Nothing looked wrong, but it all felt wrong. It reminded her of a bad trip way back in her acid days.

Oh, my God almighty, she groaned to herself. Her slim legs propelled her quickly to the end of the dock. A crisp, cloudless twilight pressed down, a slice of moon radiating. The immense lake sat still, rippleless—surreal in some distinctly unpleasant way. The sudden silence, too, struck her as unpleasant. Summer evenings on the lake brought an absolute ruckus of cricket choruses and night bird songs, but now?

Nothing but proverbial pin-drop silence.

Impossible, Dorris knew.

The wheelchair sitting at the dock-end reminded her of the day’s only rental customer. That young man who can’t walk . . . So she’d called him on the emergency walkie-talkie—she had to know if the lake’s abrupt strangeness was only in her mind—something she almost hoped was true—but his own observations confirmed her own.

What is going ON?

It had been over a half hour ago that she’d called him in. Had he had some medical problem? Surely his arms were strong enough to row the boat back in less time than that. She stood tense and straining on the dock, her eyes pressed into the binoculars, but even in the strong moonlight, she couldn’t see him.

Please, please, son! Get yer ass back here . . .

Was it the first true premonition of her life? As her stomach twitched, and that stiff, ozonelike smell sharpened, Dorris knew that something was going to happen.

When she scanned along the lake’s coast, she noticed that the usual folks that always fished at night were packing up and hightailing it out. Clearly, they sensed the same inexplicable thing that Dorris did, yet she couldn’t imagine what that thing was. Then—

There! she thought. Her implants jounced when she shot to her tiptoes; in the binoculars’ hourglass viewing field, she could make out the tiny form of the paralyzed man rowing through a pool of moonlight.

The loudest sound she’d ever heard erupted next, not an explosion, not the earsplitting sound that accompanied a massive lightning bolt, but something more like timber splitting or a colossal tree cracking as it was felled. The sound urged Dorris to scream louder than she ever had in her life but even that couldn’t be heard over the monstrous cracking . . .

Then came a single, concussive BOOM!

Had a bomb actually been dropped on the lake? The notion was absurd, but what else could it be? A terrorist attack? Here, of all places? Not that Dorris could think deductively at the moment; terror and confusion obfuscated all rational thought. In the vicious boom’s wake came some sort of displacement of air that slammed her in the stomach, lifted her out of her flip-flops, and flung her down the dock, screaming all the way. She landed hard on her back. All the wind blurted out of her lungs, and when the back of her head smacked the dock, she blacked out at once.

It must’ve been a dream—a nightmare—that dropped into her mind during the brief period of unconsciousness: a nightmare of sounds . . .

The sounds were screams, screams of human slaughter en masse—indeed, screams from another world. A deafening waterfall of relentless human and unhuman agony as though millions of people in a thousand different cities were being butchered in place all at the same time, a sound, a living blare that raged and raged and raged through some incomprehensible rent in the sky . . .

Silence, then.

Though it seemed like hours, it was only a minute or two that passed before Dorris regained consciousness. Memories dripped slowly back into her awareness yet her daze kept them from making sense. She rolled over, tried to rise to hands and knees but then collapsed back down, heaving. She reeled as if seasick, and now, as she blinked back more and more consciousness, she noticed not only the dead-calm silence but also a deep earthy odor just short of a stench that now replaced the previous ozone smell. An odor like low, low tide . . .

Several more attempts proved to her that she couldn’t yet stand. But I can crawl, she thought, determined, and crawl she did, on her palms and knees, back down the dock.

That man, she kept thinking. The handicapped man. Was he still out on the lake when that awful sound had struck?

At the end of the dock, the wheelchair still sat, and so did the walkie-talkie. She reached for it, but then her hand fell away limp as she looked outward at the same time.

Dorris’s soul seemed to flatten like a ping-pong ball under a hammer blow . . .

She used a mooring post to steady herself as she slowly rose back to her feet. The low-tide odor hung everywhere, dense as steam. But that was not what made her eyes feel stripped of their lids. That was not what wiped her cognizance clean as chalk marks off slate.

It was the lake.

Dorris stood paralyzed, staring.

Lake Misquamicus was empty. What stretched all about her now was a shallow crater lined by glistening black silt, limp waterweeds, and scores of remnant fish flapping helpless in mud. Every single one of the lake’s six billion gallons was gone.

(III)

Gerold could not conceive of a way to assess what he’d experienced, save to say that it was not like waking up. He wasn’t even sure if he’d lost consciousness. I was in the boat, I was rowing back to the dock . . . Then—

There’d been an horrendous cracking noise, then a boom.

And now he was here.

Madness, he thought now. He was still in the boat, and when he looked over the side he saw that he was still on the lake, only the lake . . .

Madness, madness, madness . . .

The lake was somewhere else now.

One moment he’d been looking at the glittering twilight over Lake Misquamicus, but now he was looking at a sky the color of deoxygenated blood. And the sickle moon was now radiant black, not radiant white.

Screaming never occurred to him when he squinted out in every direction. The water in which the rowboat floated was surrounded by endless black walls pocked with towers like castle ramparts, and along those ramparts men, or things like men, prowled about. Men—soldiers—in strange, horned helmets, wielding pikes and swords. Larger figures could be seen interspersed, plodding, drab things with barely any faces . . .

What the fuck is this?

All at once, the horned soldiers on the ramparts began to cheer. Several more were lowering a boat into the water.

Gerold could do little more than stare out.

A drone invaded his ears; then he saw a line of liquid green light hovering toward him—

Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

Now Gerold did scream.

The line of green light dilated to a wavering circle—a hole in the sky—and from that hole two hands that were clearly not human reached out, grabbed his arms, and pulled him in.

He was dropped into something like a black cave; then he sensed that the cave was moving off very quickly, soaring up into the alien air. In moments, all he could see was the bloodred sky.

“Don’t panic,” said a figure with its back to him. Gerold crawled forward, dragging his dead legs behind. He wasn’t sure what his impulse was. To see? To confront the figure that had pulled him out of the boat and into this . . . this place?

Or to jump back out?

“I can’t believe it,” the figure said. “The coordinates were right—we made it!” And then the figure turned to face Gerold.

Gerold screamed again, loud and hard. “You’re a monster!”

The figure let out a snide chuckle. “Actually, I’m a Troll, thank you very much.” His voice sounded like any normal man’s, but everything else?

Gerold screamed a third time.

This . . . Troll stood hunched over, shirtless, with greenish brown skin stretched over hillocks of muscles. He wore pants that looked like burlap and boots that were stitched up the middle. Each wide hand possessed only three fingers and a thumb and had nails like a bear’s. And his head . . .

“Man, your head’s all fucked up!” Gerold bellowed in ceaseless horror. “It looks squashed.”

“That’s ’cos when I was in jail, they put me in a Head-Bender. Don’t worry about it.” Now the figure took a candle off the side of the interior wall and touched it to each fingertip of a severed hand. “Hand of Glory,” the Troll informed. “Got no time to explain, just that it keeps the outer Observation Egress of the Nectoport invisible.”

Gerold shuddered where he sat.

“Yeah”—the Troll glanced out the large circle before him in which the red sky soared—“we’re safe now, er, at least for the time being.”

“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING!” Gerold shouted.

The Troll sat down on an outcropping in the wall. “Look, man, I know you’re confused and scared and a million other things. My name’s Krilid, and yours is Gerold, right?”

Gerold nodded, teeth chattering. Suddenly he was aware of stifling heat.

“You’re in Hell,” Krilid said.

Gerold gaped.

“I don’t have time to answer all your questions—we gotta be somewhere else, like, real soon. But I’ll give you the short version—”

“I’m in HHHHHHH—Hell?” Gerold managed.

“Only Hell’s probably not what you imagined.” Krilid picked Gerold up by his armpits, and held him up to the circular opening so he could look down.

Gerold screamed yet again.

“Hell’s a big city, the biggest in history. It’s bigger than all the cities in the Living World all put together.”

Gerold felt frozen as he looked down out of the opening. There was a city down there, all right—a leaning, shrieking, smoke-gusting city without end—

“It’s called the Mephistopolis, and this thing you’re in is called a Nectoport, the most sophisticated mode of transportation in the Abyss. We bootlegged the technology. It can travel great distances in seconds by using occult mathematics to collapse values of space.”

“I-I-I-I . . . WHAT?” Gerold blabbered.

“I understand. Just listen, though, and make of it what you will, okay? Clairvoyants in Heaven foresaw your coming here; that’s how I was able to pick you up. I’m a Troll in Hell but I work for God, and a Fallen Angel named—well, forget all that, no time. I pulled you out of your boat for a reason . . .”

“A reason,” Gerold droned.

“I’m on a mission, and I’m hoping you’ll go along with it.”

Gerold’s head spun and spun. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a nightmare but then he somehow knew it wasn’t. Whatever this thing, this Troll, this . . . guy named Krilid meant, Gerold found incontemplatable.

The opening continued to soar through the scarlet sky.

“You were gonna kill yourself, right?” Krilid asked, keeping one eye out the opening. “ ’Cos you can’t walk?”

“How do you know that?” Gerold snapped.

“Same way I knew you’d be in the Reservoir. It was foreseen. And let me tell you, it’s a good thing you didn’t kill yourself ’cos if you had, you’d be here.”

Gerold stared agog. “I already AM here!”

“Yeah, but not as a member of the Human Damned. You’re still alive, man. You’re a member of the Living World, but you’re in Hell. Why? Because of a fluke.”

Gerold pushed his hair out of his face. “Yeah, I’ll say.”

“If you had really killed yourself, you’d be damned here for all eternity. Period. No exceptions.”

“Then how did I get here?” Gerold finally regained enough of his senses to ask.

“I told you, a fluke, an accident, but we foresaw that accident and used it to our advantage,” the Troll said. Now he picked up a long musket-style rifle and began swabbing the barrel out. He chuckled. “You happened to be on that lake at the same exact moment that Lucifer’s smartest occultists pulled a Spatial Merge—”

Gerold winced. “A what?”

“It’s pretty cool,” Krilid said. “There’s no fresh water in Hell, so Satan figured he’d steal some—six billion gallons’ worth—from the Living World.”

Six billion gallons, came the grim thought. “That’s how much water was in Lake Misquamicus . . .”

“Um-hmm. And now all that water is here, in the Vandermast Reservoir. It was built especially for this operation. Satan wants to build an oasis or some shit, so he activated a massive Spatial Merge to bring all that water here—”

“All that water,” Gerold croaked, “and me with it.”

“Yep, and, depending on your frame of mind”—Krilid raised a scarlike brow—“you can look at your situation as a bad thing . . . or a good thing.”

Even in the midst of all this impossibility and all this horror, Gerold laughed. “How can being in Hell be a good thing?”

Krilid raised a Monocular with a bloodshot eyeball where the lens should be. “Just . . . be patient, and you’ll see.”

Gerold was about to crawl forward again, to look back out, but suddenly, the Nectoport’s oval opening flashed blinding white, and inertia shoved him back. Immediately there came the sense of bending, of his body somehow elongating; the strange walls of the compartment he sat in elongated as well.

Krilid tremored slightly, like one sitting on a trolley over bad tracks. He said, “We’re going to the Pol Pot District now, collapsing space.” And, next, the white flash ceased, to be replaced again by more bloodred sky. “Take a look now.”

Gerold dragged himself forward and looked out.

They hovered maybe a half a mile up, through wisps of soot-colored clouds. The clouds stunk, and when he craned his neck over the Egress’s rim, the entire city below stunk as well.

More teetering buildings and gas-gushing smokestacks. Bizarre creatures darted quickly up and down decrepit skyscrapers. Anywhere he might look, some figure was seen jumping out of a high window. Gerold gaped closer at the streets themselves. Sewer grates belched flames; masses of figures—Human and otherwise—clogged trash-strewn and blood-splattered avenues. Long, clattering cars putted about as well as carriages drawn by fanged, malformed creatures that sufficed for horses. Clay men loomed on every corner, sentinel-like as they scanned the masses. Any and all free space between buildings were stakes on which severed heads had been planted. There were thousands of them, tens of thousands. Additionally, piles of dead bodies lay everywhere, while squads of forced laborers trudged to the task of flinging the bodies into carts and wheeling them away. Gerold was too nauseated to ask . . .

“We’re getting close,” Krilid said. He handed Gerold the Monocular. “There’s the security perimeter . . .”

Gerold gulped with a dry throat when he elbowed up and looked through the glass. A heavily walled clearing existed amid the center of the District, the size of a football field. In each corner, Mongrel Demons and Human Damned were being tortured on racks or boiled in oil vats, and the resultant screams rose and fell like some mad, dissonant background music.

It was not the walled perimeter itself that stole Gerold’s breath and constricted his stomach, it was the perimeter’s most salient feature.

The fucking thing is HUGE, Gerold thought.

A hulking statue over 500 feet high spired from the middle of the perimeter. Muck-black like tar mixed with excrement mixed with mud. Its contours had been meticulously shaped to heighten its overall hideousness; Gerold thought of King Kong dunked with pitch. But the face . . .

The face—

Gerold threw up over the side when he zoomed the Monocular in on its face.

“Yeah, don’t look at it too long,” said Krilid. “I’ve heaved a couple times myself, thinking about that face. They put an Unutterability Hex on it—what you see is a cross between the most horrifying faces in Hell all wrapped up in one . . .”

“What is it?” Gerold gagged, noting that all those delicious crayfish he’d eaten earlier were now raining down.

“It’s called a Demonculus,” the Troll told him. “The most powerful weapon to ever be invented here.”

Gerold blundered with the word. “A Demonc . . .”

“It’s like a 666-foot voodoo doll that they’re going to bring to life with their round-the-clock sacrifices and spook-show sorcery.”

“Bring . . . to life?” Gerold gasped. “That-that . . . thing?”

Smirking, Krilid nodded. “See all that mist all over the place down there, that looks like it’s glowing?”

“Yuh-yeah . . .” The mist sparkled like sheets of fireflies.

“That’s the Hell-Flux. It’s air that’s charged with occult energy, and those transformer-looking things with the coils sticking up are Electrocity Generators. Those are the things that convert horror, pain, and agony into a tangible force. The sacrifices maintain that force, but a little while ago, sixty-six million people were all slaughtered at once all over the city by Mutilation Battalions. A lot of that power was used for the Spatial Merge that brought you and all that lake water to the Reservoir, but the overflow was diverted here, to dump into that.” Krilid pointed to the immobile Demonculus.

Gerold stuttered. “Wuh-wuh-when will they bring it to life?”

Krilid raised the antique rifle. “Now.”

The rifle was fitted with its own Monocular, in the fashion of a sniper sight. “But one more thing has to happen before they can activate the Demonculus. It needs a heart. Only then can it come to life to do Lucifer’s bidding.” The Troll sighted the rifle. “Look down at the thing’s chest now.”

Hands trembling, Gerold did so. A strange fenced platform was hovering near the immense creature’s chest, a platform held aloft by hot-air balloons of some sort. Gerold noticed that a hole seemed to have been bored into the dead thing’s chest. Several unspeakably ugly demons busied themselves on the platform, one unsheathing a knife, another lifting up a pair of bolt cutters. But there was another figure there, a human, with bottomless eyes and a beard. He was taking off a jacket that shined like polished chrome.

“That’s the mission target. His name is Master Builder Curwen—he’s an Archlock of the highest conditioning—Lucifer’s smartest Sorcerer, and it’s his heart that will give the Demonculus life.”

Gerold shot the Troll a funky look. “But how can—”

“They’re gonna cut out his heart and put it in the chest cavity,” Krilid said, sighting the rifle and cocking the hammer, “so I have to head-shot the guy before they can do that. Then . . .”

“Then what?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute . . .”

BAM!

Krilid bucked back when the rifle went off. A gust of black smoke spewed out of the muzzle. But when they both looked back through their Monoculars . . .

“Oh, shit!” Krilid yelled.

“You missed!”

Hundreds of feet below them, alarms began to sound.

The demons on the platform were frantic now, and so was the bearded man. The bolt cutters were brought to bear . . .

Krilid fumbled to reload, but Gerold saw another rifle leaning against the wall. He grabbed it.

“Let me do it, man. You can’t hit an elephant’s ass with a bass fiddle.”

“There’s no scope on that!” the Troll yelled.

Gerold elbowed up. “Hey! They already cut the guy’s heart out—”

“Then don’t shoot Curwen! Shoot the heart!”

Gerold frowned at the nearly impossible instruction. He lined the V-notch up to the breech post, cocked the hammer, then took a breath. Meanwhile, as Curwen’s body convulsed on the platform floor, his opened chest cavity welling blood, a dog-faced demon grabbed the severed heart and began to reach upward. He meant to put the still-beating heart into the hole in the giant thing’s chest.

“Hurry!” Krilid yelled, still fumbling with his powder.

Gerold let out half a breath—

BAM!

The rudely large bullet shot the demon’s hand off with Curwen’s heart still in it. Both hand and heart plunged to the ground.

“Great shot!” Krilid celebrated.

Gerold felt a twinkle of pride. “Yeah, not bad, but . . . now what?”

“Now what?” Krilid smiled. The Nectoport soared down, the force of its movement nudging the balloon platform away. “Now’s when you get to decide if you want to be a hero.”

“What?”

“Look, we’re banking on you saying yes—”

“Saying yes to what?” Gerold snapped, annoyed.

The Egress of the Nectoport sucked right up to and over the ragged hole in the Demonculus’s chest. “What do you want more than anything, Gerold?”

Gerold needed no time to reflect. “I want to walk.”

“Well, look, there’s no way we can send you back to the Living World, but you were going to kill yourself there anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

“But we can make it so you can walk again . . . or I should say you can.”

Gerold was about to blurt out another objection but then—

He stared at the chest hole, then looked back to Krilid.

Krilid nodded. “I offered to do it right off the bat but it wouldn’t work. See, it has to be a Human heart.”

Gerold’s mind revved like gears in a machine. He took off his life preserver, then took off his shirt.

“Good man,” Krilid said, having already picked up a tool that looked like a branch cutter. “But . . . it’s gonna hurt.”

“I would never have guessed,” Gerold mocked. He lay down flat, hands fisted. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Just do it. I don’t care how much it hurts.”

“You got balls, Gerold.” The branch cutters keened when Krilid opened them . . .

First: crack! as the curved blade slunked into Gerold’s solar plexus and then the sternum was separated.

Gerold bellowed.

Then: click, click, click, click, click, as all the ribs on the left side were snapped.

Pain? Gerold could never have conceived of such pain, but, What did I expect? He’s cutting my heart out! he somehow was able to think even over the insurmountable agony. But just as that same agony reached a terrifying peak . . .

It ebbed away, to numbness, and then Gerold’s spirit felt like vapor spinning round in a blender on the highest speed.

Meanwhile, Krilid severed all the necessary arteries and removed Gerold’s heart.

And he put it, still beating, into the hole in the Demonculus’s chest . . .

CHAPTER TWELVE

(I)

Hudson’s eyes snapped open like someone who’d just wakened from a nightmare of falling. He remained sweat-drenched in the attic chair, stewing in the insufferable heat. The hole in the wall met his direct line of sight, and through it all he could see was the straggly backyard tinted by moonlight.

The candles guttered all around him.

“You’re back,” whispered the deaconess, “from a journey only eleven people in history have taken . . .”

Hudson nodded and drew in a long breath. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

“No. It was the greatest of all privileges.” She stepped from the dark corner, her nude body shellacked in sweat itself. The macabre crucible of the baby’s skullcap remained below the hole in the wall, but the Sterno had long gone out.

“I can tell by your aura,” said the deaconess. “You’ve accepted the Senary.”

“Yes.”

“Praise Lucifer,” she sighed. “You will one day be a Privilato, the greatest thing to be in Hell save for Lucifer himself.”

“After I die, at age sixty-six. That’s what I was told.”

The robust woman handed Hudson a towel. He felt winded yet also content when he dried the sweat off his body and put his clothes back on. “I was also told something about six million dollars in cash . . .”

The deaconess grinned. “Such greed! How wonderful! But . . . first things first.” She handed him a piece of paper . . . and an ice pick.

“I guess this is self-explanatory,” Hudson commented. He didn’t like pain but considering . . .

MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT, read the contract, along with a simplification of everything he’d been promised. And all I have to trade for it is my soul . . .

He winced as he punctured his forearm with the awl, saw blood well up; then he ran the point along the blood.

Signing his name was harder than he thought.

“There.”

The deaconess looked awed at the sheet of paper. “You’re so, so privileged . . .” Suddenly she fell to her knees, hugging Hudson’s hips. “Please, I beg you. In my own Damnation, recruit me into your harem! I would be so honored to serve a Privilato! Please!”

“Sure,” Hudson agreed, “but . . . where’s that six million?”

Her smile seemed drunken now from what he’d just granted her. She kissed his crotch, and pointed behind him.

Two Samsonite suitcases sat on the other side of the room. This can’t be possible, he thought, but when he opened them, all he could do was stare for full minutes. Each hefty suitcase had been filled with banded one-hundred-dollar bills.

“There are six hundred bands, ten thousand dollars per band,” the deaconess told him.

Hudson grunted when he hefted each case. “It’s a good thing these suitcases have wheels.” But then another thought came to him. “Wait a minute. I can’t roll two big-ass suitcases to a bus stop in a ghetto, at night. I’d get mugged in two seconds.”

The deaconess’s bare skin glittered in the candlelight. “Lucifer guarantees your safety, not just in Hell but here also. From this point on, nothing can ever hurt you.”

“Really,” Hudson replied, not terribly confident.

“Oh, yes. In fact, you’ll be protected by not one but two Warding Incantations, which are quite similar to the occult bridle which protects Manse Lucifer from any anti-Satanic endeavor.”

“That’s hard-core . . .”

“I’ll demonstrate.” The deaconess wielded the ice pick.

Hudson’s heart skipped a beat.

“Any object turned on you as a weapon will be repulsed—” The deaconess threw the ice pick hard as she could right at Hudson—

“Shit!”

—but as it flew directly for his face, it veered harmlessly off and stuck in the bare-wood wall.

“Wow!”

“And any person who might attempt to assault you with his bare hands”—the nude woman smiled more mischievously—“will instantly have his blood removed from his body.”

Hudson recalled the bold but luckless insurgents’ attempt to bomb the Manse, and how their blood had been magically sucked out of every orifice.

He looked at her, at the contract in her hand, then at the suitcases. “I guess . . . all there is for me to do now is—”

“Go home, and enjoy the rest of your life here with your riches, knowing that many more riches await when you die and rise to the glory of Lucifer.”

So. That’s it, I guess. Hudson scratched his head. “What are your plans?”

“I will rise to that glory now, Mr. Hudson,” she said. “As your Senarial Messenger, I have but one more duty to perform: the execution of your contract.”

Contract in hand, the deaconess walked demurely to the chair, then stood on it.

“Hey! You’re not going to—”

“But I must, Mr. Hudson.” From a rafter she pulled down a previously prepared noose and calmly put it around her neck. “I’ll see you at your castle in the future.”

Hudson froze.

The deaconess rolled the contract into a ball, put it in her mouth, and stepped off the chair

THUNK . . .

Jesus, Hudson thought. He watched her hang there, the nude body agleam, swaying ever so gently. The rope creaked several times, then tightened to silence.

(II)

“The lake,” Dorris muttered, “is empty.” How sane she was at this time could hardly be estimated. She’d been standing there on the pier for several minutes—six minutes, to be precise—when, sane or not, some modicum of reason began to wriggle back into her consciousness . . .

What happened to my beautiful lake?

Overhead, the white moon sliver beamed. Stars sparkled in gorgeous, deep twilight, and the cricket sounds that had abated so abruptly earlier began to resume. All that she perceived would’ve been normal again, save for one irrevocable fact:

The lake was empty.

She remained there, cockeyed, limp armed, and slump shouldered, her eyes holding fast to the vast black depression that had once held six billion gallons of water.

It’s gone. It’s . . . all gone . . .

A fleeting thought returned again to the young man. Still, his wheelchair remained at the end of the pier, and when Dorris was cognizant enough to look back out with her binoculars, there was no sign of him or the boat.

A crisp static sound made her flinch, like a radio with bad reception. Then: The walkie-talkie!

It, too, remained at the end of the pier. Her lithe legs took her desperately to the small device. She snapped it up—

“Hon?” she shrieked when she jammed in the talk button. “That you? Where are ya?”

The walkie-talkie crackled back, and within the burst of static she felt sure she heard someone speaking.

“The lake!” she blurted. “Somethin’-somethin’ happened, and the lake ain’t here no more.” She didn’t know what she was trying to say. “But wherever it went . . . I guess you must’a went with it!”

More static after she released the button to listen. But—yes!—a voice was responding, however weakly, through the shifting white noise. It said this:

“All hail Lucifer the Morning Star. We bow down and sing praises to his unholy name—”

Dorris stared at the walkie-talkie. There could be no mistake; she had heard the voice, and the voice had not been that of the young handicapped man. The voice sounded deep, wet, and rotten.

It continued, “It worked! In the name off all things offensive to God—it worked!” And there followed a guttering round of the blackest laughter.

Dorris dropped the walkie-talkie, not only from the shock of the hellish voice but from a sudden return of the massive crackling sound she’d heard earlier. Again, her shiny white hair began to stand on end, and then—

BOOM!

Just like before, Dorris was thrown all the way back to the dock entrance, to land hard on her back. It was that same bomb-blast sound, and the concussion that followed in its wake. Half-unconscious, she tossed and turned on the old wood planks, and after many feeble moments of this, she managed to crawl up another mooring post. She took one deep breath—

OH MY GOD!

—and fell back to her knees to violently vomit.

It was not the earthy, low-tide smell that so effectively sickened her, it was something else, an odor so obscene it nearly shut down her senses. Her stomach kept heaving, and when it was emptied, it heaved more. Her eyes stung and her head pounded from what was not only the worst stench she could ever imagine but actually the worst stench to ever exist on the planet Earth.

Bile hanging in strings off her lips, she then dared to look back out . . .

With that second incomprehensible boom, Lake Misquamicus had been refilled, but not with lake water.

With blood.

With blood, and body parts, and debris, and sewage, and nameless and unnameable creatures, and myriad else not of this earth.

Dorris’s screams flew out of her mouth like tossed ribbons. Fish with vaguely human faces broke the bloody surface to snap at her with doglike teeth. Skeletons, severed limbs, and even some severed heads floated by, some of which moved with impossible life. A shadow beneath the red water wove under the dock, sidewinding and clearly a hundred yards long. Dorris staggered backward, unable to close her eyes, fearing—and even hoping—that the evil stench would kill her in her tracks. Several dented kegs floated by, like oversize beer kegs. From within one of them, she heard a rapid beating sound as of frantic fists, and a shrill female shriek: “Would somebody PLEASE let me out!”

The lake teemed with sounds now, sounds Dorris had never heard and would never be able to describe. When she managed to backtrack off the pier, another trickle of reason returned in spite of the madness she’d born witness to, and from a tiny pocket in her shorts, she unconsciously withdrew her car keys—

Got to get to the car! Got to get out of here!

But just as she would turn to do so, she froze at another sound.

Footsteps?

Yes, a procession of wet, slopping footsteps, like someone in hip waders marching out of a shallow tidal pool.

And then, in the silverish moonlight, she saw that someone with her own eyes, the figure of a man—a very large man—marching out of the noxious water and onto the shore.

First one, then two, then three such men.

Doris continued to stare dizzily at the spectacle. Most of her sanity, by now, of course, had been corrupted by what she was beholding. As the shlucking footfalls drew closer, she saw that they weren’t really men at all but hideous facsimiles: great glistening slablike figures almost ten feet tall. Details of the physical bodies seemed half formed as though they were but massive clay dolls bestowed with only the merest humanity. Their faces barely existed, just slits for eyes, slits for mouths . . .

Dorris couldn’t move as the three things approached. Her heart was trip-hammering; she could only pray that it would stop beating before they got to her.

But it didn’t.

A wide shadow cast by the tinseled moonlight crossed Dorris’s face. She stared and drooled. The things seemed to be staring, too, at her, but not with eyes for they had none, but with gashes where their eyes should be.

They looked at her a while, then turned, then moved hulkingly away to eventually stand up near the bait house. They stood perfectly still, in a perfectly straight line, almost as if . . . they were waiting for something.

SomeTHING? Dorris’s faltering brain managed. Or someONE?

Perhaps the horror had ravaged her consciousness so intricately that she’d been tainted with some psychic inclination, because when she looked dazedly back at the blood-filled and blight-infested lake, she did indeed see someone else coming out—but not another of these looming clay monstrosities.

It was a man.

(III)

Oh, wow, I don’t like this, Krilid thought after he’d debarked from the Nectoport and sent it back to Ezoriel’s headquarters. Suddenly his fear of heights returned, with no more Nectoport to shelter him. It’s just me and the Great Outdoors . . .

When he dared look down, his belly flip-flopped. Six hundred and sixty-six feet was a long way down . . .

It was on the left shoulder of the Demonculus that Krilid now sat, in a convenient little observation cupola.

When he’d slammed Gerold’s raw heart into the monster’s cardiac cavity, the Hell-Flux had audibly groaned down below, and its pallid luminescence had momentarily trebled. Meanwhile, the Anti-Light at the end of the cavity had sparked, signaling that the Animation Spells were properly engaged and conduction had been achieved. All the while, the Electrocity Generators down below kicked up into high rev from an occult detection sensor, to drain off all available Deathforce power . . .

These things meant that everything was working right. All systems go, Krilid had thought, a bit incredulous that nothing yet had gone wrong.

On the field at the Demonculus’s massive feet, throngs of Conscripts rallied, firing up curse-tipped arrows and sulphur guns, but the creature’s sheer size reduced their efforts to futility. Krilid chuckled. Like throwing pebbles . . . But Krilid’s chuckle ground down when he spotted several more Balloon Skiffs beginning to rise from their launch platforms. Not good, the Troll realized. We need to be far away by the time those balloons can reach this altitude. Archlocks and Bio-Wizards would undoubtedly be on the Skiffs, and would try all guises of Hexes and Cabalistic Viruses in hopes of disabling the Demonculus before it became ambulatory.

But . . . when would that be?

“Hey, Gerold!” Krilid yelled up from the cupola’s little side window. He was shouting toward the crude hole where the Demonculus’s ear should be. “Can you hear me yet?”

The giant muck-made head remained motionless.

Krilid began to feel sick.

Why wasn’t it working? He’d done everything as instructed. Had Lucifer’s Sorcerers planted countermeasure devices within the Demonculus? So much for Ezoriel’s fortune tellers, the Troll lamented.

A mile up ahead, an attack formation of Gryphons were beginning to swoop down . . .

Krilid got out of the cupola and ran to the base of the Demonculus’s neck. “Gerold! Come on! Make this thing work!”

No response. The Demonculus didn’t budge, nor could any sign of unlife be detected about the creature’s appalling face.

“Damn it!” Krilid kicked at a muscle strand in the Demonculus’s neck. “The friggin’ thing’s busted!”

Several flaming arrows zinged by. Below, the Balloon Skiffs had ascended several hundred feet already, and the Gryphon formation . . .

More arrows began to sail toward the monster.

Krilid ducked just in time to miss being hit in the head. His guts sunk when he noticed Conscripts riding the first waves of Gryphons, bearing buckets of pitch. The second wave was manned by Flamma-Troopers. These horned, armless Terrademons were Hexegenically bred to vomit fire . . .

The Conscripts will paste the Demonculus with pitch, and then the Flamma-Troopers will set it on fire . . .

Along with me.

Then—

ZZZZZZip!

—another arrow sailed by, this one nicking Krilid’s ear. Off balance he flinched, tried to stabilize his footing, but then tripped on a stray bone jutting up from the dead meat and filth that composed the Demonculus’s shoulder—

Oh my God, I’m gonna—

Krilid fell.

He fell fast. He didn’t scream, and he barely panicked. What he did mostly was frown at his clumsiness as he tumbled head over heels toward the hellish field below.

All that work, all that risk, all that planning . . . all for nothing . . .

Fifty feet. A hundred. He caught glimpses of the Demonculus’s nightmarish body as he continued to fall, picking up speed.

A hundred and fifty feet.

Two hundred.

What a way to go, Krilid thought, spinning.

WHAP!

With an unexpected jolt, Krilid landed in muck. The ground? But, no, he couldn’t have fallen that fast, could he? And if he’d hit the ground and somehow lived, Conscripts and Ushers would be dicing him to pieces. When his dizziness passed, he realized that he felt encased in more of the stinking muck.

Then he felt himself elevating, and whatever steam shovel–like thing it was that encased him . . . opened.

Hot wind blew into his face; Krilid was looking at the scarlet sky.

“Krilid, are you all right?” a voice seemed to crunch and echo at the same time. Not a human voice at all, yet there was something . . . familiar about its pitch.

Krilid realized then that he was standing in the opened palm of the Demonculus’s left hand, a fifty-foot-long hand.

“Gerold!” he shrieked when he got the gist.

The immense hand lifted Krilid until he was face level with the Demonculus.

“Thought I lost you there,” the monster’s voice crumbled out from impossible lips.

“Thanks for catching me,” Krilid said, but then a surge in his heart reminded him that they still weren’t out of the woods. “Gerold, listen, we’re under attack right now—”

“Under attack by who?”

Krilid pointed like a shot. “Those Gryphon formations—”

The corroded, grotesque-beyond-words face seemed to smirk. “I’m real scared, see?” And then like a crane, the abomination’s 200-foot-long arm swept out in an arch and swatted all of the winged things out of the sky. Several of the Flamma-Troopers exploded, which ignited sundry pitch upended from a dozen buckets. Fire rained down on the heavily populated field.

“Great move!” Krilid yelled. He pointed down. “Now step on all those guys down there sticking swords in your feet.”

“Oh—” The Demonculus looked down at the field. “I thought I felt some itching.” And then—

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The entire District shook while Gerold stomped his feet on the droves of demonic soldiers below; in fact, several buildings actually collapsed. Screams rose upward like steam from boiling pots.

“And see those Balloon Skiffs?” Krilid asked. “They’re serious business so do us both a favor and make ’em go away.”

The Demonculus’s chest expanded as it inhaled an inconceivably large breath, then exhaled it downward at storm-force velocity. The Balloon Skiffs twirled end over end in midair, ejected demonic crew members, then slammed into the ground to explode.

“So much for them,” Gerold’s new voice remarked.

“And it couldn’t hurt to step on those Electrocity Generators while you’re at it,” Krilid added. “They’re real expensive and took eons to build. Lucifer’ll dump in his pants if you trashed those things.”

The Demonculus shrugged, and it was more than likely the most massive shrug ever made by anything. Horrendous, tractor-trailer-size feet easily flattened said generators. The presiding explosions threw nuke-style mushroom clouds on either side of the unalive occult creature. The clouds crackled in hues like fresh lava; in only moments, the mushroom clouds had risen thousands of feet.

“Jeez, I didn’t figure that would happen,” Krilid said. “Pretty impressive . . .”

The Demonculus’s head turned down to Krilid. “You know something? Destroying stuff’s a lot of fun!”

“As long as it’s evil stuff, Gerold,” the Troll accentuated. “And there’s plenty of that here.”

The creature’s inexplicable face suddenly seemed morose. “But-but—” It looked at its horrific hands, then down the line of its corrupt physical body. “But-but . . . Shit, Krilid. I’m a monster.”

“You’re not a monster, Gerold. You’re the most powerful weapon ever made! And if you hadn’t come here, what would you be then?”

Nightmarish, fathomless eyes blinked. “I’d be dead. I’d be nothing.”

“Yeah!” Krilid yelled. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself just because you . . . look different. And you’re forgetting the best part!”

A titan pause. “What’s that?”

Krilid winced. “You can walk, moron! What you wanted more than anything you just got—in spades!”

“I can . . . walk . . .” The voice, however inhuman, seemed suspicious. Very slowly, one leg lifted and—

THUD!

—stepped forward. Then the other—

THUD!

The District tremored like a seismic shift.

“See?” Krilid said from the Demonculus’s hand. “It might take a little getting used to but, hell, what’s the big deal?”

The Demonculus took three more steps in succession. The third step begat a giant crack in the ground. “I can walk!” Gerold celebrated.

Krilid pointed a finger. “Yeah, and look what you get to walk with. The biggest legs to ever exist.”

Suddenly, the Demonculus began to hitch. Its abyssal mouth hung open, and the two ragged back holes that were its nose actually sniffled. Tears like raw crude oil squeezed from the impossible eyes.

“Aw, come on, Gerold,” Krilid implored. “Demonculuses don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it,” the thing sobbed. “I’m happy. And I owe it all to you. Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me, thank your Celestial Destiny—”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Krilid decided. His eyes glittered with enthusiasm as sirens and alarms began to blare from every District, Prefecture, and Municipal Zone for miles. “This is gonna be really cool, Gerold. We’re gonna kick ass and not take names. We’re gonna go on an anti-Luciferic tear-ass like Hell has never seen!”

“Right on!” The ground rumbled when Gerold yelled.

“We’re gonna destroy every Pulping Station, Power Plant, Tortuary, Prison, Police Station, every Grand Duke palace and every Sorcerial College in Hell! We’re gonna be Satan’s worst nightmare and nothing can stop us!”

“All right!”

“And who knows? One day we might even stumble upon Manse Lucifer itself—”

“And tear the shit out of it!”

“You got that right, my friend! So let’s do it!”

Staring, the Demonculus paused, as if bracing itself for a prospect too good to be true. Then it took a step—

THUD!

And another step—

THUD!

And then another and another and another, each stride consuming the length of half a city block, and that’s when Gerold started walking, and he would walk and walk and walk, for time immemorial, each step destroying something vile, each thud of its monstrous feet laying rents in Satan’s domain, each stride celebrating the gift that Gerold had taken for granted but had received yet again.

Indeed, Gerold—the first Demonculus of Hell—could walk, and from that point on, he would never stop—

THUD!

—never stop—

THUD!

He would never stop walking.

(IV)

The suitcases thunked as he clumsily got them down the stairs. For some reason he was not the least bit at odds with the prospect of walking out of an abandoned house with two suitcases full of cash. He bumped the front door open with his rump, then wheeled the suitcases out into the teaming night. Moonlight coolly painted his face; crickets throbbed dense as electronic music. Hudson felt enlivened even after this ultimate sin: his complete betrayal of God on High. Nor was he afraid of the fact that he was standing in a crackburg with six million dollars in cash.

A tiny light glowed above the bus stop just down the street. Hudson looked at his watch, then chuckled and shook his head when he saw that the bus would be coming by six minutes from now.

“Yo!” shot the subtle voice. Dollar-store sandals slapped the cement. Then another darker voice—a man’s.

“Shee-it . . .”

Bags in hand, Hudson turned to face them, unworried.

“This the fuck askin’ ’bout the Larken House,” said the prostitute whom Hudson recognized at once: the woman who’d shown him where the house was, in the zebra-striped tube top. Her white teeth gleamed when she smiled.

Two more figures stood on either side, a slouchy black male with his hair stuffed in a stocking that looked like Jiffy Pop, and a chubby, high-chinned white guy in jeans cut off at midcalf, a ten-sizes-too-large T-shirt, and a whitewall. He had snakes tattooed on the sides of his neck.

The black guy took one step. “What’s in the suitcases, my man?”

Hudson stalled, then laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The white guy bulled forward: “What’s in the suitcases, white boy!” his voice boomed, and from nowhere he’d produced a very large Buck knife.

“Six million dollars. If you want it, you’ll have to take it.”

The black guy nodded to the white one. “Just another poo-putt white muv-fuck.”

“Shee-it,” chuckled the white guy, and then he lunged with the knife.

“Cut dat boy!” the girl cheered on. “Cut him!” But it was only a second later when she shrieked. Plumes of blood launched from the attacker’s eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. His crotch, too, expelled a copious volume, which saturated the ludicrous pants. Then the knife clattered to the sidewalk and he collapsed.

“Ambrose!” shrieked the girl, fingertips to face. “What he do?”

“Don’t know,” crackled the voice of the black guy. There was a click! when he cocked a small pistol. “But he got somethin’ in them cases, so’s I’ll just bust a cap in his face.”

Here was the proof of Hudson’s newfound faith. “Go ahead,” he said. “Bust all the ’caps’ you want.”

The tiny pistol’s report sounded more like a loud handclap. A muzzle flash bloomed in a way that Hudson found spectacular. More spectacular, though, was the way the bullet was instantly repelled by the otherworldly ward surrounding him, and bounced immediately back into the black man’s Adam’s apple.

The man gargled, pop-eyed, and actually hopped about in the nearest weedy yard, hand clamped to his throat. He thrashed into some bushes and collapsed.

Hudson looked at the girl. “I’m protected by Lucifer, the Morning Star. That’s what I did in the Larken House tonight. I sold my soul . . . to Lucifer.”

The girl ran away.

“Hmm.”

Hudson moved on. The ruckus of helicopters snapped his gaze up to the twilit sky. His ears thumped; several large helicopters—clearly military—roared overhead. They were flying strangely low. Then:

Wow!

Several jet fighters screamed past in the same direction: north.

I wonder what that’s all about, Hudson thought. Maneuvers, probably; there were several big air bases nearby. He wheeled the suitcases down the sidewalk and across the street. Exactly sixty-six steps later, he arrived at the glass-shattered bus shelter where he detected the ember of a cigarette brighten, then lessen.

“Oh, you,” a ragged voice greeted. “How’s it goin’?”

It was the homeless guy from the deaconess’s church. “Hi, Forbes. I’m fine.”

The bum sucked the cigarette down to the filter, then flicked it away with begrimed fingers. His body odor seemed thick as heavy fog. “You goin’ on a trip?” he asked, noticing the suitcases. “Shit, man, the Greyhound station’s the other way.”

Am I . . . going on a trip? Hudson could’ve laughed. “No, I’m just going home.”

Both men jerked their gazes up when several more jet fighters screamed by overhead.

“Been goin’ on for a while now,” Forbes said, then burped. “I was with a john ’bout a half hour ago, and while I’m doin’ my thing he’s got music on the radio but then the music cut off and then an emergency broadcast comes on.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, man. Somethin’ happened couple counties north of here, some big lake.”

“Something happened?” Hudson couldn’t imagine why military aircraft would be sent for some mishap on a lake. “What was it, Forbes?”

“Don’t know. The john turned it off—said it was fucking up his karma or something.”

Hudson’s perplexion sparkled, but then he sighed with a smile. What do I care? I’m a Privilato.

Forbes showed a nearly toothless grin. “Hey, how ’bout I do a mouth-job on yer johnson for twenty bucks.”

“Oh, no thanks,” Hudson said.

“You can blow right in my mouth. Lotta guys like to do that for some reason, and I can always use the extra calories.”

“Uh, no. No thanks.” Hudson pulled some twenties out of his pocket and passed them to the bum. “But here’s some food money for you.”

Even in the dark, the bum’s face beamed. “Hey, man! Thanks! God bless ya!”

Not God. Not anymore . . .

Now was the first time he contemplated exactly what he had done. It was a deep contemplation. After a lifetime of SERVING God with my whole heart, I’ve now ABANDONED him . . .

He felt a state of exuberance well up from the core of his being with such power that he thought his eyes must surely be alight.

“Yeah, I’m takin’ the bus to the John’s Pass Bridge to sleep,” Forbes jabbered some more. He reached into his horrific mouth with two fingers and pulled out a rotten tooth.

“What’s that, Forbes? The bridge?”

“Yeah, it ain’t bad, ya just gotta be careful of the fire ants. But there’s no way I’m sleepin’ in the deaconess’s church no more.”

“Yes, I remember you telling me. Bad dreams.”

“But I sure miss her.” His flinty brow furrowed. “Somethin’ happened to her, somethin’ fucked her up.” Now Forbes looked beseeching. “You seen her tonight?”

Hudson stared down at him. “Do you really want to know, Forbes?”

“Well . . . sure. You seen her?”

“Yes. About ten minutes ago—or, more than likely, six minutes ago—I saw her commit suicide in a house across the street—the Larken House.”

Forbes’s pose stiffened. “No way, man!”

“I’m afraid so. She killed herself as a means of executing a contract I had just signed.”

“Fuck! A contract?”

“I sold my soul to the Devil tonight, Forbes. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“Shit yeah, man! The Devil? Really?”

“Yes,” Hudson calmly stated. “The Devil. I’m protected by the Devil. I am now a disciple of the Devil.”

“Aw, you’re full’a shit,” Then—

SCHULP

Hudson never saw the knife in Forbes’s mangy hand, until that same hand was already pulling it out of Hudson’s lower abdomen.

Holy—You gotta be—

Shock—and also outrage—made Hudson’s face feel twice its size. Blood like hot soup poured through his fingers; he also smelled his own waste as the knife had clearly punctured intestines. He began to convulse as he slumped to the other corner of the shelter.

“Fuckin’ people always tellin’ me bullshit ’cos they just think I’m a retarded bum, man,” Forbes complained. “Well, fuck them and fuck you.”

“Forbes,” Hudson croaked. “Call an ambu—”

“Here’s your fuckin’ protection, fucker.” The bum stuck the knife in again, several more times.

What Hudson felt more than the pain was simply outrage.

“I could use some new clothes, ya shit,” Forbes said, but he just stared and stared when he opened one of the suitcases. He scratched his beard, begetting dandruff. Then:

“What a fuckin’ great day!” He slapped the case closed. “Thank you, God!”

Hudson watched through hemorrhaged eyes as Forbes grabbed the suitcases and ambled away in the dark.

What a rip-off . . .

Each time Hudson coughed, blood sprayed into the air and more innards uncoiled in his hands. He died exactly six minutes later.

(V)

What stepped out of the lake next was a man in a leather strap-skirt studded with brass plates. He wore shin guards, a fat buckled belt, and one arm was covered with metal bands that reminded Dorris however obliquely of a Roman gladiator. He even held a sword, and as he strode up to her, dripping, muscles tensing, she noticed first that the skin of his chest existed as faces stitched together, while his own face . . .

God Almighty . . .

Dorris saw that the severed faces of babies had been grafted onto the man’s own face as effectively as patches stitched onto a shirt.

Dorris stared at the impossible man.

The tip of the sword touched her throat. His voice sounded sonorous and grating like rocks clacking together. “What place is this? Answer me and you may be allowed to live . . .”

Tremoring, Dorris replied, “It’s-it’s . . . Lake Misquamicus . . .”

“This is . . . the Living World, then?”

“It’s-it’s—Fluff-Fluff-Florida . . .” The man must be an alien. “Florida, on the planet Earth.”

“God’s green Earth, then?”

Dorris drooled as she nodded. Her eyes had yet to blink.

“State your name, your function, and your origin.”

“My name is Dorris Markle. I ruh-ruh-run the bait shop and boat rentals, and I’m from Ocala, Florida . . .”

The grafted face surveyed her. This man—or this semiman—had muscles bugling over more muscles, and when they moved, the severed faces stitched over them seemed to sigh.

The sword point lowered, and the stony voice gurgled, “My name is Conscript First Class Favius, formerly of the Third Augustan Legion and currently of Grand Duke Cyamal’s Exalted Security Brigade. I am from Hell.”

He turned to the three nine-foot-tall clay men, pointed his sword, and barked, “Golems of Rampart South! Single file, follow me.” And then they walked away and disappeared into the woods.

Dorris, in a trance of revulsion and disbelief, stared after them for several minutes. When things began to howl from the atrocious scarlet water, Dorris snapped, and ran and ran and ran.

EPILOGUE

Was it a dream?

You hear a THUNK! as in the sound of a cleaver striking a cutting board, and then comes the impression of rising—up a circular staircase?—and you hear footsteps. Then—open air.

Finally your eyelids prize apart.

“ ‘Let not thy hand be stretched out to receive, and shut when thou shouldest pay,’ ” comes a high-pitched, New England accent.

Your vision re-forms and then you know that—

This is no dream.

You are back at the Privilato castle, and the first thing you see is the grand courtyard and inner wards.

It’s Howard who looks back at you; he seems elated, but there’s also a tinge of scorn in his eyes. “It’s a line from the Bible,” his voice piped, “which I foolhardily never believed in. The Book of Ecclesiasticus, parablizing the sin of greed. I’d have been wiser to have heeded that book, rather than in obsessing over the creation of my own.”

“You promised me I’d die when I’m sixty-six! You promised me supernatural protection!” you wail at him.

“I, personally, forged no such promise, Mr. Hudson. It was, instead—as you’re well aware—Lucifer’s promise.”

“I sold my soul for a price!” you scream.

“Consider the author of the terms,” Howard lamented. “It’s so very regrettable: that resonant and universal power known as avarice. You were a very, very easy victim, Mr. Hudson. But, honestly! Why do you think they call him the Lord of Lies, the Great Deceiver?”

“This is bullshit!” But then only now do you realize something crucial, because when you try to look around, your head will not obey the commands of your brain. “What-what—”

“—happened to you?” Howard finishes. “It’s elementary. You died, you went to Hell, and immediately upon the commencement of your eternal Damnation, you were decapitated.” Howard, then, holds up a mirror that reflects back your severed head, which has been neatly propped upright within a stone sconce. “And, as you have hopefully cogitated, we are back at the Chatêau-Gaillard—”

“My castle!” you spit in outrage, “where I’m supposed to spend eternity living in luxury as a Privilato! But I can’t be a Privilato with my fuckin’ HEAD cut off!”

Howard’s voice, in spite of its elevated pitch, seems to turn foreboding. “Not your castle, Mr. Hudson. Mine.”

Only now do your eyes lower to scan the rest of Howard’s form. He’s no longer dressed in the shabby 1920s-style shirt and slacks . . .

He’s wearing a surplice of multifaceted jewels of every color conceivable and inconceivable. An ornate P has been mysteriously imbued on his forehead. More jewels glitter when Howard smiles: the most illustrious dental implants. “You haven’t won the Senary, Mr. Hudson. I have. Lucifer is not only notoriously dishonest, he’s also industriously dishonest. And I’d say your current circumstance demonstrates the extent of his machinations. By effectively causing you to believe that you won the Senary, you disavowed your Salvation, and since I was principal in stimulating your decision, the Senary has been awarded to me.”

“This is a pile of shit!” you bellow. “You screwed me!”

“Indeed—”

“I could’ve gone to Heaven!”

“Quite right, but here you are instead.” And then Howard picks your head up by the hair and carries you along, holding it over the ramparts. “Enjoy the view while you can. You’ll not see my beautiful castle again.”

“It’s supposed to be my beautiful castle!” You’re sobbing now. “That was the deal!”

“That was the deal that your greed allowed you to perceive. So intoxicated were you, Mr. Hudson, by the prospect of having all of this, that you never once considered the unreliability of the monarch here. Love is blind, they say, which is true, but it’s truer still that greed is so much more blind.” Howard looks forlorn for a moment. “The genuine deal is that I won the Senary and its sequent Privilato status by convincing you of the opposite, for enticing you to give your Salvation to Lucifer of your own free will. It really is quite a prize for my master and I might add, my master rewards those who do him service.”

“I won, damn it! Not you! I won!”

“You’ve won nothing but what your greed and betrayal of faith have earned you.”

The sound of a breeze stretches over the vast landscape.

“Where’s my body?” you moan now, tears running.

“There.” Howard holds your head between two merlons where you see the revelers in the courtyard: your mother, father, and sister; Randal, Monsignor Halford, and the two rowdy prostitutes; Marcie, your first girlfriend; and the six Pamela Andersons. They’re all chatting happily as they busy themselves around the barbeque. Racks of ribs have already been laid across the grill, while Randal and Marcie are systematically sawing or cleaving steaks off of the headless body stretched across a long butcher block table. Your body.

You begin to cry like a baby.

“There, there,” Howard consoles, and after a few more steps that familiar black static crackles, you scream, and—

WHAM!

—you’re someplace else, and it only takes you a moment to realize that you’ve seen this place before as well, not in reality but in the hectographs Howard showed you earlier. Thousands and thousands of heads look at your head as Howard walks you through Lucifer’s Atrium, Great Hall, Dining Room, and, lastly, the Bedchamber.

Wall after wall after wall of living female heads.

Many of them smile when you pass by.

“So behold now, Mr. Hudson, the true seat of your destiny. You will remain here forever, and though I can fathom your disappointment in now acknowledging the ruse played on you, you may at least take some solace in knowing that you have inherited a unique privilege . . .”

Oh no, your thoughts croak when Howard takes you into Lucifer’s circular-walled commode-chamber, where more, more female heads look at you with the most satisfied smiles. The head smiling the most, however, is that of the lone chubby-faced blonde lying cheek-down on the gilded toilet-stand.

“Oh please!” she exclaims in a trashy Southern accent. “Please let it be true!”

“And so it is, my dear,” Howard tells the head as he lifts it off the stand and flings it to the floor.

And what he puts in its place on the stand is your head.

“You are now the first male head to become a permanent fixture at Manse Lucifer,” Howard says.

“Howard!” you scream. “I’m begging you, man! Don’t do this to me!”

“Ah, but really, you’ve done it to yourself, haven’t you?” And then Howard turns to make his exit.

“Don’t leave me here! This isn’t fair! You tricked me! I don’t deserve to be the Devil’s toilet paper for eternity, do I? My sins weren’t that bad!”

“Sin is relative, Mr. Hudson,” pipes Howard’s voice a final time. “And with those words I’m afraid I must take my leave and enjoy the privileges I’ve duly inherited.” Howard sighs dreamily, and smiles with his jewels for teeth. “At last, I’ll finally be able to write The Lurker at the Threshold! And thank you, Mr. Hudson, very much. I could never have won the Senary without you . . .”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Howard leaves the commode-chamber and closes the head-paneled door behind him.

All the heads that form the walls, floor, and ceiling begin to laugh.

And all you can do now is sit there in dread, wondering how often the master of this house moves his bowels . . .