Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  “Vera, meet Tituba. Tituba, meet Vera.” Pliers smiled. “The ones we put on the crank usually only last a week, but Tituba here has been going for three months now! Impressive, right?”

  He was no longer touching her, but still the flashes into his mind continued.

  Lawrence Bittaker’s first hit-and-run.

  His first assault.

  His first rape.

  She stared at him in utter shock.

  He smiled, mistaking her expression for fear. “Know what I’ll do when Tituba finally wears out?”

  His next five rapes and murders, carried out with the help of a van, a toolbox, and his good friend Roy Norris. He liked the screams and begging of his victims so much that he recorded them and touched himself as he played with the trophies he had taken.

  “I’m going to replace her with you,” Lawrence Bittaker said calmly. “And when your body and spirit is broken, then I’m going to rape you. Over and over. Then I’ll use my toolbox on you.”

  Vera had thought she knew evil. She had thought she knew cruelty. But the sheer pleasure she found in his mind was so sickening, so disgusting, so irredeemably repulsive—

  “And only then will I give you to Cenodoxa,” Lawrence whispered. “And once she’s done with you and your body grows back—well then, we’ll just start it all over again.”

  When they played the recording of his final victim at his trial, the jury wept. But Lawrence “Pliers” Bittaker had thrown his head back and laughed.

  In front of the sobbing families, he laughed.

  Vera felt the most blinding hatred that she had ever known in that instant. It was so powerful and so sweeping that it nearly paralyzed her with its sheer scope. Nothing else in Heaven or Hell mattered; there was only this monster, and her desire to utterly destroy him. But not yet; the time was not yet ripe.

  She let herself be led back to the assembly line, and retreated into the darkest hole of her psyche as Pliers hurled more of his petty insults and faux-charming lines at her—the same ones he had used on so many others. When she was chained back to her station, he grew bored of the sport and left her there with a final little wave.

  “What happened?” Signy groaned. The bandages and extra shirts wrapped about her torso were stained dark with blood, but she was still making nails.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Vera looked down at her hands and saw that her fists were clenched so hard her nails were drawing blood. She released them, imagining that the blood was his. “All that matters is the future.”

  “And what kind of shitty future would that be?” Signy growled.

  “Revolution.” The wheels in Vera’s brain were already turning with the beginning of a plan. She smiled tightly as the strange mark on her left ankle gave what felt like an approving pulse.

  Hell isn’t enough for you, Pliers. So the Devil sent me.

  19

  An explosion of gnarled, grasping vines burst from John’s fingers, catching the lumberjack’s axe mid-swing and wrenching the weapon away from her. She barely had time to cry out in fear before the twisting avalanche of green swallowed up her entire form. “Die, you bitch!” John screamed out, tears streaming down his cheeks, as he pushed even harder. He could feel her bones crack and crumble under the sheer force of his grip, and still more vines branched out in every direction, slamming into the ceiling, into the walls, through bodies and around throats, until it seemed that the entire church was drowning in vegetation. Still John screamed, pushing out harder and harder, as his world shrank down to the pounding in his head and the roar of the exponentially shifting and stabbing green.

  “That’s enough!” Plague called out. He barely dodged away from a grasping arm of thorny branches and cursed as a vine began to wrap about his boot. “Famine, stop!” He managed to wrench himself away from the vine, but gasped in pain as another sprang from a screaming Flagellant’s gutted torso and wrapped around his throat.

  A miniature forest of vines descended from the ceiling to intercept the knife that Plague threw, but the blade was too fast—it whizzed by John’s face, leaving a line of blood across his cheek. The flash of pain brought him back to his senses with a gasp. The mass of shifting vines abruptly came to a stop as John gazed at his surroundings in horror.

  It looked as though the church of the Flagellants had been transported to the darkest depths of the Amazon. Vines, thorns, and branches hugged every surface, burying the pews that were only dimly visible beneath the thick mesh of vegetation. Half a dozen of the Flagellants dangled from the ceiling in various poses, ensnared by the green mass that had engulfed the ceiling and most of the rafters. The rest of the congregation was utterly paralyzed by the thick vines that suffocated and pierced their bodies—the only indication that they were even still alive was their faint curses and moans.

  Plague savagely bit the vine holding his throat in half and tore the thorny appendage away. “God damn,” he croaked out as he knelt to cut away the thorns that wrapped around his feet. “Famine, I may have underestimated you.”

  John gawked at the green-drowned destruction about them. “D-did I do all this?” he stammered in fear.

  “Yep.” Plague beamed like a proud parent. “Every last bit.”

  “Oh God,” John whispered. He stared down at his cracked, bark-encrusted and thorn-protruding hands, still attached to the avalanche of vines. “I’m a monster.”

  “Aaaaand there’s the old John Hale I know.” Plague sighed. He strode over to John and quickly sliced through the vines just in front of him, allowing him to free his hands. John gasped as he watched the cut vines recede back into his flesh, re-forming his fingers in the process. “You always were a monster, Johnny. Only difference now is you got some badass powers.” He rolled his eyes. “Just enjoy yourself already. Christ.”

  “This is not over!” Brother Vaux’s fleshy voice spat from a tangle of thorny branches. “The Fallen Father will have his vengeance upon you sinners!”

  “The Fallen Father is a fiction of your stupid cult, dreamed up by a bunch of damned former churchmen who want to feel important again,” Plague sneered. He slammed one of his knives into the tangle of branches, tearing away scraps of thorn and blood-red wood. “You would know all about that, Bishop.”

  “How do you know that?” Vaux demanded.

  Plague ripped away a large branch, revealing the Flagellant’s head glaring up at him. “I know about it all, Bishop.” He sank his fingers into the graying, rotting scalp and hurled the head on the floor behind him. The head did not bounce—instead, its cheeks and bottom splattered outward as the half-dead muscles began to peel away from the bone. Still, Brother Vaux did not flinch. “I know all about Carcassonne, and Béziers and Termes, and a score of other villages you helped slaughter with the Butcher of God.”

  The empty sockets of Brother Vaux’s eyes began to leak a dark fluid. “You speak of Lord Simon and the Cathars,” he hissed. “What do you know of them, Horseman?”

  A dark shadow fell over Plague’s face, and a look of utter hate crossed his features. “I was there, Bishop.” He raised a single boot, ready to slam it down onto Vaux’s face. His voice abruptly changed, dropping the mad singsong quality it always had to become the level voice of a bitter and angry young man. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me?”

  “I know that voice,” Vaux gasped. “You’re—”

  Plague slammed his boot down like a thunderbolt, crushing the Flagellant’s skull into a fine mush and spraying bits of entrails across the floor. Not satisfied, he stomped again and again until Brother Vaux was nothing more than a stain on the suicide-wood. “Not anymore,” he growled.

  John wisely decided to be silent as Plague wiped off the bloody sole of his boot on one of the pews. If the scowl on his face was any indication, for once the madman did not seem to be in a laughing mood. “Maybe I should bring you along,” Plague muttered darkly to himself. “If we’re all so hell-bent on having our damned reunion, may as well bring the whole gang along. May as well b
ring along all of Béziers and Termes too, while I’m on this goddamned mission.”

  His words made no sense, but then, they never did. As he gazed at all the struggling, trapped congregation, John felt as though he were about to vomit. “We should go,” he urged. The jungle of vegetation reminded him far too much of the Forest of Suicides; he felt trapped and claustrophobic.

  The look of anger on Plague’s face faded away. “Right,” he agreed. “Right!” And just like that, the lilting, singsong inflection of his voice returned. He ran a bloody hand through his auburn hair and grinned. “Nice job with our cultish companions, Famine. Now all we need to do is find the praefectus urbi and then burn this sorry excuse of a town down. Whaddya think of that?”

  John looked down at the wooden floorboards beneath his feet. Made from the trees in the Forest of Suicides, he thought angrily. “Let’s burn it all,” he spat.

  Plague chuckled. “I had my doubts at first, but I think you and I are going to get along just fine, Famine. Let’s find that praefectus urbi first and then—”

  “He’s right here,” a masculine voice said.

  Plague whipped around as fast as lightning, already hurling two of his knives in the direction of the newcomer.

  The man standing in the side entrance that Brother Antonio had used did not even flinch as the two blades buried into both of his shoulders. Instead, he gave Plague a reproachful glare. “That hurt.”

  “Why, speak of the devil.” Plague beamed. “Just the man we were looking to see. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Prophet Antony. How goes the administrative life?”

  The man called Antony reached up with either hand and tore the knives out of his shoulders. He did not offer them back to Plague, and instead tossed them into the tangled jungle of vegetation. “Irritating.” He frowned. His face was perpetually flushed in the manner of a man who enjoyed his drink too much, and his beard was tangled and ragged. His deep-set eyes only served to make his weathered face appear even more gaunt and unraveling.

  This man has seen better days, John thought, and then immediately realized the stupidity of that statement.

  “For one thing, it’s irritating when two strangers wander into town asking stupid questions. It’s even more irritating when one of these strangers is a Suicide. And it’s even more irritating when that particular stranger destroys a church and wraps my whole town up in vines that look like an absolute bitch to cut off,” the man continued. He took a step into the church and began to draw a short sword at his hip. “And I find it most irritating of all when people throw sharp things at me. So that’s how administrative life is, stranger. Irritating.”

  Plague raised his hands to show that he held no more weapons. The sleeve of his dark cloak slightly slipped down, briefly exposing another knife strapped to his wrist, but he quickly pulled up the cloth before the approaching man could notice. “It’s not often a man meets one of the Kingdom’s Prophets.” He smiled. “Even where I come from, your name is known well, Antony.”

  “Now you’re mistaking me for Prophet Salome.” A tight smile crossed Antony’s lips. “Flattery won’t get you far with me, stranger.” He took another step forward, not bothering to put away his blade. “I don’t know what you two did to my town, but there’ll be enough time later on for me to pry that information out of you.”

  “We only want to talk,” Plague said calmly. He tapped a finger on his right palm, indicating the raised bit of flesh upon it. “Surely you have time to spare for another Horseman?”

  The Prophet stopped dead in his tracks. “The Mark,” he said in disbelief. “It can’t be…”

  “It’s like we’re long-lost family.” Plague grinned. “I showed you mine, now why don’t you show me yours?”

  Antony’s sword whipped upward as he leapt back and assumed a defensive posture. “New Horsemen? That’s impossible,” he declared. “Who are you really?”

  “All things are possible with the Master.” Plague chuckled. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Don’t speak of him!” Antony snarled. His cool blue eyes flickered around the room, assessing the inevitable battleground. “His time is ended. The Third Rebellion saw to that.”

  “How soon we forget.” Plague sadly sighed. “I promise, Marc, he hasn’t forgotten you. But fear not, I come bearing a message of forgiveness and redemption for you. All the Master wants is—”

  There was a sudden clash of steel as Antony lunged forward with his sword. Plague instantly responded to the stab, intercepting the blade with an inhumanely fast swish of his knife. In less than a second, the two men were face-to-face, grunting and cursing as they locked their blades and pressed against each other.

  John tensed, ready to use his vines again, but Plague gave him a look that clearly said no.

  “Even if you are a Horseman,” Antony grunted as he pressed down with his sword, forcing Plague a step back, “you have no chance, little lapdog. I am War.” He smashed out his leg, kicking Plague’s feet out from under him and knocking the younger man to the floor. “Any more lies before I behead you?”

  Plague calmly eyed the blade at his throat. “Your orders are to capture the Prophets Giles and Salome, strip them of their devils, and bring them to Judecca,” he idly said, as though he were not lying on a bloodstained, vine-infested church floor made of suicide-trees with a hulking older man about to hack him to bits. “In return, you will be forgiven for your betrayal—”

  “Betrayal?” Antony laughed. “Is that how he sees it?” He raised his sword for a downward chop. “Maybe you are a Horseman, maybe not. I’ll ask Giles to look at your body just to be sure.”

  “—and you will be reunited with your lover.”

  Antony’s body froze. “What did you say?” he slowly asked. “What did you say?”

  “Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt.” A hideous smile crossed Plague’s face. “But what’s your pet name for her, Marc? ‘Cleo,’ isn’t it?”

  “You dare,” Antony snarled. “You dare!” He stabbed his sword down into Plague’s stomach, impaling him to the floor and drawing out a geyser of blood. “Say her name again!”

  “Cleo, Cleo, Cleo!” Plague screamed out—and then his howls of pain suddenly became laughter as Antony tore the sword out of his belly and slashed down at his head, cutting his face open to the bone. “I’ve spent eight hundred years with the Master, Marc! So if you think you can master even a fraction of his tortures, please, cut away!”

  “Stop!” John bellowed. He slammed his hand down to the floor, willing the branches to come—and thank God, they did, springing out from his arm and rushing along the floorboards to ensnare the bellowing Prophet.

  Without so much as a second glance, Antony hewed them apart with a single slash of his blade.

  “Let me prove it,” Plague gasped. He reached into his pocket and drew out a lock of long black hair, tied together with a single red string, and tossed it up to Antony. “The Master thought you might be doubtful.”

  Antony seized the lock from the air and carefully examined it. Horrible recognition dawned in his eyes as his face suddenly became a dozen shades of red darker. “YOU DARE,” he bellowed, and he slammed his boot so hard into Plague that the younger man was hurled against the other side of the wall on the opposite side of the church.

  John winced at the audible crunch of Plague’s spine against the tough wooden beams.

  But Antony was not done; with a single hand, he picked up one of the church pews and hurled it at Plague’s crumpled form, burying the Horseman under a pile of thorns, dust, and shattered wood. “God damnit,” the Prophet raged. His gaze abruptly fixed itself on John, and he stormed over to him, leaving deep impressions in the floorboards where his feet had slammed down upon them.

  John froze at the sight of the approaching man as fear gripped his entire body.

  “You a Horseman too?” Antony said between gritted teeth.

  “I—I think so,” John admitted.

  Antony whipped about and hurled another pew at th
e pile where Plague was buried. “Where’s his Mark?” he bellowed once the resulting crash had died down.

  Plague popped his head out of the pile of rubble and began to clamber out. “It’s his whole body,” he said as the skin on his face knitted itself back together and his vertebrae popped back into position of their own accord. “Perks of being a Suicide, I suppose. You could’ve been just like him, Marc—it’s a shame you’re as bad at killing yourself as you are at killing others.”

  A vein began to pop in Antony’s forehead.

  “Let’s just talk this out,” John urged. He had been through enough already; he didn’t want to have his back broken against a wall.

  “Then let me repeat myself.” Plague readjusted his tattered robe, briefly revealing a flash of heavily scarred skin on his chest. “The Master wishes for you to bring him the demons bound to the Prophets Giles and Salome—the two demons Abaddon and Leviathan. In exchange, you will be forgiven, and you will be reunited with Cleopatra.”

  “What does he want with those two?” Antony growled. “Even the Devil himself couldn’t help him in Judecca.”

  “That’s no business of either of ours. All that you and I need to know is one thing—the Fourth Rebellion is coming. And when it does”—Plague tapped a finger against his throat—“every man and woman in Hell will need to pick a side.”

  Antony’s face aged a decade as he sighed and rubbed his temples. “Why are you doing this?” he asked quietly. “The last time I saw the Master was two millennia ago. If he’s become even worse since then, why serve such a monster? You aren’t in Judecca any longer; he cannot reach you.”

  Plague was silent for a moment. “You don’t know what he’s capable of,” he whispered in a voice so low it was barely there. His mask slipped for a moment, and John saw the scared young man—scarcely more than a boy—hiding beneath the laughing exterior. And then the moment was gone, as Plague’s face tightened and he let out a forced laugh. “Do we have an agreement then, Antony?”