Hellbound

by Matt Turner

  “When I free Cleo, I’m going to hunt you down and rip your balls off,” Antony threatened, but he reluctantly nodded.

  “Then let’s shake.” Plague extended his right hand—the one with the mysterious Mark. “Mark to Mark, as true Horsemen.”

  Antony glared daggers at him, but he obediently rolled up his left sleeve, revealing a similarly shaped blotchy red spot on his forearm. “We are agreed.”

  “Then, in the name of our Master, I declare this bond sealed,” Plague announced. He pressed his palm to the Mark on Antony’s arm.

  John gasped in surprise as the two masses twitched and pulsed, seemingly of their own accord.

  “I declare this bond sealed,” Antony repeated sullenly.

  Plague’s lips curled upward. “Say it. Say his name.”

  “Damn you,” Antony hissed. “In the name of Cain, I declare this bond sealed.” The Mark on his arm briefly swelled outward at the name, and a look of disgust crossed his face.

  “You should be more respectful,” Plague chided. “He is the one who made you a Horseman, who granted you with his power.” He turned to John and lifted his hand to reveal the pulsing mass on his palm.

  “Is that—is that—” John couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  Plague laughed at his fear. “Behold the Mark granted to all Horsemen.” He placed his hand on John’s shoulder. John recoiled from the repugnant, pulsing, grabbing mass, but Plague’s grip was just too strong. “Behold the Mark of Cain!”

  Ten minutes later, the two Horsemen were gone. Marc had given them one of the smaller fishing boats (used by the Flagellants to fish bloaters out of the River Phlegethon for extra meat) and they had left as quickly as they had come, the ginger one with a laugh and something muttered about going to the First Circle, and the Suicide with his downcast face hidden in the depths of his hood. It was all Marc could do to not beat them both into a bloody pulp, but the laughing one almost certainly had some means of contacting his master in Judecca.

  I can’t give up the element of surprise. His only chance in saving Cleo lay in being cunning and unpredictable. Even in life, that had never been his strong suit—he still winced at the memories of the battles his impulsiveness had lost—but now, more than ever, he could not afford to make a single mistake.

  “Did you hear all that?” he said out loud as he watched the fishing boat disappear into the horizon. I hope it sinks and the bloaters rip them apart.

  A single locust crawled out from his sleeve and landed on his shoulder. The insect was massive, nearly half a foot long and covered in a coat of thick, bristly hair. Its face—uncannily similar to that of a sneering death-mask—sneered up at him as its pincers clicked and clattered. “Aye,” Giles’s voice emerged from the hideous creature’s mouth. “A new set of Horsemen, hmm? Very interesting.”

  “It’s more than that,” Marc said. By the time the other Prophet had come down to Hell, the Third Rebellion had long since ended, and Cain had been sealed away in the deepest depths of the Ninth Circle—the frozen hellscape of Judecca. But Marc remembered the power and the horror of the Master. “The Fourth Rebellion. It’s coming.”

  “Not if we act,” Giles said. “Without these new Horsemen, the one in Judecca is powerless. It is time to bring you to Dis. The Prophets must crush these new interlopers before we lose control.”

  Marc had already made up his mind. “I’m not going,” he declared.

  The locust clicked its pincers together in irritation. “That was not a request, Prophet. That was an order.”

  “He has Cleo,” Marc blurted. “She’s—” He stopped, trying to find the words. But how could he describe her laugh, the scent of myrrh on her skin, the feel of her hair against his fingers? How could he describe that to someone like Giles? “I lo—”

  “Your so-called ‘love’ has already gotten the both of you killed once,” Giles declared. “This is obviously a trap, designed to lure you in. Do not let your emotions destroy you again, Prophet.”

  Don’t lecture down to me, you freak, Marc inwardly raged. The other Prophets who had managed to capture and bind themselves to the last surviving demons had always disgusted him, Giles most of all. The man had worshiped Abaddon even before he had died, practicing all sorts of dark arts—

  “And, I have to wonder, if your ‘love’ with Cleopatra runs so deep, why was she not at Bromios with you?” Giles said flatly. “Return to Dis, Prophet. We will capture these new Horsemen and then see about this ex-lover of yours.”

  Marc seized the locust on his shoulder with one hand and squeezed. The monstrous insect screamed and thrashed about in his grasp, biting at him with its pincers and stabbing at his fingers with its scorpion-like tail. Nevertheless, he took a special kind of satisfaction in feeling its armor crunch and watching its entrails drip down from his fist.

  “I will save her,” Marc Antony, one of the four original Horsemen of Hell, vowed. He turned away from the River Phlegethon and began to trudge south.

  To Judecca, where his love and his old master waited.

  20

  Fritz was in a sour mood. As boring as supervising the Thirteenth Legion was—it was obviously empty work designed by Giles to keep them busy—it was even less fun to do it alongside Longinus. None of the other Prophets were exactly fun to hang out with (with the possible exception of Marc, when he was drunk), but Longinus’s icy eyes and stone-cold face had a way of sucking the joy out of everything. Hell, even rooting out the occasional Russian in the Thirteenth’s ranks was no fun with Longinus around—the former Horseman was a stickler for rules and regulations, and always insisted upon performing the crucifixions himself.

  “I don’t even like crucifixions,” Fritz fumed out loud. “They’re a waste of wood and they’re a goddamn eyesore.” Especially the upside-down ones; why did Longinus like them so much?

  “What was that?” Simon eyed him from the practice ring where he was practicing swinging his massive Zweihänder.

  “Nothing,” Fritz grumbled. He turned his attention back to the small pile of tools and scraps of iron on the tool before him. He had a vague idea of designing a new weapon, perhaps something he could strap to his wrist, but the actual details refused to come to him. I could ask Ellie, he thought, and then decided against it. The other Prophet was even more of an uptight bitch than Longinus.

  In the practice ring, Simon swung the normally two-handed Zweihänder with a single hand, easily splintering one of the statues in two. “I need a new sword,” the lord declared as he kicked at the rubble of the ancient marble statue. “This one’s broken.” He held up the sword to show that he had indeed shattered the thick steel blade in half with the force of his blow.

  It was all Fritz could do to not curse aloud in jealousy. I have a chainwhip and a few toys and he has the power of a superman, he thought angrily. He needed to conduct the ritual soon, to rob the Frenchman of his power, but how? Cenodoxa will know, he decided. The doctor was infamous thanks to her work both with the Flagellants and the Kingdom, and not particularly close to any of the Prophets. She won’t betray me. He automatically corrected himself. She better not betray me.

  “Go get a new one, then.” He waved his hand in the direction of the armory. “Just don’t run off, or Longinus will crucify you.” Simon gave him a look of disdain, but obediently strode off in the direction of the armory.

  “That one is going to be trouble,” Longinus growled.

  Fritz didn’t even look up; he had long since gotten used to the older Prophet showing up unannounced and uninvited. “Call it outsourcing,” he said cheerily. “I can have that one hack people to bits for me so I can spend more time chatting with you. Doesn’t that sound lovely, Roman?”

  Longinus marched (that was the only word to describe his robotic, unnatural movements) into the empty practice ring and examined the ruins of the statue. “This was built in the days before the Third Rebellion.”

  Fritz rolled his eyes. “I know you’re as old as sin, Longinus, but ple
ase spare me the history lesson this one time.”

  “When Cain ruled, there were monuments to him and the other heroes of the Second Rebellion across the Nine Circles,” Longinus continued. “Thousands of them, all built to last until the end of time—that’s why even the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace still has trouble rooting the remnants of his empire out. Even the lesser statues were meant to be a symbol of the Master’s power.” He nudged his foot against the marble crown that had fallen from the figure’s head. “And yet I just witnessed your ‘bodyguard’ cut one in half.”

  Fritz slipped one hand into his robes to grip his handgun. Come and try something, Longinus. I built this one specially for you. “It’s an old statue.” He shrugged. “The Kingdom’s had recruits hacking at that thing for what, two thousand years now? It’s bound to break sooner or later.” He internally damned himself as a fool—he had told Simon to lay low, and then allowed him to practice in broad daylight!

  Longinus’s cold eyes narrowed. “You lie.” The steel in his voice immediately declared the two words to be fact. “What are you hiding?”

  With his other free hand, Fritz began to pull at the bandolier of grenades around his belt. A flash-bang first, he decided. I’ll blind him. Then an incendiary on top of the bastard and a few explosives to keep him busy. He’d use the confusion to find Simon, take him away, then cut off all his limbs and drag him up to the Fourth Circle. “Nothing,” he said casually. “Why are you always so suspicious, Longinus? We’re all on the same side, aren’t we?”

  Longinus opened his mouth to say something—and then immediately shut it as something in his robes rustled out of his collar. Fritz also winced as the locust in his pocket crawled out onto his robes.

  “Prophets Fritz and Longinus, you are summoned to Dis,” Giles’s voice announced through the locust’s clacking pincers.

  “Disgusting creatures,” Longinus muttered.

  Fritz had to agree with him; he loathed Giles’s insistence that all Prophets carry one of his Abaddon’s locusts “for communication.” It was a bald-faced attempt to spy on all of them, and would have worked, had the other Prophets not discovered that simply wrapping a locust in a thick sheet of cloth was enough to deafen the hideous insects.

  “This is a Level Two meeting,” Giles continued. “Your attendance is mandatory.”

  “Damn it,” Fritz grumbled. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Simon returning from the armory, with a fresh Zweihänder in his hands. “Giles, bring my bodyguard along. He may be useful.”

  “He is not permitted in the council room,” Giles said sternly.

  Fritz rolled his eyes. “Obviously. I’ll dump him outside with the rest of the retainers.”

  “Very well then,” Giles said. “Do not move.”

  The locust on Longinus’s shoulder began to croak and shake. There was a burst of fluids as its armor cracked and another pair of legs emerged, then another, then another, until a newly formed insect wriggled out of the gaping hole and into the light. Almost immediately, it also began to grow and convulse as it gave birth to another. Fritz wrinkled his nose as he felt the same process occur on him—the locusts began to exponentially reproduce, spreading across his entire body.

  “I have the swor—oh, Christ on the cross,” Simon exploded when he saw the swarm of locusts birthing and spreading across every square centimeter of Fritz’s body. “What the hell is that?”

  “Don’t move.” Fritz grinned as a locust flew onto Simon’s arm and began to give birth to another. “They bite.” His vision darkened as the swarm grew even faster, crawling up his neck, over his face, and onto his scalp. He closed his eyes, resisting the urge to swat at the thousands of tiny legs crawling across his skin, and tried to think of something else.

  Within seconds, he felt his body grow heavier under the sheer weight of the insects. There was a sudden burst of pain, as though every single one of the locusts had bitten at him with their razor-sharp pincers at once—and then relief, as the swarm fell away.

  He opened his eyes to find himself in the antechamber of the Hall of Mammon, within the city of Dis, in the Sixth Circle of Hell, capital of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. The antechamber itself was relatively small and barren—little more than an empty stone room with a handful of torches that provided a dim, gloomy light.

  A single man stood in one of the room’s corners, leaning against the stone wall and casually picking at his fingernails with a knife. His handsome Oriental features contorted into a smile when he noticed Fritz. “It has been too long, Lord Prophet.”

  “Likewise, Lao,” Fritz grunted. As much as he detested Prophet Salome, her concubine, Lao Ai, was all right for an Easterner. Fritz had grown up in the company of prostitutes; he reluctantly understood them in a way few others did. “Your shirt is unbuttoned.”

  “Oh, it is?” Lao looked down at his silk shirt, undone so that it exposed most of his chest and the upper muscles of his abdomen. “Thank you, Lord Prophet, I hadn’t even noticed.” He made no move whatsoever to correct his wardrobe.

  A cloud of swarming locusts suddenly came into being beside him. The hissing insects abruptly died, falling away in a cloud of death to unveil Longinus, scowling as usual.

  “Greetings, Lord Prophet.” Lao inclined his head. “It has been a long time, Prophet Longinus.”

  “I thought Salome would have found herself a new whore by now,” Longinus said by way of greeting.

  “My mistress has excellent taste.” Lao smiled. “If the Lord Prophet would like a demonstration of my talents…”

  Had anyone else spoken those words, Longinus would have likely crucified them on the spot, but even the prideful Prophet knew the dangers of provoking Salome. All Longinus settled for was a nasty glare at Lao, who beamed back.

  Even Longinus is afraid of provoking the Jewish whore, Fritz inwardly sulked. It was an infuriating thought that had haunted him for decades.

  He raised his boot and crunched it down on the pile of dead locusts lying at his feet. The sensation of crushing Abaddon’s many bodies underneath his heel was always an extremely satisfying one. “I hate these things,” he grumbled.

  “For once, we are agreed.” Longinus’s cold eyes reflected the flickering torches on the stone walls about them. “The others must have already arrived. Come.”

  Another cloud of buzzing locusts suddenly burst into being just beside them. “What the blazing hell is going on,” Simon bellowed as the swarm, exhausted by the long journey, collapsed from his body and died. “I swear to Christ—”

  “Be quiet,” Longinus snapped. “You will stay here with the whore, or I’ll feed you to Legion myself.”

  “What is going on,” Simon repeated, even more angrily. He reached for the Zweihänder strapped to his back—and let out a curse as the sharp blade mounted to the tip of Fritz’s chainwhip slashed across his hand, stopping the motion.

  “I am going to a meeting,” Fritz told him. “You are going to be a good little boy and stay in this room and talk to Lao here, or I’ll rip your fucking head off. Understand?”

  “Bastard,” Simon spat.

  Fritz made an internal note to individually break every one of Simon’s fingers once he had somehow extracted the Horseman’s power. “Stay here,” he repeated. “Lao, you’ll keep this one company, won’t you?”

  Lao sighed. “He’s too old and too tall. Not really my type.” Fritz gave his chainwhip a little twirl, and the prostitute rolled his eyes. “But I will do it for the Lord Prophet.”

  “Enough of this prattle,” Longinus said. “We are late.” He pushed past the others and approached the iron door, engraved with scenes of battle and chaos from the Third Rebellion. Fritz followed him, but Lao stayed behind; only Prophets were permitted to enter the Hall of Mammon.

  They waited until the iron doors slammed shut behind them, and then opened up the second pair of doors—these were inscribed with the infamous Harrowing. As always, Fritz carefully studied Longinus’s face out of the corner of his eye
when they approached the second set of doors. And, as usual, there was not so much as a trace of recognition on Longinus’s face as his dead eyes flickered over the images of Christ’s three-day descent into Hell. Did it really happen, or was it just a myth? Fritz wondered.

  The official histories said that the Harrowing had rocked the very foundations of Cain’s once-invincible empire, setting the stage for his madness and subsequent fall in the Third Rebellion…but then, the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace also openly supported a cult that ate and sold body parts as meat. If anyone knew the truth, it was Longinus, but the old bastard’s lips were sealed even more tightly on that particular topic than they usually were. It doesn’t matter either way, Fritz decided. The old Master and his empire were long gone—the only thing that mattered was moving forward into the future. He placed his hand over Christ’s face and shoved the doors open.

  “You are late.”

  Giles’s cold voice echoed eerily in the dead silence of the cavernous hall, bouncing from the vaulted arches of the cathedral-like ceiling. Despite the distortion of the echoes, Fritz was able to immediately identify the source of the voice, for the Hall of Mammon was as empty as always. The hall was vast, nearly as large and encompassing as a stadium, but all that lay within its cold stonework was a single iron table, sitting in the immediate center of the massive room. The only source of light was the stained-glass window that lay in the ceiling directly over the table, casting a muted, deathly glow over the other Prophets who waited for them.

  “We had business,” Longinus said. The sounds of his and Fritz’s feet against the stone floor were like gunshots in the unnatural silence of the hall. The light of the stained-glass window above was such that it only directly cast the table in light; if the Prophets even slightly leaned back in their chairs, their features were utterly obscured in the darkness. They all remained in the blackness now, shadowy figures of destruction and judgment that glared daggers at their newly arrived companions.