by Matt Turner
A few of Legion’s voices argued against obeying the perimeter only command. Dessstroy everything, they insisted. No half measssuresss. But still more wanted to obey the Holy Council—it was too risky to openly oppose them just yet. Inadvertently destroying the entire Fourth Legion would be sure to draw their ire and suspicion.
Besides, the angry Prophet and the jealous Prophet were down there—Legion had waited far too long to one day taste their fear to let them be destroyed just yet. And even if the other two Prophets weren’t down there, destroying all that other meat would be such a waste!
Their minds made up, Legion gave the command. “Unleasssh Hell.”
Even Captain Gudivada nearly stumbled and lost his balance as the ship rocked with the screech and explosion of machinery. Only Legion remained still, perfectly balanced on their many legs—what a work of perfection they were!—as the Titan fired.
Far below, entire city blocks drowned in an ocean of Hellfire as the circle was drawn.
30
“Vera, you damned fool,” Seth whispered. “What have you done?” The Horseman’s petty rebellion had brought a nightmare of pain and suffering down to the Fourth Circle.
A massive jet of flame slashed down across the sky like a nightmarish parody of God’s promise to Noah. Everything it touched was instantly reduced to a roiling, boiling liquid of melted brick, bone, and steel that spat out great clouds of steel and smoke. Even the buildings not directly touched by the Hellfire were ignited by the sheer temperature of the horrific weapon, quickly spreading out firestorms within a kilometer in each direction. And still the Kingdom’s weapon fired, tracing a gigantic line of Hell into the Fourth Circle that slashed through factories, barracks, homes, tens of thousands of lives, eventually curving back to its origin.
By the time the weapon stopped, a ring of fire had sealed off an entire section of the C District. There was no possible escape; the Hellfire was so intensely powerful that even the Kingdom’s most powerful war machines would melt and break within a hundred meters of the hateful substance. All that remained within the ring the Kingdom had created was the Fourth Legion, four Horsemen, and hundreds of thousands of innocents.
Not innocents, Seth corrected himself as he gazed at the wall of fire that stretched three hundred and sixty degrees across the horizon. He could hear their panicked screams as the workers and even the factory guards blindly fled from the approaching flames—and even worse, the marching boots of the Fourth Legion. They are all damned anyway.
He found no solace in that thought as he looked down from the roof where he stood to the panic and chaos below. It was a scene that could have only existed in Hell; one of the Fourth Legion’s war stiltwalkers had smashed a factory in half with one volley of missiles, and was picking through the rubble for screaming survivors. “This is the price of rebellion.” The operator laughed as the machine nimbly scooped up a guard and hurled him head over heels in the direction of the distant Hellfire. The heat was so intense that the man’s body burst into flames long before he splashed into the molten lake.
Seth gritted his teeth. Hell was Hell, everyone knew that; it was to be left alone, but this…
The stiltwalker’s operator flipped a switch, extending a flamethrower’s nozzle from one of its arms—an invention of Prophet Ellie, no doubt. It swept a torrent of flame over the rubble, and the survivors trapped within it began to scream even louder as the fire cooked their thrashing bodies. Help, Seth could hear them beg, to their idols, to their sins, to anything that could possibly ease their torment.
The only reply they received was a volley of crossbow bolts from a passing squad of laughing soldiers. One raised her voice into a high-pitched squeal, mocking the cries of help from the burning rubble.
Seth’s blood boiled even hotter than the distant Hellfire. “Enough,” he growled. With that, he launched himself from the roof into the flames.
31
“Bitch!” Pliers screamed as his leg smashed against the edge of one of the steps. In the howling darkness, Vera vaguely felt a shard of bone stab against her knee, cutting a deep laceration into it. Before she could react, they tumbled still farther into the darkness of the seemingly unending staircase.
“Limp—dicked—fuck—face!” she bellowed at him in Russian with every subsequent blow their entwined bodies made against the stone stairwell. They were picking up a tremendous amount of speed, and with each fall, she could feel more of her bones crack. She blindly clawed at his face and sank her fingers deep into his fleshy cheeks. He reached for hers right back, and she screamed out as one of his thumbs pressed against her left eye.
Pliers twisted his thumb about, trying to gouge her eye out. She bit violently at his hand and felt her teeth sink deep into his wrist, but it was no good; he was still about to blind her. She desperately reached out for his mind, hoping to distract him.
Once again fragments of his past exploded into her brain—his murders, his rapes, his childhood—but this time they were far more jumbled and confused than usual. And what was worse, scenes from her past were mixed in as well— Petyr, her stinking drunk father, even a flash of Lieutenant Krakowsky’s dying face, and then the explosion of the tsar’s train.
“You’ve killed so many more than me!” Pliers howled in laughter. Not even the crunch of his ribs against the stone could stop him. “And you judge me, you Commie bitch?”
Pain the likes of which she had never known exploded in her skull as his thumb tore out her left eye. She screamed so loud she could feel her throat nearly tear itself apart and weakly released him, but he kept his arms wrapped around her, keeping her from falling away.
“Bitch bitch bitch!” he screamed over the howling wind. “You’re just the same as me!” His other thumb crawled across her face for her remaining eye.
Without any warning, they hit the bottom of the shaft, stopping so suddenly that the force of impact ripped their bodies apart. Vera coughed and choked as a wall of water slammed into her face and chest with the power of a sledgehammer. Only instinct forced her to flail about in the water until she could raise her face out of it to suck in a painful breath. Somehow her feet found purchase on the bottom of the pool, and she found that she was just able to raise her face above the surface of the water. Only blood and blackness greeted her vision.
For a moment, Vera stood there in the dark pool, sucking in shallow, blood-flecked breaths. Everything hurt; she knew without a shadow of a doubt that her injuries would have killed her in the real world. Nothing dies in Hell. She reached out a hand into the shadows, searching for Pliers’s body.
Something disturbed the water beside her. “Heh.” Pliers chuckled. He drew in a ragged breath and coughed wetly. “It’s just you and me now, darlin’.”
“It’s about to be just me,” Vera growled. She dragged herself forward and had to suppress a scream as the foul water—it smelled like shit—pressed against her bruised, broken body.
“Bullshit,” Pliers breathed. It sounded as though he were speaking through teeth gritted in pain. “Not even a Horseman can kill here in Hell. Make me scream all you want, darlin’, but ol’ Pliers will always be around.” He coughed again, and this time Vera felt the thin spray of fluid on her cheeks. “And sooner or later, it’ll be my turn to make the bitches scream again.”
“You asked what gave me the right to judge you.” Vera grunted. She could feel the ripples from his body; it seemed that he was trying to move and outflank her. She reached out farther, almost feeling the racing pulse of her enemy. “Know why I’m doing this, Pliers?”
“Because you’re a self-righteous Commie whore.”
He must have had a rock or something in his hand, for the blow he smashed at her arm was far stronger than any of his weak punches. She took the pain and lunged forward, seeking to grab at him.
Her index finger touched his face. He bit at it, but it was too late. This time, she was able to concentrate fully on his mind. Reaching into his brain, she dragged up the memory of his trial�
��the sickening grin on his face as they played the recordings of his victims.
“It’s because you laughed,” she whispered. And then she plunged into his soul.
He screamed an inarticulate roar of rage at her and swung with the rock again. She sensed the blow coming and easily ducked out of the way, all while maintaining her link to his mind. I’m going to burn you, she whispered. She could almost feel her hands in his memories, manipulating his thoughts. She reached out for that sickening smug satisfaction he still felt about that trial—even all these years later, even after he had been condemned to Hell—and wrenched that sensation of joy apart. Pliers let out an audible gasp as the once-proud memory sickened and withered in her hands.
We’re just getting started, Lawrence, she thought.
“Get OUT OF MY HEAD!” he bellowed. He lurched forward, hoping to tear out her throat with his teeth.
Before he moved even a foot, she found the pride and sense of power and accomplishment he had felt in his first kill—and she tore that apart too. Then all of the gleeful joy he had felt in his other crimes, she tore away. He wept and cursed at her as he faltered in confusion and terror. “Please, no,” he cried.
Like a blazing inferno of death, Vera tore through his memories, faster and faster. Every sensation of hope he had ever felt, any moment Lawrence Bittaker had felt joy, love, power, happiness, even something as simple as a sense of belonging—she tore those memories away from him and ripped them into bloody pieces.
The warm smell of chocolate chip cookies—the only time his mother had ever baked them.
Running in the rain with his childhood friends, Billy and James.
His first kiss with Barbara Henderson. Deep down, Lawrence believed that she was the only female who ever cared about him.
Driving around town with Roy Norris, chuckling at a joke one of them had just cracked.
A dozen other tiny moments, sprinkled sparsely throughout his miserable life.
Vera tore them all away from the monster.
“For Christ’s sake, PLEASE!” he shrieked into the darkness.
“Remember how they screamed, Lawrence?” She wrenched up the memories of the ones he had tortured, drowning his consciousness with their weeping, bloodied features. He shrieked and cried at their faces. “Think you can do any better?”
“I don’t—I don’t—” he tried to say.
Not enough, Vera decided. She pushed deeper into his mind, searching into the deepest, darkest crevices, the swamps filled with blind shuffling creatures that even Lawrence feared to go into. And there it was—at the very bottom, coated over by decades of slime and pain and denial. She wrenched the memory out of the sewage of his soul and expanded it so that it blotted out everything else.
1945. Five-year-old Lawrence Bittaker. An isolated woodshed in Pennsylvania.
“No,” he cried as she forced him back into the memory. Vera pushed even harder, and the image forever swallowed him up. “No!” the monster that had once been a child howled. “Daddy, I’ll be good—I’ll be GOOD—NO, DADDY!”
Vera pulled the weeping man close. “You deserved it, Lawrence,” she softly whispered into his ear. “You always did.”
He stumbled back from her, weakly splashing through the water. “No, no, no,” he cried. “Please, I’ll be good, I’ll be—”
There was a splash as his foot slipped, and a cry of fear that was abruptly cut off as the water swallowed him. Vera heard no more of Lawrence “Pliers” Bittaker.
The pain in her body was too great to ignore after that. She slumped backward in the water, allowing it to slowly rise over her face. I just need to rest, she thought weakly. Her consciousness began to drain away like the blood from her dozens of wounds. I just need to rest.
The last thing she saw from her remaining eye before she passed out was a flickering light moving toward her in the darkness. Is that Seth? her weary brain wondered before its thoughts finally died away.
32
When Simon finally came to, it was in a small underground cavern that smelled like shit. Typical, he sourly thought. He couldn’t make out anything but the flickering reflection of a torch against the rock roof, so he leaned forward, trying to stand. He had to stop, for when he looked down, his body was wrapped in a thick layer of vines that prevented him from moving.
“Oh, you’re awake,” a familiar voice said. Simon slightly turned his head to see that the weird tree-man thing was looking down at him with a faint expression of curiosity. “Sorry about the vines. You started seizing, so we—”
Simon kicked his arms and legs outward, easily tearing the vines to shreds. Damn, I’ve gotten strong, he thought in pride.
The other man looked oddly hurt. “I was going to take those away, you know.”
“Where am I?” Simon demanded. “Who are you? What’s going on?” He rose to his feet, expecting the wounds that Fritz had given him to scream out in pain.
“Well, I’m John Hale. It’s nice to meet you again.” This time the tree-man did not extend a hand for John to shake. “We’re in the sewers, I think, and we just got done healing you—”
Healing? Simon abruptly looked down at his torso. To his shock, the gaping wounds that Fritz had inflicted on him were completely gone—the only evidence that the Prophet had virtually gutted him were the large tears and holes gouged into his armor.
“We didn’t heal you,” another voice corrected. “I did.”
Simon nimbly leapt up to his feet and spun around to identify the source of the voice. It was as he feared; his blurred memories had not been a nightmare after all. Amaury was on the stone floor before him, kneeling over a dark-haired woman covered in a maze of blood and leaking wounds.
“Amaury?” Simon asked in shock. “Is it really you?” He took a step forward, unsure of whether to approach his son or flee.
“In the flesh.” Amaury chuckled. He ran his right hand over the woman’s body, causing the wounds that he touched to re-stitch themselves together. “How have you been, Father?”
“I, uh, think I’ll go watch for intruders or something,” the tree-man mumbled as he slipped away into the darkness.
“Amaury, what happened to you?” Simon whispered. He knelt to look at his son more closely. Had Amaury always been so pale? Had his eyes always been so dark and full of cunning? He started to raise a shaking hand to touch his shoulder, to see whether he was really there, and then made himself stop.
“You shouldn’t call me that.” Amaury placed his right hand on the unconscious woman’s face, resetting her broken nose. One of her eye sockets was empty; he let out a muttered curse at that, but staunched the bleeding with his index finger. “I have a new name.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My new Father gave it to me, just as he gave one to you.” Amaury raised his right hand, exposing a dark-red Mark on his palm. “I am Plague now. You are War.”
“That’s bullshit,” Simon burst out. “Amaury, you’re my son—”
“Do you remember Carcassonne?” Amaury asked in a voice that was deathly quiet. “You shoved me off my horse in a fit of rage—I struck my head against a rock and would have died were it not for Bishop Vaux. While I was unconscious and you were out getting yourself killed—by a mangonel that was operated by children, by the way—my new Father came to me. And when I died a year later at the Siege of Marmande, I came to him.”
Simon could not think of a single thing to say. He remained silent as Amaury laughed.
“But I did learn something from my birth father, I suppose—look at the two of us, here in Hell.” He waved at their dimly lit surroundings. “At last, we have something in common, War—our penchant for slaughter.” He chuckled again. The flickering image of his shadow on the wall seemed to twist and dance to the shaking of his shoulders. “And what slaughter there will be!”
What have you become? Simon wondered. And then the sickening truth hit him like a war hammer. He’s become me.
Below them, the woman beg
an to stir. “Wha—” she mumbled as she opened her remaining eye. It widened in surprise when she saw the two men standing over her, and she lunged out with her arm at Amaury’s head.
As quick as a snake, Amaury seized her wrist and stopped her hand less than six inches away from his face. “None of that now.” He grinned. “You don’t want to look into my mind, Death.” A knife flicked into his free hand and he raised it directly over her remaining eye. “Stop trying to break into my thoughts or I’ll make your shitty day a hell of a lot worse.”
The woman glared at him. “Bastard,” she growled, but her hand relaxed.
Amaury released her arm and withdrew his knife. “You should be thankful, Vera. If it weren’t for me, you’d have been floating in that sewage over there for the next three centuries or so.”
The woman sat upright, still gazing at the two of them suspiciously. “How do you know my name?”
“You’re welcome, by the way. And I know all about you, Vera—well, the highlights at least. The Master watched your life with great interest. He seemed to find your St. Petersburg bombing particularly amusing.”
Vera’s remaining eye narrowed. “I have no master.”
“Of course you don’t.” Amaury smiled nastily. “All you have is a few smoking craters you left in the real world, a Mark on your ankle there, and a failed rebellion that’s already been torn out, root and stem, by the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. Am I wrong?”
The woman muttered something under her breath about a coming revolution, but did not reply to his question. “What happened to me?” she asked as she looked down at her torn clothes. “My wounds—”
“Healed ’em,” Amaury said. “Can’t do anything about that eye until we can get a replacement, though. Otherwise, it should grow back in about a millennium.”
“A millennium?” Vera asked in utter shock.