Hellbound

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Hellbound Page 40

by Matt Turner


  Not now, their many thoughts sang merrily. Not now, not now! A new beginning was coming, not just for Hell, but for all Creation! We ssshall tassste the Divine itssself; the Master Himself had promised it! And even if a handful of the voices argued that Cain was insane, not to be trusted, well…the unending hunger drowned them out.

  After thisss, the female Horseman, they decided as they twisted through pipes only a few centimeters thick. They were blind; there was no room for eyes, so they had to go by sense of touch and smell. The Heaven-man caresss for her. Ssshe will be our bait. Food was never boring, even when it was of the lowliest sinners, but just thinking of biting into angelic flesh made Legion moan in anticipation. Paradissse…it mussst tassste ssso sssweet!

  As they neared the ceiling of the council’s chambers, they could hear the familiar squabbles and bickering of the ancient tyrants.

  “Lock down the palace,” Ahab bellowed. “Deploy the Titan. And someone fetch those damned Prophets!”

  We are clossser than you think, ancient one. It was odd; one of Legion’s voices called Ahab something different: husband.

  “The Titan?” Caligula sounded as though he were about to pass out. He was Legion’s favorite of the Holy Council because of his prodigious size. Ssso much meat on him! We will eat him ssslow. “Are you planning to bomb Dis itself?”

  “It’s just a few escaped prisoners,” Athaliah argued. Legion seemed to recall that she was Ahab’s spawn, and there was that strange feeling again: she was a…daughter—yes, that was the word. “The Praetorian Guard has the situation under control.”

  Legion oozed out of the pipe into a small room that they had carved out centuries earlier and began to re-form their usual body. Husband, daughter…there was something else too: love? For a moment, the Prophet hesitated as the barest shadow of a previous life flickered before them.

  But in the end, they were just words, they decided. There were no husbands and daughters; there was only Legion. And what was love but another word for hunger? And we have more than enough to ssshare, they thought to themselves.

  The argument below continued, only growing more louder in volume and ferocity as the seconds ticked by. At last, the last tendril of flesh came out of the pipe; Legion used it to re-form one of its many legs. Time for love, they thought happily. Time for joy.

  “Furthermore, if the Titan fires upon the city—” Caligula was saying, as suddenly the ceiling exploded and Legion hurtled down at the council like a comet. The members of the Holy Council gasped in shock as the eldritch abomination extended their limbs mid-air, stretching their arms into great, grasping tendrils more akin to a sea monster than to humanity.

  “JOIN OUR EMBRACE!” Legion’s faces shrieked in blissful unison. “JOIN OUR LOVE!”

  They ripped three councilors out of the chairs, dragging them into their mouths before they even hit the floor. The impact would have broken the bones of any normal attacker, but Legion had anticipated the fall and encased themselves in a thick layer of blubber to absorb the impact. The Prophet sloughed off the extra layer of meat the instant they landed, and before any of the other councilors could do anything more than blink in astonishment, they consumed another two.

  “Guards!” Caligula screamed in horror. He fell off his chair, away from the table that supported his belly, and let out a cry of pain as the taut skin split wider open and his guts spilled out onto the floor.

  Legion paused just a moment to dip one of their tongues into the spilled refuse. Deliciousss!

  The Holy Council and their guards tried to flee, but their bodies were old and decrepit, weighed down by millennia’s worth of ornate armor and expensive jewelry.

  “Ussselesss baublesss,” Legion cried as they tore off Nero’s golden crown and yanked him headfirst into their gaping maw. “All that mattersss isss flesssh!”

  The Prophet charged headlong into the elders, smashing to bits the ancient stone chairs that had once housed demons. “Flesssh!” Legion moaned. They played with their victims, catching them with their elongated limbs, pinning them to the floor with shards of bone, and even tossing them high into the air to be gobbled down by their waiting mouths. The Holy Council were mere playthings before the storm of flesh.

  “Wait, please!” Ahab begged as Legion wrapped an arm around him and swung him into one of the stone pillars. “I—” His remaining words were choked out by the tendril of flesh that Legion jammed down his throat.

  “Sssshhh…” Legion said soothingly as they slowly dragged the old king toward them. “No need for wordsss, darling.” The fingers that they had forced down Ahab’s throat wrapped around the king’s heart—the frantic beating of that lovely organ made Legion go wild with excitement. Instead of merely consuming Ahab, they wrapped a dozen limbs around him and brought him in close for a loving embrace.

  “Now we are one flesssh,” Legion cooed. The king’s eyes bulged in silent terror as Legion wrapped layer after layer of skin and muscle over his body. Soon enough, he was lost to sight, but Legion could still feel him in there, struggling and begging. Do not fight usss, they thought, and they shifted several of their stomachs to envelop their acid around the king. Soon enough he would be completely melded, a wondrous experience that made Legion gasp with pleasure.

  Hardly any of the Holy Council or their guards remained; the only one who had made it to the door was Athaliah. Legion began to reach for the old queen, but then a single word flickered across their mind: daughter. They hesitated for a moment, and then the opportunity was gone; Athaliah managed to scurry out through the exit.

  No matter, Legion decided. We have sssaved the bessst for lassst.

  “I’ll give you anything,” Caligula begged. Trapped by his weight, he hadn’t moved an inch since he had collapsed. Legion nearly swooned; the sheer amount of meat he contained was nothing short of glorious! “P-please, the armies are loyal to me. We can r-rule t-together…”

  Legion shifted their faces forward, one by one, until they were all staring into the former emperor’s eyes. “We do not wisssh to rule together,” they said. “We wisssh only to BE together!”

  Even with all the mouths to feed, Caligula still took some time to digest.

  “The Holy Council isss no more,” Legion proudly announced when they finally made their way back to Lao. “The Kingdom isss now leaderlesss.”

  “You look bigger, Legion,” Lao said. “Did you—never mind. We still need at least one Horseman.”

  “I know jussst the one,” Legion whispered. The new faces that they had just added grinned in anticipation. For where the one called Vera was, the heaven-man was sure to be close by. Oh, the wonderful tastes his body possessed! What a delicious day! And glory be, the feast was only just beginning!

  20

  Giles had the same dream that he always did: the very last night that he had been a free man, and the first time that he had attempted to summon a demon from the outer darkness. The sacrifices—painstakingly collected over so many years, carefully selected from all across France to reduce any suspicion on himself—had all been groomed and prepared, his collection of alchemic salts had been ready, the pentagram had been drawn. Everything was ready! He had spared no expense, and had spent most of his vast wealth buying an army of mercenaries and longbowmen to guard his massive fortress. He had wiped the surrounding lands clean of all life, poisoning every well and burning down every scrap of farmland and village so that any forces sent by the Crown or Church would have to contend with a blasted landscape before they could even reach him.

  It will work this time. He slid the rusted blade across his palm. A few of the captives tried to weep or scream through their bonds, but the gags kept them silent. Most stared blankly at the floor or ceiling; his men had long since beaten any will out of the little brats. Giles had taken care of the more uppity ones himself.

  Giles gritted his teeth in pain as he knelt before the altar. It was a hideous, ugly thing, constructed from stolen tiles from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, tainted
by a dozen previous sacrifices. He added to the old stains, squeezing his blood into the vial upon it. The stone locust engraved upon the altar seemed to shift and twist in the flickering torchlight as a few streaks of his blood dripped down on it.

  I can do it! he thought excitedly. He had never gotten this far when he had lived; they had interrupted him before he had even started the ritual, but this time it would finally be different! This time he would finally—

  The heavy oaken doors slammed open in a blast of wind, and, with a heavy heart, Giles turned to see the same sight he had seen ten thousand times before: two of his mercenaries collapsing through the doorway, their heads taken clean off. A man dressed in the garb of a cleric stepped over their bodies and pointed his bloody sword at Giles.

  “Marshal de Rais,” he snarled. His scarred face was caked in mud and blood, and he walked with a slight limp, but righteous fire burned in his eyes. “By order of the Bishop of Nantes, you are under arrest, monster.”

  How did they know? Giles wondered in shock, and then he saw the six-year-old girl lurking in the cleric’s shadow. She was ragged and emaciated from weeks of running, but he could have recognized the sniveling little brat anywhere. His men had been hunting the only child who ever escaped his dungeons for weeks! He stared at her, frozen with hate and fear. Little Marie gave him one last wicked smile before the cleric raised his sword and slashed it at Giles’s face.

  “NO!” Giles violently wrenched himself out of bed and raised a trembling hand to his cold, clammy face. “No, goddammit!” He punched one of his bedposts in a black fury. He had been so GODDAMNED CLOSE to the crowning glory of his life, and that little witch—articulate thought left him for a moment as he drew out the mace from underneath his bed and hurled it at the wall hard enough to leave a dent.

  Bad dreams again? Abaddon asked mockingly.

  I’ll get her, Giles swore as he paced back and forth. I’ll find her in the end. If I have to burn down all of France, I’ll get that evil little brat. And when I do, oh, the things I’ll do to that smiling face… He could not even think of a torture good enough for her. She had taken away his empire, his life, his chance at divinity, and condemned him to his ceaseless Hell!

  She is out of your reach forever, the demon whispered. Marie dwells in Paradise now. I’d be surprised if she even remembers your name.

  The demon was clearly egging him on, trying to provoke him even further. Giles could sense Abaddon’s mirth; the devil was the only one who ever saw him like this, and loved every second of it. Control, he tried to tell himself. I am in control. Bit by bit, he forced the feelings back, bottling them back up in the blackest pits of his soul. But the undercurrent of rage persisted, like a constant toothache that he could never quite ignore.

  You seem upset, Giles. Would you like to talk about it?

  Giles ignored the demon and reached for the intercom system on his desk. Maybe I’ll have them bring up one of the prisoners, he decided. There was that one friend of Vera Figner’s, the blonde Frenchwoman with the loud mouth. Signy Crecy. She would make a suitable proxy for Marie, at least for a few minutes.

  Just before his hand touched the button, the intercom came alive with a squeal of static. “Lord Prophet Giles!” a frantic voice called out. “We have multiple escapees in Pandemonium! And the Holy Council—” The rest of his words were drowned out in an explosion that Giles heard both over the intercom and from the city outside.

  Giles immediately rushed for the door, pulling on his crimson cloak as he barged out into the Hall of Mammon. “Abaddon,” he ordered as he coughed up half a dozen locusts. “Have the other Prophets meet me at the Titan, and have Captain Gudivada get it in the air immediately. Hurry!”

  Abaddon sensed the urgency in his voice, and the locusts immediately rushed away without a word.

  “Take me to the Holy Council,” Giles snapped. “Now!”

  This is not France, he told himself as the locusts gathered around him and transported him to the council’s chambers. Things are different now. I am no longer at the mercy of children. I am in control. I am in control—

  His thoughts stopped mid-sentence as he flashed into the council’s chambers and gagged on the charnel stench of the slaughterhouse the room had become. Raw meat was spattered on the floors, chairs, and walls as though it had been hurled about by a demented artist of death; the only evidence that the ground beef had ever even been human was the severed hands and feet scattered about.

  All that’s left of the Holy Council is the mess they left behind. Abaddon chuckled. How fitting.

  No, Giles thought desperately. I can fix this. I am in control. I AM IN CONTROL!

  He rushed from the room to hunt down the escapees, but it seemed to him that he could once again hear a child laughing as his life’s work again crumbled away.

  21

  Seth stopped the vision again.

  Vera groaned in disappointment; Cain was midway through a leap that looked as though it were about to decapitate Moloch. “Why’d you stop?” she demanded. “It was getting to the best part!”

  He looked worried. “The alarms have gone off. Vera, we don’t have much time before they come for you.”

  “So, you mean that you don’t have much time until you abandon me again,” Vera sneered.

  Seth ignored the passive-aggressive remark. “The Harrowing, then.” With a clap of his hands, the landscape about them changed. Vera vaguely recognized the great towers and labyrinth structure of Dis laid out below them, but the city somehow appeared smaller and less cramped, like a weak shadow of itself. “The Kingdom’s population has grown somewhat over the past two thousand years,” Seth said drily. “Now behold.”

  He took her by the hand and turned her around so that she could see, amid the pillars of smoke and smog that came from a thousand chimneys, a great structure that loomed above all the others. Even by the standards of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace, it was a strange building, forged out of obsidian like a living thing, decorated with hundreds of jagged peaks. Gold and priceless rubies studded it like scales, reflecting the dim lights of the dark city. The impression that Vera received was that of a mighty dragon surveying its domain.

  “Pandemonium,” Seth explained. “My brother made the palace of Satan his own. There he is now.” He pointed at the tiny figure standing on the highest spire of the great tower.

  Vera squinted, trying to make out what the man was doing, but he stood as still as a statue, silently gazing up at the skies above.

  “Vera, this is very important,” Seth said in a low voice. “If you look at what happens next, your mind will shatter. You will be beyond Hell.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Vera asked. As they floated closer to the figure, she heard something like a crack of thunder in the skies above. Surprised, she glanced up—and saw what looked to be a distant star falling through the skies.

  “Christ was dead for three days. Where do you think he went?” Seth’s grip tightened on her hand as he, too, stared up at the skies above. Below them, Cain ignored the wind and smoke lashing at his face, his golden eyes fixed on the star above.

  The light from the falling star was rapidly growing more and more bright. Tears came to Vera’s eyes as she stared up at it and all Dis became as illuminated as a summer’s day. Sunlight. I had forgotten.

  “My brother knew that He was coming.” Seth sighed. “And now we see the true madness of Cain.”

  “Don’t tell me—” Vera’s eyes flickered down to Cain, and she watched in disbelief as he calmly raised a crossbow to his shoulder and took aim.

  “ARCHERS!” Cain bellowed in a voice like death. In a flash, every roof of Dis came alive as thousands of men poured out from their hiding spaces, frantically notching arrows to bows, as they assembled and took aim. “FIRE!”

  The torrent of arrows was so thick that Vera could not even see the ground beneath her. Tens of thousands of shafts shrieked through the air, drowning out even Cain’s commands, rushing upward toward
the light—

  Seth stopped the vision. “The Harrowing lasted for three days,” he said in a low voice. “For three days, Cain used every last drop of his empire against the Almighty. The man who defeated Satan attacked God. The war was doomed from the beginning. Even his Horsemen did not fight willingly; Cain had to whip and force all of Hell into his foolish war. The effort cost him his strength, his armies, his empire, the loyalty of his subjects, and the last few fragments of his soul.”

  Their surroundings turned to darkness. “The Third Rebellion,” Seth said sadly. “It barely even deserves the name.”

  Cain appeared before them, sitting upon an obsidian throne. But the proud warrior that he had been was gone; he was slumped forward, his head in his hands, as he shuddered and mumbled to himself.

  “Cain,” a voice said. Vera turned to see the four original Horsemen emerge from the nebulous shadows. They all looked weak and defeated; great bags were underneath their eyes, and their strides were little more than weak shuffles. The one who had been Lot’s wife—her name was Edith, that was it—had spoken. “It’s over,” she continued. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Cain spat. He stared at the four Horsemen, his face still hidden beneath his hands. “Gone?”

  “He left the First Circle just a few minutes ago,” Longinus rasped in a hoarse voice. “The scouts have confirmed it.”

  “The Harrowing is over, Cain,” Edith said. “We’ve won. The Creator has left.” But there was no sign of victory or joy in the Horsemen’s faces that Vera could see; all that was there was misery and exhaustion.

  “He left,” Cain whispered. “He left? No, no, no, that’s impossible…”

  “He took thousands with him.” Jezebel sighed. Vera shuddered to hear the woman’s voice; it sounded eerily similar to that of Legion’s. Even now, she thought she could glimpse a trace of a hungry glimmer in the queen’s eyes. “They are in Paradise now.”

 

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