by Matt Turner
“Damnit,” Salome swore when the dust cleared. Below the rubble was a layer of dead flesh, already blackening at the edges where it had started to rot. Part of Legion’s body…disgusting freak had to go and fall on top of the damned vault. It was another waste of time that she could not afford.
She pulled aside the crude bandages she had wrapped around her face to spit on the flesh in contempt, and yelped in pain when her fingertips gently brushed against the ragged scraps that had once been her lips. “Fuck you, Lao!” The syringe of Zaqqum was in her hands before she even knew it, poised an inch above the hole-ridden skin of her breast. It took everything she had to slip it back into her brassiere. Can’t waste it, she thought in despair. Can’t waste it!
For a moment, she stood there, panting, trying to fight the pain. John let out a soft giggle and collapsed to the ground, tracing the edges of his roots against the bloody dirt. The wind blew softly through the deserted, cracked skyscrapers like a melancholy sigh, and Salome briefly let her thoughts drift back to the wondrous parties and galas that she had once graced with her presence. All Hell worshiped me. I could have had anyone I wanted, man or woman. And I chose him. She gritted her teeth at the thought of Lao so tightly that one of her loosened molars cracked in two. When I find him…
It gradually dawned on her that the sighing she heard was something more than just the wind. She glanced down at the massive flesh-tendril that Legion had left behind and let out a cry of disgust at what she saw.
Like maggots emerging from a rotting corpse, Legion’s body was giving birth. Bit by bit, blood and entrails spattered out onto the ground as the body parts protruding from the soft flesh slowly emerged, centimeter by centimeter. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the birthing process; she saw a single eyeball burst into the air like a ruptured abscess, pulling along a finger that it was connected to by a thin tendril of mucus. The finger itself was connected to an inside-out heart, which was partly merged with what looked to be an arm, as an entire human body squeezed out onto the ground like a chain of sausage links. Where there were enough human features to make a face, she saw only expressions of agony and horror. None of them made a sound; it looked as though none of Legion’s newborns had yet re-attached their lungs, diaphragms, and voice boxes in the correct order.
Seeing the disgusting abominations slowly splat out into the air like the vomit of a feral dog somehow cheered Salome up. “Looks like I’m still the most beautiful in Hell.” She laughed. “John, move the trash.”
“I live to serve!” John beamed. He did not even get up; instead, he leaned over and slammed one of his hands against the ground.
A forest immediately sprang up underneath the hulk of rotting flesh. For a moment, the leaking mass swelled upward and outward as the trees lifted it into the air—and then it violently ruptured into half a dozen pieces, each the size of Leviathan, as the pressure became too much. Pus and blood spattered across everything within a hundred meters, much to Salome’s dismay. As she gazed down at her soaked, ruined silks, she found herself grateful that she no longer had a nose.
“Sorry, Salome!” John giggled. “Wow-ee, that reeks!” He leapt up to his feet and bounded over to her like a puppy. “Say, you don’t have any more of that Zaqqum, do you?”
“You’ve had enough,” Salome snapped. She waded into the pool of pus that the ruptured tendril had left behind and began to search about for the vault entrance. It was difficult; the slimy golden liquid reached up to her knees and was stained by countless scraps of flesh and gore. In the end, she gave up on finding the manhole-sized entrance and simply ordered John to rip the street in half with his roots.
“I’ll do it for some Zaqqum,” he said with all the raw cunning of a toddler.
“How about a kiss?” Salome winked.
“I’d prefer Zaqqum.”
“Fine, fine.” She groaned. “Just rip open the damn street.”
“Nisch,” John slurred. “Here we go!” He lazily drew a few doodles with his finger in the sludge and pus. There was an audible crack as the roots of the trees grew deeper and pried apart the pavement below. Just as Salome had hoped, there was an audible sucking sound as the pool partly drained into the chasm that John had opened up beneath it. She had only ever been to the vault once—it was more Giles’s interest than any of the other Prophets—but she was sure that this was it.
She slogged to the edge of the small ravine that John’s roots had cleared and gazed down. It was difficult to tell through the waterfall of thick yellowish liquid, but she thought she could make out the glimmer of electrical lighting below. “This is it,” she announced. John paid no attention to her; she had to snap her fingers at him several times to make him look up. “You. Get down there.”
“Uh, ladies first?” he feebly asked.
“Is it the drugs or are you always this pathetic?” Salome demanded. She thought about grabbing him and shoving him into the pit. It wasn’t worth the risk; without Leviathan, she was no match for him in her current state. Fortunately, Zaqqum had a way of making men even more pliable than usual. “Be a man,” she snapped. When he still made no move toward the edge, she flicked him off. “Fine. I’ll go first. Christ.”
“Well, good luck then.” John sighed in obvious relief.
There are three kinds of men, Salome’s mother had once told her. The stupid ones, the goddamned ones, and the stupid goddamned ones. As Salome dropped several meters into the chasm below, she reflected that most men in Hell belonged to the third category.
The fluids leaking down had already filled the vault up to her knees, neatly catching her fall in a splash of Legion’s rot. There’s a fourth kind of man too, Mother, Salome nastily thought as she surveyed the racks of equipment that stretched dozens of meters in every direction. The stupid goddamned ones unlucky enough to piss me off.
Machine guns, flamethrowers, beam-cannons, crossbows, spike-hurlers, and ten thousand others…she could find an example of every weapon the Kingdom’s factories had ever produced, no matter how exotic. She strode through the rising muck until she found a spike-hurler that she particularly liked. It was one of the models that even the Kingdom hesitated to use, loaded with incendiary spikes that injected a dose of napalm directly into the target’s impaled body. She was told that the agony was exquisite. Perfect for Lao. And for Cain…her gaze wandered to the far end of the bunker, where the dream waited.
John splashed down into the pus beside her, bringing down a great oozing glob of filth that spattered over her hair. “What is this place?” he asked in dumb fascination.
Salome wiped away his disgusting baptism with a groan of disgust. Do they go through this shit in Heaven? she wondered. I shouldn’t have killed that damn holy man.
“The Kingdom has all sorts of hidden caches all across Hell,” she grudgingly explained. “This just happens to hold the one thing I need.” She grabbed an extra rucksack from one of the racks and strode to the opposite end of the underground warehouse, filling it with various weapons and supplies as she went. “Hold this.” She tossed it over her shoulder, forcing John to clumsily snatch it out of the air.
She soon came to the more interesting section of the armaments stored within the bunker: the Relics. The dusty old weapons had never really been her style (Longinus, the sour old bastard, had always been the Prophet who most delighted in their use), but it was difficult not to be awed by their presence, even if they were strewn haphazardly about the steel shelves. The eight Ashtamangala were here, along with the lance of Olyndicus, the Ame-no-nuboko used in the First Rebellion, and a score of other weapons that had been wielded by demons and men.
Even in the flickering light of the dying bulbs, one of the legendary weapons gleamed brighter than the rest. Salome reached for the edge of it, curious, and let out a gasp of horror when she raised the reflective shield before her face.
A hideous monster grinned back at her. Its face, poorly wrapped in soaked, purulent bandages, resembled that of a skinned man—nothing but
weeping flesh and red meat, and great holes where its cheeks and nose had once been. For a moment, she thought it was nothing but a vision, perhaps brought on by the strange power of the weapon, but she quickly recognized her curled hair and brown eyes amid the wreckage of the flayed face.
“NO!” Salome screeched. She hurled the shield away from her. It slammed into the side of the rack with enough force to tilt it over, dumping a score of priceless artifacts into the rising tide of blood and filth. “That’s not me,” Salome wept. “Not—ME!” She sank to her knees, ignoring the pus that rose up to her breasts. What am I? she mourned. A dancer? A Prophet? A freak? Bile rose in her throat as she thought of Lao’s smiling face. A whore?
John awkwardly laid a barked hand on her shoulder. “Salome,” he slowly said. His voice was still slurred and garbled, but it seemed clearer now than it ever had been—the Zaqqum in his system was probably wearing off. “Are you all right?”
I don’t have a fucking face, you idiot, she nearly screamed at him. Instead, she croaked out a feeble laugh. “I was Salome the Seductress,” she said softly. Her voice was nearly lost in the steady drip of fluid down into the bunker. “The most beautiful woman in Hell. And now look at me. Look at me!”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Salome felt a sudden wave of revulsion—though whether it was aimed at him or herself, she couldn’t say—overwhelm her. “I don’t need your pity,” she snapped as she staggered back up to her feet and shoved him away. The pain from her ruined face began to creep back into her consciousness. She wrenched one of the precious syringes from her brassiere and angrily stabbed it into her arm. Three. No more. She would need to make every last drop of her precious Zaqqum last as long as possible if she wanted her revenge. “Just your muscle. You’re going to be moving that for me.”
John gaped at the massive weapon that she pointed at. “You want me to move that?”
“All the way to fucking Judecca. That is, if the Master doesn’t come to us first.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called the Xipe Totec.” Salome grinned. “The God of Death. You’re looking at the most powerful weapon ever made by human hands, Horseman.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him toward the weapon.
“And do be careful,” she called out as he nervously approached the hulking monstrosity. “If you see a button, don’t press it.”
She had seen the Xipe Totec several times—she had even observed its creation under ELIE’s team of engineers—but the sheer majesty of it never failed to take her breath away. The power and sheer grace of the weapon…it was simultaneously deadly and feminine in a way that entranced her. I know what I am, Salome realized. With the Xipe Totec in her hands, she was more than a Prophet, more than just a pretty face, more than yet another sinner damned to an afterlife of torture. I’m the fucking Queen of Death.
It was time for the rest of Hell to learn that, too. She left the Horseman to focus on moving the Xipe Totec with his strange plant-powers (or whatever the hell they were supposed to be) and made her way to the bunker’s communication room. Like the rest of the place, it was half-drowned in Legion’s oozing blood and pus, but by some stroke of luck, none of the equipment had yet been affected.
“Two-Theta-Sigma-Sigma-One-Niner,” she muttered to herself as she punched in the code. Leave it to some smartass Kingdom officer to make it a fucking Bible verse. “This is Lady Prophet Salome of the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace,” she said into the receiver. A few small scraps of her gums spattered across the microphone. She wiped them away with a curse of disgust.
For a moment, there was nothing but static over the radio. Come on. She gritted her teeth. Had the legions abandoned the Kingdom already? Even by Hell’s standards, that was fast.
“Lady Prophet, this is Imperator Sisera of the Eighteenth Legion,” a firm voice suddenly demanded through the radio’s squeal. “What in Hellfire is happening down there?”
Sisera. It just had to be that ambitious pig who answered. How the fuck did he even survive? And since when did he take over the Eighteenth?
“I’m recalling all legions back to Dis,” Salome said. “You must’ve seen what Legion did. The Master is coming, and I need your help.”
His response did not surprise her in the slightest. “You’re recalling the legions?” She could practically see the sneer on his lips. “I don’t seem to recall the Holy Council appointing you as their successor.”
“I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be in charge of their fucking Praetorian Guard, stake-head,” Salome snapped. “Now get the Eighteenth Legion down here, on the double.”
“I don’t think you truly understand your position, Lady Prophet. The Kingdom is gone. Soon enough, the Master will be gone, too. Then it’ll just be me and our God.”
God? “Little late to find religion, Sisera,” Salome said sarcastically. “But if you’re not down here in twenty-four hours, there won’t be a single shithole in Hell where you can hide from me—”
The imperator’s braying laughter cut her off. “My poor delusional Prophet. In twenty-four hours, there won’t be a Hell at all.”
Salome was growing sick of this game. “Are you coming or not, Sisera?” she demanded.
“Oh, I’ll come,” he promised. “And I’ll bring all the lads with me. But when the Eighteenth gets there, we’ll be making a few changes, little lady.”
Of course you will, Salome thought. She did not bother to respond; instead, she leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes in thought. How do I control them when they get here?
The answer was simple. I can’t.
Drip… Drip... Drip… went a thin tendril of pus leaking down from the ceiling behind her. She idly listened to it as she tried to come up with some sort of plan. Drip— Quite suddenly, the sound stopped.
Salome felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up at attention. Someone behind me, she realized as she finally became aware of their presence. She forced herself to maintain her calm breathing as she continued to keep her eyes shut. It couldn’t be John—he was too busy splashing about on the opposite side of the bunker. Which meant the person behind her was an intruder, and thus had to be ended.
“Damn it.” She yawned as she leaned forward, still pretending to be deep in thought. A hint of a shadow flickered across the shined metal edge of the radio, confirming her suspicions. She arched her back and reached for the knife strapped to her upper thigh.
“Don’t. Move.” Whoever said it, they were behind her, slightly to the right. Salome stiffened as something sharp and metal pricked the back of her neck. “Trying to distract me with your tits? That won’t work on me, Prophet. Now just slide your hand away from that knife of yours, nice and easy.”
“You’re a woman?” Salome asked.
“Last time I checked,” the intruder replied. “Now you—”
Her words were just enough for Salome to calculate the exact position of her head—and with a burst of Zaqqum-fueled speed, she spun around and slammed out her fist. The arrow that had been placed against her neck screeched forward, burying itself in the radio in a shower of sparks. Salome caught a glimpse of blonde hair and cold eyes as the stranger intercepted her blow. The wooden edge of the bow caught itself in Salome’s face, tearing away a handful of her silken bandages, and the stranger let out a yelp of surprise at the sight of what lay underneath.
Her distraction was just enough for Salome to bury her elbow into her throat and knock her down into the pus. “John!” she howled as she threw herself down on the stranger’s body. The blonde woman was incredibly strong—with a single hand, she was able to shove Salome away. Blood and pus stung her eyes, reducing the stranger to little more than a tan blur that lurched forward and crashed into her.
“John, get over here, goddammit!” Salome screamed. The other woman was on top of her now, both hands clutched around Salome’s throat. She desperately clawed up at the stranger’s face, and let out a yelp of astonishment when the woman tore a chunk
of flesh out of her palm with her teeth.
The stranger smiled down at Salome, exposing a row of teeth that had been filed down to razor-sharp edges. “Good-bye, Lady Prophet,” she hissed, and she opened wide.
10
“DUST!” Adam screamed out as the dark cloud enveloped Seth and Vera. His reedy, haunting voice seemed to come from all directions—above, below, directly into their ears. “Nothing but dust!”
“Be ready, Vera,” Seth warned. She could barely hear his words over the rush of wind and swirling debris. “He’s—AGH!” He let out a muffled cry of pain as a dark arm reached out from the depths of the cloud and slashed a set of claws across his face.
Vera lunged for it, hoping to make some kind of physical contact, but the limb disintegrated into smog as soon as she brushed up against it.
“Forgive me, son,” Adam wept.
Vera barely had time to process the dark mass that hurtled through the smoke at her—the boulder would have crushed her head like a fruit had Seth not seized her and yanked her out of the way. As soon as it passed by, it immediately evaporated back into the swirling dust cloud that raged around them.
Vera vainly lashed out at the dust around them, but it was useless; her hand merely passed through the air. “Damnit!” she swore in frustration. “Seth, how do we beat him? Seth!”
“We don’t,” Seth shouted back. “This is my fight, Vera.” He reached out and took her by the hand; much to her embarrassment, she couldn’t help but feel the heat rise in her cheeks. “Help the others!”
“Don’t you fucking dare throw me again,” Vera yelled over the scream of the wind. “Seth, I swear to God—”
“That’s blasphemy,” he chided, but there was a twinkle of humor in his eyes. “Now, help them!”
Vera let out a scream as he spun around once, twice, lifting her feet off the ground—and then he let go, shooting her like a rocket into the raging dust. For an instant, she thought she saw a pair of sorrowful eyes gazing at her from the depths of the whirling storm. Before she could react, brightness briefly blinded her as she emerged back out into the ruined city. She blinked, trying to clear her sight, and gasped in pain as something smashed into her chest, abruptly bringing her to a teeth-clattering halt. A wave of dizziness came over her as she fought the urge to vomit.