by Matt Turner
The Beast crashed down into the slimy waters of the swamp with enough force that it nearly knocked the Master from his perch. He had to lean back to avoid being hurled into the muck, and in doing so was nearly swept away by a wave of filth that splashed over the Beast’s heads. It turned its dripping faces toward Cain and smiled mockingly.
He was in no mood for such childish games. He smoothly leapt off the Beast’s back and gracefully landed in the swamp, ignoring the mud that slid up to his naked chest. “Be here when I get back,” Cain said. With any other demon, he would’ve added, Or I’ll kill you. But threats like that wouldn’t work with the Beast. If the legends were true, then its daughter was also the mother of its son. The union had not been consensual.
Disgusting. “You are filth,” Cain told the Beast. It smiled even more widely at him in return. A wave of hate shivered down his spine so intensely that he almost had to gasp for air. He could have ripped its heart out right there. You killed my family and destroyed your own. Once I’m done with you…
He turned from the loathsome creature and made his way into the swamp. Things squirmed and shuffled in the mud around him, but he did not even deign to acknowledge them: they had infinitely more to fear from the god that walked among them than he had to fear from them. Soon enough, the fog completely enclosed him, but he gamely proceeded onward, as the mud slowly crept up to his throat.
At last he stopped, for his bare feet had found the edge of a ledge that plunged sharply downward. It was impossible to see more than a few feet in the fog, but it seemed to the Master that he stood on the rim of a vast chasm within the swamp.
A smell greeted his nostrils, one that overpowered even the sulfurous reek of the swamp. It was a scent that he knew well. Something’s rotting. Just ahead, a few tiny waves lapped up against something that floated on the surface of the scum. Cain squinted his golden eyes, and was able to recognize the outline of what looked to be a large animal, drifting amid the filth. If the smell emanating from it was any indication, the creature was long dead.
A Hellhound, he realized, as the imperceptible waves of the swamp caused it to drift closer. The beast’s flesh was so swollen and bloated by the waters that most of its hair had fallen out, exposing the pink muscle underneath. The creature must have been massive when it was alive; over three-quarters of its body was hidden beneath the swamp, yet its dead-eyed head still rose nearly a meter over the Master’s.
The Master was Hell’s first human inhabitant, yet even he had never seen a Hellhound in the flesh. He wondered what it took to slay one of the Beast’s grandchildren. “Who killed you?” he muttered aloud.
Something gurgled up from the swampish depths ahead of him. “No one.”
Cain did not even blink in surprise. “You lie,” he called out to the mist. “Devils don’t die easily.”
“The waters take them,” the voice whispered back. It was choked with phlegm and sorrow, even more repulsive than its surroundings. “My babies…”
“I have no time for this,” Cain snapped. “Face me, she-devil.”
“He said I have to stay down here,” she whimpered. “But the water—it takes my babies—he says I have to—”
“I don’t give a damn about your—” What was the word he should use? Brother? Husband? Son? In the end, he clenched his hands into fists and gritted his teeth. “Face. Me,” the Master growled. “I call you up, Sin.”
A tremor passed through the swamp around him, generating a small wave that carried the dead Hellhound out of Cain’s sight. Another wave followed, then another, as the massive devil shifted her weight beneath the water. A riptide tore at Cain’s legs as the monster heaved herself out of the squelching filth at the bottom of the swamp. He stood his ground, silently waiting, as in the mist, something massive broke the surface of the water.
“Agh.” Sin grunted as she took in a huge gulp of air. The swamp’s mists slightly dissipated, and Cain was able to catch a brief glimpse of her head. The Beast was the size of a skyscraper, Legion the size of a city, but the she-devil dwarfed them both. An entire forest of algae and weeds dribbled down from her hair and the man-sized pores in her pale, sloughing skin. Her face—it had once been beautiful, so the legends said—was completely shrouded by the flaps of fat and tissue that hung like curtains from her bulging, twisted body. Just to breathe, the demon had to reach up with slug-like fingers and pull the folds of fat away to expose her mouth.
Still her body rose up into the sky, until her head was once again out of view into the mists above. Her form was so distorted that Cain had no idea what part of her pale body he was staring at—it was just a wall of decaying meat. A few things weakly twisted and fluttered in some of the folds of fat. They were more Hellhounds, thousands of them, peeking from Sin’s every pore. Most looked swollen and drowned, but a few had enough life left in them to growl at the man who had called up their mother.
“The air,” Sin moaned. Rivers of fluid gushed down from her mouth to splash into the swamp below. “So long… My babies, they need it… But what will he think?”
“Look at me,” Cain boomed. He became aware of a great shadow passing over him, and raised his eyes to see the silhouette of Sin’s face against the sky. She lowered herself, closer and closer, raining down dead catfish and Hellhounds around him. She raised a hand and pulled at her face, drawing back the curtains of flesh to expose a single bulging eye.
“I know you, human,” she hissed. “You killed Father.”
I did you a favor, fool, Cain thought. And I didn’t kill him…I broke him. But I will finish the job after this.
“Death,” he said calmly. “Where is he?”
“You seek Death?” Her blubbery skin made an audible rustling sound as she raised one of her arms high into the sky. She thought she could simply squash him like a bug. Idiot. “I can give it to you, human.”
“There is only one who can do that,” Cain said. “And He isn’t in Hell.” Beneath the waters, he adopted a combative stance. He could feel his heart beating in his ears as the old adrenaline rush began to work its wonders. Part of him hoped that she would dare to raise her hand against him; he could not remember the last time he had had a worthy opponent. Maybe she will be mine.
Sin stopped, though the thousands of folds that enclosed her body continued to shuffle and twist, seemingly of their own volition. “Then why do you seek my lover?”
Cain’s patience finally broke. “He is your captor, foul idiot,” he snapped.
“No,” Sin gurgled. “No… NO!” Down came her fist, so quickly that even the Master had difficulty dodging it. A wave of black filth swept over him, and his feet lost their grip on the ledge as he was blasted out over the chasm. He clawed at the swamp water, trying to regain his footing, but he had lost all sense of balance, and suddenly a hand that was nearly the size of all Judecca seized him in its meaty grasp. Cain gasped and cursed as he was nearly drowned beneath the folds.
“What we have is love,” the giant she-devil screamed at him. “LOVE!”
“No such thing,” Cain choked out, and then she dove back into the depths of the swamp, dragging the Master along. Filth and mucus overwhelmed him, but the Master did not scream.
After all, he had a talent for killing devils.
33
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” James said quietly.
“No,” Signy mumbled. She buried her head deeper underneath the blankets and sucked in the familiar musk of their straw bed. “It’s your turn with the baby.”
Her husband ran a hand across her cheek. His fingers were still covered in blisters; he was new to the farming life and had never worked in the fields before. Not once did he ever complain; it was just one more reason for her to love him with all her soul. “You forgot, Sig.” She could hear the warm smile in his voice. God, she had missed him so much. “She’s gone.”
What? She opened her eyes, but there was nothing to be seen in the blackness beneath the blankets. She reached upward, trying to pull the fabric away, b
ut her arms were frozen in place. The familiar scent of the straw darkened into something more wretched and familiar.
“She’s gone, Sig,” James whispered. He coughed, and she felt the splatter of phlegm across her cheek. The warmth in his hands was gone, replaced by the cold touch of dead flesh against her face. His grip traveled downward to her throat. “She’s gone.” Iron fingers wrapped around her windpipe. “So am I.” At first she welcomed the blackness, for maybe it was death at last, finally come to end her—and then Signy remembered she was already dead. “And it’s all your fault.”
No, she tried to scream. It wasn’t me. All I ever did was love you.
“My brother was right,” James snarled in a voice that dripped with pure venom. Signy feared nothing, yet she cowered before his words—never once had he even raised his voice with her. “Leaving the castle, running off with a haggish wood-witch—”
“NO,” Signy bellowed. Her muscles seemed to move of their own accord; she crashed her head upward, smashing the top of her scalp against something hard. It jerked back and loosened its grip on her throat, just as she lunged upward in the bed and opened her mouth wide, ready to rip out a mouthful of its flesh—
She wrenched so hard against the chain on her neck that all the breath escaped from her in one mighty wheeze. Her vision briefly dimmed, and she had to stop to suck in a few desperate gasps of air.
“She’s a fast one,” a high-pitched voice remarked.
“Of course she is,” a more masculine voice replied. “You saw how she handled the others.”
“W-where am I?” Signy wheezed. She blinked, trying to get her bearings, and saw that she was in what looked to be a luxurious apartment. Satin rugs, leather-bound chairs, a volume of scrolls on a bookshelf…the only things that indicated that she was still on a train was the slight swaying of the golden chandeliers above her. She tried to raise her hands to inspect the chain around her neck, but found that they, along with the rest of her body, were also strapped down to a bed drowning in silken sheets.
A bed? She couldn’t even remember the last time she had slept in one.
“Tell me,” the first voice said. Signy turned to see that a small dwarf sat on the other end of the bed, just out of reach of her chains. A drop of blood trickled down from the corner of its mouth. “What gave me away?”
Aside from her stature, there was something odd about the woman’s appearance. She looked almost like… No, that’s impossible. Signy immediately discounted the idea. And yet…
“You started off too strong, Acceptance.” This voice came from the only other person in the room: a middle-aged man who had both the bearing and pristine uniform of an officer. Beneath his bushy hair, the outline of something sharp and metal protruded from his scalp. “How many times have I told you to ease them into it?”
“You’re Imperator Sisera of the Eighteenth Legion,” Signy realized. The one Salome sent me to kill.
“And you’re Signy Crecy, a hateful, spiteful woman with too many enemies—most of whom are your understandably vengeful in-laws—and not nearly enough friends,” the imperator calmly replied. He shrugged at Signy’s look of disbelief. “Acceptance here made you sing like a bird while you were unconscious. After the life you’ve lived…” He reached for the small silver table beside him and took a swig from a translucent crystal vial. “Hell must be something of a relief, am I right?”
“There’s only one problem with it,” Signy growled.
“Only one?” Sisera raised an eyebrow. “Most of the damned could probably come up with a few more than that.”
“I can’t fucking kill anyone down here,” she complained. “Best I can do is just make them wish they were dead.”
Sisera smirked. “That is a very common complaint down here, true. But maybe not for much longer…”
Signy ignored the useless drivel that spewed from his mouth. “Like what I’m going to do to you…” She slowly turned her head to ponder the dwarf. “And especially you.” No one fucks with James’s memory and gets away with it.
Acceptance contorted her small face into a grimace and let out a sudden wail. In a flash, Sisera, the imperator of the Praetorian Guard and the Eighteenth Legion, rushed to the side of the bed and held out his hands to the small dwarf. “There, there,” he said as Acceptance rushed forward and buried herself in his arms. “She didn’t mean it.” He glared at Signy with a hateful scowl. “Is that any way to talk to a child?”
A child? Signy looked at the small thing in Sisera’s arms in complete shock. She had just assumed it to be a dwarf, but there had been something off about it—her vision grayed when she saw the proportions of Acceptance’s body underneath her blue dress. That’s impossible. A child in Hell? She could not have been more thunderstruck if a dancing cow had suddenly burst into the compartment.
“How?” she choked out. “How?”
“You, hurt, my, friends,” Acceptance gasped between her sobs. Sisera gently patted the child on the shoulder and rocked her back and forth. “Denial, Anger, Bargaining, even Despair…”
How old is she? Signy wondered. Six? Seven? She couldn’t remember whether it was five that they started talking, or something more like seven… Parenting had not been her strong suit.
“It’s all right,” Sisera said. “It’s all right. God will make her suffer, I promise.”
“God?” Signy burst out laughing. “He’s a long way from here, Imperator. You’re going to have to do the dirty work yourself, child.”
Acceptance wiped a small hand across her dirty face. As fast as they had come, her tears vanished, and she gave Signy a steely grin. “No.” She smiled. “God is here. He told Sisera to come to the Phlegethon and to bring his army, speedy-quick.”
In a flash, Sign understood everything. “You’ve sold out to the Master,” she realized.
“The Master?” Sisera seemed so genuinely offended that he actually dropped Acceptance on the ground as he strode over to the side of the bed. “You think I serve Cain? I possess enough men and armaments to subjugate an entire level of Hell, and you think I serve Cain?” He sneered in her face. “Acceptance, get over here. This one’s annoying me.”
“God isn’t a man.” Acceptance laughed. She strolled over so that she was close enough to whisper directly into Signy’s ear. “He came to us in the form of a bird, and told us everything that we had to do. And when he’s gotten his body back, he’ll take us all out of Hell, up to Earth—”
“God damn, do you freaks ever fucking shut up,” Signy bellowed.
“He’s going to go to Paradise next,” Acceptance whispered. “Where James and the baby are. Do you think they still remember you? Or does he have a new heavenly bride, I wonder?”
“SHUT UP,” Signy screamed.
Sisera clamped a hand down over Signy’s mouth. “You should be grateful,” he hissed. “The Hell-God is the only reason I haven’t already strapped you to the underbelly of this train. He has special plans for you, Signy Crecy. You and that Horseman…although why He would resort to using two women is beyond me—Christ!” He suddenly yelped and yanked his hand back when Signy’s sharpened teeth tore into his palm.
Signy licked the blood from her lips. “Come and try that again,” she hissed. “Next time it’ll be your cock.”
Sisera gritted his teeth and turned to Acceptance. “I leave her in your hands.” He nodded. With that, he sat back down in the chair and rubbed his palms together in anticipation. Oddly enough, he withdrew a bandanna from his pocket and began to wrap it over his eyes.
“Let’s find out who you really are, Signy Crecy,” the small child whispered in her ear. A tiny hand reached up and stroked Signy’s golden locks. “I’ll take you deep, where the nightmares live.”
“Do your worst, child,” Signy snarled. “I’ve faced worse.”
“No.” Acceptance giggled. “You haven’t. And child?” The small fingers twisted and curled around Signy’s hair. They traced across her scalp, over to her temple, and slowly spread out
in either direction across her face. Farther and farther they reached, more than was possible—and now the girl’s touch seemed to be changing too, from the warm softness of skin to something that left a sticky streak of fluid against Signy’s pores.
Another goddamned freak. “You bi—” Signy turned her head to see what was enveloping her. Before she could make out anything more than the dark outline of Acceptance, two of the child’s fingers clamped tightly over her eyelids, covering everything in blackness.
“Don’t look at me.” All the emotion was gone from Acceptance’s quiet voice. “I’m not going to break your mind just yet.”
The fingers stretched out farther across her head. The edge of one tickled against Signy’s left nostril, while another crept down to the edge of her lips. A third—impossibly slender—slowly twisted its way through the contours of Signy’s ear, creeping ever closer to the canal. Acceptance placed another hand on Signy’s chest, repeating the same process across her breasts and torso as it made its way to her back. And then another hand touched Signy’s leg, breaking off into a thousand fingers that pried and dug at her pores.
Oh gods. She would have screamed, but her lips were the only thing between her throat and the half-dozen worms that slithered across it.
“Open wide.”
The fingers began to travel up her nostrils, blocking off her airway. Fire burned in her lungs.
“Open. Your. Mouth.”
She had been a fool to ever think that the thing beside her was a human child. It was worse…so much worse.
“That’s right,” the demon whispered. “I’m your devil, Signy Crecy. Now OPEN UP.”
It tightened its grip on her in a thousand different places, and she instinctively opened her mouth to suck in a great gasp of air. All that came in was a mass of devil-flesh. Her stomach and lungs became swollen with worms, and still they kept coming.
34
“Please,” the soldier begged. “We surrender. This fort is the Master’s. We—”