by Matt Turner
Fine, her mind screamed at the presence that engulfed her. I’ll be your daughter. But I KILL my families, Mother.
“You’re… you’re not human,” Acceptance wondered. “Is this a trick? What are you—”
The horrible pain of that memory flooded back to Signy. She remembered the nausea that had overcome her in the Crecy chapel—only this time, she welcomed it. Her stomach seized and convulsed, suddenly regurgitating a thin slime of bile and acid up into her throat. The worms lodged there squealed and retreated from the burning substance, and for just a sliver of a second, there was just enough room left in her mouth for her to bite down.
She slammed her razor-sharp teeth together with such ferocious power that she could feel the bones in her jaw crack from the impact. Foul liquid exploded in her mouth, and Acceptance let out a window-shattering shriek. The worms in her limbs and abdomen thrashed crazily, tearing her body from the inside out, but Signy didn’t give a single flying shit: more of the devil was within range—all she had to do was open up a bloodstained mouth and blindly chomp at the monster that straddled her. It was like tearing into an anemone: all soft, chewy material pulsing with hundreds of capillaries beneath.
“Give us a kiss, Mother,” Signy mockingly screamed up at the devil. The stupid creature had bound itself so tightly to her that all of its desperate throes to escape just kept bringing it back within range of her teeth. She clenched her muscles, locking the hundreds of squirming worms in place.
“LET ME GO,” Acceptance shrieked. “SISERA! KILL IT! KILL IT!”
“Guards!” Sisera called out. Something seemed to suddenly distract him, for his voice drifted away to the opposite side of the compartment. “Guar—what in Hell is that?”
She could feel it tearing itself away from her, trying to escape. No you fucking don’t. Signy bucked up with her hips, felt the weight on her shift to the left, and tore her teeth into Acceptance’s flesh again. The devil let out a sobbing cry and wrenched itself to the side, bringing Signy with it. The two of them tumbled off the bed in a confused, thrashing heap, but somehow the chains around Signy’s hands kept her slightly upright, and it felt as though most of the demon’s bulk spattered onto the floor beneath her. Still keeping her eyes tightly shut, she grabbed the slack of the chain and twisted it around a particularly large piece of flesh.
“NO,” Acceptance screamed. “PLEASE, NO!”
Signy identified the source of the demon’s voice—it felt like an oral cavity of sorts, surrounded by a mass of worm-like tentacles—and smashed the edge of her elbow into it. Only wetness greeted her; the monster didn’t seem to have any teeth at all.
“It’s the Prophet!” Sisera shouted. His voice seemed to come from a million miles away; Signy was far too focused on enlarging Acceptance’s mouth to hideous proportions. “All hands, battle stations! NOW!”
“Please, Mommy,” Acceptance begged, only this time it was speaking with the voice of a young girl. Signy hesitated, feeling the demon’s bleeding flesh start to morph back into the soft warmth of skin. “Don’t hurt me, please!”
Signy opened her eyes and saw a bloodied six-year-old, covered in scratches and bruises, peering up at her. An expression of utter terror was on her face, and for good reason; Signy’s chain was tightly wrapped around the child’s throat.
“You think that’ll trick me again?” Signy snarled. “I’m no fool, devil.”
“I was going to help you,” Acceptance wept. “All I ever wanted…please, mercy! Mercy, human!” A mix of tears and worms dribbled down its face onto the rich velvet of the floor.
It looks just like… Signy remembered the funeral and the pool of blood she had found her daughter in. More of the guards came. I didn’t have time to see if she was completely gone… I didn’t even say good-bye. She deserved more damnation for that single act than every other sinner in Hell.
She relaxed her grip on the chain. Acceptance stared up at her, completely astonished. “Get the fuck out of here,” Signy spat. “And if you ever take that form again, devil, there’s no crack or crevice in Hell that you’ll be able to hide in.”
The demon needed no further invitation; it immediately turned, fell down, and scampered for the door on all fours.
Signy turned her attention back to the chains that bound her hands to the bed and furiously yanked at them. On the other side of the room, Sisera shouted orders into an intercom, heedless to what had just happened. A machine gun rattled somewhere farther down the train, then one of the Kingdom’s automatic-cannons. Whump-whump-whump. Whatever the Eighteenth Legion was firing at, it was big.
“Yes, use the AA missiles,” Sisera shouted. “All of them, you damned fool! Do it n—”
The rest of his words were drowned out by an earth-shattering roar, the scream of rending metal, and a sudden influx of rushing wind as a pair of claws tore the chandelier-strewn roof of the compartment clean off. Sisera had just enough time to glance up and see the reptilian muzzle before the winged beast completely devoured him.
And now a dragon, Signy thought. This day just keeps getting fucking better and better. She wrenched at her shackles one more time, but they were too strong—her only hope was to hide beneath the bed and hope that the creature didn’t see her.
The dragon turned its head and locked its mismatched eyes with her. Fire dripped down from its scarred, metal-ridden face, searing a dozen holes into Sisera’s expensive rugs. It opened up its mouth, revealing a maw just barely illuminated by the hint of an all-encompassing inferno.
At least this one doesn’t waste its time talking. Signy spat a gob of blood and half-chewed worms on the floor. “Just do it, you pussy,” she sneered.
“Wait, Leviathan! Stop!” a familiar voice cried out. Signy blinked in surprise when the dragon obediently shuffled more of its bulk into the compartment, revealing the figure on its back. “Signy,” Salome exclaimed. “You’re here? When they started firing, I thought…” Beneath the bandages, her eyes widened in shock as they took in Signy’s miserable state. “Jesus Christ, I know we’re all immortal in Hell, but how are you not dead?”
“Too stubborn.” Signy shrugged. She suspiciously eyed the devil—it must be one of the creatures—that Salome was riding. “I almost got your man, but the dragon got to it first.”
“She smells like demon,” the dragon called Leviathan growled. “What has she been up to?”
“We can discuss that later,” Salome decided. “First, it’s time the Eighteenth Legion takes on a new master. Care to help me pacify this train, Signy?”
“Salome…” Signy croaked out. Pure exhaustion clouded her every thought, but there was something she had to tell the Prophet; she knew it… Something about the way Sisera and Acceptance had talked about God waiting for them at the end of the line… “Something’s wrong.”
“Well, it is Hell,” the other woman noted.
Leviathan grunted and shot a jet of flame toward the end of the train compartment. Metal melted like butter, and from deeper in the train came the screams of the unlucky soldiers too close to the heat.
“Not that, smartass. Like you thought, Sisera was going to betray you—but not for Cain. For someone else.”
“There is no one else.” Salome shook her head. “Unless the fool was planning to try to take on all Hell with a single legion.”
“He had a…demon with him.” Signy’s eyes snapped over to the still-melting end of the compartment, but Acceptance was long gone. If the monster had any brains at all, it would find the deepest hole in Hell and never again emerge. “They both served another—called it God.”
“Probably just another maniac claiming godhood,” Salome said dismissively. But beneath her, Leviathan stiffened. “What, you know something?”
“I might,” the dragon said.
Was that a tremble of fear that Signy saw in the great beast’s mismatched eyes?
“Pray that I’m wrong. If I’m not, then we are already doomed.”
38
Meat, meat, meat. There was so
much of it—and so close! Podarge the Harpy could taste the countless smells wafting on the cool wind—so many, and so varied—that it was close to driving her mad. “Have to eat,” the harpy groaned to herself. She anxiously fluttered her wings and clashed her claws together. “Smells sooooo good…”
Something deep inside the muddy swamp of her brain shifted and stirred. The harpy paused, perplexed. There was something happening inside her, there was no doubt of that—a presence rising up through her subconscious, rifling through her memories—but the demon had no understanding of what was going on. It rose like the rising tide, growing more and more powerful. It felt like the strange presence she had known for so long, ever since the day she had feasted on the massive baboon head that the Master had left on a stake outside Judecca…
“Voice?” she croaked out.
You have been useful, little sister, the growing presence said.
Its voice was no longer a whisper—it was clear as day. Podarge blinked in utter confusion—for a moment, it had seemed that there was someone else up in the sky with her, a nebulous dark shadow beginning to solidify and take shape. As soon as she blinked, the strange image was gone. The suffocating thing inside her remained, stronger than ever.
But God’s time is here. There was a tinge of regret in the Voice. Too late, Podarge realized what was happening.
It was eating her, from the inside out.
She spread her wings and opened her mouth to let out a caw of warning to the Horsemen below.
Good-bye. In the space of an instant, the presence took Podarge’s soul into its claws and snuffed it out. Her very last thoughts were a memory—an image of Antony’s grinning face. Friend, the demon thought. And then Podarge the Harpy was gone.
After two thousand years of being as nebulous as a nightmare, it was good to finally have a body again. He (for, as the firstborn of all Creation, the presence that had hidden in the harpy’s mind was certainly male) flexed Podarge’s wings and experimentally slashed its claws through the air. Not much, but it would do for now. He let out a low chuckle of amusement. What fun this is going to be.
“Podarge!” John called up from the dock. “Something wrong?”
The thing that now controlled the harpy’s body looked down at the Horsemen below it. “Lots of meat!” it called back down in a perfect imitation of the stupid creature. It couldn’t help but smile when John sighed and glanced away dismissively. Only Seth continued to glare upward for a few seconds longer.
Stare all you want, Heaven-man. The mind inside Podarge’s body chuckled. The First Rebellion had never ended—even now, it was only just beginning. Paradise will be mine yet.
The true master of Hell extended his new wings and took to the skies. He could not wait for what happened next.
39
John had never been particularly talented at reading others—I really was a terrible reverend, some part of his mind thought absurdly—but there certainly seemed to be something off about Podarge. Had he really seen that strange shadow creeping across the harpy’s body? Impossible. And yet he kept looking back up, if for no other reason than to distract himself from the marching doom that screamed at them from across the river of blood.
“John!” Seth had to practically scream over the DOOM-DOOM-DOOM of the marching army and the waves that splashed, higher and higher, across the small dock.
John turned toward him, surprised; there was a level of harshness in the heaven-man’s voice that he hadn’t heard before.
“Focus!”
He would come to bitterly regret it, but John turned his attention from the cackling harpy back to the horizon.
After they had executed Tituba, he had gone back to survey the witch’s burnt remains before the gravediggers scooped them out of the ashes. John hadn’t been the first one to look at them; someone had upended an entire bucket of rotten food and feces over the remains. He hadn’t recognized Tituba at all; her shriveled corpse was the size of a child, and so coated in wriggling, gnawing maggots and flies that he hadn’t been able to make out much of the body underneath. Her head had been closer to a ball of churning blackness than anything remotely recognizable as human.
He saw that same sight on the horizon now—an entire nation, an entire world, marching in lockstep toward the shore. It’s not possible, he thought in horror. They were so densely packed that entire hills and mountain ranges formed from their clustered bodies, transient peaks that crushed hundreds of thousands in the space of seconds, yet still the horde marched on. It boggled his mind that so many humans had ever even been born—his mind couldn’t distinguish even columns and ranks within the army, just the unending vastness of it.
“Oh—oh God,” John moaned.
“I hope Vera’s plan works,” Seth said grimly. “There are too many for me to handle.”
DOOM, DOOM, DOOM. It was a strange thing, but John could’ve sworn he felt the weight of those millions of eyes, all staring at him from across the water. It was completely crushing. They’ve all come for me, he thought. For my sins. Ten times ten million souls, all filled with nothing but hate and rage and utter loathing for him. Seems about right. A mad cackle rose to his lips. “Oh, you think?”
Seth placed a hand on his shoulder. “I feel it too,” he said in a low voice. “But we shouldn’t fear. God is on our side.”
Frantic terror clawed at John’s guts. “He’s on your side,” he whimpered. “I’m just another damned soul.”
“No,” Seth said fiercely. “I don’t believe that. You’re more than that, John. Heaven may be shut off to you, but you’re still a man, made in the Creator’s image. You’re—”
“I’m not a man!” John shrieked at him. He tore at the branches and leaves that protruded from his body. “Look at me! This is what I am! A monster!”
“Then be a monster,” Seth bellowed directly into his face. “You’re in Hell, so be a monster and help me!”
“I…” John struggled for words and found none. He’s right, he realized. He remembered his desperate struggle against the monstrous Legion in the ruins of Dis, the vision of the child he might have had. We are in Hell. And if he could change… I will. For all of them. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, but he swallowed his fear and slowly nodded. “I’ll help you,” he whispered.
Seth smiled. “I knew you would.”
DOOM. DOOM. DOOM. Without any warning, the cacophony on the opposite side of the shore suddenly stopped. For a moment, the echo of its limitless march washed across the river and bounced off of the First Blockade’s walls, finally fading away into the distance.
Where will it end? John wondered. As endless as the enemy’s forces were, Hell was even vaster. He had thought that the unending landscape of Hell was just another one of its punishments, precluding the possibility of escape, but now he wasn’t so sure. With so much space, maybe there is hope out there. An opportunity for something better. Maybe—
A low hissing sound came from the great crowd that silently stared at them. He still could not make out individual faces or figures—there were too many, and the dust that their footfalls had churned up obscured those in the front ranks—but he could feel every single one of their repulsive glares. John gritted his teeth and shouldered the burden.
“No,” Seth muttered to himself. “No.”
The hissing sound was the sliding of many bodies across sand—a small hill of bodies, mashed together like ants, moving like a wave amid the crowd, slithered up to the very border of the river. Six stories above the shore, a single figure sat perched on the latticework of limbs and torsos. It pulled itself up from a throne of bones and shuffled forward.
“MEN AND WOMEN OF EVERY TRIBE AND TONGUE!” the mighty voice roared across the waters.
John blinked, confused, for he had heard Cain’s voice before, and this did not sound at all like the Master.
“THE OLD GOD HAS CONDEMNED US TO EVERLASTING PAIN! HE MADE US AND TOSSED US ASIDE LIKE TRASH!”
“He loved you.” Seth sighe
d. The grief in his voice was palpable. “He still does.”
The army of the damned slammed its feet on the ground in agreement. DOOM, DOOM, DOOM. Their footfalls made such a raw percussion that John could feel it even in the air. They were as numberless as the stars in the sky, as the grains of sand in the universe. With their sheer numbers, it seemed that they could drown Heaven itself. Who can stand against them? he wondered. The answer came immediately: I can. I must.
“BUT YOU HAVE A NEW GOD!” The woman extended both of her arms up to the darkening skies, as though she could reach through the firmament and take hold of the world above.
“Mother, what have you become?” Seth wondered.
Eve, the First Woman, pointed a damning finger across the Phlegethon at the fortress and the two tiny figures that stood against her. “THE MASTER WILL GIVE YOU FREEDOM!”
Behind John, there were a series of dull thuds. The artillery, he realized. Simon must have finally gotten it working. A thin line of rockets shrieked across the sky, leaving behind an impossibly thin and delicate-looking stream of smoke.
“HE WILL GIVE YOU AN END!”
The first salvo of shells slammed into the opposite shore, igniting it in a wall of flame. In a flash, thousands were torn to shreds or incinerated by the Hellfire charges. Only one of the shells came even close to Eve’s tower; she casually flicked one of her fingers and an entire mountain of bodies rose to intercept the explosion. The detonating shell barely left as much as a dent within the makeshift fortification. Meanwhile, a numberless drove flocked forward, and within seconds, the eternally burning Hellfire was extinguished by the sheer number of bodies piled upon it. One of the strongest weapons in Hell hadn’t so much as scratched the foe’s strength.
Eve waved her hand, and the mountain of bodies receded back into the horde, granting her full view to the shore beyond. “HE WILL GIVE YOU DEATH!!” she finished. With the authority of a supreme judge, the ancient woman crashed her arthritic hands together and pointed at the single river that stood in her way. “NOW FILL IT!”