Hell's Hinges

by S. M. Reine

  They’ve never seen a preternatural before.

  He looked down at his body.

  The trench coat and muddy boots were gone. Lincoln was dressed in an old Billabong tee—the kind of thing he used to wear in college—with a plaid shirt unbuttoned over it. His jeans were heavily distressed. In those days, the tearing had mostly been fashion. If he’d been getting dirty, he’d been wearing football gear.

  He spun to face the theater. The posters included one for a Harry Potter movie—one of the early ones. Lincoln hadn’t cared enough for the books to know which, but he knew those actors weren’t kids anymore.

  He was in the past. Before Genesis.

  But not all the way back to the beginning, where they should have gone.

  “Sophie?” Lincoln shouted. “Sophie, are you here too? Traveler? Tripp? Anyone?”

  He only saw two craters. Wherever Sophie and the Traveler had ended up, it wasn’t on the same street.

  Sirens split the air.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Lincoln said, shoving Junior toward an alley. “Go. Go!”

  The gargoyle could move with shocking agility once prodded. He slid through the trash cans and around the corner, and Lincoln about busted a lung trying to keep up with him.

  But he could keep up with him. Lincoln spotted the flash of police lights behind him, reflecting off of a stack of bottles, and he leaped effortlessly over a Dumpster to roll around the corner unseen. He’d traveled back within his own lifetime, so his body was younger. Now he had the terrible fashion of a college student and the great stamina of youth.

  Junior skidded into a corner, folding down tightly next to a garage door covered in graffiti. Lincoln found himself crouching down next to the painting of a spiral mushroom cupped in the long fingers of a green alien.

  The sirens stopped at either end of the alley.

  Trapped.

  “Let’s get up higher,” Lincoln said.

  Junior hooked his arm around Lincoln’s waist, and the gargoyle’s thick legs shoved the Earth out from under them. The world roared around him, and wind stung his eyes. It was hard to breathe with the rush of air.

  It wasn’t the first time Lincoln had flown in Junior’s grasp, but he still wasn’t used to it—the way his heart splashed into his gut and his head spun in circles as his screaming senses tried to orient. Lincoln didn’t manage to get an aerial view of Reno on their brief flight. He was too dizzy.

  Stone slammed against stone. Junior had jumped to the top of the parking gallery.

  Spilling onto an empty parking space, Lincoln clutched at his chest. His heart wasn’t pounding as hard as it should have been. College kids were harder to perturb than old men. “Sophie,” he said, staggering to the edge of the roof to look down.

  The police were still bracketing the alley, shouting for them to come out. They hadn’t been looking up. They had missed Junior’s jump.

  Lincoln’s eyes swept over the street. The Truckee River ran low, almost dry. A drought year for certain. Downtown was almost unrecognizable. There was no ballpark on First, nor eccentric sculptures on Virginia. It was a tired, faded city, much older than Lincoln had ever seen it.

  They were in the past. They were really there.

  He paced, and every footstep seemed to help clear his head further. A clearer head wasn’t real pleasant. It meant calculating the years he might have been dressed in Billabong, and then trying to remember when Elise Kavanagh lived in Reno. She’d retired in Nevada around a decade before Genesis, and this looked an awful lot like the year 2005. Give or take a few months.

  Sophie could have been anywhere. Alone. Afraid. Probably crying.

  Jesus, I gotta find her.

  And he needed to do it without getting caught by police or changing events.

  He especially could not run into Elise Kavanagh.

  “We’re screwed,” Lincoln announced.

  “I told you not to bring me.” Inanna stepped from behind the gargoyle’s shoulder. She was dressed in simple linens. Her rope belt hung heavy with keys and the bones of slaughtered prey. “He doesn’t belong in this time any more than you do. He wants to hide. A sensible urge.” Her hand breezed over Junior’s shoulder. The gargoyle’s head tipped toward hers.

  “You can understand him?” Lincoln asked. “Could you translate for Junior?”

  She gave him a blank look. “You have reversed so many moonrises.”

  “All right, back to talking like a crazy person.” Lincoln wasn’t surprised she’d expended her ability to be cogent. She’d managed to communicate one correct idea before going down again: Junior needed to be hidden. “Take me two streets over.” He wobbled back to his brother. “Right over there, in the alleyway. There’s an entrance to a club there.” Or at least, there should have been. Lincoln had seen where the human entrance to Eloquent Blood used to be, but it was so destroyed that he only ever entered through a missing wall.

  Junior picked him up, and they moved again.

  Lincoln had been around demons and sidhe and werewolves, but he’d still never seen a creature that moved like a gargoyle. He was the size of an elephant but fast as a cheetah. He slammed against concrete and bricks to leave huge craters without earning a crack of his own. His claws could grip anything. He was flexible, crawling around balconies and in between cars with ermine ease.

  That was why Lincoln kept having Junior carry him, even though it made him sick to his stomach. Something as big as Junior should have been impossible to miss. But there were no witnesses to his silent flight across the blocks.

  Junior dropped into a big pile of trash bags behind a casino.

  The alleyway was narrow, and it reeked of rotten milk. An unmarked street-level door led into a casino called Craven’s. Further down, steep concrete steps led to another door, this one with a rust-pocked sign that declared “Humans Only.” Most Reno residents would have been confused by the sign at the time. It sure would have confused Lincoln.

  “Stick close,” he told Junior, heading down the stairs.

  When he knocked, the door was answered by a broad-shouldered beast with tusks. It looked only mildly surprised to see Junior. “Humans only here,” it grunted. The voice was surprisingly feminine. “Demons take the other entrance.”

  If Lincoln wasn’t mistaken, his gargoyle half-brother looked offended. Demons came from Hell. Gargoyles, on the other hand, were native to Earth and the sidhe planes. It was a big difference.

  “Where’s the demon entrance?” Lincoln asked. He offered an apologetic shrug to Junior.

  The tusked bouncer rolled its eyes and shouted back into the hallway. Another creature appeared to take Junior away. They vanished behind a chain link fence in the shadows at the end of the alley where it looked to be a dead end.

  Lincoln tried to step into Eloquent Blood. The bouncer blocked him.

  “Ten dollar cover,” it said.

  Reflexively, Lincoln’s hand went to his back pocket. He was surprised to find his old wallet there. The driver’s license would expire in 2008. In his photo, his hair had bleached tips. He also had photo booth shots of himself with his girlfriend at the time, whose name he couldn’t even remember. She’d cheated on him with half of the football team. She wasn’t worth remembering.

  Most importantly, Lincoln had cash. A couple hundred in twenties.

  “Can you make change?” he asked, pulling one out.

  The demon plucked the money out of his hand. “Get inside, asshole. Thanks for the tip.”

  Lincoln barely got inside the hall before the door slammed shut behind him. The sharp yellow daylight of Nevada afternoon vanished.

  It was dark. He stretched out his left hand and found the wall with his fingertips, matte with black paint, textured like plywood. It had been nailed to the cement, presumably to muffle the music thumping up the hallway. Halfway down, the music became so loud that it felt like the bass would shake his heart out of his chest.

  The end of the hallway was shut by another door and m
arked by a crimson neon sign, spelling out one word in cursive: Blood .

  Lincoln pushed the door open and got sucked into Hell on Earth.

  Eloquent Blood had a similar layout to the bar he used to haunt, but all its walls were intact in this year. Neon edged the room and underneath the tables so that everything glowed red. The floor was covered in something crunchy—something that smelled like brimstone, which a lot of demons sweated.

  The dance floor throbbed with bodies even now, in the middle of the day. Sodomites would have been shocked by how many human women were on the dance floor with demons. The bar top was packed too. Eloquent Blood must have secretly been Northern Nevada’s biggest bar, and ninety percent of the surface city hadn’t known it.

  Lincoln earned a lot of annoyed cries shoving his way to the bar. There were no big demons around this part of the club; guys like Junior were being entertained somewhere else. He tried to flag down a bartender for information. “Hey! Miss!”

  A woman with sleek black hair flitted between customers. Pale fingers flipped liquor bottles through the air, flipped shakers shut, poured a dozen shots at a time.

  “Excuse me!”

  She scooped up a fistful of beer steins and filled them at the taps.

  “I’m looking for my friend!” Lincoln called. “A big guy, made of stone.”

  The bartender finally turned. For the span of a skipped heartbeat, he thought it was Elise. Her hair flowed around her shoulders like ink in water. Her luminous black eyes were rimmed by thick lashes. Her lips were like maraschinos.

  The resemblance ended there. This woman had ethnic features, like Mexican or something, and she dressed like trash. Some skimpy little bra squeezed her tits together and it still covered more than the string she tried to pass off as a thong.

  Even though she wasn’t Elise, Lincoln still recognized her. “Neuma?”

  “Do we know each other?” she asked, stroking her hair where it fell over her shoulders, down her breasts, to her flat belly.

  They didn’t know each other yet. They’d never know each other all that well, either. Their paths crossed in the City of Dis after Elise saved Lincoln from demonic possession. Neuma had been running the Palace of Dis, Elise’s right-hand woman. Lincoln had always assumed that she’d come out of Hell. Finding her in his favorite Reno bar was a shock to say the least.

  “I’m afraid we’re strangers, ma’am,” Lincoln said.

  “Hopefully that’ll change quick-like. Are you looking for Mr. Strong and Silent?” She swept over with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a shot glass in the other. Every step made her bosom bounce. Lincoln was usually strong enough not to look, but at the moment, he was riveted. “Janice told me all about him, but she didn’t say that he had a sexy friend.”

  She clicked her tongue against her teeth, and Lincoln’s eyes fixed on her mouth. He couldn’t help but wonder if that lipstick would leave a bright-red ring around his cock. He could imagine the bartender on her knees. He knew how it’d feel to grip her glossy hair in his fists and pump himself inside her mouth.

  Succubus.

  The word jumped into his mind unbidden. Once he labeled her, he could feel the press of her thrall—or maybe that was just his jeans getting a little too tight. Lincoln had dealt with succubi before, both on Earth and in Hell. He reckoned he was better than most at controlling his urges. “I want to see him,” Lincoln said.

  She smiled, like she could tell he was fighting his attraction. She overfilled a shot glass and pushed it toward him. “Drink.”

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  “You want to drink before you go back. The bartenders there will make you pay for your drinks.” She winked. “I’m a sucker for a pretty face.”

  Lincoln had to admit, his reflection in the bar’s mirror was prettier than it was in 2015. After all, by 2015, he’d lived through literal Hell and earned more than a few scars for it. Back in college, he’d had five o’clock shadow as golden as the short hair on his head. He didn’t have any facial scars. His shoulders weren’t quite as broad, but his muscles were bulkier, since he’d been doing football at the time. Women used to always throw themselves at Lincoln. Said he looked like Paul Walker, or maybe Matthew McConaughey, depending on the lady. He’d never been clear on who either actor was, but as far as he could tell, women found them attractive.

  He wondered what Elise would think. And then he tried not to think about her.

  “Just take me to my friend,” he said, standing up without drinking the whiskey.

  Neuma lifted part of the bar to let him in back. She met him on the other side holding the shot, liquor slopping over her wrist. She laved her tongue along the line of whiskey on her skin, knocked back the shot, and smiled. “You a kopis?”

  “Nothing like that,” Lincoln said.

  Neuma molded herself to him, running her nose along his throat. “Mmm. Are you sure? You smell like power to me.” He wouldn’t have been able to fight his arousal even if she hadn’t been a succubus. That was a lot of warm, soft woman to have melting over his youthful muscles, and he’d forgotten how fast young men got horny. He ached to push himself inside her. He bet her ass would feel like heaven.

  She’s friends with Elise. Junior’s waiting. And Sophie’s still lost.

  “Please,” Lincoln said through his teeth.

  Neuma set the shot glass on the bar. “Follow me.”

  She led him down a hallway behind the bar. It was just as dark as the rest of the club, though the neon bolts were blue here. Lincoln could even read door labels, like dressing room and storage and armory . He doubted that last one was a joke.

  There was a lounge down a flight of stairs. The chairs were huge and mismatched, ready to accommodate demons of all kinds, even though there wasn’t a lot of diversity in the patronage at the moment. Mostly just more succubi and some ugly assholes who were probably nightmares.

  Neuma conferred with the hostess—presumably Janice—then led Lincoln through the labyrinthine tables toward a booth in the back. “He’s got the corner booth,” Neuma said. “Must be a pretty scary guy to rank the corner booth.”

  “He’s one of a kind,” Lincoln said honestly.

  Neuma arched a sultry eyebrow. “Seems like something the two of you have in common.”

  “I’m not interested, ma’am.”

  “Your hard-on says otherwise,” she purred, reaching for his jeans.

  He caught her wrist and deflected her fingers. “With all due respect, the hard-on doesn’t make my decisions for me.”

  Her lips quirked. “Cute. Wrong, but cute.” Her nails trailed over his shoulder blades but dropped without touching anywhere more private.

  Neuma’s pale hands threw open the velvet curtains.

  The booth was more like a roomy, well-furnished closet. It had power outlets and an internet cable. The low lighting was cozy enough that Lincoln could have napped on the sturdy couch where Junior currently sat. He assumed the door in the corner behind the lamp led to a secondary exit. There was even a mini-fridge with snacks.

  “Looks nice,” Lincoln said. “How do we arrange to keep this for a few hours?”

  Neuma didn’t respond. At the sight of Junior, she had gone stiff. Her wide eyes were blank.

  “Neuma?” Lincoln asked warily.

  She stepped inside and pulled the curtains shut behind her. She was jerking. Fighting the urge to vomit. Her motions were awkward, like a clumsy puppeteer had taken control.

  When she swung around to face them again, her head lolled on her shoulders.

  “Impossible,” she said, gaze fixed on Junior.

  “You recognize gargoyles?” Lincoln asked.

  A shiver rolled down her flesh, and there was nothing appealing about the jiggle of her breasts. A black tear slithered from her right eye. When she spoke, her lips didn’t move. It was as though some creature were talking from inside her throat, and the voice echoed out of her mouth.

  “Inanna…” she whispered.

  The
lights died. Total darkness consumed the lounge on both sides of the curtain. Demons shouted out in the bar. That was the only sign they still existed—he couldn’t see his own hands in front of his face.

  The darkness had texture. It was velvet in his lungs. He was smothering.

  A flash of light.

  Neuma’s face appeared in front of his, searing his retinas. Her white skin had gone supernova. The green reverse image of her greedy leer and thrashing black tongue bounced through his vision. “I obliterated you millennia ago,” she hissed, forked tongue lashing against Lincoln’s ear.

  He leaped away from her with a strangled cry. He struck something hard—Junior—and bounced off.

  The lights came back on.

  Neuma was collapsed on the floor, motionless except for the inky black puddle spreading under her body. It looked like she was bleeding oil.

  Lincoln stared for a heartbeat, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d turned into something terrifying for an instant. There was no reason she should stop attacking.

  But nothing happened.

  “Run,” he said, once he remembered how to speak. “Junior—we can’t hide here, we have to—”

  He didn’t get to finish. The gargoyle seized him, and they fled.

  4

  T here was no denying the truth. Without help from the demons at Eloquent Blood, Lincoln and Junior couldn’t hide together. “You’ll search for Sophie a lot faster if you’re not hauling me anyway,” Lincoln said. “I’ll be safe in Reno for now. I know how to lay low. And we’ve gotta lay low. God only knows what the Traveler will do if we’ve ruined the timeline.”

  They were sitting on an empty hill overlooking Reno. It was north of the university, and not much grew on it besides rabbit brush, so there was nothing to block Lincoln’s view of the skyline. The Eldorado’s globe was vivid green, like it belonged in the Emerald City. Something was happening at Mackay Stadium too, and its floodlights poured into the crisp night sky. All that activity stayed below. Up on the hill, it was quiet.

  In the darkness of night, Lincoln could almost believe he was just sitting around with his brother. Junior’s wings were folded, and his arms were around his spiked knees, and the city lights shined along a profile just like John Marshall’s.