Hellequin Chronicles 4: Prison of Hope

by Steve McHugh

  She shrugged. “You like it?” she asked, motioning to her hair. Her once long, dark hair had been cut much shorter.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No, Nathan, we haven’t involved ourselves in any wars. These humans don’t need our help to kill one another.”

  “Hasn’t stopped you before.”

  She shrugged. “Yes, well, this time we’re only killing people who deserve it. Indiscriminate violence is only fun for the first few millennia. After that, we had to find a new hobby.”

  “You feel like telling me where you’ve been? Petra and Kurt are searching Dresden for you at the moment.”

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we’re here right now, throwing ourselves on your sword. Metaphorically.” She looked me up and down before taking my fedora from the table beside me and placing it on her head. “Nice suit. Makes you look like a gangster.”

  “That’s what I was going for,” I said sarcastically.

  “We’re going to keep the hat.”

  A young man walked past and winked at Pandora, who smiled in return. Pandora reached out and touched the back of the man’s hand, and he stopped walking immediately and sat on the arm of the chair, offering Pandora a cigarette. She took it and licked her lips seductively as she placed it in her mouth, rolling her tongue over the tip as he struck a match and offered to light the cigarette.

  “Pandora,” I said, my voice stern.

  The man glanced over at me and appeared to notice me for the first time. Even if Pandora hadn’t been able to bewitch and enslave people, her beauty would have still stopped those who passed her by. Thankfully, due to an encounter long ago, I was immune to both Pandora’s charms and her powers; it was why I always got sent to track her down after she escaped.

  “The lady and I are talking,” he said, his accent placing him from England, probably around the Manchester area. He had a thin moustache and slicked back hair. His smart suit probably cost a pretty penny, and he wore it with confidence. All in all, he looked every inch the respectable banker or lawyer, but there was something behind his green eyes. Something I didn’t like.

  “Actually, you haven’t said anything to her,” I mentioned.

  He appeared to be confused for a moment, as if only just realizing that what I’d said was true. “Well, be that as it may, you can leave now.”

  “Pandora, knock it off,” I snapped.

  She glanced toward me and removed the cigarette from her lips, blowing the noxious smoke above her. “You don’t want to fight for us, Nathan?”

  I stood and sighed; I really didn’t want to have trouble inside the hotel. And I knew that Pandora was thoroughly enjoying herself, but she’d hopefully get bored if I walked away. She always did like an audience. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  I left the couple to talk and asked the smartly dressed, pretty, young receptionist at the hotel front desk for a phone to use for a private conversation. She retrieved one from under the desk and then walked away in order to at least appear as if she weren’t going to listen in.

  I connected myself with an operator and got her to put me through to a number in Mittenwald. To the rest of the world, it was a simple hotel, but I knew that it was the only way anyone could get through to Hades, who refused to have a direct number while he was at Tartarus. He said it was safer that way; I just thought he didn’t like the idea of having a telephone that anyone could use to contact him.

  It took a few minutes, but eventually I tracked him down. “Ja, Nathan?” he asked.

  “I have Pandora,” I reported, and waited for a few seconds for the information to sink in.

  “That’s excellent news. Was she . . . awkward to capture?”

  I told him about the time I’d spent searching for Pandora, ending my account with the time a few minutes earlier, when she’d just walked into the hotel.

  “Well now, that is unusual. Where are you at the moment?”

  I gave him the address of the hotel and could hear the scribbling of pen on paper at his end.

  “There’s a private airfield about sixty miles outside of the city.” He gave me more accurate directions, which I wrote down after the receptionist passed me a sheet of paper and pen. “Be there in six hours.”

  “Will do,” I said, and nodded thanks to the receptionist as she retrieved her pen. “Something isn’t right here.”

  “Something is never right with that woman,” Hades said with a slight chuckle.

  “More so than usual. I’ve never known her to just hand herself in without the preceding fire and brimstone she’s always managed to create.”

  Hades paused for a second. “You think she’s planning something?”

  “Always. But this time, I think whatever she’s got planned is already set in motion. Otherwise, why appear out of nowhere?”

  “Okay, I’ll think on it and talk to you when I get to the airfield.” Hades hung up, and I passed the phone back to the young lady, who nodded her thanks before walking away to deal with a new couple who had arrived.

  I heard Pandora before I saw her; or rather, I heard the commotion she’d clearly created. Two men, one of whom had given Pandora the cigarette, and a second dressed in an SS uniform, were arguing over who was going to talk to the woman seated between them. No one wanted to get involved in a row that a member of the Schutzstaffel was engaged in, but everyone appeared to be very confused as to why the officer wasn’t just dragging the other man outside.

  “I saw her first,” the British man bellowed.

  “She is mine to treat like a lady as she deserves,” the German officer shouted back in English, following it up by shoving the other man in the shoulder slightly.

  “You sir, are a cad and a bounder,” the British man said and shoved the German back, with a little more force.

  Everyone in the lobby took a deep breath. No SS officer was going to let someone shove him without meting out some serious punishment. I walked toward the two men, but didn’t reach them in time to stop the German from removing one of his brown gloves and slapping the British man across the face with it. The crack of leather against skin brought winces from those nearby.

  I stopped walking and glanced at Pandora, who had an expression of glee on her face. “It’s like theater,” she said with a slight giddy laugh, the Southern drawl was replaced with her normal tone, a neutral accent that contained traces of her Greek heritage.

  “Stop them,” I urged. “Before this goes any further.”

  Pandora tore her gaze away from the two men, who were now slapping each other across the face with reckless abandon, and glanced at me. “We aim to have some amusement before being taken back to Tartarus. Besides, if we weren’t here, then this SS gentleman would have taken the other man outside and had him executed.”

  “If you weren’t here, they never would have started doing this. You’re making them fight like this. You made him say ‘cad and bounder,’ Pandora.”

  “We can’t help it if men want to fight over us.”

  “Yes,” I said softly, “you can.”

  Pandora’s expression hardened, and she pointed to the German officer. “Nathan, this man here is a member of the SS. He has murdered and tortured people, and he likes it. A few weeks ago, while he was drunk, he beat an elderly Jewish man to death. He still had blood on his boots the next morning when he went to see his commanding officer. He believes totally in Hitler’s propaganda.”

  Both men continued to slap each other, ignoring everything else around them. The British man had found a glove of his own, but the event was now escalating, as their faces became pink and painful. People in the lobby were clearly uncomfortable at what was happening, although no one moved to intervene or call for the police.

  “This man,” Pandora continued, her voice full of anger and disgust, “has raped four women just on his journey from England to here over the past few weeks. Two in Germany. He beat the second woman so badly she’s currently in a hospital unde
r sedation. He went to visit her and whispered things in her ears that would make your skin crawl. He believes himself to be above the law. He wanted to rape us, Nathan, do you know that? This piece of shit wanted to take us in the alley behind this hotel and hurt us, to make me scream.”

  I was sure she’d said “me” and not “us,” but I couldn’t be certain. “Are you making everyone in this place watch them?” I asked.

  “We’re ensuring no one calls the authorities, that’s all.”

  “Are you going to check all of these people for evil deeds and punish them too?”

  Pandora closed her eyes. “Jealousy, anger, rage, hatred, bitterness. All normal emotions, but no one here has killed for fun or hurt people for pleasure. They do not deserve our wrath.”

  “Did you know that these two would both be here?” I asked as the sounds of slapping had slowed down, and the men’s faces were both raw and had been cut open several times.

  Pandora ignored my question. “We can feel it, Nathan. We can feel the wants and desires, the anger and rage of every person we walk past. It’s like a chorus of malevolence. And in the middle of all that is always that glimmer of hope and love. But these two, these two diseased pieces of shit, deserve to be punished for their actions.”

  Pandora couldn’t lie to me; it was one of the benefits of the bond we shared. From my point of view, anyway. “Make them go outside,” I whispered. “To the alley behind the hotel.”

  Pandora glanced up at me, her eyes ice cold and full of rage. “Someone here might remember us.”

  “Just leave with me; we’ll go to the alley with them. Then you can release them.”

  “Will you stop me?”

  I paused for a second. I was certain that Pandora hadn’t said “we,” or “us”—that she’d used the singular, not the plural.

  “So, are you going to stop us?” Pandora asked.

  I looked at the two men who had unwittingly set themselves into the gaze of someone as dangerous as Pandora. They were the flies to her hunting spider. And once she’d caught them and learned their true natures, they’d never stood a chance. “No, they’re yours to use as you see fit. But after, you come with me, no arguments.”

  She nodded once, curtly. “Deal.”

  She stood and walked off toward the hotel’s front doors, the two men trailing behind her silently. I glanced around as everyone went back to whatever they’d been doing before Pandora started affecting them; no one appeared to even know that anything had happened.

  I caught up to Pandora and her followers as she walked down the steps outside the hotel and began strolling along the street outside. As it was mid-morning, it was fairly busy, and a few people gave noticeable glances to the two men who looked as if they’d been in a fight, although I doubted anyone would have come close to guessing what had actually transpired.

  We all turned into a nearby alley and continued down the snaking path until we were behind the hotel. The alley was empty, and from the place where Pandora and the men stopped, it was impossible to be spotted by anyone, unless someone was looking out one of the windows of the hotel that towered above us.

  The sun shone down, lighting up the alley and glinting off the pieces of glass and paper that littered one side.

  “So, do you have a plan?” I asked Pandora.

  Pandora turned to the two men, who swayed slightly as if drunk, and removed a pen and notepad from her pocket. “Both of you will write your confession of your crimes.”

  She didn’t need to speak to anyone she’d enthralled in order to get that person to do anything, but I think she liked to verbalize her orders. Either as an idiosyncratic action that made her connect more to her human side, or maybe she just liked the sound of her own voice. I preferred to believe it was the former.

  Pandora passed the notepad and pen to the SS officer, who set about furiously scribing the confession to his crimes. It took him nearly five minutes, and several pages, to get it all out, but when he was done, he passed the notepad and pen to the British man.

  “Excellent,” Pandora said, and the man beamed.

  She tapped him on the shoulder, and he glanced around as if searching for something. Eventually, he found what he was looking for and walked off a few steps, stopping and picking up a three-foot piece of metal that at one point had probably been part of some railings. The metal was dark blue in color with a spike on one end that would have deterred people from climbing over whatever it had originally come from. He brought it back to Pandora, who smiled at him.

  The officer beamed again, as if he were a puppy who’d been told he was a good boy, while the British man started his own confession in earnest silence. The officer placed one end of the pole into a drain nearby, ensuring that it was wedged tightly. Once forced into position, the spike was maybe two feet out of the drain. The officer knelt down in front of the spike and glanced over at Pandora, who nodded once. Then he drove his head forward as fast as possible, his eye making contact with the spike first, accompanied by a sickening sound. His own momentum and gravity ensured that the spike followed through the rest of his skull, coming out the back of his head with a crunch. The officer twitched for a few seconds and then went still, his body slowly collapsing to the dirty ground as he slid farther down the railing.

  The British man finished his confession and looked down at the man he’d been fighting only a short time ago, but he didn’t appear to notice or care. Pandora passed me the notepad, and I flicked through both men’s writings. The officer had murdered or tortured well over a dozen people, and many, many more had been attacked. But the crimes of the British man were also contemptible, and he embodied the definition of a lifelong criminal. He’d raped and beaten many women in his lifetime, including girlfriends and wife. He wrote about the things he wanted to do to the woman he’d recently attacked, and how he was going to wait for her to leave the hospital before he visited her again. When I was done reading, I wanted to impale his head over that of the officer. Hell, I wanted to tear the fucking thing free of his neck and throw it down the alley. He was an evil little man who enjoyed the pain of others. Any concern over what Pandora wanted to do to him evaporated. Whatever she did wouldn’t be enough.

  “Are you okay?” Pandora asked me as I raised my gaze to the man, who was still ignorant to his plight.

  I nodded and placed the notebook in my pocket. “Whatever you’re going to do, get it done. We need to leave before anyone comes looking for his SS friend.”

  Pandora turned back to the remaining follower and whispered something in his ear. He nodded with total enthusiasm, and I turned to walk away.

  “You don’t want to watch this?” Pandora asked. “You’re not squeamish all of a sudden, are you?”

  “I’m fine with whatever you’ve got planned, but I’ve killed and hurt enough people over the years that I don’t need to watch someone else do it. He’ll be dead either way.”

  Pandora turned back to the man. “We’ll be with you shortly then.”

  I stood around the corner from the alley, maybe fifty feet away from whatever Pandora was inflicting on her victim, but not once did I hear any cries for help or screams of pain.

  I checked my watch and found that two minutes had passed. I glanced around the corner to see a prone man lying on the ground on his side facing me, Pandora liberally stomping on his skull, which, even from the distance between us, I could tell was now grossly misshapen. I walked toward them and saw so much blood on his face that it appeared to be a mask. It wasn’t until I got a few steps closer that I realized that large portions of the skin on his face had been removed. Blood pooled out of his ears, combining with the blood that streamed from his face as if it had been torn apart.

  “Pandora,” I whispered as she gave one last crunching stomp on his temple. Her black boots were shiny and slick with his blood; a piece of skin dangled from the heel.

  The man remained silent, a smile still on what remained of his lips.

  “I’m almost done,” she s
aid.

  “End it,” I demanded.

  Her head snapped up toward me, her red eyes burning with rage. “You don’t get to tell me when to fucking stop.”

  “End it, or I will,” I said, ensuring my voice was calm and level.

  Her gaze remained locked on the man she was killing for just a moment longer before she glanced up at me, and her eyes softened. “As you wish.” She stared at her victim, and a second later he was no longer enslaved to her. The pain that wracked his body very quickly overrode his expression of confusion, and he screamed out, gaining a swift kick to the mouth for his trouble. Pandora removed a compact from her pocket and showed the man his new face. Just to drive the point home, she dropped something on his chest: his actual face.

  “We want you to know that all of this is because of what you are,” she told him as he whimpered and tried to cry out, but Pandora stuffed the tip of her boot into his open mouth. “This is quicker than you deserve,” she told him and removed a knife from her pocket. She took the boot from his mouth and then slit his throat with one quick movement. She stepped away as he bled to death on the filthy ground of the alley. He clawed at his wound, desperate to stop the bleeding, but it was no use, and he was soon dead.

  When he’d taken his last breath, Pandora wiped her boots on the trousers of the SS officer and tossed the knife onto the ground. “Now, I’m done,” she told me as she walked past me and around the corner to the end of the alley.

  CHAPTER 6

  Berlin, Germany. 1936.

  Pandora had stolen the keys for a black Bugatti Type 50, which had light-blue stripes along each side. It was an ostentatious, but comfortable, car, and at least it meant that Pandora might behave herself for the journey if we drove in a car of her choosing.

  Pandora said nothing from the moment she’d given me the keys, and remained quiet for the entire journey. It wasn’t until we were only a few miles away that she finally found her voice. “Hello, Nathan.” Her voice was still Pandora’s, but it was quieter, less assured of itself.