by Jim Butcher
I expect a cry of rage and a ferocious counterattack on foot afterward, but instead I get a startled squawk, and the damned thing crashes to the sandblasted ground, dead.
The demon dog is agog, and he’s not the only one.
“How did you do that?” it asks.
“I don’t know. I just sliced his wing.”
“With what? He’s died the final death. Look, already he shrivels.”
It’s true: The creature was a tomato-red steroidal horror straight out of the nightmares of medieval humans, but now it is dissolving and bubbling into a puddle of black tar. I look down at the ice knife and see that it is different: colder, giving off steam while still remaining frozen solid, and the thin crimson glow along the top of the blade extends all the way to the point and pulses with energy.
“I think this knife may have drunk its soul. Do demons have souls?”
“Some do. He certainly did. Where did you get that knife?”
“Never mind that,” I snap at it. “Just get me out of here before something else comes along.”
“Of course.”
I did not pay close enough attention to this weapon when I stole it. How did the yetis learn such magic? And why, if they possess such secrets, did they share them with Granuaile MacTiernan, the gullible Druid? I must admit I underestimated her. She managed to put an axe in my back and stole the white horse of Świętowit from me, giving him to some witches in Poland with very strong wards around their property. My shoulder still aches as a reminder of how arrogant I was. These Druids are dangerous if given a chance to act, and deserve more respect than I’ve given them to this point. Perhaps the yetis know better than I. Perhaps I should persuade the yetis to make more of these knives before Ragnarok begins. But I have found the lost arrows of Vayu, which never miss their target. I have this soul-drinking blade. And I have many allies and surprises besides. The world is bigger than when the Norns first prophesied Ragnarok. Happily, my plans have grown to meet this new world, and I think we are ready. Or at least as ready as we will ever be. Assessing where Lucifer stands was the last errand to run.
“How much farther do we have to go?” I ask my guide.
“Some distance, unfortunately. At least an hour of subjective time.”
It was not an hour’s walk to reach Lucifer. “You’re trying to make sure I never leave, aren’t you?”
“No! I am positive Lucifer wishes you to remain alive. He is interested in your project, even if he doesn’t wish to participate.”
“My project? You are calling Ragnarok a mere project?”
“Please forgive my poor choice of words. I have no proper appreciation for the scale of things and do not even know what Ragnarok is. In any case, regarding the greater demon you just slew, you did precisely as you should have. Let us continue and remain vigilant.”
“Where will this put me on Earth?”
“This particular maw of hell we are using will empty into what the humans call New Jersey.”
“Hmm. I have heard of it. By all reports, more hellish than other places on the human plane. But a significant distance from Kansas, if I am not mistaken.” I have been studying maps of the modern world in recent days. “More than a mere hour’s walk.”
“The space here is fluid, as you have no doubt seen.”
Yes, I’ve seen that. Even as the demon dog speaks, the horizon melts and wobbles in my vision and resolves into a slightly different hellscape with red peaks shifted and plumes of ash and lava billowing elsewhere than they did mere seconds ago, yet the path we follow remains. I maintain my giant form but add spider eyes to my head, which always gives me a headache from interpreting so much visual information, but as it will provide me with views of the sky and my trail, I cannot afford to remain limited by human vision.
Lucifer let me go far too easily, and this demon escort is far too placating: I am being set up for slaughter. Probably being led into a trap—it’s not paranoia, because someone really did try to kill me. And there will be more attempts, I have no doubt. Lucifer has absolved himself of responsibility by claiming that they are rogues, but it is beyond belief that visiting gods in his realm can be attacked without his approval. If he were truly concerned for my welfare, he would escort me out himself.
Off to my right, in a hollow between low mesas baked to a blood-orange crisp, a shadow flickers, then moves. It is in fact many shadows, cast by a boiling army of imps lurching in my direction. These cannot all be silly homicidal rogues out to cause some mischief in my general area. Someone ordered them to froth and foam my way. And I will need more than two arms to defeat them. More than two weapons, in fact. And thank the giants of Muspellheim for teaching me to always have them on hand. Or, rather, have them stowed safely.
A fantastic benefit of being able to change one’s shape is the ability to repurpose one’s orifices for weapon storage. My flesh is both mutable and elastic, and thus my colon contains all kinds of shit. Actual shit, of course, but also other things that I can pull out of there when needed. And I need everything if I am going to meet a small army of hellions by myself. I also need a shape that can handle it.
While spending time with Jörmungandr, the world serpent, I learned of many creatures of the sea one can combine to form powerful chimeras. I shifted only above the waist to a mantis shrimp—not really a mantis or a shrimp at all, but it looks similar to both—except that I grow tentacles out to the sides to brandish all the weapons I pull out of my nether regions. Including the two I already had, I now set myself up with four blades total, and these fascinating chitinous limbs that work on a locking-latch principle that delivers tremendous kinetic force when released. I can punch anything, basically, that gets close to my face, shattering it without harming myself in the process. My hope is that nothing will get that near.
The imps are a motley collection of shapes, bipedal but otherwise sporting a varied number of limbs, heads, and teeth. Some of them carry hatchets, some have swords, and a couple are very pleased to have found scythes, judging by the number of rotting teeth they show me. Their skin is painted in any of four different pigments, but I don’t know if the red, green, blue, and black signify any sort of impish hierarchy. They do not approach in any ranks, but rather in a rabid horde—a small horde of thirty or forty, I’m guessing, allied against one, since I notice my escort is scuttling away to keep out of it.
I get to feel confident and superior for all of five seconds, as my lengthened arms take out the vanguard and then the next few as well. But the imps keep barreling forward, counting on their numbers to overwhelm me, and it’s a fine reckoning. I stab as fast as I can, black ichor spilling from them and unholy screeches tearing the air, but it’s only a second more and their weapons are biting into my chitin, hollow thunks that sting but fail to penetrate to my vitals. The weapons get lodged there, and while the imps try to pull them free I stab them and they fall away. I backpedal as fast as I can, attempting to give my arms more room to dispatch them at a distance, but it’s not as effective as I had hoped. They’re already too close and they leap at me. One vaults over the others with a hatchet aimed at the space between my eyes, and I let the chitin shrimp hammers fly at him. He crunches without time to squawk, his skull and ribs shattered as he flies back into the press of his fellows, but I don’t get to enjoy it for more than a fraction of a second before one of my tentacles is lopped off by a scythe and a bolt of pain lances through my body. The tentacle’s nerves fire on the ground, and it writhes with one of the shit-covered swords in its grip, and while there are no bones inside, it’s a pound or two of flesh I’m going to miss.
The ice knife is no more effective than a regular knife against these creatures. They have no souls, apparently, so I must stab into something necessary, not merely prick them with the tip. I discover this when one of them recovers from a stab to the gut to make a screaming charge and hack at my thigh with a hatchet. I fall onto the blistered, scalloped rocks and the imps follow me there, determined to end me. I fear they
might be successful.
I lash out again with the shrimp fists, and that launches three crushed bodies into the air, but there are more doing their best to penetrate my chitin, and more piling on top of them. I won’t be getting up on that leg with an axe buried in it. Time to change tactics by changing shape.
Choosing yet another form I learned from Jörmungandr, I become a small sphere of protected organs surrounded on all sides by long spines, something called a sea urchin—except far larger than the real ones you find in the ocean. I won’t be able to maintain it for long, but I don’t need to; it impales every single imp covering me, and when I shift again, the spines slide out of them and their bodies provide me some cover from the remaining attackers, who are not sure what happened to their target. I launch myself out of the pile of dead reconstituted as a spider monkey, one of the most acrobatic creatures I’ve ever seen. I retrieve the ice knife and a sword with my long arms, balancing on them and my one good leg, and proceed to dance among the ten or so remaining imps, chest heaving from oxygen debt and enervated by the shifts and blood loss, hyperaware that I have no natural armor in this form. Metal slices through flesh with slithering noises, and howls rise into the fuckfurnace of hell as I spin, slash, and stab through opponents too surprised by my shift to understand what’s happening. And when the last one collapses, I fall onto my ass, exhausted and unable to get a breath of clean air, it being actual hell. The imps’ bodies bubble and hiss as they melt into sludge, and I see my bug-dog guide skitter forward to congratulate me.
“Masterful, sir, simply masterful! May I help in any way?”
I shift back into my accustomed human form, which allows speech instead of unintelligible screeches. “You can insert your head into the anus of a rhinoceros and take a deep breath.”
The hellspawn looks around at the blasted land, helpless. “Should one appear, I will do my best, sir.”
“Just get me to the nearest exit.”
“Certainly. Please follow me.”
I collect all my weapons from the ruin of the imp horde and limp after him, my head constantly craning about me, looking for new threats. None appear, and it’s almost more nerve-wracking than if something concrete had materialized to attack.
Uncountable moments of heat and pain later, the hellspawn stops and raises an insect leg at the air in front of it.
“Here we are, sir. Just a moment.” He mutters something unintelligible, his leg spasms in a pattern that must have some arcane significance, and the air puckers and warps in front of him before a rectangle shimmers and resolves into a window to the plane of Midgard.
Just as the portal pops into solid reality and I feel a cool gust of air from New Jersey that is no doubt putrid by human standards but qualifies as a benediction in hell, Lucifer appears to my left, unfolding himself out of the air in a flutter of cherubic feathers. I ready the ice knife in case he attacks.
“What now?” I bark at him.
~I merely wished to congratulate you on making it this far. Perhaps you will have more luck in your rebellion than I thought. I will not aid you, but as you have earned my respect, neither will I hinder you. Seriously, though, you need to get a clue about David Bowie and Prince. You missed quite a bit being bound for all those years in the bowels of the earth. Before you decide to burn it all down and start over, take some time to appreciate creative geniuses. For you wish to be one, correct?
“A creative genius? No, that is not among my ambitions.”
~If I’m not being too forward, Loki, perhaps it should be. My father was a creative genius, much as I despise him. I hear Odin is, too. Quite a few of the beings I presume you’ll be fighting against are creative geniuses. It would be wise to know your enemy, if nothing else. But also wise to have a plan to build your utopia once the day is won.
“I have a plan. No need to worry about that.”
~Ah. Fair enough. Well, then. It’s all very exciting, isn’t it? This should be good. I’m off to make some popcorn. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Cherubim cannot actually process genemod corn—oh, never mind.
The wings fold around him, and he spins like a top in the air until he shrinks and pops out of existence. What a strange adversary.
I’m left alone with the Bosch horror who did nothing to help me—not even provide so much as a warning—against Lucifer’s ambushes. I’d like to try out the ice knife on him and see if he has a soul it can drink. The heat of hell has taxed the blade; the red reservoir along the top has noticeably diminished during our trek. It looks thirsty.
“Please step through,” the hellion says. “I can only keep the portal open for a few more moments.”
Ah, clever to remind me of that. I can’t afford to risk being trapped here. I nod as a measure of insincere thanks and step through to New Jersey. The portal closes behind me, and good riddance. If a large portion of humanity can imagine such a creature as Lucifer and a realm as bleak as hell, then Ragnarok will be a merciful fate by comparison.
Time to get on with it.
THE RESURRECTIONIST
CAITLIN KITTREDGE
“The Resurrectionist” is set in the continuity of the Hellhound Chronicles during the early 1930s. This is a collection of stories about villains, but Lee Grey is a monster hunter—a man who’d probably be considered a hero for protecting humanity. But Ava and the other characters populating the Hellhound Chronicles are monsters, and to them, a man like Lee, with special abilities designed to kill their kind, would be the ultimate enemy.
This is the very beginning of Lee’s story . . . but far from the last time he and Ava will cross paths.
Los Angeles
1932
Louie Montrose told me to kill Tom Mason on a sunny September afternoon. He didn’t flat-out say it, since Louie “the Rose” Montrose never used four words where fourteen would do, but I got the message all the same.
“You like cowboy movies, Lee?” he asked while he was pouring his third glass of whiskey. Louie had left behind the cheap suits and greasy hair on the East Coast, but he still had a thug’s taste, and a thug’s manners.
“I prefer detective pictures,” I said. Louie puckered up his face, pink like a fat cabbage rose, and downed the whiskey. He hadn’t offered me any.
“All the same, ain’t they? Some dame with legs and a problem. Some mook with too much chin. Boring as shit.” His window looked down on the back lot, and I watched a pair of covered wagons pulled by production assistants roll past an Egyptian throne made of plaster.
“You mind telling me why I’m here?” I asked. A guy dressed as a mummy walked behind the throne, smoking a cigarette. I hoped those bandages were fireproof.
“Tom Mason,” he said. “Some old fossil from back in the day when this place was real cowboys and Indians. Studio used him on a few pictures as a consultant—you know, the guy who tells Tom Mix and Gene Autry how to sit on a horse.”
I waited, because he could have wanted me to beat the hell out of the guy or find him a fancy hooker. You could never tell with Louie. He was mercurial—that was the word. Unpredictable, like a starving coyote.
“Tom’s been working for a friend of mine down at our distinguished competition,” said Louie. “Doing some B picture. Anyway, there was an incident with one of the actresses—nothing serious, just a girl thinking she’s more important than she is—and now Tom is shooting his mouth off crazy-like, threatening to go to the cops.”
Louie went to his desk and took out a small clear bottle, the kind you keep under lock and key in a hospital. “Visit him, Lee. See what he has to say.” The bottle changed hands. Louie’s were soft and manicured. You’d think he’d never administered a beating in his life. “He’s an ornery cuss, so come bearing gifts. My friend’s been keeping him sweet with this.”
I rolled the bottle before I pocketed it. Morphine is a fickle bitch. Your best friend one minute, and a screaming, knife-nailed whore the next.
I didn’t know Tom Mason, but I already felt sorry for him.
&
nbsp; I felt worse when I pulled up at his house—the worst-off one on a street full of cracker-box bungalows where everything was covered in a sheen of dust. The Santa Anas were blowing, coating the entire city with a fine powder that worked its way everywhere. At night, the sky glowed orange with the sheen of wildfires in the canyons.
Tom Mason’s porch sagged under my weight, and I squinted through a dirty window. I caught a glimpse of a sofa covered in laundry and a table littered with empty plates and bottles of the cheapest rotgut you could panhandle your way into.
Whoever this guy was, I didn’t think he warranted the wrath of Louie Montrose. But what did I know? I was a leg breaker, nothing more. I cleaned up the vomit, shooed the boyfriends out of the lantern-jawed stars’ stately homes, threw away the needles in the ingenues’ dressing rooms, and bounced a union rep or two off a brick wall, as the occasion called for. A man in my situation couldn’t ask for much more.
The front door to the place was locked, but not in any serious way. A few seconds with a lock pick and a shove, and stale, stench-laden air floated out to greet me. It smelled like a terminal ward and a hobo toilet had run off together and gotten married.
Hell, I’d smelled worse. I stepped in.
Light spoke in the darkness, a flash like a camera bulb, except it came with a roar of sound that slammed me high in the chest and knocked me on my ass in the doorway.
Someone grabbed my legs and dragged me inside. The door slammed, and everything went dark.
The someone prodded me over, found my wallet, and lifted it. They felt at my hip and found my gun, too. A nice little automatic that I was sad to lose, but I had bigger problems, like the gaping hole in my chest.