I scrunched my eyes shut as it scuttled across the surface like a spider, its eight serpentine legs sticking to the stone like a fucking gecko. As I brought my shotgun to bear on the creature, more appeared from everywhere, melding out of the shadows and attacking our merry foursome.
As I fired my shotgun into the alligator, the rapport of gunfire all around me tore my hearing to shreds. My blast took the lunging gator’s head clean off its shoulders in a spray of blood and bone, but that didn’t seem to bother it much because it landed practically on top of me and slashed at me. Its huge claws ripped into my clothes as I backpedaled into Jenna. Her Desert Eagle sang, punching holes in the gators as I put boot to ass and kicked the headless gator in the chest. It flailed, stumbling backward as it whipped its huge, scaled tail at me with enough force for me to know it would break my bones with little effort.
“Get down,” Sam called moments before he tackled me to the side. We hit the cement hard enough for my teeth to rattle around in my skull as another creature slashed through the space I’d occupied.
A bolt of emerald Hellfire tore into the creature, incinerating the top half of it and filling the air with the smell of burned flesh. As the creature collapsed into a pile of ash, Jenna’s gun boomed again.
Hot wet blood rained down on top of me as another headless monster dropped from the ceiling only a foot in front of me.
“They’re after Mac!” Sam cried, grabbing me by the shoulder and hauling me to my feet with surprising strength. “We need to get out of here!”
Now that the corridor was filled with still glowing bodies, I could see we were in a large underground amphitheater with a myriad of tunnels leading into the room. There had to be over a hundred of the creatures ambling toward us from all sides. I didn’t need to count them to know we were fucked.
“Why are they after me?” I asked, blasting another creature with my shotgun as I turned to Van for explanation.
“Who cares?” Jenna cried, elbowing me aside as she snap kicked another alligator in the gut and sent it stumbling backward. As it recovered, she put a bullet into its brainpan. “Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”
“Agreed,” Van replied, turning on his heel and running toward a seemingly random tunnel. I had to hope it wasn’t actually random because the prospect of running into more of these creatures or getting blocked into a dead end wasn’t exactly appealing.
“Go, I’ve got the rear!” Sam said, swinging both Tommy guns up and unloading like he was in a bad gangster movie. The bullets shredded the alligators as he cackled maniacally. “Say hello to my little friend!”
Then the guns clicked empty, and in the silence, the creatures who had been ducking for cover surged forward, ignoring their fallen brethren. Sam turned and sprinted toward us as we reached the tunnel. Van moved in first, right hand glowing like he was Iron fucking Fist. He threw a gob of Hellfire into the door a few meters in, blowing it inward in a shriek of ruined steel that splattered molten goo across the stones.
“Come on,” Van cried, waving us in as I stood there, trying to cover Sam with shotgun blasts. He reached us as the shotgun’s runes died out and it clicked empty. Fuck.
I spun on my heel, moving past Van as he brought up his machinegun and unleashed a barrage of lead into the gators. They dove out of the way as Sam cleared the threshold.
“Well, this is fun,” Sam said, sprinting to the front of the line, his chest heaving from exhaustion. “Let’s not do it again.”
“Agreed,” Jenna said as Van shouldered by them
“We need to hurry. It’s not too far from here.” Van said jogging past us.
“I’m not sure how long I can hold them off. Shotgun’s empty,” I said, glancing back down the tunnel.
“It’ll recharge, just wait,” Sam said, moving past me.
If there was one thing we didn’t have right now, it was time. With no one keeping the alligators at bay, it wouldn’t be long before they were on us. There was no way this was going to work. No. I needed to buy us more time. Fast.
“Ignis!” I cried, causing my tattoos to light up the dark hallway. A blast of Hellfire leapt from my outstretched hand and into the left pillar of the door. My blast hit the stone with an earsplitting crack that tore through the support. The ceiling above us rumbled as I threw another blast into the right one. The whole thing gave way in an explosion of rock, caving in and sealing us away from the mutant alligators which was pretty much what I was going for.
“I really hope we don’t wind up needing to go out that way,” Sam said, clapping me on the shoulder as I stood there, heart pounding from effort. It shouldn’t have taken that much energy to fling around a little bit of Hellfire, but it had. Why?
“We don’t,” Van said and I could tell he was already pretty far down the tunnel. “And a word of warning, Mac. Try not to use your magic down here. Since you can’t talk to your cat and you don’t know how to draw upon the power of Hell, you can’t recharge very easily.” I could almost hear the smirk in his voice as he continued. “You’ll just have to let me do the heavy lifting.”
“Man, I was a Cursed for like three hours and killed you. How badass could you be?” I replied, annoyed because what if he was right? If I ran out of magic, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get us out of here without him. At the same time, I’d dropped him with relative ease, and as far as I could tell, Sargent would have made Van his bitch. Speaking of which…
“You got lucky,” Van said in a way that made me think he believed it. To be fair, it was sort of true and sort of not. I’d mostly gotten lucky because he was full of himself.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said, suddenly unconcerned with him as we made our way down the darkened hallway. “Um… Jenna, what happened to the rest of your clown car friends?”
“What do you mean?” Jenna asked, glancing at me over her shoulder. As she did, cold water, at least I hoped it was water, dripped down the back of my neck.
“Sargent, Bruce Lee, the Nazi bitch,” I rubbed the back of my neck. Something sticky was clinging to it, and against my better judgment I glanced upward. I didn’t see anything, partially because it was really dark despite Van’s glowing green chest V. All I got for my effort was some gunk dripping into my eyes. Awesome.
Jenna froze as realization dawned over her. Van was one thing, since realistically he should have been in Vassago’s territory fucking bitches or whatever it was he did down here. The other seven council members were another thing though. Those ass clowns belonged to Asmodai, who while absent, would have likely brought his chosen people here.
“Well…” Jenna said, biting her lip as she met my eyes. “I don’t feel their presence like I normally would at least.” She gave me a halfhearted smile as she tapped her temple.
“Probably still processing,” Sam said, and as he did, Van nodded.
“Processing?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at the two of them.
“This is Hell,” Van said, waving his hand dismissively. “Unless you know someone who can bypass the bureaucracy, there’s a long wait to get in. Think California DMV without an appointment but way worse. You know, ‘cause it’s Hell.”
“So Hell is waiting to get in?” I asked, somewhat confused. Granted my time in Hell thus far hadn’t exactly been fire and brimstone but at the same time, it didn’t seem nearly horrible enough. Waiting in a long line at the DMV, even the California DMV, was hardly equivalent to getting gouged with hot pokers. Where was all the violence? The torture? The random acts of sucktitude?
“Yeah, you wait in a line for a while. Then you get to the end and they tell you it’s the wrong line. It happens for a few decades before you get let in. If you’re lucky.” Sam shrugged. “I know it’s not what you think of when you envision Hell, but it’s sort of like that way on purpose. A real thumb in the eye to the big guy upstairs, don’t you think?” He grinned. “The Devil still fulfills his whole torture shtick, but not in a way that means anything to anyone. God must hate it.”
; “Yeah, sure, whatever,” Jenna said, shaking her head. “What concerns me more is the rest of the Council of Seven. Wouldn’t Asmodai have been able to pull them through?” She gestured at Van. “Like with you.”
“He could of if he was around. Which he is not.” Van sighed. “Assuming he wanted to do it, anyway.” He touched his chest. “I was lucky. Vassago felt like slapping me around which was the only reason he got me through.” He rolled his eyes. “Otherwise I’d definitely have had to take a number.”
“What kind of ridiculous system is this?” I snapped, suddenly annoyed. “Hell is not supposed to be like this. It’s like the Devil really did get bored and farmed the whole thing out to a bunch of stupid bureaucrats.”
“You can blame Lucifer for it when you see him,” Sam said, smirking at me. “I’m sure he’ll care a whole lot.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that,” I said, rolling my eyes. Something told me if I ever met Lucifer, the absolute last thing I’d want to do would be criticizing how he ran the place.
“If you ladies are done bitching,” Van said, stopping and pointing toward a pair of steel elevator doors. His flaming green hand revealed a glowing green button embedded into the stone. “We’re here.”
10
The elevator doors opened to reveal a room decorated from floor to ceiling in green. Emerald tile covered the ground and walls up to the ceiling which was also green. About thirty king size beds sat either wall of the long room with about three feet of space between them. Lying upon each lime-colored comforter was a girl or guy in their mid-twenties. None of them appeared to be conscious, and all of them were hooked to IVs.
Plush green chairs sat on either side of each and every bed, and filling those chairs were a bunch of pale as fuck motherfuckers. They didn’t even look up at us as we entered the room with Van in the lead. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but something about it reminded me of what I’d seen when I’d gone after Pierce. He had kept people caged up and extracted their blood so he could sell it to prospective buyers. This seemed oddly similar, only these guys got to drink from the tap.
Part of me wanted to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. After what I’d seen down here, I had no way of knowing if the drinkee or the drinker was the paying customer, if either.
“What is this?” Jenna asked, sweeping her gaze across the room as a girl dressed like the love child of Count Dracula and a fox came up to us. Her skin was pale as driven snow, and she had orange fox ears and a tail. She pursed her black lips as she saw us and gave us a once over.
“I don’t have any group discounts right now,” she said, glancing down at the lime green clipboard in her hand. “But I do have four beds open together at the far end.” She smacked her mouth together in a way that made me think she was chewing gum before turning and gesturing at the far corner. “Will that work?”
“We’re not here to dine,” Van said, smiling at her as he held out a handful of cash. “Just passing through.”
“As you wish.” She snatched the bills from his hand and stuffed them down into her shirt before nodding and returning to her little podium. She sat on it and stopped moving completely. It was kind of freaky.
“What the fuck?” I asked, trying not to stare at the motionless woman as we began to follow Van through the room. Our footsteps sounded loud on the tile despite the sound of sucking filling the air.
“This is a tasting room. Girls and guys get shot up with whatever the client desires. The substances enter their blood and people pay to drink it.” Sam shrugged. “It’s really not a bad way to make a living.” He gestured toward one of the girls lying unconscious on the bed. Her blonde hair was splayed around her as a guy who sort of looked like Chris Pratt sucked at her wrist. “Pretty safe since no one wants to cross Drac. Don’t have to worry about getting drained in an alley or anything. Only problem is you can’t do it too often. The body needs time to replenish.”
Part of me was repulsed, but at the same time, who was I to judge? If people wanted to sell their blood to a bunch of bloodsuckers of their own free will, well, that was their business.
“Why do they need to replenish? Aren’t all these people dead?” Jenna asked as we passed by an elderly couple munching on a guy who sort of looked like Eddie Munster.
“Being dead isn’t much different than being alive. You still need to eat, sleep, all those things. You can get tired and drained same as anywhere.” Sam tapped his temple. “Which is why there’s a limit. Dying in Hell sucks. You get a wicked hangover, and you have to wait in the reprocessing line.” He smacked Van on the back. “Isn’t that right?”
“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t died.” Van shrugged as we reached the far end of the room. As we approached, a panel in the wall slid upward, revealing a plain white hallway big enough to accommodate about ten or so people. Once we’d stepped inside, the panel slid shut and a holographic image of Bram Stoker’s Dracula appeared in front of us.
“Good evening,” it said, pacing back and forth in front of us. “Where would you like to go?”
The hologram held its palm out, and a map made of light and color that reminded me of something straight out of Star Wars appeared above it. A red dot was lit up on the map with an arrow that said “you are here” above it.
“To the exit,” Van said, eyeing the map closely.
“Very good, sir. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” Dracula vanished and the ground beneath us started to move. I couldn’t tell what direction we were going because it felt like every direction at once. A few moments later, one of the walls slid open.
The blast of new age electronic music was almost deafening. A sea of blood red carpet stretched out in front of us, leading to several glass doors. Beyond them I could see the street.
“Well, this has been remarkably easy,” Sam said as he stepped out of the hallway. The moment his foot touched the carpet, an alarm started to blare.
“You just had to say something,” I said as I surged past him into the hallway. I didn’t see anyone, but the glass doors in front of us were starting to close. I was willing to bet it was related to whatever alarm Sam had triggered.
“Go!” Van cried, shoving us forward toward the doors.
Before we made it halfway, a dude the size of an ogre with a triceratops head came charging out of nowhere. There were a couple other bruisers behind them, and the doors were closing. We did not have time for this.
I spun on my heel, braced the butt of the shotgun against my shoulder and blasted tricera-face full in the chest. The blast of shrapnel and fire threw him backward in a spray of flesh and blood. He crashed to the floor as I spun back toward the doors in time to see them close.
Van took a look at them, shut his eyes, and held his hand out toward them. Emerald fire spread from his splayed fingers as bullets started flying at us. I threw myself to the ground as the glass doors shattered into a zillion pieces, but instead of crashing to the ground, they flitted up through the air like a million bumblebees. Van threw his hands forward, and the shards flew across the room, slamming into the security dinosaurs and tearing into their flesh and clothing alike as if they were made of warm butter.
Screams filled my ears as the bullets stopped flying at us.
“Go on, I’ll hold ‘em,” Van cried, the strain in his voice obvious as he directed the glinting pieces of glass through the air. He’d managed to push security back, but from the way his chest was heaving, he didn’t have enough energy to keep it up for long.
“What about you?” Jenna asked as Sam slipped past her through the blown out doors. Evidently, he had no problem leaving Van behind. To be fair, I didn’t really either. Van was a professional, and I had no doubt if something happened to him, reprocessing wouldn’t really be a thing for him thanks to Vassago, but at the same time, I sort of felt bad about leaving him behind. Not enough to stay and help mind you, but I did, and that counts for something.
“I’m fine,” Van growled, making eye contact with me. “Find Persephone. S
he knows what to do.” He took a deep breath and as he exhaled, the lights overhead shattered, plunging us into darkness as glittering bits of green shrapnel moved to join their friends pinning down security.
“What about the key?” I asked, taking a look around.
“No time for that now.” Van took a step forward as sparks leapt from the glowing V on his chest. “Persephone will help you. It’s not optimal, but it will work.”
“Thanks, Van,” I said, grabbing Jenna and hurrying out after Sam. Admittedly, a small part of me was glad he had our backs. I knew Van was strong, and he had centuries of experience. If anyone could slow down the mob, it’d be him.
“Great, your thanks and two bucks will get me a candy bar.” His laughter followed us out. “Then again, maybe not. Inflation is a bitch.”
Another explosion detonated behind us and the shockwave threw us forward onto the concrete. I hit hard on my shoulder and rolled to my feet to find Slade the pteranodon grabbing Sam by his throat.
The dinosaur saw me and his beak turned into a grin. “Why we were just talking about you, Mac Brennan.”
“Put him down,” I said, pointing my shotgun at the winger-dinosaur.
“Or what—”
I cut Slade off by cocking my shotgun, hoping it’d recharged enough for a second shot. “There’s only two ways this will end and both of them end with you dead.” I pulled the trigger. The runes across the barrel flared as molten energy spat out the front end. The blast caught Slade full in the face and blew his head clean off. The hand gripping Sam twitched, letting Sam pull himself free. He managed to stagger backward before the headless dinosaur collapsed to the ground.
“You almost shot me!” Sam cried, glancing at me with a creepy smile on his face. His eyes roamed over me, taking the entirety of me in. “I like your moxie.”
Great. The creepy demon liked that I’d saved him because I had the balls to pull the trigger even though I could get him. It wasn’t like I’d had another option. If I hadn’t done it, who knows what would have happened to Sam, and as far as things went, I actually kind of liked him.
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