Charlaine Harris

by Must Love Hellhounds

  “How long do we have before they feed us?” Batanya asked Amelia.

  Amelia pondered. “They should be by with something pretty soon,” she said. “The feeding’s not exactly regular, but we do get three meals a day. It’s pretty much the same food no matter what the time of day is: not really breakfast, dinner, supper.”

  Batanya said, “We have to get out of here. Sooner or later, Lucifer will get tired of Crick, or he’ll forget he doesn’t want to alienate the Collective—we’ll explain that to you later, Amelia—and he’ll have us killed, or we’ll meet an ‘accident.’ You’ll notice he’s pretty careless with his soldiers.”

  “I’m listening,” Amelia said. “What about sissy-boy, here?” She nodded toward Narcissus’s cage. A glance told Batanya that the beautiful youth was busy brushing his chestnut hair.

  “He’s all for himself,” Batanya said. “The best we can hope is that he doesn’t get in our way.” Narcissus, still sans clothing, began examining his body, pore by pore, as far as Batanya could tell. He lifted his genitals, gave them a good scan, and then dropped his package as casually as if it’d been a bunch of wilted flowers.

  “What’s your plan?” Clovache said.

  “Here it is.” It didn’t take long to explain.

  In a little while, two guards (the one who’d escaped the hellhounds, and Sha) brought in a cart with four large bowls. The pass-through hatches for the bowls were at the bottom of the bars in the door, and each bowl was shoved through with very little care for whether it slopped over or not. A bucket of water followed it. This must have been intended for both washing and drinking, since there was a dipper hanging from the side of the bucket. Sha, the snakeman, still found Clovache attractive and showed his admiration openly.

  “Show me what you’ve got, little one,” he hissed to Clovache, who looked a little anxious. Sha had a spear, and a dagger thrust through his belt. Lucifer had ordered the guards not to go into the cells, but Sha might disobey.

  “He can’t let you out, and he can’t go in,” Amelia said. “He doesn’t have the key on his belt.” Batanya could tell by the relaxation in her shoulders that Clovache was relieved, though her face remained stony as he continued to tell her what he’d like to do with her.

  “Who does have the key?” Batanya said to Amelia. She didn’t want Clovache to think she was worried. “The other guard doesn’t have it either.”

  “I think the commander of the guard has it at all times, at least as far as I’ve been able to see. That would be the wolfy one called Marl.”

  Clovache grew tired of Sha’s suggestive remarks and told him to fuck off. Batanya laughed, but she noticed that Amelia looked quite shocked. “I’m sorry,” Batanya called. “We are rough soldiers, and our language is sometimes just as rough.”

  Amelia’s face cleared, and she managed to smile back at Batanya.

  “Did you notice how that guard couldn’t take his eyes off me?” Narcissus asked, and the three women sighed in unison.

  Batanya hunkered down to examine the contents of her supper bowl. She had a very rudimentary Plan A, and she turned it over in her head while she ate.

  There was no Plan B.

  Like good Britlingens, Batanya and Clovache consumed everything in their bowls. Batanya wasn’t sure what the meal was—some kind of noodle and some meat, though what the creature had originally been was anybody’s guess—but it wasn’t spoiled. She sniffed very carefully for poison, and asked Amelia how she’d felt after the other meals she’d eaten.

  “Fine,” Amelia said, astonished.

  At last Clovache took a mouthful to see if the food was drugged, since that was the job of a junior. The Britlingens waited for a few minutes.

  “I feel fine,” Clovache said, and without further ado they dug in. There was a hunk of bread in the bowl, too, and it was fairly good. No vegetables; she guessed those would have been hard to produce underground. Not a healthy meal, but it would supply the energy they’d need.

  “Save a bit of meat,” Batanya said.

  After they’d eaten and rested, the two Britlingens exercised. Amelia and Narcissus were interested, Amelia because she was obviously a normally active woman and because she was bored, and Narcissus because he thought exercise might improve his body. Amelia showed them how to do “jumping jacks,” which amused Batanya. They ran in place, lunged, squatted, punched at the air in jabs (Amelia called that “shadow boxing”), and completed a hundred push-ups (at least, Clovache and Batanya completed a hundred). After a few more exercises, they all took a nap, for lack of anything better to do. The guards didn’t reappear for at least four hours, and then when they opened the door at the end of the corridor, it was to push the cart through again, so it was time for lunch . . . or maybe supper. Possibly breakfast?

  Batanya was ashamed that she’d lost track of how many hours they’d moved through the tunnels before they’d been captured. They’d left Spauling in the middle of the afternoon, though that didn’t necessarily mean they’d arrived in Hell at the same time of day. And, really, did it make a difference? Some of the denizens of Hell were sure to be awake around the clock.

  When she heard the click of the hounds’ claws on the stone floor, Batanya got ready, though her hands were not steady and sweat was already trickling down her back.

  “I fucking hate dogs,” she whispered, but Clovache heard her.

  “Have you reached in your pocket?” Clovache asked.

  “Your outfits don’t have pockets,” Amelia said.

  “We brought our own,” Batanya told her.

  After a particularly successful mission, their client had given Clovache and Batanya a sizable bonus. Clovache had wanted to take a trip to Pardua and go to the famous male whorehouse there to see the dancing, but Batanya had persuaded her to visit a special medical technician instead. Batanya had a false wall in one cheek, prepared with careful and expensive surgery. In that secret thin pocket, she’d stowed a small flat blade. It was sharp enough and long enough to open a vein, whether her own or someone else’s, but it was strictly an emergency option.

  The time had come to use it.

  Clovache had a similar false pouch on the underside of her arm, high up near the pit. A very thorough search would have uncovered her pocket, and possibly Batanya’s, but they hadn’t been searched very thoroughly, proof of the fact that the worst soldiers got prison guard duty in Hell. Clovache stepped to the front of her cell at the moment Batanya did.

  “Narcissus,” Clovache said. The young man stopped examining his fingernails and looked at her. “Don’t be upset,” she said steadily. “I promise you they’ll heal.”

  “Good luck,” Amelia said, very quietly, as the hounds entered the jail corridor. Their massive black heads swung from side to side, as if they were considering who would taste best. Their red eyes glowed like burning coals.

  The Britlingens held out the bits of meat they’d saved, for the hounds’ inspection. They were standing as close together as they could get at the juncture of their cells. Noses twitching, the two beasts approached cautiously. Clovache’s hand was just within the bars, and the hound sniffing at her meat shoved his head closer. It was much too broad to fit between the bars, but his nose extended inside the cell. While Clovache’s left hand fed the hound, her right hand slid between the bars to grip the broad studded collar, and then her tiny blade scored the hound’s skin at the neck. A gush of blood told her she’d struck the best spot, and that blood sprayed on the bars of the cell as the hound reared back, baying and shrieking.

  The blood also spattered on Clovache’s hands.

  Batanya’s hound turned slightly to leap against the bars at the juncture of the cells in an attempt to get at Clovache, and as he reared with his chest and stomach exposed, Batanya’s bladed hand darted out to rake the hound’s skin. She’d had the presence of mind to pull off her tunic and hold it to the dog, too, which was a good thing, since she didn’t get an arterial spray. Pulling the soaked tunic back through, she immedia
tely rubbed the bloody cloth over the metal of the bars. She stuffed the tunic down at the bottom of the bars, so the blood remaining in the cloth might do some good. This left her standing bare-chested, but she pulled the blanket from her bed and draped it around her shoulders. She hoped they wouldn’t notice the absence of her tunic.

  A group of guards rushed in to investigate the dogs’ commotion, and it took everything the Britlingens had to look stunned. Though Narcissus had flinched when the dogs were hurt, he was silent, at least for the moment. Amelia provided a great distraction by screaming up a storm, and since the guards looked at her and the hounds first, Batanya and Clovache had the chance to slide their thin blades into places that might escape inspection. Batanya’s went into the thick padding of her socks, and Clovache’s into a tiny crevice in the stone floor of her cell.

  “Hands in the water!” Batanya said hoarsely, and Clovache immersed her hands in her water bucket. Batanya hoped it was quick enough to save Clovache’s skin.

  “They attacked each other!” Amelia told the guards. The American woman was not a great actress, but she did look very excited. They believed her.

  “I’ve never seen them turn on each other,” Sha hissed, but he didn’t seem inclined to ask more questions. After all, the prisoners were in their cells, and unarmed.

  Though the hounds were still whining, their wounds were healing fast. Narcissus called them to him and stroked their huge heads while they whimpered. Narcissus had kept silent for so long that Batanya was hopeful he wouldn’t blurt out some information. He was watching all the action with an expression that sat oddly on his face.

  “He’s thinking about something besides himself,” Clovache muttered to Batanya, who was standing as close as she could get, because she wanted a look at Clovache’s hands. “That can’t be good.” Tears were running down Clovache’s face. That meant the water immersion hadn’t completely worked.

  “Steady,” she said, and Narcissus moved to the corner of his cell to look at the bars on Batanya’s. Batanya followed the direction of his gaze. The bars were beginning to smoke; just a little, easy to miss in the murky atmosphere, but still ... Their eyes met. Come on, beautiful, she thought. Give me this. I’ll admire you till the pookas return to their burrows, if you’ll just give me this. She tried to smile winsomely, but it was too much of an effort. She gave him a good, hard stare. She was much better at that.

  “What are you doing, bitch?” screamed Sha. Clovache whirled to face him, her fingers scattering drops of water. The skin of her hands was blistered, and Clovache clasped them behind her after a quick downward glance.

  “Washing my hands, since the hounds slobbered all over them,” Clovache said. “What did you feed them, razor blades? Why’d they bite each other?” Sha glared at her, suspicion written all over his scaled face, and a third guard, one of the dust-balls, rolled around in an unbelieving manner.

  The steam coming off the bars was slowly increasing in density, and any moment the guards would notice. If sheer force of will could have moved them, they would have shot back outside the doors. The hounds, casting malevolent looks at Batanya and Clovache, skulked out into the guardroom. The guards, after a few more threats and a lot more curses, followed. The doors slammed shut just in time, because the smoke was beginning to really pour off the bars that had been touched with hound blood.

  “Let me see your hands,” Batanya said, and Clovache held them out. There were bright red blisters covering the palms of Clovache’s hands. They looked so painful that even Narcissus winced in sympathy. (He felt better after he looked down at his own white, unsullied hands.)

  Clovache shrugged. “Worth it, if we get out. Will they come back in if we make a lot of noise?” she asked Narcissus.

  “No,” said the beautiful youth after a moment’s thought. “Others scream and plead all the time. And they only came in before because the hounds were howling, and the hounds are favorites of Lucifer’s. An ogre beat his heads against the bars for an hour before they came to check, two weeks ago.” He looked at the Britlingens expectantly.

  “You were so clever to keep silent when the hounds were in here,” Batanya said hastily. “I was so proud of you. I don’t know how we’d accomplish this without your help.”

  Satisfied temporarily, Narcissus gave her a lovely smile and fetched his hairbrush.

  The smoke roiled and thickened, and the air got even worse. After perhaps five minutes, the smoke began to dissipate, though the thick atmosphere made it hard to see what damage had been done. Batanya positioned herself carefully and swung the heavy water bucket at what she figured was the weakest point. She got as close as she could to examine the weak spot. She hadn’t caused any visible damage, but the impact of the metal-rimmed bucket against the bars hadn’t felt as violent as she’d expected. Heartened, Batanya swung the bucket again, putting all the strength of her upper body into the movement. The bars bent outward, and a few flakes fell off the fast-corroding metal. She swung again, and the metal bent outward. Clovache had grasped her own bucket in her damaged hands and began the same procedure on the bars of her own cell. That didn’t go as swiftly, because smearing the blood on a wide section had produced better results than a more intense application in a few spots. With a roar of sheer focus, Batanya swung the bucket for a tenth time, and a section of the bars broke off, creating an aperture large enough to allow her to climb out. Amelia cheered, Narcissus gaped, and Clovache sagged against her cot with relief. The next instant, she was back to swinging her bucket. While Batanya ran to hide behind the door, Clovache began to yell in time with her attacks on the bars.

  Narcissus had told them the guards were slow to react to prisoner noise, and it took a few minutes before the combination of Clovache’s piercing screams and the banging of the bucket roused them to come check. The first one through the door was the snakeman, Sha, and Batanya was on his back instantly, slicing the side of his neck with her tiny blade. His blood was not red, more of a deep purple, and it didn’t spray, but welled sluggishly from the gash. But he crumpled to the floor, scaled hands clutching at the wound as if to keep his blood inside. Batanya leaped over him to attack the dustball. It didn’t seem to have a mortal spot to wound, at least to human eyes, but Batanya swung her arm as if there were a sword in it instead of an inch-and-a-half blade, and the startled dustball rolled farther into the corridor, bringing it closer to Amelia’s cell. Amelia thrust her arms through the bars and brought them together, as she would as if she had caught an assailant’s neck. Batanya had wondered if Amelia’s arms would cut through the dustball, but the aviatrix seemed to be compressing an area. The dustball reacted in an agitated fashion, so at least it was seriously frightened at being held like that. Compression was the key to defeating the creature.

  Clovache, halfway out of her own cell, climbed back in to get her blanket from the cot.

  “Stand away,” she yelled to Batanya, who obeyed instantly. Clovache tossed the blanket over the creature, and then she and Batanya threw themselves on it. The dustball began to deflate as they pressed it against the bars of Amelia’s cell, and when the two Britlingens dug their feet in and pushed harder, the escaping air achieved a moaning sound. The smell was even more unpleasant than the other smells in the jail, and Amelia looked really queasy.

  After a silent struggle that seemed to go on for hours, the dustball was squashed flat. When the Britlingens cautiously released their pressure, a large lump of hair, trash, and dust fell to the stone floor. Clovache threw the blanket on top of it, in case it could pump itself back up, and she dragged the snakeman’s ghastly body on top of that, while Batanya divested Sha of his dagger.

  “What’s happening?” Marl called from the guardroom. The door had swung shut behind Sha and the dustball, so he didn’t have a good view, and he wasn’t at the peephole—too cautious, maybe.

  “Help! Help! He’s killing me!” Clovache screamed. Furious that Sha was interfering with a valuable prisoner, Marl threw open the door and rushed into the pr
ison wing, sword drawn. Batanya tripped him and stabbed him through the neck with Sha’s dagger. Within seconds, they’d gotten the keys off his belt and Batanya was unlocking Amelia’s cell. The tall woman didn’t waste any time getting out, and the four former prisoners clustered together for a minute.

  “Amelia, Narcissus, I don’t know what you want to do, but Clovache and I have to rescue our client,” Batanya said. “Does either of you have any knowledge of where Lucifer’s chambers are?”

  “I do,” Narcissus said. “I spent hours there, entrancing and entertaining him.” He made a ludicrous attempt to look modest.

  “Will you take us there?” Batanya asked. There was no time for finesse. They were in the middle of hostile territory.

  “We want to keep you with us as long as we can,” Clovache said more diplomatically, “and if you can’t help us, we have to be on our way.”

  “Since you ask so nicely,” Narcissus said, casting a cold look in Batanya’s direction, “I will lead you there.”

  There was no question that Amelia wanted to go. She was pale with anxiety, and choking on the suffocating miasma of the jail. The four ex-prisoners crept to the open door. The air in the guard chamber outside was remarkably stinky, but it was a big improvement nonetheless.

  For a few seconds they just breathed.

  The great thing about the guardroom was the weapons hanging on the walls. Batanya felt much more like herself with a gun in one hand and a sword in the other. Clovache spotted their armor, and seized it with a yip of delight. She was about to shimmy into it when Batanya stopped her. “It’s too Britlingen,” Batanya said. “We need to be guards.” The two pulled on the green pants and tunics that the guards wore. Clovache reluctantly bundled the two suits into a backpack. She would have felt much better with it on her body, but Batanya knew Clovache could see the sense of her decision. To compensate, Clovache armed herself to the teeth with two guns, a short spear, and a dagger.

  “We’re going to pretend we have you two in custody,” Batanya explained to Amelia and Narcissus, who had pulled on his clothes. “If we herd you ahead of us, that’s a good way for Narcissus to guide us to our client without it being obvious we don’t know the way.” Amelia nodded. She was so anxious to leave the jail that she couldn’t form words.