King of Hell (The Shadow Saga)

by Christopher Golden

  "Where the fuck is this?" Squire asked, an edge of panic in his voice.

  Octavian breathed deeply of the blast-furnace air, so familiar to him. This whole scene had been branded into his mind. He had spent lifetimes with this vista the only thing his eyes could see.

  "The surface," he replied.

  Squire punched him in the arm and Octavian flinched and turned to glare at him.

  "Did you just say the surface?" Squire demanded. "The goddamn surface?"

  "We passed through the nexus. There are several fixed locations it could have taken us, but this was our destination, so yes, we're on the surface."

  "Of Hell. The surface of Hell." Squire glanced around and then up at the tiny, white pinpricks of stars. "Hell is a fucking planet?"

  "What did you think?" Octavian asked.

  "It's the underworld, dumbass. I thought it was under!"

  "And it is. Under this," Octavian said, spreading his arms wide. "Did you think it was under Cleveland?"

  Squire shrugged. "Kind of."

  "Look, you've got to get your shit together. I need —"

  "Blahblahblah your needs. Yeah, all right. Hell is a planet. Got it. Keep walking, because at some point I'm gonna have to take a piss and I'd rather do it somewhere I won't get my dick burnt off."

  "You might want to take care of that now," Octavian said. "It's a long walk."

  Squire grumbled but made no effort to find some privacy. Octavian took that as a sign that they should move on and started walking, and after a moment Squire fell in beside him. They struck out for a mountain ridge far in the distance, where flames shot high into the air from crevices throughout the mountains — so much fire that it looked as if the sun were rising beyond the mountains. But no sun ever rose on the fire plains of Hell. Octavian had spent centuries imprisoned amidst that burning twilight.

  Pa-Bil-Sag, one of the most putrid of the Lords of Hell, had bartered his location with Meaghan and Lazarus all those years ago, but the demon was not his friend. Octavian knew if he encountered Lord Pa-Bil-Sag here, he would have to strike first and swiftly, kill the disgusting bloated monstrosity before Pa-Bil-Sag had the chance to kill him. When he had contemplated which among the Lords of Hell might have sent Cortez — which might have ascended to such power that he or she would dare launch a full-scale invasion of Earth — he had not considered Pa-Bil-Sag. The bloat was too self-indulgent, too focused on his own immediate pleasure to bother with ambition. But as he considered it again, Octavian realized he could not judge so quickly. Much time had passed in Hell since he had last walked these plains. Anything was possible.

  Hours passed. They drank what little water Squire had brought along, but their bodies did not seem to require the same sustenance that they would in another dimension. Whatever field of magic kept them from burning up in the atmosphere and allowed the damned underground to be tormented over and over, to die again and again, sustained them. They passed over vast areas where the sandy surface had been scorched with such heat that it had turned to glass.

  Only when they had already passed by did Octavian realize they had gone beyond the gate to the glass city. The gate, it appeared, had been destroyed. Only a broken tower that had once been part of the frame remained, and even that had been scoured away by the wind and sand. Whatever power had once claimed this place for itself had long since abandoned it and any responsibility for its upkeep.

  On the outskirts of the glass city, the spires and buildings were little better off than its gate. Shattered spires lay in pieces, half-buried in the sand. Structures that might once have been lived in — though not in Octavian's time — had collapsed and begun to return to the desert plain of Hell's surface.

  As they walked, however, they discovered that much of the vast city remained, abandoned but still intact. Some of the glass buildings seemed modeled after those in the human world, with turrets and balconies and dormers, but others were completely alien to the sort of design that might be found on Earth. Octavian believed these had been inspired by the civilizations on other worlds — other realms where societies existed in fear of demons and damnation. But they were perversions of actual homes, because these housed only the Suffering.

  The spires were the one constant in the city, rising up like towering glass knives. Some of the spires were part of the design of other buildings, but most seemed to have no other purpose but to stab at the sky.

  "It's a ghost town on the planet Hell," Squire muttered as they walked. "Yeah, I'm not gonna have nightmares about this."

  Octavian wished he could have smiled, but he simply couldn't bring himself to do it. They walked on for another hour and soon drew close to the burning mountains. The structures became rarer while the spires became more plentiful, until it was like striding through a forest of glass.

  "Here," he said. "It was near here."

  Squire sighed. "Better be. I've had burning cinders in my boot for the past half hour. I need to sit."

  "Soon," Octavian promised.

  "I don't see a prison," Squire observed.

  Octavian laughed without humor. "It wasn't that kind of prison. The spires . . . in the heart of the glass city they're mostly decorative. Out here on the fringe, near the mountains, they serve a different purpose. Some of the spires you see . . . they were the prisons, glass cages where the damned and other captives might be encased for eons, unable to do anything but think."

  "I'd go out of my mind," Squire said.

  "Madness the only rational result," Octavian said. He expected Squire to ask how he had remained sane, but the hobgoblin said nothing more as he glanced around, contemplating the spires. The truth was, Octavian had gone mad in the end. Meaghan had brought him back from that.

  Meaghan, who was dead now. Far too many of the people he'd loved were dead. He did not intend to lose any more.

  "Are there . . ." Squire began. "Christ's sake, there are people in there."

  The hobgoblin had stopped to stare through the glass wall of one of the larger spires. Closer up it was easy to see that the reddish tint of the glass did not come solely from the reflection of the fires. Octavian knew what caused the red tint, but nothing would be gained by explaining it to Squire.

  "Don't stare," Octavian said. "It's torment to them, knowing we're out here and can do nothing to help them. Better to just walk on."

  Inside the glass, frozen in place, were two women and a man. They seemed to have been caught unaware, paralyzed in the midst of a moment out of their lives — but a terrible moment, for each of them seemed to be screaming. They had bright red skin and wide eyes and they were trapped in the glass like flies in amber.

  "You mean they're alive?" Squire asked.

  "Not quite. Like the rest of the Suffering, their physical bodies are dead. As best I could ever work it out, these are manifestations of some sort."

  "But they can feel pain? And they know we're here?"

  "Yes. So let's move on. There's nothing you can do to help them."

  "Screw that," Squire said, pulling out his axe. He began to hack away at the glass, but the blade only skittered aside with every blow, unable to make so much as a crack. After a moment he began to beat at the glass with his free hand and then swore, yanking his hand back and staring at the terrible burn that had been seared into his skin.

  Octavian put a hand on his shoulder. "There are billions of Suffering here. Trillions. More than that, I'm sure, from a hundred civilizations."

  "But they're . . ." Squire said, staring at his hand as the meaning of the burn on his wrinkled flesh became clear. "Son of a bitch, Pete, they're burning in there. The glass must be searing their skin constantly."

  A ripple of anger went through Octavian. He dropped to one knee and spun Squire around to face him, stared into the little man's yellow eyes.

  "Listen to me. You, my friend, are in Hell. There is nothing here but suffering. I'm sorry that I needed you to bring me here and I appreciate your help, but if you expect either of us to get out of here
, you've got to get it together."

  Squire scowled at him, baring his little shark teeth, but then he faltered and his leathery, misshapen face crumpled with emotion. For a second, Octavian thought he might actually cry — not for himself but for the Suffering — and then Squire took a deep breath and nodded.

  "Go on," he said.

  And so they walked. The fire that engulfed the mountains grew louder as they approached, and the ash fell softly from the sky like a fine snowfall. Ash had accumulated so that soon they were walking through low drifts of it. Octavian recognized their surroundings all too well, now. Years had passed, but he could have found his former prison with his eyes closed. Nearer to the mountain than any of the others, the spire that had once been his cage climbed so high into the darkness that they could not see its tip.

  As they walked toward it, Octavian picked up his pace, for within the reddish glass of the spire he could see the silhouette of a person. One of the Suffering. A prisoner of Hell.

  "Who is it?" Squire asked, hurrying to keep up. "Is it Lazarus?"

  Octavian stood inches from the hot glass and stared inside, trying to make sense of what he saw.

  "Not really how I imagined Lazarus would look," Squire muttered.

  "That's because it's not Lazarus."

  "No shit, really?" Squire said, unable to rein in his sarcasm, even here. "You know her, though. I can tell by the way you're gawking at her."

  Octavian did know her. They had been friends and allies once, blood-children of the same vampiric sire, Karl von Reinman. And, later, they had loved the same woman . . . the woman who had dragged her into Hell along with Lazarus to try to bring Peter Octavian back to Earth. She had died in the attempt, or at least that was what Octavian had always believed. But then, this was Hell, where one could die again and again and again, in order to suffer.

  "Her name is Alexandra Nueva," Octavian said. "In all the ways that matter to me now . . . she's my sister."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hell

  Octavian and Squire took turns carving away at Alexandra's glass prison. It had taken Meaghan and Lazarus weeks to chip through the crystal spire in order to release him, but they hadn't had weapons forged by a hobgoblin weaponsmith. Both edges of the sword Squire had given Octavian were sharp enough to shear off whole sections of the spire, but the black edge did it smoothly, with only the lightest resistance.

  As they worked — Octavian with his sword and Squire with the axe that seemed to have become his preferred weapon — Octavian kept stealing glances at Alex's frozen features. He had not seen her in the flesh since before his own time in Hell, and yet he had recognized her immediately. When Karl von Reinman had made new vampires to bring into his coven he had required them to abandon their human names and had rechristened them with names that included numbers, thus Nicephorus Dragases had become Peter Octavian. Whatever Alexandra Nueva's birth name had been, Octavian had never learned it. They had been allies and sometimes even friends, but often they had feuded the way siblings so frequently did. Her rich, deep brown skin might be the furthest thing from his own complexion, but they were family in a way that went far beyond such simplistic definitions, siblings not from birth but rebirth. An entirely different sort of blood relation.

  "She's a beauty," Squire said as they carved away. A huge chunk of crystal calved off and crashed into the thick blanket of ashes to the hobgoblin's right. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume she's single."

  Octavian took his turn, brought the sword down and whittled off a six inch section near her abdomen.

  "Not funny," he said.

  "It's a little funny."

  "You keep saying that, which suggests to me that you actually believe it. You're like the girl with the horrible voice who sings the loudest at parties because her mommy always told her she sang like an angel."

  "Now who thinks he's funny?"

  Squire hacked off another chunk of glass. They had come within a foot of Alex's chest. Her arms hung at her sides as if she were unconscious when she had been pushed into the malleable, still-cooling crystal spire. Octavian studied her perfect features, her chocolate skin, and the serenity of her expression and he faltered.

  "No, no," he said, and he brought the sword down hard, cleaving another shard away, this time close to her face. "Don't fucking do this."

  "Who are you —" Squire began.

  "Look at her," Octavian said. He let the sword rest at his side, point against the ground, and gestured at Alex. "She burns inside, you understand? Alexandra Nueva's one of the most intense creatures I've ever met. She can be a cruel bitch or a savage ally, but she's fierce. She'd have fought this, but look at her face. Even demons could not imprison her here without her fighting back, but she looks so damn peaceful."

  "Last I checked, vampires from your world were molecular shapeshifters," Squire said. "The only way to kill them is to destroy them completely, or convince them they're dead."

  Exhaling, Octavian nodded. "Normally that's true. But this is Hell. Even I'm not sure what's possible here."

  "Look, it's much more likely that she was just unconscious when they put her in there," Squire said. "They do torture people, if you'd forgotten."

  Octavian sneered angrily at him and Squire held up a hand in surrender.

  "I know, I know. I'm not funny," the hobgoblin said. "All I'm saying is, if she's dead, she's no worse off than you thought she was when we got here. We trekked over here looking for Lazarus and we found your sister instead. Let's just get her cute little ass out of there and we'll see what's what."

  Ignoring him, Octavian stared at Alex through the jagged crystal. Can you hear me? But of course she could not. Shadows who shared the same sire could communicate with their minds, read each other's thoughts, but he hadn't been a vampire in a very long time.

  Squire hefted his axe.

  Octavian held up a hand to stop him. "We've done enough. We're almost through to her flesh, but there's a faster way to finish this. The way I got out of here."

  Sheathing his sword, Octavian drew a dagger Squire had given him and began chipping away at the glass around Alex's face as if it were a block of ice. It took several minutes — during which Squire winced several times and admonished him to be careful and work more slowly — but at last he cracked a bit of the crystal away from her left cheek. Emotion well up within him, the pain of a sentiment he had not allowed himself to feel since before he'd discovered Nikki had been murdered. Yes, he believed Allison and Kuromaku and the others were still alive somewhere in Hell, but no living creature had known him as long as Alex had. No one could understand the road he had traveled the way she could.

  Sister, he thought again. The word had never had so much meaning.

  He poked the pad of his left index finger with the point of the dagger, just enough to draw several beads of blood.

  "Alex," he said. "Time to wake up. If you're alive in there, I need you to open your eyes." He pushed his finger through the hole in the glass and smeared his own blood on her cheek. "Come on, now. You're not alone anymore."

  Nothing happened. He prodded her flesh and found it soft and yielding, scalded by the superheated glass but otherwise unharmed.

  Octavian slammed his hand against her crystal prison. "Alex, come on! Wake up! I need you!"

  He struck the spire again and again, until Squire put a hand on his arm.

  "Pete, step back a second. Let me take a few more whacks at it and we can pull her right out. It might help if —"

  Alex opened her eyes. They were bright red, wide with fury or madness or both, and Octavian felt sure that if she could have opened her mouth she would have screamed.

  "Mist," he told her. "You can get yourself out. Just shift and you can . . ."

  Alexandra Nueva did not need his instructions. She disincorporated, transforming herself from flesh to white mist, and poured herself out as if that crystal spire had simple exhaled her. The mist fled the hollow inside the spire and began to coalesce, but the inc
orporation seemed sluggish, as if her consciousness had trouble remembering what she was supposed to look like, how to sculpt herself anew.

  "Alex, focus!" Octavian snapped. "You're Alexandra Nueva, blood-daughter to Karl von Reinman, one of the Defiant Ones. You know who you are!"

  It took several seconds longer, but the mist took on solidity and at last Alexandra Nueva stood naked before them, head hung as she stared at the thick layer of ashes underfoot.

  "Oh, my," Squire said, entranced by her nudity.

  Octavian took a step toward her. "Alex, it's me, Peter. Do you know me? Do you remember yourself?"

  She snapped her head up, red eyes locked on him, and she began to tremble as her jaws opened wide and her fangs grew long. With a ravenous snarl, she lunged at him. Octavian shouted at her to stop as he brought the dagger up to defend himself. Her claws raked through his jacket and slashed his shoulder even as he buried the blade between her breasts. Alex roared with pain and staggered backward, almost feral in her rage and hunger.

  "Goddamn it, Alex, listen to me!" Octavian shouted. "It's Peter!"

  Her blood-red eyes locked on him again, but this time the madness had receded and a fierce intelligence glittered therein. She glanced down at the dagger jutting from her chest and then she turned to mist again. The blade fell into the ashes with a whisper and then she reformed in front of him, lashed out and grabbed him by the throat . . . lifted him off the ground so that he began to choke.

  Fangs bared, she shoved her face toward his so that they were eye to eye.

  "I know exactly who you are," she said. "You're the motherfucker who got my girlfriend killed."

  Which was when Squire buried his axe in the back of her head.

  She screamed and reeled away, crashing into the shattered face of her crystal prison. With a roar, she ripped the axe from her skull and turned on Squire, ready to cleave him in two with his own weapon even as the wound he'd made knitted itself closed.