“Dead,” said Elderflower. “Ah, but you mean her body? Sent to the Garden, Thomas, along with all the flesh of Hell.”
“No,” said Fool urgently, leaning up, ignoring the pain in his belly and chest and arms and legs and head and heart. “No, I need her sent to Morgan. She needs Questioning. Now.”
“Really? If you insist, Thomas. I shall send one of your troops to the Garden to retrieve her before she goes to the flames. Do you have any other orders?”
“No,” said Fool and then, “Yes. The body in the Houska needs to be questioned as well, and I want Morgan to do both, not Tidyman or Hand.”
“As you wish,” said Elderflower. “I shall see to it. Now I shall leave you to rest. Let me leave you with something to read, though, before I go.” Elderflower took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and passed them to Fool. The top one he had seen before, the leaflet that had been thrown from the roof in the Houska yesterday, and the other papers were of similar size. The second one had another crude picture of him on it, and the phrase This man kills demons below it; the next one a different though equally rough picture of him and the phrases He fights for us and Fight with him. The others were similar, variations on the same theme. Looking at them, reading them, Fool felt a new pain grow in him; or rather, an old pain made large and fresh.
“I don’t want this,” he said to Elderflower. “I didn’t ask them. I’m not responsible.”
“The Bureaucracy knows,” said Elderflower. “Trust that it knows, Thomas, because you are still alive to protest your innocence. You did Hell a service yesterday evening, but it appears that Hell’s human inhabitants are also grateful for it. These have been appearing all over Hell, Thomas. You are becoming noticed not simply by those at the top but by those at the bottom as well. You are in the middle, Thomas, and Hell is pivoting around you. These are fascinating times, are they not?”
“I suppose,” said Fool, still uneasy. He let the papers fall to the floor, trying to show Elderflower his disinterest.
“I should go,” said Elderflower. “Unless there’s anything else?”
“Yes,” said Fool after a pause during which he tried to think, to concentrate. “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Any of it. Nothing’s making sense. Like here, this place, the Iomante Hospital. Why?”
“Why what, Thomas?”
“Why is it here? It heals these few Genevieves and Marys but not them all; why not just let them die, replace them from Limbo?”
“Thomas, you’ve become good at observing these past few days; perhaps you should practice your listening skills as well. Adam has already told you. Hell is not a place of no hope, Thomas, but a place where tiny amounts of hope are allowed to flourish. Most Genevieves live short, brutal lives, even by Hell’s standards, get beaten to death or savaged by the passions of their clients, but one or two or ten are brought here and made well. They go back and they tell their friends, if they have any, their fellow Genevieves, about this place, and suddenly there is just the tiniest fragment of hope in a hundred hearts that if they are injured, they might also be saved. This place is the same as the Elevations.
“There is no real charity or goodness, of course. Allowing this place to exist is, for the demonkind, a mere business decision. The Bureaucracy’s reason for allowing it to exist, though, is much more complicated. Look at Drow. A good man? Yes. Will he ever be Elevated? No.”
“Why?”
“Think of the answer yourself, Thomas. Think about what you’ve learned and answer your own question for me.”
“Because,” said Fool after a second’s thought, “that would show people that Elevation was something to earn, would give them not just hope but goals. The hope of Elevation has to remain something random, impossible to see properly, given not to those who earn it but to those with no discernible right to it. Resentment, fear, loathing, and a tiny, flickering light of hope always just out of reach, that is Hell, yes?”
“Of course. The Iomante, the Elevations, those occasional people who seem to achieve some kind of happiness here like your two dead colleagues, these are the things that Hell allows to flourish in tiny, stunted bursts, to make it immeasurably worse for everyone else.”
“Yes,” said Fool. Elderflower had known about Gordie and Summer, despite their creeping and their care. Had he expected otherwise? No. He had hoped it, and at that moment he knew he had hoped to find something similar and he hated Elderflower for exposing that hope to his understanding. He lay back on his bed, looking up at the muslin above him.
“Hell isn’t meant to be easy, or nice, Thomas,” said Elderflower, surprisingly gently. “It’s Hell, it’s meant to be a punishment. We are all of us meant to suffer. We dance to tunes played by those above us, even me, and we hope the dance pleases our masters.”
“Yes,” said Fool again and closed his eyes.
“Tomorrow, Thomas,” said Elderflower, still gentle. “In your uniform. The Elevations begin tomorrow.”
He hadn’t intended to, but Fool must have fallen asleep, because he was woken later by the distant sounds of movement. Doors opened and closed, voices called to each other; somewhere, someone shouted loudly. Fool levered himself up onto his elbow, wincing at the darts of pain that traveled across his shoulders and back.
“It’s just the new shift,” said one of the Genevieves, seeing him look around. “Don’t worry, they’ll quiet down soon. Drow and the others go home and some new ones come. They aren’t as nice as Drow, and they don’t know shit about how to make us better, but they’ll help you get to the toilet if you need it and they bring drinks around sometimes. You’re him, aren’t you? The one who kills demons?”
“Yes,” said Fool, uncomfortably aware of the flyers scattered under his bed and a pressure in his bladder. He sat, very slowly, swinging his legs around and letting them drop over the edge of the bed. He looked down his naked body, seeing the new damage written across his skin. The sickle curves of his hip bones were dark with bruises, and a long graze stretched down his left leg; his right was mottled with scratches and bruised and swollen around the knee. Moving it hurt.
“Swing your legs back and forward,” said the same Genevieve. “You’ll be stiff, you need to loosen your muscles.”
“Thank you,” said Fool, doing as he was told. It ached, but moving did loosen the pain’s grip. “Have you been here long?”
“A few days. I’m nearly ready to get out and go back,” said the young man. “I’m Parry. You’re Fool?”
“I am,” said Fool, and then the screaming started.
At first, Fool thought it was simply another of the Iomante’s occupants; there had been screams at irregular intervals during the hours he had been awake, shouts of pain and fear. This one started low, rose swiftly into a register that sounded as though the screamer’s throat were being torn apart from the inside, and then shut off abruptly. There was a crash and more screams, lots at once, layering on each other. A series of crashes echoed, followed by a noise that sounded like ripping fabric and then a wet, thick, pattering sound.
More screams; a sound that might have been a laugh, made by something that hadn’t gotten the mouth shape to laugh properly and that had only heard laughter described in words before attempting it, another crash, a shout, and then a voice.
“I smell you, Fool,” it called, the words echoing, climbing through the air to lose themselves among the lanterns and ceiling beams. “I smell you!”
The Genevieves in the room with Fool began to scream, their voices joining the cacophony of crashes and screeches and occasional wet gurgles that came into the room from outside. Fool stood, nakedness forgotten, pain forgotten, bladder forgotten, and limped around the bed. There was a doorless cupboard on its far side and his clothes were folded in it. He crouched, throwing the uniform aside quickly, looking for anything else that might be there. Looking for his gun, hoping that someone had picked it up and brought it to him while he slept.
It w
as below the uniform. Someone had cleaned it inexpertly and streaks of mud and Summer’s blood were still ingrained into the seams and thickly welded joints of metal, but it felt good and solid and heavy in his hand. Using the bed as a support, he raised himself to standing and turned to face the door. It was now impossible to tell which screams were coming from outside the room and which were from the Genevieves inside. Some of the young men had climbed out of their beds, were scrabbling for their clothes. One—Parry, he thought—had managed to push his bed toward the door and was shouting at the others to do the same. The lanterns above them were swinging back and forth, creating shifting black and orange shadows through which the pink and brown bodies of the ward’s inhabitants flashed and jittered. More of them were dragging and pushing their beds, upturning them at the door, the frames and mattresses forming an untidy pile. It looked fragile and insubstantial.
Fool raised his gun and pointed it at the barrier and the door beyond, shouting. It took several moments, but eventually most of the Genevieves fell to quietness and he said, “Good. Stay quiet, get behind me. Those who can walk, help those who can’t.” He hoped that whatever it was beyond the door would lose the smell of him, be unable to find him, but he doubted it. As if to confirm his suspicion, the voice came again, like air being forced through mud. “I still smell you, Fool! I know your smell, I know where you are!”
Fool was halfway down the room now, naked, arm outstretched and gun shaking in his hand, some of the young men shuffling behind him. Others were still in their beds, left by the others, and all of them yammered and cried and screamed. Their noise felt like a physical thing, unsettling Fool’s vision and balance with its sheer intensity.
There was another terrible scream from outside, ascending above the others, rising to a pitch that made it impossible to tell whether the screamer was male or female. It ended with a snapping and a sound like drinking and then more of that loose, rumbling laughter.
The door rattled, hard.
“Here we are,” said the voice from outside, almost conversational, and the door crashed in the frame, banging open and then rebounding from the makeshift barrier. Something beyond the door howled in fury and the door crashed open again, this time torn loose from its hinges and driven into the bed frames and mattresses. The barrier shifted violently, tumbling apart in a rattle of metal, and then the speaker was in the room with them.
It had to fold itself through the door, and it tore away more of the frame as it entered, the wood dragged loose from the walls by its broad shoulders. Its torso was huge, barrel-like, the head on it shaggy with tufts of hair and two curling, vicious horns, its eyes glowing furnace red. It was covered in long, greasy hair that stood out from it and danced as it moved.
“Fool!” it cried and then sent an impossibly long limb snaking out to grasp one of the bed-bound patients, and Fool suddenly realized he had seen the thing before, that it had been the huge spiderlike demon in the crowd in Crow Heights. A clawed hand tightened on the boy’s ankle and yanked, dragging him back toward the demon, swinging him so that he struck the metal bed frames before being drawn against the demon’s body. The Genevieve hit the flesh of the torso and his screams suddenly became muffled. There was a terrible, brief sizzle and then he dissolved against the demon’s flesh, the hair wrapping around him and piercing his flesh, drawing on it, some of him crumbling away to nothing and the rest falling to the floor in a thick, splattering stream. The demon roared with laughter and lashed out again, this time taking a Genevieve from the other side of the room.
“Fool,” it cried again as the second Genevieve hit it and sizzled away to nothing, “I’m here for you!” Fool had a moment’s awful clarity, seeing the thing’s body bloated with the dissolved remains of people from the Iomante and wondering whether Drow was in there, and then he fired.
The shot went high, blowing a chunk out from the thin wall behind the demon. It dropped to a crouch and scuttled forward like some huge spider, scattering bed frames and mattresses, and then rose up in front of Fool as his next bullet formed and he fired a second time. This time, the bullet tore into the demon’s belly, releasing a foul odor and a spray of dark, thick liquid that steamed where it hit the floor. The demon lurched sideways, dropped back down into a crouch, and sprang toward Fool. He had a nightmare glimpse of it, limbs outstretched and hair rippling as it arced through the air toward him, its face distorted by pain, and then he dropped and it went over him. He tried to roll but was clumsy with stiffness, instead doing little more than crashing over. Splinters dug into his skin as he twisted around, trying to see where the thing was.
It had landed in front of the knot of Genevieves at the back of the room and carried on toward them, encircling them with its scrawny arms and drawing them in. Fool fired again, not caring what he hit, and the tip of one of the demon’s horns disintegrated into dust and fragments. It yowled, spinning about and down and scuttling again. It rushed toward Fool, its mouth wide in a grin that exposed teeth the size and color of human skulls. Fool loosed another shot and one of the demon’s eyes exploded, the red glow extinguished in a winking mess of flesh and pus. It screamed, shouting Fool’s name as he threw himself sideways and it passed him, one limb missing him by inches.
The demon hit one of the beds, its occupant screaming once before being absorbed into its skin and hair with a noise like fat hissing on a griddle. It thrashed around, tangling itself in a swathe of muslin and the blankets from the bed, coming to an unsteady halt. Its limbs were shorter now, pulled in and trembling, facing Fool. The bullet hadn’t formed in his gun yet. Fool was defenseless, scrambling backward in the hope of buying himself another second. Someone was screaming; it might have been him, he couldn’t tell.
“You come to our home without invite and demand we tell you things,” hissed the demon, “and expect us to simply allow this? You kill our brothers? Challenge the Bar-Igura in their own boardinghouse? You are human, Fool, less than nothing.” It opened its mouth wider. Drool spilled from it, landing on the floor and beginning to smoke.
“Rhakshasas isn’t here to protect you now, human,” it said. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
It sprang.
Fool fired, not at the demon but above it. His bullet tore through the lantern hanging from the ceiling, shattering its glass walls and tearing open the reservoir of oil. Liquid fire rained down onto the demon, soaking into the muslin and thin woolen blankets wrapped around it. The fabric caught the flames and sucked at them hungrily, and by the time the demon hit the floor it was burning brightly, writhing. Fool pulled the trigger again but nothing happened. The demon screeched, jerking spastically across the floor, leaving a trail of guttering flames behind it. Fool managed to stand, fired again, and this time the gun boomed, shooting into the blazing, writhing mass.
“Get out,” he shouted, waving at the young men. They began to run, still screaming; Fool grabbed Parry as he passed and said, “Help the ones in the beds. Now!” Turning back to the demon, he fired again.
Its original shape was gone into the heart of fire now, an uneven black mass at the conflagration’s center. A limb emerged, groped blindly across the floor toward Fool, dug into the wood, and then pulled, dragging the burning demon toward him. Despite the fire, it managed to speak, the voice even more distorted, spitting the words out on balls of flame. “You will die, tiny shit,” it said, “tiny human nothing.”
Fool felt the heat from the burning demon, could still hear screaming from throughout the Iomante, and raised his gun. He pointed it at the demon’s head, now a ball of bright yellow flames out of which a single red eye still gleamed.
“All the demons of Hell will see you dead,” the burning thing said. Its eye swelled and ruptured, its contents immediately becoming steam and evaporating.
“Fuck them,” said Fool and pulled the trigger.
22
At some point, Fool had lost track of time. He had assumed that it was daytime, late afternoon or early evening, but the middle of the night was
a receding memory when he emerged from the burning Iomante, and it had started raining.
Hell’s storms were frequent and vicious, torrential downpours that soaked the streets and created cold tributaries that ran between the buildings and slithered against the bases of walls. It turned the streets to slicks of mud and stones, the water flooding down them. People were swept away by Hell’s storms, caught up by water that carried so much mud and dirt that it was rumored to be like being struck by liquid stone. “Rumors,” he said aloud, not caring who heard him distractedly. “Always rumors.”
The rain fell in huge drops, hitting the ground hard enough to fragment and jump up against the downpour, and Fool’s visibility was reduced to mere feet, breaking down the movement around him to little more than the shift of gray shapes without distinct form. The water caught the light from the fire and held it, a dull orange glimmer; despite the rain’s heaviness, the Iomante burned fiercely. Clouds of steam rose over it as the rain hit the fire, billowing and sizzling up into the night sky and creating ghostlike, featureless faces that peered down on Fool.
He was still naked, sitting on the rough stone curb that marked the edge between the footpath and the roadway, arms wrapped around his legs and head tilted back. Somewhere in the chaos, he had dropped his gun and lost the bandages that had been wrapped around his chest, and the dark bruises and scabs stood out in stark contrast to his pale skin. One of them had cracked and strings of blood ran down over his ribs. Fool’s cheek was sore, stinging when the rain hit it.
Getting out of the Iomante had been a journey of scrambling and heat, dragging terrified Genevieves through thick black smoke that was alive with sparks and licking tongues of fire. As he went, the trail of men and then women following him grew larger as they picked up more and more desperate, terrified patients. Some carried others, some limped, some cried, some screamed, and some were grimly silent.
The demon had caused other fires through the building, knocked other lanterns over in its search for Fool, and the various conflagrations searched for each other as he had searched for an exit. Some doors he opened led into more wards, filled with smoke or fire and cowering people; some opened to flames and heat. Some were so hot when he placed his hand against the wood that he left them shut.
The Devil's Detective Page 21