by Edward Lee
Then Cassie ripped out a scream of her own.
The little head that emerged was no baby’s—at least not a human baby’s. It was gray and squashed, with nubs at the forehead like precursory horns. When the new-born mouth opened, Cassie saw that it was full of fangs. Blood-red eyes looked right at her.
Then the infant began to bark.
Cassie’s own screams followed her back into their cabin. Seeing the head had been more than enough—when the rest came out, she definitely didn’t want to be there.
“It wasn’t a baby, Cassie,” Via told her.
Then, Xeke: “Humans can’t reproduce here; nothing human can ever be born in Hell. What you saw in there was just a hybrid.”
“She probably got raped by a Gargoyle or a City-Imp.”
“The thing in that cabin doesn’t have a soul,” Xeke finished, as if that made it all okay.
Next came the squalling, a hot burst of infantile need, but soon the squalls seemed to taper off into a fastidious wet clicking sound—like an animal eating sloppily at a trough.
“First it’ll suck all the blood out of the umbilical cord,” Via informed, “then it’ll eat the afterbirth.”
“And then,” Xeke furthered, “it’ll start to nurse—”
Cassie bolted, threw open the cabin window, and began vomiting.
Xeke raised a brow toward Via. “Looks like this is gonna be a long ride....”
PART TWO
THE MEPHISTOPOLIS
Chapter Seven
(I)
Cassie’s revulsion overpowered her, but even in spite of it, she could not suppress periodic glances out the window. Past the wastelands, she soon saw strange acres of farmland where slaves cultivated noxious crops; and ranches pocked with what could only be slaughterhouses processing Hell-born livestock that were better left undescribed. The train clattered over only one bridge—a high suspension bridge—which spanned a mile-wide river the color of bilge.
“Styx,” Via told her. “It surrounds the city,” and then Xeke charmingly added, “All the city’s run-off, waste, garbage, and sewage empty into it. Waste is our biggest resource, even bigger than sulphur.”
The visions thinned Cassie’s breath. Watercraft of manifold sizes—from canoes to barges—roamed along the river’s surface of steaming muck. Fishermen hauled in nets teeming with hideous creatures that would later find their way to market; crab traps were hoisted aboard, yet the crustaceous things they contained could hardly be called crabs. Body parts, innards, and various human and not-so-human organs floated atop the unspeakable river, and these too were harvested with zeal.
The next sight jolted Cassie: a fanged serpent at least a hundred feet long serenely rose to the surface and swallowed a dinghy whole. Moments later, Cassie’s guts clenched as she glimpsed another serpent prowling just below the watertop—only this one was at least a thousand feet long.
“She’s not holding up very well,” Via observed.
Xeke concurred. “You can get off at Pogrom Park; it’s the first stop on the line. You won’t have to wait very long before the next train. It’ll take you back to the station, and you can go home.”
“Go back to my house alone?” Cassie objected.
“Hush’ll take you. But Via and I have to get into the city. We have to get food. We haven’t eaten in a while.”
“I’ve got food at my house,” Cassie blurted. “I’ll give you all you want.”
“We can only eat the food in this world, Cassie,” Via explained.
I have to go back, Cassie realized. Her nauseousness was only multiplying; she couldn’t take much more. Then she nearly vomited again when she inadvertently took another glance out the window, and saw swollen corpses hanging from the bridge’s suspension cables. Liquefied rot ran off of them in thick dribbles, yet the corpses still moved with life.
Oh, Jesus, yes! I’ve got to go back!
But then—
Then I’ll never stand a chance of finding Lissa....
The consideration turned over in her mind. “I don’t want to go back,” she eventually roused her courage and told them. “I want to go to the city.”
“That’s a good girl,” Xeke said. “And you know what? I’ve got a great idea.”
Cassie didn’t have time to ask what it was before she heard the conductor’s voice: “Approaching city limits. First stop Pogrom Park, walking distance to the J. P. Kennedy Ghettoblock, the Bathym Memorial, and our own beautiful Riverwalk. Connections to the City Center Nexus, Panzuzu Avenue, Athanor Hill, and the brand-new Baalzephon Mall for all your shopping needs.”
“This is us,” Xeke said.
Cassie squeezed Hush’s hand as she forced herself to look on. They were fast approaching the Mephistopolis now, the city’s northernmost outskirt: smoke-misted skyscrapers along an endless straight line. In between the buildings, Cassie could see an urban labyrinth that might as well have existed ad infinitum.
When the train chugged to a halt, Cassie kept her head bowed as they left the car; she didn’t dare look into the cabin across from them where the woman had just given birth.
Hearing the suckling sounds was enough.
“Ah, I love that great fresh air,” Xeke said when they stepped off the train.
“To be honest,” Via commented, “I really think New-ark was worse.”
The air, indeed, stank. Cassie could swear she felt soot clinging to her sweat and adhering to the inside of her nostrils. However, the dense scarlet sky aside, her first look around once they’d exited the train proved unremarkable—or, at the very least, not as horrid as she’d expected. When they got off the platform, she was looking at something like a public piazza. It had park benches, trees, open stretches of grass, and sidewalks branching out. A large statue, surrounded by a fountain, stood at the piazza’s center. Pedestrians milled about.
The scene, in other words, seemed normal of any large city. But then Cassie took a harder look.
The trees were twisted, deformed; faces seemed imprinted in the pestiferous bark. All of the grass as well as the foliage in the trees was not the expected green but instead sickly off-yellow. Many of the “pedestrians” milling about displayed an array of disfigurements, emaciation, evidence of incalculable destitution; and some weren’t even human. Some were Trolls, some were demons or bizarre hybrids. The “normal” fountain gushed blood, and the statue standing above it was the likeness of Josef Stalin, who’d starved millions of his own people to death because they were Jews.
When Cassie looked down, she saw the “normal” sidewalk, the concrete of which was flecked with bone fragments and teeth.
“Welcome to the Mephistopolis,” Xeke said.
Cassie was at least grateful for her nausea’s distraction. It kept her from concentrating on the details of this new environ. Hush led her along—a petite tour guide in black—behind Via and Xeke. When they passed a row of derelicts begging for money, Xeke joked, “Did we get off in Seattle by mistake?” but the derelicts, sitting in their own rot, were clawed, homed things with amputated legs, dressed in infested rags. From one another they plucked off bugs nesting in the rags, and ate them.
Smoky stenches wafted off the water as they toured the elaborately leveled Riverwalk. It was high, unrailed, and dangerously narrow.
The first thing Cassie saw were a band of devilish children attacking an old man, disemboweling him with a hook. Two of the hideous children threw the old man over the side, while a third ran off with his intestines.
“Broodren,” Xeke explained. “Kind of like teen-age gangs in the Living World—real pains in the ass.”
“There are no human kids here,” Via said, “but we’ve got several dozen different demon races. They reproduce like rabbits. Even the Hierarchals hate them. The Extermination Platoons barely help at all.”
Cassie asked a question, half-gagging: “Why did the one—”
“Run off with the old geezers guts?” Xeke finished. “To sell it to an Anthropomancer or Extipicist. They
read the future by looking at entrails, and send messengers to report the results to Lucifer. Divination is the biggest game in town—it runs the economy. There are countless thousands of Divination Points in the city.”
“Smoke Divination is even bigger,” Via said. “It’s supposedly more accurate, and it’s easier to sell small pieces at a time.”
Small ... pieces? Cassie thought. She didn’t ask.
They passed rows of what appeared to be shops: alchemists, palmists, channelers. “Clip joints mostly,” Xeke revealed. “Most of them aren’t legit—except the place we’re going.”
But where were they going?
“No way!” Via complained when they arrived. A sign above the shop read SHANNON’S APOTHECARIES & AMULETS: CASH, TRADE, OR PHLEBOTOMY.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Xeke assured. “I figure a Reckoning Elixir will help Cassie get used to things.”
“But we don’t have any cash,” Via hotly reminded him, “and we’ve got to be very careful with the bones. If you just start throwing those things around, the Constabs’ ll be on to us! They’ll put warrants out!”
“Relax. I’m saving the bones for the money-changer’s,” and before he could say another word, he was walking into the shop.
Via seemed furious; Cassie and Hush followed her in.
A crystal bell chimed, and at once Cassie was surrounded by exotic scents. The simple shop was mostly old, leaning shelves filled with bottles and jars. “Reminds me of one of those hokey voodoo shops in New Orleans,” Cassie said.
“This ain’t no damn voodoo shop,” Via testily replied.
A cheerful young woman stood behind the front counter. Cassie liked her apparel: a diaphanous black silk cloak and hood. The woman—Shannon, she presumed—smiled warmly at them, with deep dark eyes. “Greetings....” Her eyes surveyed Xeke with some approval. “The handsome rogue returns. Didn’t thee trade with me, a wee bit ago?”
“Thee did,” Xeke mocked.
“Of course! A Bergamot Shot, was it not?”
“Yeah, I had a stomach ache.”
“And such a treat it is for the red night to bless me again with thy striking presence. What can Shannon concoct for thee?”
“Shit-can the hokey medieval witch-talk for starters,” Xeke said. “I need a Reckoning Elixir, a good one. not that jive crap they sell to Newcomers on the street.”
“Mmmm.” The smile widened. “For these I have, and for you, I have much, virile stranger—the finest on the Walk.” Her dark eyes thinned on Hush. “Invest to me the short one, to be drained just one-quarter-dry, in return for a full liter flagon of Hell’s most potent Reckoning Elixir.”
“Not a chance,” Xeke said. “I just want one dram, and I’ve got no cash.”
The woman’s next words were stalled when she looked to Cassie, saw the bag she was carrying. “Lo, no cash. What have thee, though, in that sack, grasped so limply by the pretty one so fulgent-haired?”
“Nothing for you. Just give me the dram.”
“Xeke! No!” Via outraged.
“I got plenty,” he dismissed over his shoulder.
The cloaked woman drifted to a shelf, placed a tiny vial on the counter. Cassie, in the meantime, was taking some note of the shop’s disturbing inventory. Opaque bottles with corroded corks, and jars full of murky slop. One jar contained severed demon fingertips, another severed testes. THYMUS JUICE, another jar was labeled, and another: GARGOYLE SWEAT. Cassie ceased her examination when she looked into one jar and saw a face looking back.
Now Shannon smiled openly, showing a pair of delicate fangs.
“Goddamn vampires,” Via complained. “I can’t stand them....”
“So, then, a dram for a dram.” Her voice grew plush. “Or ... we can go in back for a while.”
“Xeke, if you do,” Via challenged jealously, “I’ll punch your friggin’ face in! I’ll never talk to you again, I swear!”
“Dram for a dram,” Xeke replied.
The vampire-woman handed Xeke a pointed stylus of some kind, then raised a tiny silver spoon.
Xeke casually pricked his palm with the stylus. From his fist he squeezed enough drops of his own blood to fill the spoon.
“There, knock yourself out.”
Shannon slowly sucked the blood off the spoon, savoring it. Her face took on an expression of serene ecstacy.
“Thanks,” Xeke said, and took the vial. “Later.”
“Later—yes!” the woman slurred through her bloody smile. “I implore thee, come back soon, handsome one.”
“Go crawl back in your coffin, you fanged bitch!” Via yelled.
Xeke just shook his head. He was turning to leave, but Shannon delicately grabbed the sleeve of his leather jacket. “Come back soon,” she whispered. She lewdly cupped a breast through the black cloak. “I’ll show thee many pleasures ... and you can show me what’s in your pretty friend’s sack.”
“Take your grubby hands off him,” Via yelled some more, “unless you want me to throw your trashy vampire ass right into the river! I’ll chop your head off and stuff garlic down your neck!”
Xeke was clearly embarrassed. He gestured them all toward the door, but something urged Cassie to look back at the vampire one last time.
The woman’s red lips silently mouthed Bye.
Cassie shuddered and left.
“I can’t believe you were flirting with that spooky bitch!” Via griped to Xeke back on the Riverwalk.
“Oh, Jesus. How was I flirting? Can I help it if she digs me? I just played her game a little. She’s the best Elixirist in this part of the city.”
“She’s probably the best head queen too! You’ve been there before—she said so!”
“So what? I go to Elixirists all the time.”
“You fucked her, didn’t you?”
Xeke rolled his eyes. “No, of course not. Jesus, Via. I can’t even look at another girl without you having a fit.”
Cassie interrupted the spat. “So vampires are real?”
“Sure,” Xeke said. “But when they get staked and come to Hell, they’re under an even worse curse—a Conversion Hex. If they bite a human, they turn into pillars of salt. They’re only allowed to drink blood if it’s offered to them.” He uncapped the tiny vial. “Anyway, down the hatch.”
Cassie sniffed ... and nearly retched. “That smells awful! It smells like rotten meat! I’m not going to drink that! ”
“Of course you are,” Xeke said. “Don’t be such a creamcake. Believe me, after you drink that slop, you’ll be glad that you did.”
Hush nodded to give Cassie some assurance. Cassie grimaced and swallowed it. The elixir tasted worse than it smelled, and it slid down her throat like a line of mucus.
But, in another second—
Wait a minute....
She felt completely at ease.
The nausea was gone, and so was the staggering mental trauma inflicted by all she’d seen. Suddenly ... she understood.
“Feel better?” Via asked.
“Yes—wow,” Cassie replied.
“And here comes your first test,” Xeke chided.
A naked woman shuffled along the walk, leaving footprints of pus. “Daemosyphilitus,” Xeke said. “There are sexual diseases in Hell too. It takes over your whole body until you’re just one big walking infection—like her.”
The meaty stench blew off her as she sloshed along. Cassie felt sorry for the woman, but was not repulsed by her at all.
“Hey, and here comes a Gut-Job.”
A haggard man limped along, shirtless. Where his abdomen should be was just a ragged, empty hole—his entire abdominal cavity emptied. Yellow things, like maggots, infested much of the open cavity now.
“Same as that old man we saw get eviscerated by those Broodren,” Via accented. “He was either captured and gutted by a Mancer Squad or he willingly sold his entrails to an Extipicist. People are desperate here just like they are in the Living World.”
Cassie wasn’t repulsed in
the least.
“Good,” Xeke said cheerily. “It worked.” He nudged Via. “See, I told you Shannon made a great Reckoning Elixir. ”
Via cut a hot frown. “She’s a floozy blood-chugging tramp and I’ll bitch-slap her up and down the street if I ever see her checking you out again.”
“Yeah?” Xeke dared. “And what if I check her out?”
“Then I’ll pop your eyeballs out and suck your brain.”
Xeke winked at Cassie. “Fatal attraction—I think she means business. Come on, let’s go. It’s time to give you the twenty-five-cent tour.”
(II)
Her abhorrence cured now, Cassie found the city diversified and fascinating—she also found it structurally awesome when she considered that this district represented only one grain of sand in a megalopic sandbox. She remembered what Xeke had told her of the actual dimensions: over two million square miles. “It’s bigger than most countries in the Living World,” he said as he led the group down the Avenue Des Champs-Blóde. Cassie easily noted the Parisian influence, especially when they walked beneath the massive Arc de Miserius, where corpses of Broodren hung upside-down by iron hooks set in the keystones. These corpses, however, showed no signs of movement, unlike those they’d seen on the Styx Bridge. “Human bodies can’t die here, but pretty much anything Hell-born can,” Via explained. “Trolls, Imps, Broodren—most of the lower species of demons. They aren’t born with souls. Even Grand Dukes can die.”
“So only human souls are immortal here?” Cassie asked.
“Humans,” Xeke answered. “And Fallen Angels. That’s about it.”
“Golems don’t count, because they’re manufactured—they’ re almost impossible to kill but they’re stupid.” Via pointed. “There’s one now.”
The thing stood on a comer, nine feet tall. Its sculpted body of riverbed clay shined wetly in the sulphuric light of a street lamp. It seemed insentient as a statue, until something caught its thumb-holes for eyes, and it turned into an alley.
“Golems are like street cops, the lowest level of the Constabs,” Xeke said. “Spells program them what to look for.”