City Infernal

by Edward Lee

  “All right, you’re on,” Roy cracked.

  “Watch this,” Via said, and sucked a little more blood off Cassie’s hand.

  The cue ball was off when Roy made his shot—

  “Damn!”

  —but when it nicked the seven ball, Via invisibly flicked it in the pocket with her finger.

  The bar cheered uproariously.

  Roy’s brow rose in disbelief.

  “Fucker lucked out,” Chester grumbled.

  “Rack ’em,” Roy said, but then he noticed Cassie waving at him. “Well, hey there, Cassie,” he said, and came over.

  “Nice shot,” Cassie said.

  Roy leaned over, whispered, “He was right, I lucked out. Lemme get‘cha a beer—oh, that’s right, you don’t drink. How ’bout a Coke?”

  “Sure, Roy. Thanks.”

  “So what brings ya to this dump?”

  “I came to see you,” she said. “I want to ask you something—”

  “Hey, Roy!” Chester interrupted. “Who’s that jailbait litle piece’a tush you got sittin’ with ya there? Your sister?”

  “Just ignore him,” Roy said. “He’s the biggest asshole in town.”

  Cassie believed it, but then Chester continued to goad, “Hey, Roy? How many women you get with that stump? Bet it wiggles while you’re humpin’, huh?”

  “Shut up, Chester.”

  “Well, shee-it, Roy, ya know what? I ain’t payin’ ya your money. Guess you’ll just have to kick my ass for it. Got the balls, Stumpy?”

  Cassie felt bad for him. “Don’t fight him. It’s not worth it.”

  “I ain’t no coward, but—”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Hey, Roy?” Chester kept on, and this time he gave Roy a shove on his stool. “Why don’t you just go on home now and take yer stump with ya. I’ll give that little yellow-haired city ditz the kind of lovin’ she really needs.”

  “That’s it,” Roy said and got up.

  Oh, shit, Cassie thought.

  The two men began to fight, Roy at a distinct disadvantage. For each blow Roy landed with his single fist, two harder blows were returned. The bar crowd gathered around, hooting.

  Roy was getting pummeled fast.

  “Watch this,” Via repeated, and this time it was Hush who licked some blood off Cassie’s hand.

  Roy’s face was already bloodied, but when he threw a feeble punch, Hush poked Chester in the eye at the same time.

  “Oooow! You fucker!”

  Then Roy landed another blow, and Hush simultaneously kicked Chester in the solar plexus. He toppled over.

  “Damn,” Roy murmured.

  “Why you one-armed son of a whore!” Chester roared. He got up and lunged forward.

  Now Hush stood on the pool table, grinning. Roy’s fist shot out once again, connected, and then Hush rammed her bootsole right against Chester’s face as hard as she could. He crashed against a table and fell over.

  “She’s a violent little thing, isn’t she?” Via said, grinning wickedly..

  The crowd was cheering.

  “Fuck this shit, man,” Chester babbled when he picked himself up. Both eyes were black, and his nose was broken. When he stumbled clumsily out of the bar, Hush gave him a final invisible kick behind the knee and sent him sprawling face-first into the gravel parking lot.

  “About time someone gave Chester a whuppin’!” somebody shouted. Now several of the girls were smiling at Roy.

  “Damn,” he said when he came back to his stool. “Guess I don’t know my own strength.”

  Via and Hush were laughing like hyenas.

  “I don’t think that guy’ll be hassling you anymore,” Cassie suggested.

  Once the bar settled back down, she continued, “I wanted to ask you something. Remember the other day, you were telling me about Fenton Blackwell?”

  “Sure,” Roy said. “And I wasn’t jivin’ you when I said I seen his ghost in your house.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Ya-ya do?”

  “Yeah, and I need to ask you a favor.”

  Roy shrugged and sipped his beer. “Sure.”

  Cassie whispered her request in his ear.

  Roy pulled back and glared at her with unbelieving eyes. “You want me to help you do WHAT?”

  (III)

  Nevertheless, Roy agreed to Cassie’s request.

  “I done some dumbass things for women in my time but this takes the whole damn cake,” he said when they were driving off in his pickup truck. Cassie didn’t feel too good about using his obvious crush on her to get something, but what else could she do? Via and Hush sat in the truck’s back bed, along with the shovel Cassie had brought.

  “I really appreciate this, Roy.”

  Roy seemed dumbfounded. “So you’re ... what? You’re into satanism?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that. I just want to see the grave. Show me where the grave is, and you can leave.”

  “You want me to leave you alone in a friggin’ graveyard goin’ on one in the morning?”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about it.”

  Roy just shook his head as he drove.

  As it turned out, Fenton Blackwell had been publicly hanged in the town square and then buried at the tiny cemetery near the house. Even though the stone was unmarked, Roy knew exactly where it was and even said it was easy to find. But he seemed understandably troubled as he drove on.

  Back up towards the house, he pulled around on the other side of the hill. Sure enough, right there and drenched in moonlight, was a small graveyard surrounded by a weedy iron fence.

  The truck stopped, idling.

  Look, Cassie, this is a mite weird,“Roy said. ”You ask me to take you to a graveyard and you throw a shovel in the back of my truck. Please tell me you’re not fixing to—”

  “I have to dig up his bones,” she said.

  Roy closed his eyes, thinking, tweaking the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. “Whatever this shit is you’re into, it just ain’t right. I don’t want no part in diggin’ up graves...

  But then he sat bolt upright, suddenly staring out.

  That’s when Cassie noticed that Via, standing at the open driver’s window, had blown something gritty into the cab. She was holding the little pouch she kept on her belt.

  “It’s Dermot the Love-Spot dust,” she said. “It causes an enchantment spell. He won’t remember anything, and he’ll do whatever you want.”

  Okay, Cassie thought. “Roy, show us where Blackwell’s grave is.”

  “Right over yonder.”

  He sluggishly got out of the truck and led them across the cemetery. Cassie dragged the shovel along.

  The dust had somewhat zombified him; he walked slowly, trodding forward. “Right here,” he eventually said, and pointed down.

  The moonlight revealed the small blank stone. Someone had painted SATANIST! on it in red.

  “Here goes nothing,” Cassie gave in. She stepped forward and began digging into the soil. She grunted at the effort and toiled for several minutes but barely made a dent in the stony earth.

  “This is hard as shit!” she complained.

  “Tell Roy to do it,” Via suggested.

  “He’s only got one arm! He can’t dig a grave!”

  But then they all looked aside. Roy wasn’t to be seen. “Where did he go?” Via wondered.

  “Probably back to his truck!” Cassie fretted. “He’s probably going to drive back to town to get the police!”

  “Relax. The enchantment spell will last for hours.” But Via looked back at the truck just in case.

  Roy wasn’t there either.

  The three of them jolted when a sudden loud chugging sound rang out in the cemetery. “What the hell—” It sounded like a tractor or something, and then a pair of lights flashed and around came Roy.

  He was sitting on top of a mobile trencher whose stout chainsawlike blade was pointed in the air.

  “A grave-digging m
achine!” Via exclaimed.

  Roy drove the trencher right up to the grave plot, then worked a lever which lowered the digging blade into the soil.

  “Stand aside, ya‘ll,” he said. “Grave-diggin’ ain’t no work for a pretty gal to be doin’. Not while I’m around.”

  The engine groaned as the blade cut into the ground and began to tear up the soil.

  This wouldn’t take long at all.

  (IV)

  “So. We’ve got the bones. Now what? We go back through the Rive, back to the depot, take the train back to Pogrom Park, then find this Commission of Judicial Torture? Is that right?” Cassie asked rather testily.

  “Right,” Via said. “Simple.”

  “Oh, yeah, that sounds real simple.”

  They were back on the trail behind the house, near the egress point. Cassie hauled along the bones of Fenton Blackwell in a potato sack.

  Jesus, bones are heavier than I thought....

  “The Hand of Glory will still work, won’t it?” she asked.

  “Sure will,” Via assured. Hush held her own severed hand while Via re-lit the fingertips with a match. “Without the Hand of Glory, our gooses would be cooked. We wouldn’t even be able to get back on the train without being spotted. So just relax. We’ll make it to the Commission in no time.”

  The words reassured Cassie. The sooner they rescued Lissa, the better.

  “One minor problem, though,” Via said. “Your Reckoning Elixir has long since worn off, and we won’t have time to get any more. Hope you don’t mind, but you’ll just have to rough it.”

  That’s just dandy, Cassie thought, her stomach already queasy just from the idea. She was grateful she hadn’t eaten anything in a while.

  “Let’s go.”

  Entering and exiting the Rive was something she was almost used to by now, as though crossing the threshold between two worlds were matter-of-fact. It was past two in the morning, but she knew that time would stop for her again, and in the Deadpass too, when she stepped in.

  The world turned black, then she was staring up at the strange maroon sky. She tried to formulate a plan, some tactic or strategy to follow. “Shouldn’t we be thinking about how we’re going to pull this off?” she suggested when Via and Hush came through behind her. “We’re not going to be able to just waltz into the Commission’s prison, find Lissa, and waltz back out.”

  “Sure we will,” Via disagreed. They began walking down the smoking trail. “And I’ll tell you how. With this—” she held up the Hand of Glory—“and with that,” and then she pointed to the sack of bones that Cassie was carrying.

  “You mean we buy our way in?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. This isn’t like the fish bones.”

  “But I thought bones were money.”

  “The bones in that potato sack are worth a lot more than money. They’re an incredible Power Relic. Just wait. You’ll see.”

  So far Via had pretty much been right about everything. But perhaps these jaunts into Hell were turning Cassie pessimistic.

  The whole thing almost sounds too easy.

  Via raised the severed hand as they emerged from pestilent forest. But then she stopped. She was sniffing the air.

  Hush was sniffing the air, too.

  “You smell something?” Via asked.

  Hush nodded, and then Cassie also smelled it. “Smells like leaves burning somewhere,” she said. “Something like that.”

  But Via looked far more grim. “Hush, are we smelling what I think we’re smelling?”

  Another nod from Hush.

  Cassie was annoyingly confused. “What? What is it?”

  “It’s Serroroot,” Via said. “Shit. Someone’s initiating an Expossen Rite.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Via sighed. “It means we’re not invisible anymore.”

  “What!” Cassie exclaimed.

  “It’s the only ritual in Hell that could counter a Hand of Glory.”

  Cassie was outraged, but then she put two and two together. “Then that must mean that the Constabulary—”

  “Is waiting for us,” Via finished.

  Hush pointed frantically beyond the low branches, to the wasteland that stood between them and the train depot.

  At least a thousand demons were waiting for them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  (I)

  They ran panicked back up the trail.

  “I thought you said they wouldn’t be here when we came back!” Cassie shouted.

  “Well I guess I was fucking wrong!” Via shouted back.

  It went without saying, though: their only option now was to abandon everything and go back through the Rive, to the safety of the Deadpass.

  “Goddamn Xeke must’ve told them where the Rive is!” Via complained further. “It’s the only way they’d know!”

  But then—

  “SHIT!” Cassie yelled. They all stopped cold on the trail. “What in God’s name is THAT?”

  “Flamma-Troopers!” Via yelled. “Duck!”

  An orb of fire the size of a beach ball rocketed toward them. Via ducked just in time to avoid being struck in the face. The fireball exploded against a stout tree and burnt it to a pile of ashes in seconds.

  As the three of them crouched in a gully, Cassie looked closely at the two things standing less than fifty feet ahead of them.

  Their human heads sported horns, but they walked on three legs and had no arms. They wore shiny slate-gray uniforms which were crisscrossed by heavy black straps. On either side, hooked to the straps, were dull metal tanks, like scuba tanks, and tubes from the tanks led up under their jaws.

  “They’re Hybrids,” Via said in a rush. “A type of Terrademon that they make for Lucifer’s special forces. They vomit fire....”

  Another flaming orb crackled down the trail. Cassie could feel its intense heat as it passed only a foot over their heads.

  “Jesus! They’re blocking the trail! We can’t get back to the Rive!”

  “No duh,” Via said.

  Now the two unearthly figures were coming down the trail. One’s scorched voice ordered, “Etheress! Come out and your friends will be spared.”

  The other: “But if you don’t, our orders are to incinerate you all.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Via whispered. “They need to take you alive. But me and Hush ...”

  When Cassie projected at them, another fireball intervened, and Cassie’s most violent thought was stopped in its tracks and burned up. “I can’t get to them!” she shrieked in frustration.

  One of the Troopers took a deep breath, leaned back and opened his mouth. But just as he would belch another fireball—

  “Who’s that?” Cassie exclaimed.

  Two knights in coal-black armor jumped down from the trees. The first Flamma-Trooper’s head was promptly covered by an iron pot at the same moment it would vomit its next fireball.

  The Trooper exploded into flame.

  The second one was beheaded with a single blur of a black knight’s sword.

  “Get behind us, Holy One.”

  “Huh?” Cassie replied.

  “That means you,” Via chuckled. They walked around behind the knights. “They just saved our asses. They’re soldiers with the Contumacy....”

  Cassie watched in relief. The two knights affixed a strange iron pipe to the beheaded Flamma-Troopers stump—a make-shift cannon. One knight held the limp body out straight while the other injected something with a syringe.

  “We’re ready, Holy One!”

  A plume of fire shot from the pipe, stretching a half mile all the way down the hill. The flame splattered like napalm across the first row of demons. It was like hosing them down with fire.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Via said.

  Cassie looked down the hill and saw the figures thrashing in the flames. Black smoke rose in the air. Dozens had just been burned alive.

  But there’s a whole army of them down there, Cassie realized.

 
The front lines were regrouping quickly. A demon on some horse-like beast raised a sword and yelled, “Charge!”

  And now the army was trotting up the hill.

  The pair of black knights drew their swords. One said to Cassie, “Our eternal duty is to protect you, oh holiest Etheress.”

  The gesture was flattering, but Cassie yelled, “You’re just two guys! There’s a whole friggin’ army of demons coming for us!”

  “I think they just might have something up their sleeves,” Via suggested.

  Then came the queer sounds. Cassie had heard them before. Bizarre popping sounds followed by a loud:

  Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

  Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

  Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

  Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

  Nectoports, Cassie remembered.

  Four of the strange green blobs of light appeared on the field, two ahead of them and two more behind the demonic army. The blobs grew, tinting much of the field in their eerie, throbbing green. Then the churning channels formed.

  When she’d witnessed this phenomenon the first time, it had been regiments of Lucifer’s Mutilation Squads who had rushed out of the channels.

  This time, though, it was regiments of the black-armored rebels.

  “Talk about front row seats,” Via remarked.

  Cassie just stared at the spectacle.

  “It’s the Contumacy,” Via said. “The same rebel forces we saw tearing up the Mephisto District on TV.”

  “We have allies, in other words.”

  “Yep. The Satan Park Contumacy is the biggest revolutionary force in Hell. Their army is half a million strong.”

  “We’re much larger than that now,” the lead knight corrected. “Three to four million.” He pointed his huge sword downfield. “Behold the wonder of Ezoriel....”

  Cassie doubted that wonder was the best word to describe what came next. In only a matter of minutes, the army of a thousand demons was completely surrounded by the rebel soldiers, and what followed looked more like a threshing operation. Demons were mown down like wheat by the whir of insurgent blades. The screams alone sounded like a coming earthquake.

  In the end, the vast circle of black knights joined lines completely, having butchered everything in their way.