Queen of Nothing (Marla Mason Book 9)

by T. A. Pratt

“I’ll fly,” Jenny said, rising up in a hazy nimbus of flame.

  “Mmm. Me too.” Genevieve stood on her tiptoes, then levitated further, hovering a few feet off the ground, still holding her tommy gun.

  “That looks like advanced class.” Rondeau slung his gun onto his back—it grew a strap, conveniently—and then clambered onto the back of the chimera. “Yip yip,” he said, and the chimera took flight.

  The sunlit lemon grove vanished rapidly behind them, and the sky went black again. They passed over a burning desert populated by roving packs of monstrous dogs pursuing the damned; Genevieve turned the desert into a sunny beach and the dogs into a pack of gamboling puppies playing in the surf.

  Soon they passed an imperceptible border, and approached stony ditches spanned by rough-hewn rock bridges, the chasms below full of wailing, miserable souls. Immense centipedes—they seemed somehow more in keeping with Skull Island from King Kong than anything from Dante to Marla’s eye—scuttled out of the ditches and rose up as if to attack them. Jenny whooped and blasted the creatures with torrents of fire.

  Rondeau shouted, “I’m not going straight or anything, but Jenny’s pretty hot.”

  “Puns are forbidden in Hell.” Marla guided the chimera with her thoughts, sending it zooming around a skyscraper-sized centipede with mandibles to match. Genevieve floated along behind them, and in her wake the sky turned blue and flowers bloomed in the ditches. Bubbles ranging in size from ping-pong balls to houses floated up from the ditches as she set the dead free from the constraints of the New Death’s grim worldview.

  Soon they left the circle of the fraudulent behind, and landed on the edge of a frozen sea. Marla dismounted and walked to the ice, frowning. There were people trapped beneath the ice, their faces contorted in terror, their eyes moving and alive. Was Daniel here? He’d spent years trapped at the bottom of an actual sea after a disastrous magical mission, unable to escape, and he only survived by stealing the life force of passing sea life. He would have remained under the sea forever, barely subsisting, if a geas hadn’t driven him to return to try and raise Artie Mann from the dead. Would being trapped under water again be peaceful for Daniel, or a nightmare?

  She gestured with her rod, and the ice began to melt. First there were small cracks, then vast ones, and Jenny joined in, burning away ice with delicate streams of fire, almost laser-like, careful not to cause the dead harm. Genevieve took a more direct approach, causing the ice to turn directly into bubbles, freeing the trapped souls. She could overcome the New Death’s vision of reality here with such apparent ease, and while that wasn’t exactly surprising given how easily she could alter even physical reality, it was still damned impressive.

  Rondeau just helped drag people out of the ice when they got sufficiently thawed out, but Marla was sure the people he assisted appreciated it. Each according to his abilities... There was no sign of Daniel, though, even when all the ice was gone and nothing was left but marshy earth drying under Genevieve’s latest sun, and none of the bubbles belonged to him. Marla reached out with her godly senses, trying to find him, but there were whole sections of Hell blocked off to her vision: territory still firmly held by the New Death’s worldview. Daniel must be in one of those areas. She hoped he wasn’t a midnight snack for the devil in the night chair.

  “Aw, poop.” Jenny set a random patch of earth on fire. “No Danny-boy.”

  “It’s a big underworld,” Marla said. “He must be around here somewhere.”

  Rondeau scratched his nose and gazed around thoughtfully. “You know, Marla, Genevieve has thoroughly disrupted four-ninths of the circles of Hell, and the innermost four, at that. Shouldn’t Skully be attacking us with his hellishly host by now?”

  “I did figure he’d take more notice of our arrival,” Marla said. “Maybe he’s lying in wait. Setting an ambush.”

  “Or the others are keeping him busy,” Genevieve said. “I suspect Elsie can be very... distracting.”

  “I wouldn’t wish Elsie Jarrow on my worst enemy,” Rondeau said. “But on Marla’s worse enemy? Yeah. Okay. He deserves her.”

  Marla watched the bubbles of afterlives stream into the sky. “If Skully won’t come to us, we’ll find him. Let’s go to my palace.”

  Unearthly Delights

  Bradley blipped out of the suite and found himself standing, understandably a bit disoriented, on a bridge made of flame-blackened stones, with the vague shape of buildings—mills? factories?—off in the distance, either belching out pollution or simply on fire themselves. A tattered flag bearing no sigil flapped in the brutally hot wind, and the creek flowing beneath the bridge wasn’t water at all, but a feculent mixture of animal waste and blood. The stench was ghastly.

  He looked to the left, and saw indistinct figures howling, waving weapons, and charging toward the bridge. Bradley opted to run to the right, and once he was off the bridge, decide to run away from the smoking, blackened buildings. If they were factories, they were factories generating misery. He looked over his shoulder and saw the eccentrically armored host leading an assault on one of the mills, and knew he’d made the right choice.

  The earth beneath his feet was reddish-brown, like the soil was made of scabs, and when he crested a hill, he looked down on a dizzyingly surreal vista. There were ambulatory, gargantuan body parts—a set of ears the size of monster truck tires with a blade protruding between them, a heart bristling with javelin-sized spines, and skulls the size of buildings, the latter seemingly remnants of malformed giant cattle or horses. There were musical instruments, too, but of ridiculous size, and transformed into instruments of torture: harps with screaming people tangled in their strings, an immense lute with writhing figures bound to its neck, people impaled on flutes sticking up from the ground. There were more human figures than he could count, naked and terrified, some running from spotted catlike beasts, some trying to climb over one another in an effort to escape smoldering pits. He tried not to think of them as people, because if he did, the magnitude of their suffering made him too dizzy to function.

  Some of the bizarre elements, at least, he recognized. He didn’t remember the bridge or the Satanic mills, but maybe they were in the background of the image, overshadowed by the more bizarre foreground. The rest of these horrors were drawn from the right-hand panel of Bosch’s triptych “Garden of Earthly Delights,” depicting twisted symbolic torments of the damn. Far off the distance, he could even make out the figure of a beaked monstrosity perched on a high seat: the devil in the night chair.

  “I had to go and mention Bosch,” he muttered. Though he didn’t think this landscape was his fault. Marla said this place could be shaped according to thoughts, but his vague memory of the painting surely hadn’t been powerful enough to bring about all this. The New Death was just leaning on the old classics, as promised.

  “The strange thing is, Hieronymous Bosch is doubtless in this underworld somewhere.” Pelham emerged from beneath a huge, dusty skull, wiping dust from his suit. “Do you think he’s here, now, horrified by his prescience?”

  “If he is, he’s probably screaming, ‘But it’s an allegory,’” Bradley said. “It’s good to see you. I was afraid I was here all alone.”

  “As was I. I do not know what has become of the others.”

  Bradley looked around, and Elsie was right there, not even ten feet away, with a pickaxe slung across her back on a strap, and a trident with overcomplicated barbs on its tines in her hand. “Gentlemen!” she called. “The unpredictable nature of the terrain in the underworld seems to have separated us from Marla. But, you’re in luck, you’re still in the company of a god, so you might not die immediately.” She sighed. “No offense, but I wish I’d stumbled across the reweaver instead of the actor and the butler. She can probably paint over this old artwork with something all bright and shiny with a wave of her hand, but we’ll have to settle for my personal forte, creative disruption.”

  Elsie gestured with the trident, and a wave of changes rippled across the field
. Some of the humans grew to immense size, and some of the lumbering giant monstrosities shrank. The newly empowered humans struck back at their tormentors, or began to tear apart the engines of their agonies. The devil on the night chair unfurled wings and tried to fly away, but a giant woman swatted it out of the sky, and began to stomp on its body. The scene was no more pleasant than before, and if anything it was more chaotic, but at least now the tormented had a chance to take revenge.

  “Mmm, lovely, lovely,” Elsie said. “Let’s go look for the big bastard boss in charge and step on his neck, what do you say?”

  “Sure.” Bradley frowned. “But which way do we go?”

  “Call up an oracle and see, silly! We’re in Hell, there should be a spirit or two you can summon.”

  “Uh....” Bradley reached out with his senses, and yes, there was a clamor of supernatural forces, all eager to be brought into immanence. He’d never encountered such a crowded field before, but it made sense. He drew on residual supernatural energies, and this place was all supernatural energy. He chose a spirit that seemed small and manageable, and called it up.

  The air thickened and became a goat-headed demon the size of a small child, with the malformed body of a monkey. It looked around. “Huh. I didn’t think I’d ever exist again.”

  Elsie frowned. “Didn’t I eat you?”

  The demon looked up at her, picking its nose unselfconsciously. “Did you used to be a dragon? You bit me, and dissolved me back into chaos, yeah.”

  “Lovely to see you again,” she said. “Where’s the new lord of Hell?”

  “I’ll tell you, but he needs to make me a promise first.” He jabbed his thumb in Bradley’s direction.

  Bradley nodded. “There’s always a price. What do you want?”

  “Tell my dread queen that I served her faithfully, and deserve to be given permanent existence.”

  He shook his head. “I can pass on the message, but I can’t make Marla do anything.”

  The demon shrugged. “I just want you to put a word in.”

  “That I can do.”

  The creature frowned. “You agreed too easily. I should’ve asked for more. I want a name, too, my own name, like you get.”

  Bradley nodded seriously. “What name?”

  The demon considered. “Muscles,” it said at last. “I’m Muscles Malone.”

  Bradley maintained his solemn expression. “Okay, Muscles. I’ll pass it on.”

  Muscles looked around, then leapt into the air, hovering about four feet up. “Mmm. I smell the new boss that way.” He pointed. “Want me to guide you?”

  Elsie chuckled. “Sniveling little conniver, trying to trick us into giving you more time in a coherent form.”

  “She sounds so approving when she says that.” At some point Pelham had picked up a length of bone half as tall as himself, like a stretched-out femur, the color of ancient ivory. He held it like a walkingstick, which, in his hands, was the same as saying he held it like a lethal weapon.

  “It’s fine,” Bradley said. “Lead on, Muscles.”

  The goatish thing bobbed along like a balloon before them, setting a pace somewhere between a fast walk and a slow run. They left the garden of unearthly torments behind, moving into a wasteland of gravel... except, on closer examination, the gravel was actually millions of human teeth, some trailing bloody roots. “I don’t like this place,” Bradley said.

  Elsie kicked up a shower of teeth. “Oh, I don’t know. The New Death has a ridiculous aesthetic, but he really commits to the vision. He –”

  “Incoming!” the demon shouted, and floated into the air to a height of about twenty feet. The teeth half a dozen yards away began to shift, move, and scatter, as something began to rise up from the depths: a hulking bear-sized demon with wrinkled elephantine skin, arms as big as telephone poles, and no facial features beyond a maw that gaped like a manhole, its bloody gums studded with hundreds of mismatched teeth, from the needle fangs of snakes to the triangular incisors of sharks to the jagged bladelike teeth of komodo dragons. The thing roared and rushed toward them, and Pelham darted forward, beating it about the head with his walkingstick, surprising it with the ferocity of his assault. It tried to grab Pelham, but the monster was slow, and Pelham was quick—but after several sorties, the treacherous, slippery ground turned under Pelham’s foot, and he stumbled.

  Bradley tried to lash out with his psychic powers, but the thing had no mind at all, not even the rudimentary consciousness of a dog, nothing he could send to sleep or daze into confusion.

  As the beast hunched over Pelham, opening its mouth impossibly wider, Elsie calmly dropped her trident, took her pickaxe in hand, and drove the point into the back of what, for lack of a better word, Bradley supposed was the monster’s head.

  The toothsome demon slouched, and then kept slouching, melting into itself like a mound of filthy snow dissolving in the rain. Pelham rolled out of the way and got to his feet, moving away from the spreading puddle of gray ooze. “Thank you for assisting me.” His tone was stiff, formal, and scrupulously polite. Bradley knew that Elsie Jarrow was pretty much an affront to everything Pelham believed in—order, manners, civilization—but he was nothing if not gracious.

  Elsie grabbed him in a headlock and gave him a noogie, then released him. “Can’t let anybody hurt old Pelly. Marla would never forgive me, and that girl can hold a grudge.” She stowed her pickaxe, but left the trident on the ground. After a moment, Bradley bent and picked it up. He was a thinker, not a fighter, but maybe it was a good time to try being both.

  “Get down here, goat!” Elsie hollered.

  Muscles drifted down to a height of eight feet or so. “All right, all right. This way.” They set off again, and the toothy plain gave way to a valley of ragged, bloody fingernails, and then a plain of—and this was the worst—great matted wads of human hair in every conceivable color and texture, some cut, some apparently ripped from scalps.

  “What vision of Hell did he get this from?” Elsie complained.

  “Perhaps he decided to draw on images from nightmare,” Pelham said.

  “Or maybe we just haven’t read every book or seen every piece of art about the underworld.” Bradley stepped over a particularly bloody patch of blonde hair. “This is like the most horrible barbershop floor in the world.”

  “We’re nearly to the palace,” the goat-demon said.

  “I do so love palaces.” Elsie gave a little shiver of anticipation. “They make such interesting sounds when they implode.”

  The sky, which had hardly been bright before, darkened further, and the wads of hair gradually thinned out, revealing gray stone underneath. In the distance, jagged mountains loomed, but a tall mount stood much closer, all alone, a cave mouth the size of an airplane hangar door yawning in its side. Reddish light flickered from the interior. “That’s the palace.” The goat demon drifted higher, as if edging toward an escape.

  “That is a cave.” Elsie shook her head. “The New Death lives in a cave?”

  “Marla said he was kind of... austere,” Bradley said.

  “It does seem a poor habitation for a god, however,” Pelham said.

  “The first gods lived in caves.” The voice seemed to whisper intimately into Bradley’s ear, and from the way Pelham jerked and stared around, he’d heard it the same way. “Because the first humans capable of believing in gods sheltered in those caves, and the gods lived among the people, then. Gods have often dwelt on mountain tops, and in high lonely places, and in dark caverns beneath the Earth.”

  Elsie clucked her tongue. “I prefer to dwell in places with swim-up bars. What’s the point of being immortal if you don’t live a little?”

  A figure appeared in the cave opening, the silhouette of a stocky, broad-shouldered man, with a misshapen head. Bradley fought off an urge to avert his eyes, or to fall prostrate. The New Death radiated power, and Bradley could feel him pushing, trying to do... something. Overpower Bradley’s mind, or change his body, or transform h
is surroundings. His scalp began to tingle. Maybe Elsie’s invisible helmets really did something after all.

  The landscape blurred, and suddenly the three of them were no longer a hundred yards away from the mountain, but directly in front of it, standing mere feet away from the New Death. He had the skull of some horned creature that wasn’t quite a bull; maybe an aurochs. “How dare you invade my domain, newborn god?”

  Elsie laughed her outsized laugh. “You call me newborn? I’m older than you by months, at least. Respect your elders, sonny, and your betters, too. Either way, respect me.”

  “I am of an ancient lineage, and pure.” Skully clenched and unclenched his fists. “You are tainted by humanity, and of an upstart line.”

  Elsie drew herself up, and for the first time, Bradley felt something like awe in her presence, too: she was turning up her god-wattage, and it shone. “I may not be from a line as old as Death, but nearly, because as soon as people realized there was such a thing as death, they started figuring out ways to cheat death. I’m a god of hairsbreadth escapes and sudden reversals. You’re the stone wall, and I’m the dynamite. You’re the coyote, and I’m the roadrunner.” She paused. “I know traditionally coyotes are seen as tricksters, but there’s this classic cartoon, you’ve probably never seen it because you’re literally an infant, where this coyote chases a roadrunner, and never catches it, and in some ways it’s a reversal of the traditional iconography –”

  “Cease your prattle!” Skully lashed out with one hand, clearly intending to slap Elsie across the face

  But Pelham moved in a flash, and smacked the New Death’s hand aside with his bone walkingstick. The god turned, roaring, and Bradley thought oh fuck oh fuck of fuckity fuck and tried to stab Skully with his trident. The spikes bent like wire on impact, the skin of the New Death’s abdomen not even dented. Skully tore the trident away anyway, hurling it into the cave behind him, then snatched the walkingstick from Pelly’s grasp, snapping it in two as easily as Bradley would break a twig.