Devil City

by Gestalt Publishing

  Then, one line from him. One line I didn't want to hear because I'm worried it's Jon. Just Jon. And I'm worried it's because it's him talking to me. Not him and the mask.

  'Fucksake Lark. You fixing to die, naive as all this?'

  But then it's gone.

  Leans Jon's head to one side. Behind the mask, Jon's eyes are gone. Just light, cold like a diamond, staring at me, polarising. More octopi come up, hauling themselves up onto the shore, jawtunnels sucking and drooling. Eager for the show.

  Jon burns inside. That's the light in his eye, window into the processes within. The last of him. Burning out the weakness. But Jon is still in there. No doubt now. He spoke.

  'You are wrong. My ambitions are holy.'

  Every magician's story is a Faust story. No less an authority than Lucifer himself told me that I wasn't in a Faust story.

  Open my mouth. Here's what I was gonna say.

  Alright Satan. Let's make a deal. That's my only play to help Jon. The only thing strong enough.

  But someone steals that thunder. Heads off my last play before I have to make it. Making myself vulnerable, hoping to outrun the razor.

  'That's a coincidence, mister mask. Mine are too.'

  Aristide. And his boys. Strapped. Ready for war.

  iii

  These aren't his hardcore crew. They're dead. Then again, quantity has a quality all its own, right?

  Fuck. Fuck! This was not expected.

  Calm down. Look for angles to play.

  There's a dozen, maybe more. They're not in the full voodoo drag like the others but they have the veves on their jackets. They're initiates eager for illuminations. Young blood, coming up in the crew, looking to get paid.

  Damn good cannon fodder, right?

  Aristide knows the rules. No guns. Guns queer the magic. Bring in a meaning that magic doesn't care for. A dozen guys with blades here to battle a darkness like to prey on their people? Mythical. Guns? Just another execution. Bring gats to a fight like this? You're the one at the disadvantage. Your luck will run bad. Your victims' gonna go the opposite way.

  These motherfuckers bought a lot of symbolism and it's real sharp.

  A dozen gangster, pressed into the astrovan. Machetes are popular. Traditional. Brass knucks here and there. Hunting knife, flensing knife. Baseball bat with nails in it. Nostalgia. One drops a jerry can of petrol. One is unlimbering a whip for Christ's sake. All of a tribe, one set, street certified, all glassy eyed with some chemical or another.

  'How'd you find me, Aristide?'

  'Hommes, you been playing for too high stakes too long. Forget to protect yourself from the little man, too.'

  Reckon he's right. Lazy of me. Then again, I can use the unpredictable.

  Now, Aristide? He's okay. Before I tell you this, important you know, I think he's okay.

  But I don't owe him a good goddamn. And I give up Bettina's eye? Throw Katanya in with the sharks? You think I'm worried about this cat? He's got one use for me and that's to help me get the answer to this question: can I help Jon? Besides, he's not here to help me. He's here to kill the Hollow and sparing Jon never even got into his sights.

  Sorry Aristide.

  'Listen man, this place. Down here. He's vulnerable. You ever want to take him, it's here and now, man.'

  'You hear that, mister mask? You're fucking mine now, alright. I want to share with you a lesson my brother taught me. Then, when it's done, I can drop this torture gangster shit forever.'

  Ah, Aristide. Didn't know you were looking to leave it behind. Sorry again. But the plan ain't changing for you.

  'And I want Lemuel's coat back you evil motherfucker.'

  Aristide throws something at Jon, who doesn't even bother to side step. Acid. Watch his skin melt and all the while he never moves.

  The octopi on the shore shiver like jelly.

  Jon takes off the smoking coat. Neatly folds it. Carefully drops it. Definitely one he took from the bodies we found down in the old city.

  'Are you the kind of man can come and claim it from me?'

  The crew watches uneasy. No one just ignores acid turning flesh to clay.

  'I am.'

  Aristide has two machetes in his fists and hate in his voice, his heart.

  'With me!'

  Authority and hate. It's overrides his crew. He charges.

  You can guess how it goes. After then it's just a massacre. Only really notable thing is Jon gets his hand on that whip and goes to work. Bullwhip? You know why it cracks, right? Tips moves supersonic. That's for real. Leather is stronger than flesh. See some ugly wounds. Hear some ugly screams.

  Turn my attentions away. Bad move. Octopi are expressing their appreciation all erotically.

  Turn back.

  Here's the thing. Aristide has come smarter. He's enchanted himself to win. He never charged all the way. Pulled back and let the boys go first, like a good general. Each wound one of his crew makes, each death, I listen to his song. He's offering up his boy's death to his patron Loa. Baron Saturday, who greets everyone.

  He offers up another to the other Guede Barons. Baron of the Cross, who links sex and death and finds all death absurd. Baron Cemetery, the great leveller, who pretends to sophistication but understands that the great and the wretched alike, we're all just sticks in a basket when we're dead.

  No hymn to the good Loa. Hope their eyes are turned away.

  Aristide is... It's pretty much a human sacrifice he's set up.

  Time was, this kind of thing, get an action called on him. Me and Jon come to vanish him. Now I'm just happy he got it done. Funny how things turn out. I wanted chaos, I wanted everything confused and messed up so I could look for a shot and take it.

  Here it is. Because Aristide is sworn to the death Barons and I've an idea what his play is.

  Twelve men aren't easy to kill. Jon takes wound. A gouge where a nipple was. A vicious slice in a thigh. Broke ribs. Except -

  - no.

  Aristide's not the only one getting fat off death. The Hollow is making the most of it.

  Body is healing but not quickly, not all the way. Scars. Ruin. He's nearly done with flesh like it is. Why waste resources keeping it whole?

  Minute or two later, it's done. Twelve dead men or more on the ground. Octopi, rutting done, real quiet, real smooth, with delicate pseudopods twitching, drag the bodies down into the black lake. Hope they're just feeding.

  Heat haze of death in the air. The terrible stink of freshly dead animals. Eyes opened, mouths too those who have faces and the sounds of corpses adjusting to death. Twelve men dead and I just watched.

  How many more times can I see things like this before I take a wound inside me that I cannot ever heal?

  Shhh. No time for that. That's a different kind of self-preservation than I need right now.

  And Aristide?

  He's gone. There's just a shadow figure where he used to be. Skeleton in an overcoat, somehow wearing dark glasses. Cigar it its mouth to hat head on head. Superimposed over Aristide.

  Death Loa. Here. A real God. Fear and mortality of cultures. A powerful idea. An awesome story.

  But a human idea, up against something inhuman that fancies hell itself lenient.

  Aristide's gone and made his own deal with his own Devil. Every story is a...

  Nearly time, Satan. Nearly time.

  They challenge each other, both in French patois. Death Loa is smoky, like it walks behind an obsidian lens. But even Jon's bones are burning now. Strength of it all like a bruise in the air.

  Throw down.

  Loa aren't gods like you might think of them. You don't pray to them. You don't take orders from them. They serve God, vodou faithful serve them in turn. Mambo priestess or Houngan priest. Or, a Bokor who seeks to profit from them, like any fucking good magician would. And the Barons? Serve the Barons and you serve Death itself.

  They fight. Blades meet. Terrible skeletal hands rake. A whirl and motion, leaving strobing after images in my visio
n. Smoky, glassy movement smears accented by knives flashing in the bioluminescent light.

  Not what's really going on.

  Magic fights are a bit weirder than that.

  The Loa is pushing bad thoughts, kill-ideas into the Hollow. The inevitability of death. That fact that, no matter what, the Baron of Death will triumph and you'll smile his victory from your skull when he does. The fingers of his magic lightly caress the dragon-brain, the amygdala, magic working the body against itself. All the vapours that boil inside you in the presence of terror get stirred up. Powerful, powerful need to flee, to the get the fuck away, that's the message your own body sends when the Loa spells touch.

  The Baron shuts down heart valves, stops kidney and liver functions. Sets a chemical fire to burn the oxygen from the Hollow's blood. Aneurysms blossom like bad flowers in his brain. He strokes out a dozen times. A human can't survive a magical duel with an entity like the Mystery Loa. It is a question of context, a question of scale. Even if you have the defences, how do you hurt an idea? Fight should already be over.

  But the Hollow is no man.

  (I'm painting symbols in dead men's blood)

  The blades bite deep into the Loa. Carving away the information that makes up its body. The Hollow's knives are wound up with spells that are shooting entropy like poison, disordering as it goes. And every wound it takes, it heals. The lungs shut and it forces them open. Scabs in his brain. Hollow ain't got no use for weakness.

  (I'm putting together the spell in my head like man doing complex maths)

  Watch as the Hollow moves, quicker than any human thing. On the shore of a black lake, it takes its greatest victim. Loa, down on its knees, information bleeding off it. Calm, Jon walks up behind it.

  Hollow slits its throat. Aristide falls to the ground. Loa can't die but its manifestation can be damaged. Aristide? Check on him quick. Bleeding. Can't save him. Sorry pal.

  But.

  The Hollow.

  Is hurt.

  Nothing is beyond all pain and wounding. Whatever fuel it uses is low as can be. Aristide isn't the only one can use tragedy for spells. Hollow falls to its knees besides the body. Make my move. Work the angle.

  Symbol I've been writing in his guy's blood? Pizzalgo taught it to me.

  Draw on the memory of a good man dead. Scarlet, getting married right now. Me, in a dark room filled with bodies. Draw on that anger, the choking pain of the unfairness of it all. Add in the anger I feel at myself even thinking fairness is a thing. And finally, draw on the, the fury I feel towards Jon, for leaving me in the first place. Fucksake Lark. You fixing to die, naive as all this?

  Because, I'm scared that really was Jon said that, not the Hollow.

  Sling together words in an Ouranian, barbaric tongue. Latin won't help, God and the Devil aren't in this exorcism. There's just rage and a need to make this fucking stop. Free him or kill him, Bettina is right. My last chance.

  Hollow just killed a God. Last trial in its self-initiation into something monstrous.

  Say the final word and point my finger. Because, in the end, the wands and the cups, all the tools are nothing but extensions of the will.

  Never willed anything harder than this.

  'Hollow. Leave my friend be.'

  Jon falls, that simple. Like all those strokes caught up to him. He just falls down. Go over slow.

  Touch his face.

  It's loose.

  Pull that Hollow mask off. Throw it away from the shore. Mask lands near Aristide.

  Look down at Jon.

  Eyes snap open.

  He whispers. 'Give it back. Damn you. Give it back.'

  Eight words and every one burns hate.

  Then his body gives out. Thrashing, major arrest. Starfish movements. Extremis. Profound trauma.

  See, two years, it's been healing him up from bullets, blades, falls, black magic curses, snapped bones, puncture wounds, infections. Everything a man who fights professionally can endure, he took it. Now the Hollow is gone, he's left with a body that's gone all through that. Rushing down on him.

  Time to prove the Devil wrong. In the end, every magician's story is a Faust's story. Although I suspected it's a different deal I'd be making.

  Look up and there he is, waiting. Dressed all in a black silk with dark sunglasses even down here. Fingernails, painted black. Broad-brimmed hat on his head. Silver topped cane.

  'You know what I want,' he says to me.

  'Save him and you can have my soul.'

  Jon's body goes still.

  The Devil smiles at me.

  'One catch, old Devil. I just need time. Jon has to be taken care of. Give me ‘til midnight and this is a done deal.'

  Pride. He's all about it. Hassling me over a time is beneath him.

  'I presume you're aware of what will happen to your loved ones if you attempt to cheat me.'

  They've shielded me enough. Little more won't hurt especially if they don't know it.

  'I know.'

  Then it's a deal and I'm making myself vulnerable, hoping to outrun the razor.

  Jon. It's done.

  iv

  Devil takes my hand. Shakes it.

  'That it?'

  'That's all.'

  He kneels down and grabs Jon by the hair, drags him over the rocks, out into the rail tunnels. Over by Aristide the octopi are closing in. Clap at ‘em like you would a dog but they just up and regard me with their vile fucking eyes. Hiss a pain curse at ‘em and their soft bodies tremble.

  Kneel down and feel his pulse. Faint. He's lost blood but looks like the Loa took the worst of his execution. He's on the Houngan tip and he's gonna owe that Baron big.

  Hollow mask about two feet from him. Regard it. Sociopathic need radiates from it. Find a body.

  Take off my jacket. Cover it. Throw it closer to the door.

  Devil comes back.

  'Can you take care of him?'

  'No.'

  He's a big man and I get to dragging. Takes a while. Get him nearly to the door. Alls to be done is get him out and close the door to the cave. Know I'm not supposed to move him and that I'm probably making it worse somehow. Can't have ambulances down in here, though. Don't owe Aristide a thing but I'm not leaving a dying man down here.

  'Lark,' says the Devil.

  'What?'

  'Listen.'

  Nothing. Grab a leg. Haul again. Then.

  A howl. Like wind. Catabatic and ferocious. Devil starts to laughing.

  Everything gets cold. Breath starts to fog. Five meters to the door. Haul. Haul! Three meters. Two!

  Then.

  Edimmu come out of the walls.

  Hate-fogs. Evil mists. Look like someone took a butcher's knife to a grey storm cloud. Vaporous speed to them. Glowing with some sharp internal lights. In the centre of their snapping, hazy limbs are the memories of faces.

  Foulstone's dogs.

  I'm not ready. There's nothing I can do. Too much despair for panic. Didn't outrun the razor in the end. Dealing with the oldest ghosts would be no joke on my best day. Now, I'm just dying and reckon I'm off to hell. Figured there'd be a way to win my soul back before all this is done.

  At least Jon has a chance.

  Drop Aristide's leg and stand tall. Least I can go out with some goddamn dignity. Fingers form Mundra shapes. Start hissing out a prayer to the God who messes with evil forces, Wrathful Mahakala

  'Your wrathful mouth completely bares its fangs...' starts the prayer.

  But they're not here for me. Insubstantial whips of their body drag Aristide up by the leg, hanging him like a trapped animal. Another seethes around, looking for somethin-

  Oh. No.

  The Devil is laughing.

  The second ancient ghost sees the Hollow. Picks it up but recoils like it's stung. It starts to writhe, slashing at the air, silently howling its fury.

  Continue the prayer, trying to focus the divine fury of the evil-hunting god Mahakala, willing his blood and strength into me.

/>   Too late.

  The ghosts go still, then one lowers Aristide's body down until it touches the Hollow. Moved by a will he could never resist, his hands move like traitors. Slip the mask on.

  See him regain consciousness. See his eyes go wide as he realises he's a slave to the thing he hates most. Listen to the sound a cut throat makes when it screams.

  The ghosts move quick. Dragging him out and away. The Hollow is weak from my spell, from being ripped off Jon, from a new hosts and the Edimmu, who even the Hollow needs respect, drag him away like a leaf in the wind. They'll curl around him like snakes. Move his body like a puppet.

  Till they take him to Foulstone.

  Their howling fades away.

  The Devil looks at me. He's grinning.

  'Where's Jon?'

  'Safe.'

  Silence in the darkness.

  v

  'Ava.'

  'She doesn't want to come.'

  'Make her, goddamn it.'

  'You don't know what she's like.'

  'Did you tell her the situation?'

  Silence over the phone.

  'Why not?'

  A pause. 'You don't know what she's like. She never wanted me to get married in -'

  'I do. Not. Give a fuck about your issues with your mother. You want to be the Queen of Hell, I'm helping you and by Christ it's cost me. So you get her up here now!'

  Slam the phone down. Should be more respectful. Really, I should. But she's not the one with the pawned soul.

  Anyways...

  Want to hear something really funny?

  You're gonna like this.

  I need to hit Foulstone now. Right now. He's still got my blood and if I don't get to him soon, he'll stash the Hollow somewhere real secure. Never get a chance to finish it off. But, truth to tell, the blood is more important. Never figured him to move so soon. Got one clock ticking. Don't need that fat man's either.

  Here's the funny bit. He's at Scarlet's wedding.

  Haha.

  One more coin in the phone's slot.

  'Yeah.'

  'No time to talk. Foulstone at the wedding?'

  'Yeah, but Lark.'