by Mark Eller
“Desperate, huh?” Sulya muttered. “I’ll find a way to make her desperate. So desperate she’ll be sorry she ever refused the job.”
Evil poured from Sulya’s mind. Hatred filled her body. She would make the stupid wench sorry for her refusal. Repeated rape and injury would do the job, and maybe fear for her daughter. Afterward, she would find someone more pliable, more in line with Hell’s priorities, to run the Hellhole Tavern. Carrid was now a liability. In Sulya’s world, liabilities ended up dead.
Chapter 9—Spawn’s Fee
Robar Joiner released a sigh when he settled his abused body onto a tavern barstool. He rubbed a battered hand over the swollen lumps on his face, across his lips, and grimaced at the too familiar pain of a split lip.
Carrid Brewer eyed Robar while he poured three ales from the main cask and set the filled oak cups on a battered wooden tray. A thin smile played about the corner of his lips, but his eyes were gauging as he studied Robar’s bruised face.
Scowling, Robar eyed the man back. Carrid might be huge, but to Robar size did not matter. No matter what the bartender expected Carrid would not get the best of him again.
“You might be the bravest man I know,” Carrid finally said, “but you never did have much sense.” His mocking smile grew larger. After a few moments of continued silence, he lifted the drink filled tray and headed onto the floor.
Still scowling, Robar turned his head to watch the man wind past a scattered array of empty tables and broken chairs. Half of those tables leaned hazardously. Some lay on their side while others were supported by having the back rail of a broken chair shoved beneath a sagging corner. By any reasonable reckoning the place was a total disaster. Robar figured less than a quarter of the Hellhole Tavern’s twenty-three tables were actually stable and solid. A week earlier the number would have been closer to half, but fights over dice games and women and the color of another man’s hair had taken their toll. In this place broken furniture was one of the costs of doing business because its environs were often filled with a dark miasma which rose from the pit leading to Hell located in the tavern’s cellar.
For most businesses, the miasma and the resulting violence would have been a death knell. Because of the king’s newfound tolerance for hellborn, Carrid Brewer’s tavern thrived on it. Carrid made a fortune off those who were drawn through the tavern’s door. Gamblers, thieves, slavers, whores, murderers, shifters, and all the other dark elements of the city found the place a comfortable fit for their natures. He made even more money off the rich and influential who wanted to feel brave and daring by taking a drink in such a notorious den, but now, at this early hour, the Hellhole was almost empty. The sun had not yet settled out of the evening sky. Most of the Hole’s habitual patrons had not stirred themselves from their beds. Selnac, the thief, and Mathew Changer, the half-were fence and crime lord, occupied one table along with Glace, Mathew’s apprentice. A hunched figure, barely visible in the dim light, sat on the floor in the far corner. Head bowed, its folded arms pressed in upon itself so tightly Robar instantly knew what the figure was.
Another escaped spawn. Pity, contempt, and distaste welled up in him. Like most other humans, he knew spawn were almost always the thin remnants of children sacrificed to Athos by one of their parents. Once their souls descended into Hell, they were given new bodies and trained by Athos’s demons to be the unwilling servants of Hell’s elite. As a rule, the parent who sacrificed his child gained wealth or power or some other glittering promise that soon became a nightmare when their new gift slithered away. Most knew a person never gained when he bargained with Hell, but there were always a few brave fools who were willing to try.
Almost as if it felt the weight of Robar’s stare, the spawn stirred, raised its head, and met Robar’s eyes. It started, shifted its gaze nervously, and bowed its head once more. Robar turned his attention back to the tavern’s owner, dismissing the frightened and eternally damned creature from his mind.
Carrid’s mocking smile, Robar observed, became thick and false while he served the two thieves and the half-were. Robar wished the man was half as eager to pay his debts.
When Carrid returned, he laid the tray on the bar’s knife carved surface, placed his elbows on the front rail, and studied Robar’s face.
Accepting the unspoken challenge, Robar leaned forward to push his spare body’s presence into the other man’s space. Carrid was large and heavy and strong enough to frighten the worst of his customers. He sometimes needed reminding that no man intimidated Robar. Like always, Carrid seemed to pay the invisible message no mind, but deep inside Robar knew Carrid took note of Robar’s unwillingness to ever back down.
“So you lost your fight again,” Carrid finally said. He was, Robar suspected, deliberately bypassing the reason for Robar’s visit. “When are you going to give up on the woman? There isn’t a whore out there who’s worth the price you pay or the beating you take every week.”
“She isn’t a whore!” Robar snapped. “She’s a prize, and by the Seven Gods and Two, she’s a prize I’ll win. A week with her would be enough to satisfy any man for life.”
“I doubt it. That Heriod fellow has won her every week for the last half year, and you don’t see him passing her on.”
Robar snorted. “No, what I mostly see is his fist just before it knocks me down. I’ve made it to the final round for the last six weeks. I can hit him easily enough, only he’s too big, and I’m not strong enough to make those hits count. I figure the time will come when he either gets tired of beating me up or he gets tired of the succubus sucking on his soul. I’ll get her then.”
“I don’t think he has enough soul left to make the decision on his own,” Carrid observed, “If you’ll take my advice on the matter, you’d do well to let her have him instead of you. I’ve made it my business to stay out of her way ever since she climbed out of my cellar. The thought of her turns my knees to water. Truth is I think she might be the scariest hellborn I’ve ever encountered.”
“She has no fangs,” Robar insisted. “She has no claws or poison. She’s only beautiful and alluring. I‘m telling you, Carrid, I’m not afraid of her, and I’m going to prove it.”
“She’s a succubus,” Carrid replied, “and you’re a bantam with no sense. I suppose you’ll continue proving how brave you are until it’s the end of you, but that’s your business, and I’ve business of my own.” Turning away from the bar, he poured an ale from a keg set against the back wall and turned back to Robar, setting the ale before him. “I’ve a need for new tables and chairs. My customers have pretty much worn this set out, and it didn‘t take them long to do it. I don’t think you made these as sturdy as you did the stools.”
“Your customers would break a table made from solid rock,” Robar said, “and you’ll never again see wood as strong as the stuff I used on those stools. Still, a new supply of hardwood just came in. I’ll see what I can put together, but I’m not joining two boards until I see some money.”
“But I’m your friend!”
Robar snorted. “Only when you want something from me. You haven’t paid one rugdle for the last job. I have to eat, and so do the girls.”
“You’d eat better if the contest didn’t use up so much of your money.”
Robar waved the concern away. “I can’t afford to work for free.”
“You could work cheaper if you gave the brats to your wife,” Carrid said.
Shrugging, Robar tried an experimental sip of the ale and grimaced. Carrid was, at best, an indifferent brewer. When this fact was added to the miasma inundating the tavern the piss flavored result was often something undrinkable by civilized men. Fortunately for Carrid, few of his customers were civilized.
“She’s been gone for more than six months,” he said after setting his drink back down. “Don’t know where she is. Don’t care enough to look. I got my workshop and my two girls out of her, and I don’t want nothing more. So, how about my money?”
He heard a stirring fr
om the tavern’s corner. Turning his head, he saw the crouched figure rise. This spawn looked mostly like a man, but the body Athos had given it was thin and pale and perhaps too tall. Its gaunt face was partly hidden in the shadows, but Robar saw it well enough to know its expression held the typical fear all its kind wore. Using short, clumsy steps, it shambled toward the bar in a jerky, hesitant way. Its arm motions were tight, protective, typical for every spawn Robar had ever seen, but an evilly pointed jade green hook was attached to its left arm where a hand had once been, and this surprised Robar. To the best of his knowledge spawn were not supposed to be armed. In fact, he once heard a demon say spawn were too unstable to be trusted with any weapon no matter how small.
He gestured toward the figure. “He’s what, the fifth escaped spawn this last half year. Why don’t you seal the damned hole up so they’ll stay where they belong?”
“Four,” Carrid corrected. “I don’t seal it because the hellborn are good for business. Every week a few of the city’s rich put on their servant’s clothes and come down here just to see what something out of Hell looks like. Of course, one of my regulars normally rolls the fools so they never come back again, but I get a quarter of the take so that doesn’t matter too much. Besides, these spawn are always too frightened to cause me trouble. In fact, they’re too scared to even step outside the tavern’s door. I generally let ‘em hang around for a week or two, and then a demon comes up to fetch them back.” He smiled. “I get a bit of something from those demons, too, though I don’t know what to do with most of it. Got a jar of ‘damned souls’s on a shelf in the cellar, and one cheery fellow gave me the scars off a hanged man’s neck. Took ‘em out of the jar once just to see what they felt like.”
Refusing to play this game by Carrid’s rules, Robar sat silent for several minutes while Carrid waited expectantly. Finally, Carrid shook his head with exasperation.
“You’re impossible. Aren’t you even a little curious about what they felt like?”
“A little,” Robar answered truthfully, “but not enough for you to lead me into it.”
“Do you remember the fellow who came by here about four years back, the one who had a roughly formed ball that could bounce?”
Frowning, Robar cast his thoughts into the past, trying to draw out a memory of something he probably cared nothing about at the time. “Maybe.”
“Well,” Carrid said. “The ball was made out of something called rubber, and rubber’s what those scars felt like. What do you think of that?”
Lifting his mug, Robar took another sip of the foul brew and set the cup down. “Don’t think much about it at all. I only heard of the fellow you’re talking about. Never met him and never touched his rubber. Better yet, I don’t really care what those scars feel like. I’m here about my money. You owe me.”
Carrid’s fingers twitched irritably and then stilled. “I don’t have enough here. The wife keeps her hands on most of it, and she’s at home. I’d have to talk long and hard to get her to part with a single coin.”
“Then you better moisten your throat before you start talking,” Robar warned, “because I’m not joining one board to another before I get paid for the last job.”
Sighing, Carrid straightened and brushed his hands on his shirt. “Dealing with you is a sight harder than bargaining with any hellborn I ever met. Watch the bar while I’m gone. This will take a while.”
He left. Robar noticed he took the tavern’s money box with him.
Once the tavern’s batwing doors squeaked closed, Robar thought about sipping his ale, but the memory of its urine taste and the sight of several strands of something floating on its surface, changed his mind. Instead, he pushed the cup away and rubbed once more at his bruised face, wincing at the familiar pain. As usual, his eyes were half-swollen shut. It was a blessing he could even see. For some reason beyond his understanding, his eyes were always the first targets Heriod went for. To Robar’s way of thinking, this was unnecessarily cruel since Heriod could beat him just as quickly whether or not his eyes worked. Sometimes, after a fight, it took days before Robar could see well enough to work again.
“Please— please, sir?” a thin voice pleaded.
Lowering his hand, Robar turned his head to find the thing standing four feet away, crouched and cringing, sweating out its sulfur stink. Fear swirled darkly in its eyes. Its arms were held tight against its body. Its right hand partially hid the hook’s curve. Robar thought briefly about ordering the disgusting thing away, but pity overcame his contempt when he remembered his recent thoughts on Heriod’s cruelty. Even though spawn were almost human, they were slow and clumsy. Most were stupid, and even the smartest ones were cowards. During the last several years Robar had encountered more than two dozen spawn. Not one had acted as if it owned half the spine or a tenth the soul of a man.
“What do you want?”
“Your drink, sir. That is, you don’t look as if you are going— I’m hungry and thirsty and— I’m sorry. I won’t bother you again.” It cringed further in upon itself until it stood less than five feet tall. Robar considered this an amazing feat because he was positive the being would stand at least six feet if it straightened.
“Take the drink and leave me alone,” Robar ordered.
The thing did not move.
“Well!”
“If you please, sir,” the spawn said. “I have very good hearing. You mentioned a succubus, and I wondered if she might have light blue skin, green hair, and dark eyes.”
Robar’s heart stilled. He waited for it to regain its accustomed beat before he carefully spoke. “What do you know about Belthethsia?”
The spawn’s lips twitched nervously. “Then it is her. Belthethsia was once my mistress. She had a deft hand with a whip, and she was accounted one of the most accomplished soulwrights in our section of the underworld. It was quite a scandal when she left, but I was glad for it because I was given to a lesser demon who was not nearly so accomplished at disciplining its servants.”
“The woman I speak of is a succubus, not a soulwright.”
Pausing for a moment, the thing drew in a shuddering breath and released it slowly. “If you please, sir, she is both, born of mixed parentage and not nano set to one or the other while still in the womb. I–I know Belthethsia from long ago, and I’ve known many devils who were her lovers. Sir, their satisfaction was complete just so long as they rejected her before a month passed.”
Apparently nervous, the spawn stopped speaking and looked jerkily around.
Frustrated, Robar grabbed it by its jaw. “A month? Why is a month important?”
“Be–because after that she has eaten far too much of their souls. Her mixed heritage allows her to dine on flesh and soul alike.”
Robar scowled. When the spawn caught his look, the thing raised its arms protectively before scrambling back several clumsy paces. “Please, sir! I can give you strength.” It gestured feebly with the hook. To Robar’s amazement, the hook glowed a faint jade green. “I can help you win Belthethsia if you’ve the courage to accept it.”
Robar’s hand leaped forward and grabbed its wrist. Sinking lower to the floor, the thing released a small sob. Its skin felt cool in Robar’s grasp, almost parchment dry. The wrist he held, the arm, the entire being trembled before him.
“I’ve the courage to dare anything,” Robar growled, low voiced. “I’ve wanted Belthethsia ever since I saw her seven months back. At first, I thought I had no chance at her body, but she started the contest, the challenge. I’ve fought to win her since then, but I’ll use her only for a week. I know I can’t survive her attention for long, but I’ve the courage to take her for a week, or maybe two.”
The thing raised its eyes and looked fearfully into Robar’s. “And so you murdered your wife to clear the way.”
Robar felt his face pale. “I murdered nobody!”
The thing gathered itself together. From somewhere inside it seemed to find a small trace of the courage that had led it to esca
pe Hell. “I heard it when you spoke of her. I heard her murder in your words. It made me think you might welcome me.”
“I’ll kill you if you speak of it,” Robar warned, gripping the wrist harder, sinking his fingers deep into slack flesh.
“Please,” the thing whimpered, squirming. “All I want is to be free. I want— I want to dare looking at the sky. I want to never go back. I can give you strength if you give me what I need. I can give you almost anything you want.”
Snorting disbelief, Robar released his grip on the pathetic thing’s wrist. “There’s nothing you can do for me.”
“There is,” the spawn whispered, waving the hook before Robar with small movements of its arm. The hook’s glow intensified, casting its ghastly green light deeper into the tavern, covering Robar with its essence, its influence. The sensation made Robar’s skin crawl, made him feel as if he were dirty inside, filthy. Even so, it drew him, pulled at his greed, his desire, and the sensation was insidious. Robar’s fascinated eyes noted that no leather cuff attached the foul hook to the spawn‘s wrist. He saw nothing but a small blurring where metal met flesh.
“Belthethsia removed my hand. I wanted something to replace it.” The spawn’s whispered caress cut into Robar’s flesh, a promise sinking deep into his brain. The spawn’s voice was stronger, its bearing more insistent, perhaps even bolder. “I stole this hook from a mage after he fell into a magma pool. His duty was to prepare us spawn for our position and tasks. He used the hook to remove our resolve and our will and other things. It holds the strength the mage took from us. The strength can be yours. All I ask is that you give me a chance to leave here. I want to walk beneath the sun.”
Shuddering, Robar drew slightly back and studied the spawn. This one was different from the others he had known. More intelligent perhaps. Stronger, though it still quavered before him even in its unusual boldness. “Why don’t you use the hook on yourself?”