Текст книги "Aloha from Hell"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

In regular Hell, the Phlegethon is a river of fire that flows and ebbs like water. The flames are just a light breeze from on board a barge. You don’t get burned unless you’re in direct contact with the river.

The Phlegethon does double duty in Hell. It’s one of the big five rivers, so it carries a lot of traffic, mostly barges, passenger boats, and freighters. It’s busy enough that it needs docks, buoys, depth markers, and all the other Moby-Dick bric-a-brac I don’t understand. This is Hell. Why get artisans to make all that stuff when you have millions of dead souls lying around? Down the length of the Phlegethon, the damned float in the eternal fire as channel markers and buoys showing depth readings. Entire docks are made from spirits lashed together. There’s similar creativity in this Hell. The freeway guardrails and the median fence in the center are staked-out souls. The reflectors separating the freeway lanes are the heads of souls who’ve been buried up to their necks in Hellion concrete. What happens if you blow a tire down here? Hellion AAA probably comes out and ties a few souls around your axle so you can get to a damned garage.

“So, who are you?” I ask Kelly.

He doesn’t say anything.

“Tell him to talk to me. Tell him he doesn’t ever need your permission to talk again.”

Mammon says, “Talk to him, Mr. Kelly. Talk to him to your heart’s content. But first take this exit and merge left.”

Kelly says, “I’m Master Mammon’s servant and resident human. I do whatever he asks, from talking about my life to performing whatever tasks I’m instructed to do in a way that best exemplifies human habits and behavior.”

“I told you he was a bore,” says Mammon. “You remove creatures like this from their environment and they wither. He might still be interesting if we let him loose as a killer down here like you.”

“I wasn’t a killer until I got down here.Édown hex201D;

Mammon makes a dismissive gesture with his good hand.

“Just because a baby spider hasn’t bitten anyone yet doesn’t make it any less of a spider.”

Kelly steers us down the fire road. Mammon occasionally tells him to change lanes or follow a road that splits off from the main one. We’re driving for at least an hour but we don’t seem to be anywhere yet. If Mammon is leading us anywhere but Eleusis, I’m going to tie him to the back bumper and drag him to Mexico. If I can find it.

“What makes you so special that of all the souls down here, you rate being handed off to a general?” I ask Kelly.

“I don’t know, sir. Stark, I mean. I’m sorry. It’s a wretched habit to break.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“There are so many people down here more accomplished than I. I’ve accomplished nothing compared to some I’ve met.”

“Don’t be so modest, Mr. Kelly. Mr. Kelly was a murderer, and after some practice he became quite adept. More than even his pursuers knew,” says Mammon. “But it was only dumb luck that kept you unincarcerated after those first few, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Master Mammon. Just as you say, sir.”

We drive for what feels like another hour. Every now and then I see a flash behind us, like a light going out or a reflection off a mirror, but when I turn there’s nothing there.

I’ve driven the 101 south to San Diego a hundred times, but I don’t recognize this road at all. We could be driving to Oz or right into a trap.

“We’re getting off here,” says Mammon.

I look around, trying to get my bearings. All the road signs have been torn down or hacked to pieces. More of Lucifer’s paranoia or just another example of L.A.’s ever-expanding nervous breakdown?

The exit sign has been torched and lies in a little slag heap at the edge of the road. I swear I see another flash behind us, but then I’m bracing myself against the dashboard. Kelly takes the exit too fast and has to tap the brakes hard when we come to a hairpin curve. That’s when Mammon stabs me.

I should have stripped the fucker down at the palace, but the angel in my head felt sorry for all the maiming and frying I did. I went easy on him and this is what I get.

The inverted-cross medal he’s been wearing comes apart and the lower half is a razor-sharp golden blade. He was probably going for my neck, but when Kelly hit the brakes, it ruined Mammon&>

Mammon pulls the knife out of my face and slashes me in the shoulder before I can turn and grab him. He stabs me a second time in the cheek before I can pin his good hand. I have one hand braced on the roof as we turn under the freeway. Mammon lunges at me and buries his teeth in my hand that’s holding him. I pull back reflexively and he gets his hand free. He swings the blade at me as the car fishtails, but ends up slashing Kelly’s arm.

Kelly screams and we plow through a guardrail and down an embankment. The car flips and rolls. When we stop moving I’m not sure which way is up or down, but when I elbow open my door, my foot touches the ground, so I’m guessing we’re right side up.

I step out and fall onto the dry dead grass. When my head stops swimming, I go around to Kelly’s side and pull him out. His arm doesn’t look too bad. I don’t bother with Mammon. His neck is twisted 180 degrees, so he’s looking out the back window at the road we just left. Probably nostalgic for when he wasn’t dead. I guess he’s technically not dead since he hasn’t blipped out of existence to Tartarus, but if I was his secretary I’d cancel all his appointments for tomorrow.

I carry Kelly around the car and set him down leaning against the car.

Human souls don’t breathe or have beating hearts, so I don’t know how to check if he’s okay. The angel in my head can see souls, but the dead are all soul, so that doesn’t help much. But a double-dead human soul will end up in Tartarus as fast as any Hellion, so Kelly still being here is a good sign.

The side of my face burns. I touch it where Mammon stabbed me and my hand comes away bloody. Shit. Exactly what I don’t need right now.

Kelly moans and starts to move.

It takes him a few minutes to get his bearings. He rubs the back of his neck and stares at the ground. When he sees the car, he sits up straight.

“You bloody berk!” he yells into the car at Mammon’s broken body. “This is fucking perfect.”

“Get a grip, man. This really isn’t the moment to freak out.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

He holds his arm where Mammon stabbed him. It clearly hurts, but is more of a shock than a wound.

I say, “Wait here while I look around.”

I walk up the slope to the freeway to see if there’s any trace of a town or a sign or wandering Boy Scout with a compass. Three strikes. I’m out. We could be in Egypt for all I know.

When I get back to getget bacthe car, Kelly seems a little more coherent.

“The master is still in the car,” he says.

“Yeah. He doesn’t really need any fresh air, if you know what I mean.”

“But he’s not dead, is he? I mean he’s still there.”

“He’s still with us, tough old bastard. Do you know where we are, Kelly?”

He gets to his knees and looks around.

“Roughly,” he says.

“Can you get us to Eleusis?”

“I believe so.”

“How long will it take?”

“On foot? If we cut through the flats and we don’t have to detour too far around holes and faults, less than a day. But it’ll be rough going.”

From the freeway I hear the unmistakable sound of tires. I grab Kelly and pull him to the ground beside me. A heavy Unimog rolls slowly by, running without lights. That’s what I’ve been seeing behind us all night. Mammon must have signaled someone before we left the palace and they’ve been tracking us ever since. A spotlight flashes from the Unimog, playing over the dying trees and cracked road. The car is on the downhill side of an embankment. The light moves back and forth across the exit, but I don’t think they can see us down here. A second later the spotlight goes out and the truck drives away.

We’ve got a posse after us. More good news. Like Mammon said, it’s a good idea to err on the side of caution. I need to do something in case they catch up to us.

“Kelly. Will we be passing through any towns or settlements? Anywhere someone might see us?”

“It’s hard to say. Things can change so quickly here. It’s best to assume we will.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

I open the car and drag Mammon out.

Don’t die on me now, you prick. Give me a few more minutes.

I pop the lock on the trunk with the black blade and start tossing things. It’s full of the usual car junk. A tire iron, spare tire, jumper cables. But there’s also military gear. I go back to where I left Mammon with a sturdy leather satchel and drop it beside him. With the knife I cut a large square of fabric from his suit jacket and lay it out flat on the grass.

Kelly creeps over closer to see what="1 to see I’m doing.

“You might not want to watch this,” I say.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay. This looks like it might be quite interesting.”

“Okay,” I say. “Here’s the situation. We have to walk to Eleusis and then get all the way to the asylum and back out again. I’m wearing a glamour so I don’t broadcast that I’m alive, but I’m bleeding, so I need more. And if Mammon signaled a posse, he might have told them I was the one who took him. I can’t look like me. Are you getting my point?”

Jack gives me a big wolfish smile.

“If you’re about to do what I think you are, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Okay, but if souls puke, don’t do it on me.”

“I’ll remember that, sir.”

“And don’t call me ‘sir.’ ”

“Yes. Sorry.”

I close my eyes and try to remember any binding spells I picked up along the way, something to keep Mammon here with us a little longer before he croaks. My head is still a little foggy from the crash, but I come up with a minor bit of hoodoo that should hold if I work fast.

The next part I’ve never actually tried myself, but I saw it done a couple of times by old juju priests I met through some Dharma bums in a New Orleans Sub Rosa clan.

I try to get the words and rhythms of the old houngans in my mind before I start working. The real spell is a complex combination of Yoruba and Louisiana Creole and I’ve forgotten a lot of the words, so I have to do a lot of bebop improv, but bullshitting hoodoo on the fly is my specialty. As I chant, I rub my temples, and when the words are flowing fast enough and the time feels right, I grab my face just below the scalp line and pull. The skin comes off like I’m peeling a banana. It sticks in a couple of places and I have to snip them with the knife, but it’s not a big deal.

I put my face, bloody side up, on the cloth I cut from Mammon’s suit.

I hear Kelly gasp. It’s not in horror, but in a kind of fascination and awe. He’s probably never seen high-quality Merlin stuff. This must be a hell of an introduction to magic.

I do the whole ritual again. When I peel off Mammon’s face, I drape it over the raw and bloody place where my face used to be. The new flesh burns as it attaches itself. I close my eyes and breathe, working through the pain. I’m dizzy and slide over onto an elbow. I feel Kelly grab me so I don’t fall. The inside of my head swirls around once more and then it’s over. I touch my n19;I touchew face. There’s no pain at all. Mammon’s skin feels like it’s been there forever. I open my mouth. Move my lips in mock smiles and frowns.

I look at Kelly.

“What do you think? I don’t look too much like Mammon, do I? It’s his skin, but my bones and muscles, so we shouldn’t be twins.”

Kelly shakes his head.

“You don’t look at all like him,” he says. He stares at me with a kind of beatific smile plastered on his face, like Saint Peter just gave him an invitation to the Christmas after-party in Heaven.

He says, “If it isn’t being too forward, I’d like to say that you might have just become my personal hero, Mr. Stark.”

“Okay.”

He looks up at the rolling black clouds that cover the sky.

“I once thought that I was a master of flesh. But I see now that you have surpassed me in every way.”

As my new face settles in, I wrap my real face in Mammon’s cloth, put it carefully in the leather satchel, and sling it over my shoulder.

“That’s real nice of you, Kelly, but what the fuck are you talking about?”

He stands. Looks at me and then at Mammon. The Hellion finally dies and his body disappears.

“I prefer Jack, if you don’t mind,” says Kelly. “That’s what people called me in older, merrier days when I was still alive. Jack the Ripper.”

Some crazy people must stay crazy even after they’re dead. I met dozens of Judas Iscariots, Hitlers, and Jack the Rippers in the eleven years I spent Downtown, but always one at a time. I always wondered if they steered clear of each other out of professional courtesy.

There’s one thing that makes me think Kelly could be for real. Mason chose him. Picking a simple back-alley cutthroat with delusions of grandeur isn’t a mistake Mason would make.

Jack is leading us down the embankment and into the thick woods that line the freeway. The trees stand at crazy, impossible angles. It’s like we’re walking through still photos of the forest in the process of falling.

“Step lightly,” whispers Jack. “And don’t touch anything. Tremors have loosed the land under the trees. They’re barely rooted. They’ll come down on us with the slightest provocation.”

Suddenly I’m sorry I’m wearing big steel-toe boots. I should be in Hello Kitty slippers.

I’ve never seen a real forest in Hell. Not one with trees and plants. I’ve seen places called “forests,” but they’re usually tightly packed mazes of saw blades and spinning pylons studded with needlelike Hydra teeth.

We walk maybe twenty yards until the forest gets tight and dark and wild. Old-growth backwoods. It’s hard not to bump into limbs and the solid trunks of the drunken trees. Each time I hit something, I feel it give, and wonder if it’s going to fall and which way to run and if running will make things better or worse by bringing down even more trees. Tree trunks crack and branches fall around us, but we make it through the forest and come out onto low sand dunes.

Jack points off into the empty distance and says, “There’s Eleusis.”

But I’m looking down. At the bottom of the dune Venice Beach stretches into the distance. Which doesn’t make sense. Venice is west of Hollywood and we’ve been going south. I don’t know what’s going crazy faster, this city or me.

I look up to where Jack is pointing. There’s something in the distance, but I’m damned if I know what it is.

Venice is shuttered and looks like it’s been that way for fifty years. The only light in the area comes from the fires reflected off the belly of the endless black clouds overhead. Vents in the ground belch geysers of superheated steam. Fire twisters skitter in the distance, tearing up the empty beach houses. We head down to the long tourist walk.

“You’re wondering if I’m lying about who I am, Mr. Stark. Or if I’m a nutter.”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re wondering how someone might go about proving or disproving my claim.”

“Right on the money.”

Even by Hell standards we’ve pretty much pegged the bleak meter. There’s nothing more depressing than a dead beach town. It’s like all the loons and extroverts and dimwit fun in the world has been boxed up and tossed on a bonfire. Of course, this isn’t really Venice. It’s just the Convergence projection of it. Still, something big died here and the sight of it has sucked the wind out of me. Or maybe I’m light-headed from cutting off my face. We move past empty weight-lifting areas and out-of-business tattoo parlors.

Jack says, “It’s impossible for me to prove who I am. Perhaps I’m mad. Perhaps I’m a liar. If you perhaps had a book about old Jack’s comings and goings, you might ask me details of my past. But you don’t have a book and even if you did, Jack is a famous man. His crimes are well known and well documented. I might have read the same books as you.”

“Where does that leave us, Jack?”

“In the wilderness, I’m afraid. I can no more prove to you that I’m happy Jack than you can prove to me you’re Sandman Slim.”

“Excuse me? I just stepped out of a shadow and killed five Hellion military officers. I took a Hellion general prisoner. I manifested a Gladius.”

Jack rubs his jaw and rolls his shoulders, still trying to work out the kinks. I wonder how long he was in Mammon’s cage.

He says, “Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t. I’m not a magical sort like you and some of these other folk, so I don’t know how it all works, do I?”

“Use your imagination.”

“You appeared to kill a number of soldiers and to dash through shadows, but it could have been a trick of the eye. I’ve seen stage magicians make furniture dance and spirits float in the air. And I’ve seen this lot make people see all sorts of things. Lovers, friends, parents. Spiders. Snakes. But they were mere phantasms. Trickery meant to fool the eye and terrorize the soul. For all I know, you twiddled your thumbs and tricked Master Mammon’s staff into killing each other.”

“That would still be a pretty good trick.”

“Indeed it would be. I’ve seen demons and devils that could break a man’s bones on the rack or his heart with a single word. But that doesn’t make any of them Sandman Slim.”

“When you get down to it, I don’t really care who you are. If you can get me to Eleusis, I’ll call you Jack the Ripper or Mott the Hoople if you want. Just get me there.”

“Of course. And what will be my payment for this service?”

I stop and look at him. Jack walks on for a few steps before looking back at me. He puts his hands in his pockets and stands up straight. The whole deferential attitude is gone. He’s a killer standing his ground.

“Payment? And here I thought saving you from a tin-can coffin might cover it.”

“Perhaps. Let’s put our minds to it as we go and see what we come up with, shall we?”

He starts walking and I follow, staring at the thick foamy sea that looks more like tar than water. I should have tried to get the car started. But on the road the posse would have caught up with us. So no, leaving it was the smart move.

“Okay, Jack, I’ve got to ask. Assuming you are old Leather Apron, what’s your story? Did the clap eat half your brain? Were you a religious freak? Did a talking dog named Sam tell you to kill all those women?”

“There is no God and I know noandnd I knthing about a talking dog, though I’d surely like to see one.”

“You’re an atheist? You were a fallen angel’s slave. In Hell. And you’re an atheist? Walk me through that, Jack.”

“Why is it necessary for God to exist for Hell to exist? The problem is that when good people imagine Hell, they imagine it as the opposite of the real world and as remote as the stars. That’s their delusionment. Hell and earth are the same thing. Separated by nothing more than a thin shroud of understanding that this is so. I lived in Hell every moment I dwelt on the other earth and I made it my business to bring Hell to all God-fearing souls to remind them that horror is the fabric from which the world was made.”

“You didn’t date a lot when you were alive, did you, Jack?”

“I don’t consort with whores, thank you very much. I rip ’em.”

“Fucking hell.”

I get out the flask and have a drink. The Aqua Regia burns in just the right way going down. I start to offer Jack a drink because you always offer the other guy a drink, but I screw the top on and put the flask back in my pocket.

We’re off the beach and heading inland, picking our way through the dead neighborhoods. At the corner of one of the main streets, where rows of burning palms converge on it like a weird offering to a glue-sniffing beach god, is an office building with a three-story clown sculpture in front. It’s in white face with dark whiskers and is wearing a top hat, white gloves, and ballet slippers. I know it’s supposed to look whimsical, but whimsy in a place like this is like jerking off at a funeral. Someone might enjoy it, but you wouldn’t want to know them.

“Assuming that you are Sandman Slim, tell me about yourself and your work. I’ve heard your name many times. Hellions talk about you like the bogeyman.”

“I might be a monster but I never mailed a kidney to a newspaper.”

“Half a kidney. I ate the other half.”

“Mom always said it’s a sin to waste food.”

“How many Hellions have you dispatched, Sandman Slim? How many humans and human souls?”

“No idea.”

“How many women?”

“I yelled at a meter maid once.”

Soon we’re in a residential area. People in Venice are sun worshippers and most of the houses have huge windows. Some of the upscale places even have one or two glass walls. The glass is all gone. Shattered by earth tbogd by earemors and fucked over by looters. Houses are tagged with spray-painted Hellion gang signs. Teenyboppers are assholes here, too. I hope Heaven’s teens are idiots. Going joyriding in Dad’s wings and TPing other angels’ clouds.

A dust devil swirls down the street, pelting us with trash and broken glass. I pull Jack behind a burned-out car and wait until the twister passes. It turns at the corner and heads down another street like it’s alive and has a sense of direction. A few doors later, it goes. The neighborhood isn’t completely deserted. I don’t want to know who or what still lives here. I pull Jack to his feet and we get moving.

I hear a different kind of rumble back the way we came. There’s a light in the distance. A spotlight coming down the dunes to the beach. The posse must have circled back and found Mammon’s limo.

“Is there a faster way, Jack?”

“Yes, but it’s more dangerous.”

“Let’s go.”

We make a few turns back the way we came and run right into a dust storm. I’m practically blind, but Jack pulls me through it like I’m a poodle on a leash. When we emerge from the storm we’re in a different neighborhood. Winding hill roads. The steep grades and long driveways are chewed-up, ever-widening fissures. Ghost mansions come and go in the settling dust. We head downhill, just like this neighborhood is. If the cracks in the road hook up with other, deeper cracks, one good shake and the whole side of this hill is going to turn into Surf City. Hang ten and ride the mansions, Rolls-Royces, and manicured lawns all the way down to the flats and into the Pacific.

Jack looks at me, trying to figure out how we got here.

“You’re navigating with your eyes,” he says. “To navigate these days, you have to think like a worm or mole. You must know what’s underground. This isn’t a land of right angles or streets anymore. It’s purely geologic. The sand back at the beach was probably used as landfill around here to flatten sections of the hills.”

“I’m lucky I have you, then.”

“Yes you are.” He pauses. “You were telling me about how many people you’ve killed.”

“No. I wasn’t.”

“Back in London, old Inspector Abberline and the rest of the Met think I only took five. I took plenty more than that, believe you me. There were a few in the country, but south by the coast was best. Like the lovely beach we just left. Do a day’s excursion to Brighton or Portsmouth. I’d find saloon trollops and rip them down by the wharfs. Toss their innards to the birds and fill their bodies with stones to weigh them down. They’d slip into the sea like it was waiting for them.”

“20100">nough, you twisted fuck.”

We walk on, Jack staring at his feet. Each step leaves a shallow impression in the thick dust that covers the sidewalk. If the posse is behind us, we’ll be easy to track, but I don’t have time to worry about that now. Each step is a second hand on a clock ticking away the time. Jack said it would take a day to get to Eleusis, but I’ve already lost track of how long we’ve been walking.

“None of this is a coincidence, you know,” says Jack.

“Yeah. You had a great personal ad on Craigslist.”

“Assuming I’m who I say that I am and assuming that you are who you say you are, do you truly believe that two such infamous killers could cross paths through simple happenstance?”

“Are you talking about divine intervention, Jack? Because that kind of blows your no-God theory.”

“Not God. Some other, more subtle force that’s thrown us together toward a higher purpose.”

“Listen, we’re in Hell and there are about fifty billion killers down here, so I was bound to meet someone like you. It could have been the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy, or Freddy Krueger, and every one of them would tell me exactly what you’re telling me now. There’s nothing special about our road movie. It’s nothing more than the flip of a coin.”

He slowly shakes his head.

“I don’t believe that. There’s a reason for this. We’re fated to do something together.”

“Yeah. You’re going to take me to Eleusis. When we get there I’m going to shake your hand and we are going to go our separate ways.”

“There has to be more to it than that.”

“Trust me, there doesn’t.”

“Maybe our doing the thing is the payment I need.”

“It won’t work, Jack. Look at our histories. We’re lone wolves. We don’t work with partners. When we get to town we go our separate ways. I’ll be grateful I’m there and you’ll be grateful you’re not still a Hellion’s paperweight.”

A steam vent explodes nearby. The blast of heat and vapor knocks me back. I think I hear a rumbling behind us. There might be a truck coming or it might just be the sound of the vent. I push Jack and we break into a trot.

Jack says, “May I see your knife? I have a great fondness for knives.”

“No.”gn=201D;

I look back at our tracks in the dust. You could see them from space. Maybe Jack wants us to get caught. We need to get off this street. I take his arm and push him onto a side street that’s clean of dust. The vent spews again and the street moves below us. A palm tree falls and crushes a dusty pickup truck. Jack pulls me back in the other direction.

We run to the street we’d been on before. The air is full of dust and we can’t see where we’re going, but we run anyway. If there are any sinkholes or faults in front of us, we’re fucked. We can barely see each other. But the tremors and the noise die down after a minute and the street goes back to being solid.

Jack looks at me.

“I assume you won’t stray from the path again.”

“You’re the boss, Jack.”

“Well put.”

WE’RE HEADING FOR what looks like low hills, but as we get closer, it’s really an area where the streets have buckled wildly, like black icebergs jutting up from the street. Eleusis is on the other side.

We turned off the dusty street twenty minutes earlier. Most of the signs in this neighborhood are in Spanish, but the residents are the same mix of dazed Hellions and lost souls we saw in Hollywood. They sit in cars and wander between strip malls like sleepwalkers.

Where the hell are you, Alice? What are you doing right now, Candy? I’d rather be having the worst time possible with either of you than having the best with my knife-happy tour guide. I know I told Candy to take the blood cure from Allegra, but I wouldn’t mind letting her show Jack here what a Jade looks like. Try to hurt this woman, you little shit.

Every couple of minutes a lone man runs across the street. He’s easy to spot when everyone else is going half speed. When he’s settled somewhere he whistles an all clear. Soon a group of eight or ten Hellions comes up the same way. A mix of men and women, they whoop it up, running into stores, busting the places up, and coming out again with stolen wine and food. The ones with working guns take potshots at cars and store windows.

Jack says, “Raiders.”

He starts running for the back of a half-burned building off to our right. I follow. When he can’t get the rear door open, I push him out of the way, jam the black blade into the door frame, and push. Metal pops and wood splinters. I shove Jack inside and we head to the front of the place. The door is open a crack, giving us a good view of the street.

The Hellions stroll by like the street is bought and paid for. Some are still in their uniforms. Others only kept half of their uniforms and replaced the jackets or pants with formal wear or stolen motocross gear.

“Where are the Raiders from?”

“As the war with Heaven grows closer, there are more and more deserters from the armies. They raid the provinces and live on anything they can find. I once drove the master on a mission to arrest a group hiding in Eleusis. That’s why I know where it is.”

The raiders stop in front of the building we’re hiding in. Suddenly I wish I’d brought a shotgun or two. But they’re not looking at us. They’re looking back down the street. When they get a look at what’s coming, they sprint, run, and disappear over the fence behind a convenience store.

Moving lights sweep the street. The posse has grown to several vehicles. How did they get ahead of us? They must know where we’re going.

There are about twenty Hellions on tricked-out ATVs and Unimogs. They have hot-rod flames on the sides and animal skulls mounted on the roofs and hoods. Their spotlights are LAPD issue. When they hit you with one from a helicopter, it’s instant daylight and you better stop and look happy about it. Jack and I duck behind the door as the light moves over the front of the building.

A ticking, whirring sound follows the posse. I don’t need Jack to tell me what that is. A pack of hellhounds. There wasn’t much in Hell that gave me the creeps as much as the metal hounds. Maybe my subconscious really is shaping the place. The hounds are the only things I’ve seen that look just as hard and awful as they do in regular Hell.

The hounds move in packs. They’re clockwork war dogs bigger than a dire wolf and are run by a brain suspended in a glass globe where their heads should be. A hellhound is smart and dangerous on its own. In packs, they’re like a herd of velociraptors driving tanks. The best way to fight them is to run away and hope they die of old age.

The mechanical hounds lope behind the noisy trucks, their gears ticking quietly in the dark.

“Goddammit, Jack, how much longer before we get there?”

“If we cross over to the street behind this one, with luck we can beat them all to Eleusis. I know of a wall with just a little bit of a hole in it.”

“Let’s get moving.”

“On the other hand, it might not be a bad idea to let the raiders or the men following them get there first.”

“Why?”

“You know of the asylum, but do you know that as Pandemonium has fallen apart, so has the asylum. Most of the inmates have escaped and wander the streets. The old pagans to whom the place was a paradise have all been killed or driven into the wilderness. All you’re going to find in Eleusis are madmen, raiders, and thieves hiding from the war.”