“I think . . .” Nobody seemed to be paying attention to us, but if my message wasn’t as innocuous as it sounded, I wasn’t certain I wanted to take the risk of anyone even seeing me deliver it. “I need to speak to you in private.”
His thick lip curled. “Piss on you, my lord. If you’ve got a bribe to offer, talk to my master, not me. I won’t cheat on him, not for all the treasure and cooze in Pandaemonium.”
“No, no!” I said. “It’s not a bribe, it’s a message. And not for Gagsnatch. For you.” I did everything but waggle my eyebrows like Groucho to help him get the subtext. “I just think it would be safer . . .”
I was interrupted by shouting from behind me, voices raised above even the roar of Gagsnatch Brothers ordinary chorus of bellows and howls. As we turned to look, a scrawny demon dashed toward us from the nearest knot of workers, his batlike ears laid flat against his skull in alarm.
“Boss says look sharp, Master Riprash! Make sure everything’s on the up!”
“Why?” Riprash didn’t seem to have many other facial expressions besides Annoyed and Dangerous.
“The Commissar’s showed up of a sudden. He and his lot are poking their noses in all over. They’re going from stall to stall looking for somebody.”
“Commissar Niloch?” The ogre clearly wasn’t happy to hear it, and now I wasn’t happy either. The bat-eared minion skittered away to spread the word to other parts of the large establishment. “What in the name of Astaroth’s swinging udders is he up to? Old Flaps and Scratches usually doesn’t make a show of himself until later in the season when he comes for his tribute.”
Now the stir had become more general as a few helmeted Murderers Sect guards came swaggering into the stall at the far end. When I quickly turned away again, Riprash was looking at me. He must have seen the panic in my eyes.
“You don’t want to be seen by Murder Sect, do you?” His remaining eye roved from me to little Gob and back again. “Not a friend of the Commissar’s, I take it?”
I didn’t dare say a word, because almost anything I could say suddenly struck me as potentially the wrong thing. Heavily armed demon soldiers were shouldering into the stall in bunches now. The slavers and even the slaves had fallen silent, nobody wanting to attract attention, and there was no way I could walk out again unnoticed. This wounded giant had my immortal soul in his huge hands, and there was nothing more I could do.
“Over here, then.” Riprash folded a giant hand over my shoulder and shoved me into a stumbling trot toward the back of the stall, where all kinds of cages had been dumped. Most were empty, but one was so full of slaves that arms and legs stuck out between every bar, and even the growing sense of terror settling over Gagsnatch’s establishment had not stopped their quiet noises of pain. “These need to be washed. Nobody with sense will want to look for you there.” The ogre fumbled a huge key out of his ragged garment and threw open the door of the cage, dealt bonebreaking blows to the few prisoners foolish enough to try to leave, then shoved me in. Gob scrambled in on top of me. I say “on top” because there was literally nowhere else to go. The entire cage, not much bigger than an old-fashioned phone booth, was crammed with the hideous, filthy bodies of damned slaves. They were so beaten down I heard only a few snarls of complaint as I pushed as far into the middle as I could get. The two or three prisoners who had been displaced by my entrance were only too happy to move back to the bars and the comparatively fresh air to be found just outside of a slave cage in the middle of Hell.
I got into an awkward crouch so that I had less chance of being crushed and a slightly better angle to see what was going on. Our end of the stall was rapidly filling with demon guards, most of them closer in size to Riprash than to me. The Commissar’s soldiers moved with the grace of water buffalos on fire, knocking over everything that wasn’t staked into the ground, stepping on everything that was, and yanking on the neck chains of uncaged slaves until I heard vertebrae snap. It was like watching a troop of baboons investigating a structure made of twigs and meat. Yet even these inhuman monstrosities turned up their noses at our cage and did no more than jab with their spears at a few of the more exposed slaves, just for fun.
After awhile the soldier-demons got bored with pulling things apart and began to wander out of the stall. I was beginning to feel I might actually survive the afternoon when a new group stomped into view, looking like nastier and more serious versions of the first thugs, and immediately began throwing slaves and slavemasters alike to the floor of the stall. Then the Commissar walked in.
I swear I felt something like a shock of cold air before I saw him, along with the faint smell of vinegar and something rotting, then the Commissar came into my view and paused before the only employee of Gagsnatch Brothers still standing, namely Riprash.
The newcomer was not one of those demons who waste a lot of energy trying to look like anything human. In fact, at first I could barely tell where Commissar Niloch began and everything else left off, because he was covered with rattling, bone-white tendrils that curled out of his black armor like stray hairs, making him look a little like one of those fancy, frilly seahorses you only see in aquariums. His face was a bit like a seahorse’s too, long, angular, and bony, but no seahorse ever had such evil little blood-drop eyes.
“Oh, my good heart, what have we here?” Niloch was almost as tall as Riprash, but despite his armor and helmet, the rattling bone-tendrils made him seem as fragile as the slenderest branching coral. Still, I don’t think anyone could have looked at the Commissar’s hideous, gleeful face and imagined mere strength would defeat such a creature. “Oh, my charitable works! What is this? A bottom-dweller, a shit-sucker, who does not bow to the Commissar of Wings and Claws, master of all the Meadows and beyond? But why would someone thwart me when all I wish to do is kindness?” He extended an insectoid arm crusted by a whorl of horns. “Why do you insult me, fellow? Why do you hate your rightful master so?”
Even listening to his lilting voice made my stomach turn over. It was as if someone had taken the skin off your favorite grandfather and made a balloon, then let the air squeak out of it in musical bursts. I would gladly have burrowed down into the dung and stayed there forever to avoid that bony, clicking thing noticing me.
Riprash, I guess, was made of sterner stuff. “I waited until you were close enough to show you proper respect, Commissar.” The ogre lowered his vast body to one knee, but I could tell he didn’t like this Niloch much.
“Ah, to be sure, to be sure. And what slave would not risk the anger of the Lord of Wings and Claws to protect his employer’s slaves from being disturbed? What is it you attend so closely here?” Niloch’s jaw, a hinge of horn at the base of his equine skull, splayed to reveal a row of teeth that seemed too different and too long for even that strange mouth. I guessed it was a smile. “What property of your master’s are you so diligently protecting, hmmm?” He took a step forward, his legs creaking and sawing as his tangles of bone rubbed together. “What could be worth keeping even from beloved Niloch? Hmmmm?” Another step forward, until the rattling thing was only a few paces from the cage where I squatted with the other terrified prisoners. Riprash started to get up, but Niloch pointed at him. “Do you object to my inspection? That is a serious matter, slave. Souls have gone into the holes between stars over less.” The fluting voice rose. “Would you obstruct Commissar Niloch at his rightful duties?”
For a moment, against all sense, I prayed that Riprash would do something crazy, run, shout, hit the Commissar in his bony face, anything that might cause enough ruckus to allow Gob and me to escape. Then I remembered that we were locked in a cage. Even if they burned the stall to the ground, we weren’t going anywhere.
Riprash made a rumbling noise deep in his chest, but didn’t say anything. Then his big head dipped. He stayed on one knee. “Course not, Lord Commissar. Our place is yours.”
“Ah, lovely.” Niloch spat a long thread of something onto the ground. “That’s all right then. I’ll just come ove
r and have a closer look at these, shall I?” And so he did, stinking of death and vinegar.
interlude
“YOU NEVER told me what you do for entertainment in Hell.”
She rolled away and lit a cigarette. “And I doubt I ever will. You don’t really care, anyway. You just want to hear all the horrid bits. It’s not like that. At least, not always. Not all of it.”
“Whoa! Peace, milady Countess. Honestly, I just wanted to know. I’m a curious guy.”
She peered over her shoulder at me. I couldn’t tell if she was ready to be nice again or not. She was funny that way, I could tell. Under that perfect, ultra-cool surface she was full of broken places. They say that’s why cats get abscesses—their skin heals so quickly it often heals right over an infected wound. Caz was a bit feline that way.
Still, she looked so fucking lovely when she stretched to flick her cigarette ash into the ashtray, just looking at her made me want to jump her again. Even an angel needs some recovery time, though, so I just stroked her hip as the sheet slid back, then leaned forward and kissed the cold skin.
“Okay, then I’ll ask you,” she said. “What do you do for fun in Heaven?”
I laughed, but then I thought about it, and there wasn’t really much I could say. Heaven is a lot of things, but “fun” isn’t really one of them. “It’s hard to explain. It’s a very happy place, but not really by choice.”
“Enforced happiness?”
“Something like that. Well, no, it’s more like how when you live near a really good barbecue place, it makes you hungry all the time, just smelling the meat cooking.”
“Wouldn’t quite work like that in Hell, Dollar,” she said, sending a jet of smoke up to be obliterated by her ceiling fan. “We’re fairly used to the smell of burning meat.”
Zing. “Okay. But do you get what I’m trying to say? It’s not like you turn into some kind of zombie in Heaven, it’s just . . . well, being there is very uplifting.”
“Boy, does that sound like bullshit, Wings. Uplifting? That’s the kind of thing people say about the folk mass down at the local congregational church.”
“Look, don’t put me in the position of defending Heaven. It’s not like I’m their golden boy or anything.” I reached over and gently squeezed a pink nipple. She made a little noise. It was very sweet. “I mean, you don’t think they’d approve of this do you? Of us?”
Caz smacked my hand away before I could do it again. “Don’t change the subject. You asked what I do for fun in Hell. I’m asking you what you do in Heaven.”
“Try to leave, most of the time. Quickly as I possibly can.”
She gave me a grumpy look. “Come on, sport. I’ve seen you drink. You’ve got nothing against a little happy oblivion. What’s the difference?”
“Because getting drunk in a bar is my choice. Getting drunk on glory in Heaven when I’m only there because I’ve been summoned, that’s different.”
“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “I’m finding it a little difficult to feel sorry about someone making you feel happy even when you don’t want to. I mean, compared to some of the things I’ve seen—like, you know, people being eaten from the inside out by sawtoothed worms because they didn’t bow fast enough—it doesn’t seem so bad.” She shook her head. “Shit, I’ve seen worse things back in medieval Poland. In church on Sunday.”
It was, even I had to admit, a no-win argument. Of course I couldn’t make her understand what bothered me about Heaven. It was like those things they make fun of on the internet—First World Problems. Except this was an Above The World Problem.
“Look,” she said, then reached out and squeezed me in a different place than I’d squeezed her, and a lot harder (but in a very nice way). “I’m making you feel good against your will. Does that mean you’re going to complain about me, too? Stand up for your rights? Ooh, you’re such a rebel, Bobby!” Then she gently wrapped her lips around my cock, the part of my body least likely to help me concentrate on arguing at times like these. She drew me past her lips and into her mouth. Very, very cold, then very warm.
Normally I don’t like it when people make fun of me. I always prefer to be the fun-maker, probably because I’m a complete asshole, but I decided I could let myself be exploited just that once, strictly as a learning experience.
fifteen
riprash
I COULD ONLY watch helplessly as Commissar Niloch approached the cage. His bony spurs stirred and scraped as he walked, like wind shifting dead leaves, and he examined the crush of damned souls with eyes as unfeeling as two shiny red buttons. If I tell you that I could smell him even through the various stenches of being locked in a slave cage in the middle of Hell, you’ll have an idea of how pungent his scent was, sweetness and rotten meat combined, like one of those corpse flowers that lure flies to their doom. It was all I could do not to vomit, and I probably gagged a little, which may have been what drew his attention. I was mostly hidden by the slaves splayed against the bars in front of me, but those tiny eyes suddenly fixed on mine, and he moved closer. His smell rolled over me in a nauseating wave, then he opened his weird mouth and things got a lot worse.
The two bits of his lower jaw clashed together like a crab applauding. I hoped it wasn’t what he did when he was hungry. He was staring straight at me. My demon heart was going like a jackhammer in my chest.
“Are you interested in purchasing more slaves, Commissar?” Riprash came forward. “I’d be happy to find you some healthy ones. I haven’t sorted these yet.” Niloch turned and looked at him, saying nothing, but when Riprash spoke again he had a slight tremor in his voice. “Or, if you’d like, I can clean these up so you can inspect them.”
The commissar laughed, I guess, although the thin whistling didn’t sound much like laughter. “Oh, would you? Perhaps dress them up, too, so they look like little lords and ladies. That would be merry.” He turned back to the cage and, just to make sure my heart kept crashing against my ribs, found my eyes again. “But I must say, I’ve—”
“What’s going on here? Oh, Commissar, it’s true, you’ve graced us with a visit!”
“He’s expecting something,” said another voice almost immediately.
“Shut up or I’ll have you removed,” said the first voice. “Thank you, Lord Commissar, thank you!”
The tubby, two-headed figure of Gagsnatch, the slave-stall’s owner, bustled toward Niloch. One of his heads showed the commissar a wide, ingratiating smile, the other stared with a look of open disinterest. “You do me too much honor!” said Happy Head.
“Any is too much,” said the other head, sullen as a teenage boy.
“Ah,” said Niloch. “At last you favor me with your attendance, slave trader.”
Happy Head immediately screwed his face into a frown of remorse. “I did not know it was you, Commissar! Rest assured that as soon—”
“Shut your mouths,” said Niloch, not much louder than a whisper. “Both.” Silence followed. “Yes, as it happens, you can do something for me. I do have need of more slaves. Send me this crate, just as it is.” Niloch turned back, but this time his gaze only touched me briefly, then swept across the other poor schmucks in the cage. “Yes, this should do. Dear me, don’t bother to clean them. Waste of sand. They’ll serve just fine the way they are.” He paused. “Ah, yes. I see my men have finished here, and I have a long way back to my quarters. Draw up the bill and send the slaves to Gravejaw House immediately.” The commissar rattled out of my line of sight, back the way he had come.
“Thank you, Commissar!” cried Happy Head. “Your custom is the most generous gift you could give me! You are the best lord in the land!”
“But you said he was the worst,” chirped Unhappy Head. “You said he was stupid as a turd and smelled like—”
I had the novel experience of watching someone slap one of his own heads across the mouth hard enough to draw blood. Punishment delivered and Unhappy Head at least temporarily silenced, Gagsnatch hurried after the comm
issar, spouting words of praise and gratitude.
My heart was finally slowing to a level more like ordinary terror when the door of the slave cage clanked open. “You,” Riprash told me. “Out.”
The other slaves had no real way to make room for me, so he yanked several of them out, causing at least one or two serious injuries, I’m sure. I fought my way toward the opening, only remembering as I got close to it that Gob was in the cage, too, but when I looked back the little hairy kid was slithering his way after me through the other slaves.
Before I could ask Riprash a single question he picked me up under the arms and carried me like a puppy into the back of the stall, into a little area blocked by a screen made of hide and dropped me there. Gob curled up just behind my legs, watching Riprash with an impressive level of concentration, no doubt fermenting half a dozen plans of escape if things went sour. A survivor, that’s what the kid was. That was how I used to think of myself, too, but after meeting Gob I realized now how pathetically easy I’d had it by comparison.
“You lot stay here.” Riprash peered at us over the screen, which I couldn’t have done standing on a box. In the dark his ruined face looked like it was carved of stone. Ugly stone. “No noise!” Then he went out. After a few comparatively quiet minutes I heard him talking with both of his boss’s heads for a while. If Unhappy Head had been cowed by its recent smacking, it had gotten over it; I heard it sniping at almost everything the other head said. At last the three-way palaver ended, and I heard Riprash’s heavy tread returning.
“And now I have to find two more slaves, because that’s how many Niloch counted and that’s how many he’ll expect.” Again the big hands closed on me and lifted. He set me down and looked me over. I swear, if he had said “Fee Fi Fo Fum,” I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Instead he pulled over a large stone, which I couldn’t have moved with a pickup truck and a tow chain, then sat on it.