Hell's Pawn

  “No.”

  The gods turned as one to look at John.

  “We’re fighting to free souls from P urgatory,” he said. “I won’t let you treat them like poker chips!”

  “What is this chipped poker that he speaks of?” Set growled.

  “I believe his concern lies with the fate of the souls in question,” Thoth said gently.

  “This is why we wanted you to see some of our land, so you would know that existence is good here, as it will be for those who come.”

  “The souls will be volunteers,” R immon added, “those who wish to move on.

  Nobody will be forced to come here against their will.”

  J ohn knew he could trust R immon, knew to the very core of his being since touching his heart, but that didn’t mean R immon couldn’t be mistaken. A piece was missing from this puzzle, some vital information they weren’t being told, and J ohn wouldn’t budge until he found out what.

  “I f you want us to work with you,” he said, “then you have to come clean.

  Otherwise, no deal.”

  Rimmon tried to intervene. “John, I’m sure there is nothing to be concerned—”

  “Very well,” Thoth said, nodding with a dip of his bird beak. “Too often a blind eye is turned to those details of life considered unpleasant. O ur realm isn’t the paradise we’ve led you to believe. E xtend your trust in us and make one more journey, this time to the onyx pyramid of the north. There you shall find your answers.”

  * * * * *

  “You just had to open your big mouth, didn’t you?”

  J ohn ignored Dante and focused on their destination. He could see the dark pyramid on the horizon. G one were the fountains, the lush green grass, and the winding Nile. I n their place was only sand and silence. W hat this had to do with the ten thousand souls, he didn’t yet understand, but the answers were only moments away.

  “J ohn,” R immon said, removing B olo’s leash so he could run free. “S low down.

  We’ll be there soon enough.”

  “You’re one to talk,” John replied.

  Rimmon digested this. “You feel I was too hasty in my negotiations.”

  “Yes. Ugh. I don’t know. The whole thing sounded like human trafficking. W hat if I hadn’t challenged them? We never would have learned the real reason they wanted the souls.”

  “I ’m sorry. I should have asked more questions. I feel as though I ’ve betrayed your trust.”

  “You haven’t. I know I can trust you, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be wrong, especially if you’re being lied to.”

  R immon took hold of J ohn’s arm and stopped him. “This isn’t only about the Egyptians, is it?”

  “No,” J ohn admi ed, “it isn’t. The leaders of each realm go missing, the M inisters of O rder arrive, and all the pantheons fall in line. I t’s all too convenient. The chess pieces have been perfectly arranged on the board, and when I ask myself who really stands to gain from all of this, the arrows keep pointing to Hell.” Rimmon was silent.

  John’s jaw dropped. “You know something!”

  “I know a good many things, but I have never deceived you. You are right that there is a game being played, but I don’t pretend to understand the rules. There are two halves of the board, and I promise you Hell and the M inisters of O rder are on opposite sides.”

  “And the missing leaders?”

  “That is a question I cannot answer, but if you trust me just until we return to Hell, then I’ll make sure you hear the truth from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Does this horse happen to have three eyes and chain-smoke cigars?” Rimmon smiled. “Yes.”

  J ohn nodded. “O kay. Not only do I need answers, but the other pantheons do as well. If we expect them to fight alongside us, the least we can do is tell them the truth.” The demon agreed before breaking into laughter. “O h, how you remind me of him!

  Always so serious, so earnest in your duty. L ook around you, J ohn! You’re in immortal Egypt, surrounded by the old gods and their pyramids. Drink in the details and allow yourself to become intoxicated!”

  “Yes. It’s very nice,” John said, hiding a smile.

  “Very nice?” R immon shook his head, before grabbing up J ohn in his arms and spinning him around, as if they were dancing. “I would show you so many wonders, see that stoic face of yours light up like a child’s. There are red sands in the second circle of Hell that flow like a river, pulling you down into their warmth, but the sensation isn’t uncomfortable. The way your body bends and moves, like a snake across the ground, is pure ecstasy.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” J ohn teased as R immon set him down. “We have yoga back home.” B ut there was nothing like R immon on E arth. As the demon shook his head ruefully, J ohn’s heart was beating, not out of habit, but because of the feeling that came from being this close to the incubus.

  The moon caught R immon’s eye and he began to sing in a voice that sounded like many, a chorus both haunting and beautiful. And then they really were dancing as John was swept up into his arms again. Like a whirlwind Rimmon spun them back and forth along the sands, his song and movements enchanting J ohn and erasing every worry from his mind. J ohn felt they could go on like this forever, le ing time pass by as they forgot everything in the world except each other.

  “W hen you gents are finished.” Dante’s voice could barely be heard over the song, but R immon stopped singing and set J ohn gently on his feet. “S orry to break up your Village People moment, but there’s something you might want to see.” Dante disappeared over the dune in the direction of the pyramid.

  “I ’ve heard that song before,” J ohn said as they followed, his blood still racing with excitement. “In Cerridwen’s cave, when I thought I had lost you.”

  “I was singing to the moon,” R immon said, the light in his eyes growing distant. “I always serenade the moon, because that’s where I met him.”

  “You met your ex-boyfriend on the moon?”

  “I n its essence, yes. I t’s difficult to explain. I was symbiotically resonating with moon’s light, basking in the glory of its existence. There’s so much you haven’t experienced yet, J ohn, but you will. R egardless, I must have been singing then as well, because that’s how he found me.”

  J ohn studied his face, the subtle longing, the barely concealed affection. All the signs of love, and even though they weren’t for him, seeing their effect on R immon made his legs feel weak.

  “I always sing when I see the moon, hoping by doing so that he will one day hear and come back to me.”

  J ohn could have cried for him, sensing the pain that was so well hidden. Part of him hated this other man for hurting R immon, for not answering his song, but the other part felt a strange sort of hope.

  “M aybe it’s time I stop,” R immon said with a shake of his head. “I t’s been so long now.”

  “Keep singing,” J ohn said, feeling a rush of passion. “He might not come, but someone else will. I promise.” And he was starting to realize who he thought that person should be. All of this was so new, but was it a part of touching R immon’s heart or something more? J ohn needed to know if R immon had felt the same connection or at least understood what had happened. “There’s something I need to ask you—” B ut they had crested the dune and found themselves in the shadow of the pyramid, the scene there chasing all thoughts of hearts from J ohn’s mind. The onyx stones were unpolished, flat black that seemed to make a pyramid-shaped hole in the world. Not far from its base sat two old women in front of a huge pile of thin bricks.

  No, not bricks. B read. The old women were seated next to a bread oven, just as elsewhere in the realm, but the sense of communal joy was absent here. The old woman pounding the dough flat did so mechanically, with the dull precision of a machine. Her companion stared, unmoving, as if she had grown as stale and inflexible as the countless loaves piled beside her. The sand had built up around her, evidence that she hadn’t moved for a long time.

/>   B olo snuck forward and stole the fresh dough from the first woman’s hands, gulping it down in two swallows, but the old woman didn’t react. S he simply reached into the flour bucket next to her to begin again.

  “It doesn’t matter how much you talk to them,” Dante said. “They don’t respond.” W hat did any of it mean? J ohn didn’t understand what was wrong with them, or what he was supposed to do. He wondered for a moment if he could help, as he had done for B olo in P urgatory, but these women weren’t frozen against their will.

  Somehow they had become machines.

  “The pyramid entrance is just over here,” Dante said.

  J ohn was all too eager to leave the strangely disturbing scene, until he saw the unlit rectangle leading to the pyramid’s interior. The dark entrance was barely distinguishable from the onyx stones. W hatever awaited them inside, they wouldn’t know what it was until they ran headlong into it.

  “I don’t suppose you can see in the dark?” J ohn asked. “Demonic vision or something?”

  “No,” Rimmon said, “but there’s always my flame breath.”

  “R ight, then you’re going first,” Dante said. “I don’t fancy ge ing roasted from behind.”

  O f course they had one more option, one that would allow J ohn to put his skills to the test. All he needed was a li le motivation, which wasn’t hard considering the pitch-black maw they were about to enter.

  The torches appeared in J ohn’s hands, three of them that he had been wise enough to visualize as unlit. They came as easily as B olo’s leash had, J ohn’s need summoning them into existence.

  “Well done,” R immon said, taking one and lighting it with a gentle puff of his flame breath before passing it back.

  “I don’t know why you always steal,” J ohn said, handing the freshly lit torch to Dante. “I f you’d practice creating more than just cigare es, you could literally make your own money.”

  “Don’t give him any ideas,” R immon said. “The merchants in Hell have no trouble spo ing a counterfeit. B esides, it’s the essence of an object, the energy and history imbuing it that holds value. A pile of conjured gold holds no more worth than mud.”

  “The money Asmoday filled my pockets with in Hell didn’t seem so special,” Dante said, not willing to give up hope.

  “B ecause they had Asmoday’s mark on them,” R immon explained, “and his favor is extremely valuable. Now let’s see what awaits us inside while J ohn is still concentrating on keeping these torches in existence.”

  B eyond the entrance of the onyx pyramid were stairs leading down into the earth, but never upward into the pyramid itself. J ohn wondered if anything was to be found in the structure above, or if the black pyramid was one huge gravestone.

  Their path ended in a large chamber full of people, the four walls covered in hieroglyphics. O nly the occasional shuffling of feet gave the people away as being more than statues. J ohn was reminded of the animals in P urgatory, except here the people weren’t in stasis. They were free to move, so why did they choose to stay here in the darkness?

  “I thought mummies were supposed to wear bandages,” Dante said.

  His voice echoed through the chamber. The reaction was subtle at first. A few heads turned to look at them, followed by surprised murmurs. This a racted more a ention, and soon bodies began to jostle each other for a be er view. Then everything exploded. The crowd rushed them, eyes wild, teeth bared, and hands outstretched.

  J ohn panicked as the first wave of people hit them, their fingers clutching, tearing at him as if hungry for his flesh. His mind was filled with the need to survive, leaving no room for the torches he should have been concentrating on, which disappeared and left them in complete darkness.

  B ut the hands continued to explore. B olo was barking, and Dante’s screams were unintelligible. W here was R immon’s fire? He needed to burn these people before

  — before what? The hands, while intrusive, weren’t doing any harm. I n fact, J ohn could hear excited voices discussing details. R immon’s horns, or the strange fabric of J ohn’s suit. These weren’t brain-hungry zombies. They were curious spectators, no ma er how overzealous they were.

  “Be calm, my people, and remember to show restraint!”

  The commanding voice of a god was followed by a soft blue light that filled the chamber, restoring their vision. C rane-headed Thoth was at their side, and with his appearance came a wave of calm. Even Dante stopped shrieking.

  “What is this?” John asked.

  “S tagnant water, people who have long since lost their passion for existence. For eons they have experienced all that we have to offer them, until they became weary with time.”

  “Thus the behavior of the bread-makers outside,” R immon said, nodding in understanding. “They’ve been performing the same actions for so long that it’s become mechanical.”

  Thoth nodded. “The passion has been extinguished from their souls.” J ohn felt his anger rising. “S o you bury them under a pyramid and leave them to rot?”

  “The properties of the onyx pyramid brings them what comfort we can provide,” Thoth answered. “We gods use our magic daily to give them rest, but this is no solution. E ven before the other realms became suspicious of each other, we E gyptians preferred a secluded existence. The price of this is what you see here. These people long for new experiences outside of this realm, which is why we ask Hell to send us fresh souls. You can see the reaction your presence alone has caused. Tell them a story.”

  John’s brow furrowed. “Sorry?”

  “A story from your life. Let them hear of matters unknown to them.” J ohn looked at the crowd, their faces eager as children on C hristmas Day. W hat could he possibly tell them? The contracts he struggled to fulfill in business? The malls he helped build, or the boyfriends who one by one tired of his working hours and left?

  “There’s the first time I killed a man.” Dante was speaking, looking rather sheepish.

  “I never really talk about it, so it would be good to get it off my chest. Not that I ’m confessing, mind you. B eing born C atholic doesn’t make you one, no ma er what anyone says. That was only on my father’s side anyway, and he ran off long before I was a teenager.”

  J ohn looked at their audience, expecting to see confused faces, but they were enraptured. Thoth raised the staff he was holding, and suddenly J ohn could see Dante’s father in his mind as clear as day, a stern man with small, suspicious eyes and a chin covered in black grizzle.

  “I dropped out of school not having learned much,” Dante continued. “At least nothing that could earn me a wage, so me and my mates would drink and try to find women dumb enough to waste their time on us. P ints don’t come free, so I took to stealing. At first from my mam, later from neighbors. As soon as they left the house, I ’d let myself in by one means or another. I f I was lucky, I found money and a li le something to drink. O therwise I ’d have to find valuables, which was never easy as I couldn’t care less about antiques. E ventually I a racted the a ention of one too many pigs, and it was in my best interest to leave Dublin.

  “I decided to go to England. M y mam always said that the streets of London could go from civilized to sinister in the beat of a heart, and I suppose that appealed to me. I t didn’t take long before the East End was my second home. No surprise to anyone I fell in with a bad crowd. That’s how I met Filthy Henry, who had more than one neighborhood under his greasy thumb. He fancied himself a regular duke of the streets, which I suppose he was. I didn’t like him much, but he had money, so I started working for him. Henry always knew the right houses to rob and the most valuable things to take. He cased jobs for me, and even after he took his cut, I was still making more than I ever did on my own.

  “Henry had a small army of lads running jobs for him, but that didn’t stop him from coming along occasionally. He wasn’t scared to get his own hands dirty, which is where his name came from. He was good, too, made short work of any lock, and was a vicious bastard
in a fight if anyone got out of line. Things were good for a while, until Henry started ge ing into drugs and weapons. I didn’t mind the drugs so much, but the army surplus he was picking up I avoided like the plague. W ho wants to pick up a crate of shoddy grenades from a shifty bloke bristling with weapons? Filthy Henry respected this, so I would only do the occasional drug run.

  “I was supposed to push some heroin on a new buyer, but I smelled him out as a pig. He didn’t look comfortable in his coat. I know that sounds crazy, but a man should be used to his own coat. I played it cool, said I could get him what he wanted in a week, even though the boot of my car was loaded down with the stuff. P icked the man’s pocket as he left, and sure enough, the badge was tucked in right next to the wallet.”

  Dante paused to make sure his audience was still listening, and shrugged when he saw they were.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t have told Filthy Henry, but I had to give a reason for why the deal went sour. I f I hadn’t mentioned the wallet, everything would have been fine, but Henry snatched it away. There it was, C onstable Warren’s home address right next to all the photos of his kids. You should have seen them. E ach one was a different color, like a United Nations meeting or something, all squeezed in between him and his Yoko O no wife. I ’ll spare you what Filthy Henry’s plans were, but they involved using some of those surplus explosives to make sure C onstable Warren and his family would never sing Kumbaya again.”

  “I thought you were going to spare us?” John interrupted.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t tell you where he planned on shoving those explosives.

  Anyway, I tailed Warren the very next day and watched him take his kids to church, stopping along the way to talk to a beggar. Didn’t give him a thing, or so I thought, but then Warren pops in a bakery and comes out with some food and gives it to the bum, along with the change. All the while his family is watching patiently as if they’d seen it a thousand times before. C onstable Warren was a good man, and his kids would probably grow up right with someone like him around. If he lived long enough.”