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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: City Infernal
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The first thing Cassie saw were a band of devilish children attacking an old man, disemboweling him with a hook. Two of the hideous children threw the old man over the side, while a third ran off with his intestines.
“Broodren,” Xeke explained. “Kind of like teen-age gangs in the Living World—real pains in the ass.”
“There are no human kids here,” Via said, “but we’ve got several dozen different demon races. They reproduce like rabbits. Even the Hierarchals hate them. The Extermination Platoons barely help at all.”
Cassie asked a question, half-gagging: “Why did the one—”
“Run off with the old geezers guts?” Xeke finished. “To sell it to an Anthropomancer or Extipicist. They read the future by looking at entrails, and send messengers to report the results to Lucifer. Divination is the biggest game in town—it runs the economy. There are countless thousands of Divination Points in the city.”
“Smoke Divination is even bigger,” Via said. “It’s supposedly more accurate, and it’s easier to sell small pieces at a time.”
Small ... pieces?
Cassie thought. She didn’t ask.
They passed rows of what appeared to be shops: alchemists, palmists, channelers. “Clip joints mostly,” Xeke revealed. “Most of them aren’t legit—except the place we’re going.”
But where
were
they going?
“No way!” Via complained when they arrived. A sign above the shop read SHANNON’S APOTHECARIES & AMULETS: CASH, TRADE, OR PHLEBOTOMY.
“It’ll only take a minute,” Xeke assured. “I figure a Reckoning Elixir will help Cassie get used to things.”
“But we don’t have any cash,” Via hotly reminded him, “and we’ve got to be
very
careful with the bones. If you just start throwing those things around, the Constabs’ ll be on to us! They’ll put warrants out!”
“Relax. I’m saving the bones for the money-changer’s,” and before he could say another word, he was walking into the shop.
Via seemed furious; Cassie and Hush followed her in.
A crystal bell chimed, and at once Cassie was surrounded by exotic scents. The simple shop was mostly old, leaning shelves filled with bottles and jars. “Reminds me of one of those hokey voodoo shops in New Orleans,” Cassie said.
“This ain’t no damn voodoo shop,” Via testily replied.
A cheerful young woman stood behind the front counter. Cassie liked her apparel: a diaphanous black silk cloak and hood. The woman—Shannon, she presumed—smiled warmly at them, with deep dark eyes. “Greetings....” Her eyes surveyed Xeke with some approval. “The handsome rogue returns. Didn’t thee trade with me, a wee bit ago?”
“Thee did,” Xeke mocked.
“Of course! A Bergamot Shot, was it not?”
“Yeah, I had a stomach ache.”
“And such a treat it is for the red night to bless me again with thy striking presence. What can Shannon concoct for thee?”
“Shit-can the hokey medieval witch-talk for starters,” Xeke said. “I need a Reckoning Elixir, a good one. not that jive crap they sell to Newcomers on the street.”
“Mmmm.” The smile widened. “For these I have, and for you, I have much, virile stranger—the finest on the Walk.” Her dark eyes thinned on Hush. “Invest to me the short one, to be drained just one-quarter-dry, in return for a full liter flagon of Hell’s most potent Reckoning Elixir.”
“Not a chance,” Xeke said. “I just want one dram, and I’ve got no cash.”
The woman’s next words were stalled when she looked to Cassie, saw the bag she was carrying. “Lo, no cash. What have thee, though, in that sack, grasped so limply by the pretty one so fulgent-haired?”
“Nothing for you. Just give me the dram.”
“Xeke! No!” Via outraged.
“I got plenty,” he dismissed over his shoulder.
The cloaked woman drifted to a shelf, placed a tiny vial on the counter. Cassie, in the meantime, was taking some note of the shop’s disturbing inventory. Opaque bottles with corroded corks, and jars full of murky slop. One jar contained severed demon fingertips, another severed testes. THYMUS JUICE, another jar was labeled, and another: GARGOYLE SWEAT. Cassie ceased her examination when she looked into one jar and saw a face looking back.
Now Shannon smiled openly, showing a pair of delicate fangs.
“Goddamn vampires,” Via complained. “I can’t stand them....”
“So, then, a dram for a dram.” Her voice grew plush. “Or ... we can go in back for a while.”
“Xeke, if you do,” Via challenged jealously, “I’ll punch your friggin’ face in! I’ll never talk to you again, I swear!”
“Dram for a dram,” Xeke replied.
The vampire-woman handed Xeke a pointed stylus of some kind, then raised a tiny silver spoon.
Xeke casually pricked his palm with the stylus. From his fist he squeezed enough drops of his own blood to fill the spoon.
“There, knock yourself out.”
Shannon slowly sucked the blood off the spoon, savoring it. Her face took on an expression of serene ecstacy.
“Thanks,” Xeke said, and took the vial. “Later.”
“Later—yes!” the woman slurred through her bloody smile. “I implore thee, come back soon, handsome one.”
“Go crawl back in your coffin, you fanged bitch!” Via yelled.
Xeke just shook his head. He was turning to leave, but Shannon delicately grabbed the sleeve of his leather jacket. “Come back soon,” she whispered. She lewdly cupped a breast through the black cloak. “I’ll show thee many pleasures ... and you can show
me
what’s in your pretty friend’s sack.”
“Take your grubby hands off him,” Via yelled some more, “unless you want me to throw your trashy vampire ass right into the river! I’ll chop your head off and stuff garlic down your neck!”
Xeke was clearly embarrassed. He gestured them all toward the door, but something urged Cassie to look back at the vampire one last time.
The woman’s red lips silently mouthed
Bye.
Cassie shuddered and left.
“I can’t believe you were flirting with that spooky bitch!” Via griped to Xeke back on the Riverwalk.
“Oh, Jesus. How was I flirting? Can I help it if she digs me? I just played her game a little. She’s the best Elixirist in this part of the city.”
“She’s probably the best head queen too! You’ve been there before—she said so!”
“So what? I go to Elixirists all the time.”
“You
fucked
her, didn’t you?”
Xeke rolled his eyes. “No, of course not. Jesus, Via. I can’t even look at another girl without you having a fit.”
Cassie interrupted the spat. “So vampires are real?”
“Sure,” Xeke said. “But when they get staked and come to Hell, they’re under an even worse curse—a Conversion Hex. If they bite a human, they turn into pillars of salt. They’re only allowed to drink blood if it’s offered to them.” He uncapped the tiny vial. “Anyway, down the hatch.”
Cassie sniffed ... and nearly retched. “That smells
awful!
It smells like rotten meat! I’m not going to
drink
that! ”
“Of course you are,” Xeke said. “Don’t be such a creamcake. Believe me, after you drink that slop, you’ll be glad that you did.”
Hush nodded to give Cassie some assurance. Cassie grimaced and swallowed it. The elixir tasted worse than it smelled, and it slid down her throat like a line of mucus.
But, in another second—
Wait a minute....
She felt completely at ease.
The nausea was gone, and so was the staggering mental trauma inflicted by all she’d seen. Suddenly ... she understood.
“Feel better?” Via asked.
“Yes—wow,” Cassie replied.
“And here comes your first test,” Xeke chided.
A naked woman shuffled along the walk, leaving footprints of pus. “Daemosyphilitus,” Xeke said. “There are sexual diseases in Hell too. It takes over your whole body until you’re just one big walking infection—like her.”
The meaty stench blew off her as she sloshed along. Cassie felt sorry for the woman, but was not repulsed by her at all.
“Hey, and here comes a Gut-Job.”
A haggard man limped along, shirtless. Where his abdomen should be was just a ragged, empty hole—his entire abdominal cavity emptied. Yellow things, like maggots, infested much of the open cavity now.
“Same as that old man we saw get eviscerated by those Broodren,” Via accented. “He was either captured and gutted by a Mancer Squad or he willingly sold his entrails to an Extipicist. People are desperate here just like they are in the Living World.”
Cassie wasn’t repulsed in the least.
“Good,” Xeke said cheerily. “It worked.” He nudged Via. “See, I told you Shannon made a great Reckoning Elixir. ”
Via cut a hot frown. “She’s a floozy blood-chugging tramp and I’ll bitch-slap her up and down the street if I ever see her checking you out again.”
“Yeah?” Xeke dared. “And what if I check
her
out?”
“Then I’ll pop your eyeballs out and suck your brain.”
Xeke winked at Cassie. “Fatal attraction—I think she means business. Come on, let’s go. It’s time to give you the twenty-five-cent tour.”
(II)
Her abhorrence cured now, Cassie found the city diversified and fascinating—she also found it structurally awesome when she considered that this district represented only one grain of sand in a megalopic sandbox. She remembered what Xeke had told her of the actual dimensions: over two million square miles. “It’s bigger than most
countries
in the Living World,” he said as he led the group down the Avenue Des Champs-Blóde. Cassie easily noted the Parisian influence, especially when they walked beneath the massive Arc de Miserius, where corpses of Broodren hung upside-down by iron hooks set in the keystones. These corpses, however, showed no signs of movement, unlike those they’d seen on the Styx Bridge.
“Human
bodies can’t die here, but pretty much anything Hell-born can,” Via explained. “Trolls, Imps, Broodren—most of the lower species of demons. They aren’t born with souls. Even Grand Dukes can die.”
“So only
human
souls are immortal here?” Cassie asked.
“Humans,” Xeke answered. “And Fallen Angels. That’s about it.”
“Golems don’t count, because they’re manufactured—they’ re almost impossible to kill but they’re stupid.” Via pointed. “There’s one now.”
The thing stood on a comer, nine feet tall. Its sculpted body of riverbed clay shined wetly in the sulphuric light of a street lamp. It seemed insentient as a statue, until something caught its thumb-holes for eyes, and it turned into an alley.
“Golems are like street cops, the lowest level of the Constabs,” Xeke said. “Spells program them what to look for.”
“But didn’t you say you were fugitives?” Cassie wondered. “Aren’t you afraid a Golem might come after you?”
“Naw. They can’t identify
people,
just criminal activity. XR’s like us are safe from them. Ushers are another story, though, and so are Conscripts. They have brains.”
“Ushers are Hellborn; they’re the most ferocious genus of demon, and Conscripts are hybridizations of Orges and Nether-Bats. But most of them are recruited into the Mutilation Squads,” Via added. “What XR’s and other fugitives most have to worry about are other humans who read the District Wanted Boards. The Constabulary is granted a large budget for squealers and spies. It’s a big temptation. Treachery is a way of life here.”
Several Polter-Rats scurried across the next street. They were larger than city rats, with vaguely human facial features. Cassie noted, too, that their feet looked more like a human infant’s hands. “Whenever a Spirit Body is destroyed to the extent that the Soul is transferred to vermin or proto-demons,” Xeke said, “some of the human physical traits are transferred as well.”
Via kicked a tin can—labeled VIENNA TROLL-BRAIN SAUSAGES—across the street. “Polter-Rats are probably the worst vermin. They have anesthetic in their saliva—so you don’t wake up when they’re eating you. It’s a real problem in the Ghettoblocks. One night you go to sleep as usual but when you wake up, your face is gone, or all the flesh has been eaten off your arms or legs, and all you’ve got left are bones. Bapho-Roaches are pretty gross too. They’ll lay eggs under your skin; the only way to get ’em out is to cut.”
Xeke kicked another can further, which read HUMAN SPAM. “And let’s not forget Hell’s most notorious pest, the Caco-Tick. They get into your hair and drill through your skull, and what they feed on is your spinal fluid. One tick can suck a human dry in no time. Fucks you
all
up. But don’t worry, our gemstones protect us all from most of that.”
Somehow, Cassie didn’t feel terribly secure.
Across certain intersections, she thought she could feel a rumbling beneath her feet, while smoke and licks of flame gushed out of the sewer grates. But then Xeke and Via explained that Hell’s bedrock was indeed sulphur, and subterranean sectors had been burning for centuries—firesthat would never go out. After another block, they crossed the street, and Cassie suddenly found herself walking ankle deep in some grotesque, warm liquefaction. “Yuck! What’s that?”

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