City Infernal (18 page)

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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: City Infernal
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“This place almost seems normal,” she remarked.
“Does that look normal to you?” Via pointed to a high mantle over the bar. The severed head of a monster had been propped there on a spike. Bottles on the glass shelves behind the bar all seemed to be full of muck rather than liquor, and then there was a sink full of green mold over which a sign read: EMPLOYEES MUST NOT WASH THEIR HANDS.
A chalkboard announced the day’s specials: HUMAN CHILI (SPICY OR MILD), HUMAN SAUSAGE, HUMAN MEAT LOAF WITH FIXIN’S.
“Those are the specials?” Cassie questioned.
“Sure. In the Ghetto,
Human
meat is rare. It’s usually shipped to the ritzier districts, which means this place has some mob ties. Nine times out of ten, you’ll only find demon meat in the Ghettoblocks.” Then Via gestured toward the pool table. “The balls are kidney stones from a Nether-Pig. Oh, and check out the tube.”
Cassie looked closer at the oval tv screen in the corner. It was a boxing match between two demons. Instead of boxing gloves, the contestants held carpenter’s hammers in each hand.
Via reached up and changed the channel, a game show where a cadaverous host in a tuxedo spun a great clicking wheel. Wedges on the wheel bore words: TOTAL DISMEMBERMENT, LUXURY SUITE, BONE-REMOVAL, $50,000 CASH, and the like. A giddy She-Demon watched as the wheel spun. “Here’s your chance, Magnolia!” the host celebrated. “Will it be riches, or will it be the end of the line for you?” The wheel slowed, ticking. The pointer turned through a wedge that read LUXURY CRUISE FOR TWO ON THE SEA OF CAGLIOSTRO, but—
One more click and the pointer stopped on: HEAD-PRESSING.
“Oh, no, that sure is some bum luck, huh, Magnolia?” the host said, and at once the woman was dragged off the stage by tuxedo’d demons. Her head was forced into a metal box with a hand-crank on it, and soon the woman’s arms and legs were flailing. One demon was vigorously turning the crank, crushing the woman’s head. The audience cheered as blood and pureed brains began to run out of a tap in the box.
Where’s
Wheel of Fortune
when you need it?
Cassie thought.
“And you wouldn’t believe the soap operas they’ve got here,” Via added.
Behind the bar a handsome man with a pompadour was polishing highball glasses with a blood-stained cloth. “Xeke, my man. How goes it?”
“Like half a dog, Jimmy D.,” Xeke answered.
“Half a dog?”
“Veah, I’m still standing on two legs so I suppose I’m doing all right.”
The barkeep leaned over. “The heat’s been up around here lately. Keep an eye out for the Constabs. Oh, and the meat supply’s down; they’re trolling hard for XR’s and Plebes on the wanted boards.”
“Those punks’ll never get me,” Xeke bragged. “They wish they could get me.”
But the keep seemed very serious. “Word is Nicky the Cooker is looking for you and Via. Word is you scammed him out of five grand.”
“That goombah greaseball can sit on a Caco-Dragon’s horn for all I care,” Xeke said, “Now gimme a shot of your best sour mash, not the rail stuff, the stuff from the back.”
“Oh, so it’s
Grand Duke
Xeke now?” The barkeep laughed. “Don’t bust my balls. You and I both know you ain’t got the cash for that.”
Xeke opened the paper bag. “I’ll have plenty of cash once you exchange
this
for me. And don’t try to jive me with the city exchange-rate. I want it from your people on Trafficante Street.”
The barkeep’s eyes shot wide when he saw the catfish spines and bone meal. It all glowed in the bar’s darkness like lime-green fire. “Holy shit! That’s worth a quarter-million Hellnotes on the street!”
“Which is why I’ll take a hundred and fifty large from you.” Xeke acted as though he expected a haggle, but all the barkeep did was go into a back room and reappear with a sack of cash. “My people will
shit
when they see this, and I’ll get a kick-ass commission. Thanks for coming to me, man.”
Xeke downed his drink and grabbed the sack. “No problemo. Keep your mouth quiet about this and I’ll have you up to your eyebrows in commissions.”
“You mean ... you’ve got more bones?”
Xeke just winked and turned back to the others. “Let’s get out of here.”
“But I thought you guys were hungry,” Cassie pointed out. “Why not eat here?”
Xeke frowned at the specials board. “With the kind of cash we’re packing? Hell, I wouldn’t eat that slop ... with
Via’s
mouth.” Then he laughed and slapped Via hard on the back.
“Yeah?” Via retorted. “I’ve got something for you to eat—” But before any more insults could be traded, Cassie noticed the barkeep staring at her.
“Oh, hey,” he said, “I didn’t recognize you with your hair that way.”
“Are you—” Cassie looked behind her confusedly—“talking to me?”
“Yeah, sure, you been in here a bunch of times, said you worked the cages at the S&N Club. Wasn’t I talking to you the other night?”
Uh, no. I wasn’t in Hell the other night.
She couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. “Sorry. You must be mistaking me for someone else.”
“You don’t say?” The keep smiled, shaking his head. “There’s this chick, comes in here all the time for Desolation Hour, and I mean she looks
exactly
like you, except her hair’s different. Spittin’ image of you.”
Cassie stood mute for a moment, then Xeke whispered, “He might mean your sister. Ask him.” Then Hush pointed to her locket.
“Her hair? Is it long and black, with a white streak?” Cassie’s heart was already racing. She rushed to the bar, opened her locket with Lissa’s picture inside, and showed it to him. “Is this the person you’re talking about?”
“Yeah, that’s her. Ain’t that weird?”
The implication slammed into Cassie’s consciousness.
He’s talking about Lissa! He’s SEEN Lissa!
“What were you saying? You said you know where she works?”
“Yeah, that’s right—”
“Where!” Cassie exclaimed.
Her excitement took the barkeep aback. “She was telling me that she worked—” His words paused, then he looked up at a keening sound. “Ask her yourself.”
Then he pointed over Cassie’s shoulder. “There she is.”
Cassie turned very slowly. All she could do was stare, a lump in her throat.
There, standing in the tavern’s doorway, was her twin sister.
Chapter Eight
(I)
At first she couldn’t believe it—she couldn’t believe
any
of it. She wasn’t in this bar. She wasn’t in Hell.
And it wasn’t Lissa standing there looking back at her.
No. This was crazy. She was dreaming. She was hallucinating everything. There was no Via, Xeke, or Hush. Her house wasn’t a “Deadpass” and there was no such thing as an Etheress.
“Cassie?”
Lissa’s voice.
Lissa’s face and body.
Lissa’s hair, down to the white streak on the right side. She wore black-velvet gauntlets, a short black crinoline skirt and black-lace blouse. The same thing she’d been wearing on the night she shot herself in the back room of the Goth House. The tiny barbed-wire tattoo around her navel was the final proof.
Cassie knew then that she wasn’t dreaming. It was all real.
But when she opened her mouth, to speak to her sister for the first time in over two years—
Lissa turned and bolted, ran out of the bar.
“No! Come back!”
Cassie disregarded all else. She ran out of the bar, too, and manically followed her sister.
Why is she running?
came the anguished question.
She should be happy to see me
—
Then again, maybe not. Maybe the opposite.
I’m the reason she’s in Hell,
Cassie reminded herself.
Her flipflops carried her across the wretched street; she hurdled piles of garbage and nameless waste. A pack of Polter-Rats dispersed, squealing, as she leapt over them. Overhead, the bloody sky squirmed, and down the dark avenue, Lissa dashed onward, as if fleeing a certain terror. She was easily out-pacing Cassie.
“Lissa! Come back!”
A huge carriage rattled down the intersecting street—not drawn by horses but by rotund, rhinoceros-looking beasts with shiny, pustulating skin. Lissa crossed their path and darted into an alley. Then the carriage inconveniently stopped as the beasts paused to feed on a demon corpse in the road.
The alley was blocked.
“Damn it!” Cassie shouted. “Lissa, come back!” But her sister was gone.
Cassie didn’t dare follow. That would mean skirting the swollen things that hauled the carriage, and she suspected they might prefer eating
her
to the dead demon.
The others caught up to her on the corner, out of breath.
“Cassie, don’t ever do that!” Via warned her.
“You need to always stay with us,” Xeke said. “You don’t know the turf; you wouldn’t last a minute on your own.”
Cassie knew they were right, but—
She was close to tears. “That was my
sister!
She was standing right in front of me and now she’s gone!”
“We’ll find her.” Xeke seemed confident. “She figures she lost you—”
“But
she
doesn’t know that
we
know where she works,” Via added. Even Hush’s little smile seemed assuring.
Cassie’s mind reeled. “I-I forgot what the bartender said.
Where
does she work? Some kind of club?”
“The S&N Club,” Via confirmed. “Sid and Nancy’s place. It’s in Boniface Square.”
“And you’ll love the club,” Xeke said.
“Why?”
“It’s a Goth club.” Xeke grinned. “In Hell.”
(II)
A groaning escalator took them beneath the street, where the temperature must’ve shot up fifty degrees; it was like being in a sauna. Fires could be heard roaring behind fungus-traced tile walls. Their rail passes were good here—
here
being the Rasputin Circle subway station. In the ticket cage, a fat woman with leprosy waved them through the turnstile, waved them, that is, with a skeleton arm.
Cassie barely took note of this latest bit of sightseeing; she was too pent-up over Lissa.
Why did she run away?
the question tormented her.
But Via explained some more dismal realities: “This place changes people. Most can’t hack it at all. It changes every aspect of their personalities. You need to be aware of this.”
“You really can’t expect Lissa to warm up to you,” Xeke added.
“Consider what she’s been through since she got here. And
how
she got here.”
Cassie shuffled despondently toward the platform. “I know. She’s in Hell, and it’s my fault.”
“It’s not
your fault. She
killed herself.”
Yeah, but it was because of me....
“One thing’s very important, though,” Xeke added. “When we do find her, you have to let her think that you’re dead too.”
“Yeah, you can’t let her know you’re an Etheress,” Via forewarned. “There’d be a riot. If Lucifer ever got wind that there was an Etheress on the street, then he’d be after you with everything he’s got. He’d activate the entire Constabulary to hunt for you.”
“Why?” Cassie asked.
“According to the legends, if an Etheress is captured alive, Lucifer’s Arch-Locks at the College of Spells and Discantations could use your body in a Transposition Rite. Satan could fully incarnate demons into the Living World. He could even incarnate
himself.”
“So,” Cassie wondered. “You mean Satan’s never really set foot in the Living World?”
“Oh, sure he has, a bunch of times,” Via continued, tapping her leather boot as they waited for the subway. “But only as a Subcarnate, not fully in the flesh. And the subcarnation rites never last long, they’re real hard to perform properly, and real expensive.”
Then Xeke: “That’s why we have to be real careful. No one can know that you’re an Etheress. A full incarnation is Lucifer’s holy grail, and if he finds out you’re an Etheress, he’ll do
anything
to get his hands on you.”
Only now did the implications start to sink in.
Satan,
she realized,
will put a dragnet out for
me....
The prospect made her stomach clench.
More from Xeke: “You can’t let on to your sister that you’re different from everyone else here. So when we catch up to her, you’ll have to be real careful. I know you want to see her, and I can imagine you won’t rest until you do. But we gotta be honest with you. Like Via was saying, Hell changes people.”

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