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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: City Infernal
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But Blackwell just continued to laugh, his broad chest heaving against the strapping chains.
Galland walked up closer, raising his visor. “You laugh? As Satan’s stronghold is on the verge of destruction?”
The laughter boomed like cannon fire. The walls of the cell shook till mortar dust sifted from the seams of each stone.
“Fine,” Galland decided. “See how hard you laugh when we rivet your evil mouth shut. Lance Corporal! Heat up some rivets for our jovial friend here.”
“It would be a pleasure, sir!”
But Flavius would have no time to prepare any rivets, because—
CHINK!
Blackwell’s next burst of laughter expanded his chest to the extent that the widest length of chain snapped.
“Call for reinforcements!” Galland ordered. “And fetch a halberd shaft!”
Now the dungeon walls tremored as if an earthquake were rocking the entire fortress. Galland stepped back when another length of chain broke.
CHINK!
Then another, and another—
CHINK! CHINK!
Galland drew his sword.
It’s impossible! The chain could bind a Caco-Dragon!
The laughter roared, then—
CLACK!
—the remaining chains exploded off the Grand Duke’s body.
Now Galland was scared....
“Bring that halberd!” he shouted. “The beast is escaping!”
Galland expected the dehorned thing to get up off the slab and attack. Grand Dukes could be destroyed but it took the greatest might—such a monster’s heart must be cleaved from its chest, and then its head must be severed and pulped—and Galland knew that it would take many soldiers to achieve that feat.
He and Flavius alone didn’t stand a chance.
The alarm was blaring in the compound now, and Flavius rushed back, the blade of his halberd high in the air.
But Grand Duke Blackwell did not rise from the slab. Instead, he just lay there, laughing so hard and loud that Galland was deafened.
“Why isn’t it attacking us!” Flavius shouted.
I don’t know,
Galland thought.
And then he leapt up onto the creature and rammed the point of his sword directly into the thing’s heart.
“God save us,” Flavius muttered and dropped his halberd in the limpest surrender to terror.
The laughter abated when Galland’s sword sunk.
Lucifer has tricked us,
he realized in a despairing surprise.
The thing on the slab
deflated
as a pestiferous effluence gushed from the wound Galland had inflicted.
“It’s a Hex-Clone,” Flavius croaked.
Yes, Galland knew in total disgrace. He threw his sword down. “We’ve been wretchedly deceived. Summon some messengers posthaste. We must notify Ezoriel at once and tell him to retreat. And we must get word to the Etheress also—if she’s not been captured , already....”
For it was clear. This sack of putrid meat was not who they believed it was, and there was only one place that the
real
Grand Duke Blackwell could be....
(III)
—and as
hundreds
of demons charged out of the Commission’s best-guarded chamber, it was
hundreds
of demons that lay slaughtered before them a few minutes later. Cassie was now harnessing her Ethereal skills to a terrifying exactitude, and the amplification of those skills via the Power Relic made her pause to wonder if any force in all of Hell could stop her.
As a skeleton charged by the Power Relic, she might even be able to penetrate the Mephisto Building itself, and throw Lucifer out of his 666-floor penthouse window.
But that was for later. Now her duty was at hand.
Rescue Lissa, get her out of here.
The last defender of the chamber—Cassie was happy to see—was Commissioner Himmler himself. The little man cowered before her, his narrow face agape. His monocle popped out of his eye, and then he was on his knees before the raging skeleton.
“Spare me, please. I’ll do anything you command,” he sobbed.
God, I can’t stand to see a grown man cry,
she thought, and then—
splat!
—her returning glance flattened the Commissioner to a smear of gore on the stone floor as effectively as if a steam-roller had driven over him.
Her feet of bones began to climb over the mounds of bodies before her.
I’m glad I’m not the janitor here.
Her squad of knights followed, but when she stepped finally into the central chamber—
No!
Lissa was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, all that occupied the chamber was the vat of Razor-Leeches, and suspended upside-down above the vat was a familiar face.
The body squirming there had been skinned from the feet to the neck, but the intact face wailed at her—
“Cassie! Help me! For God’s sake please HELP me!”
It was Radu, her sister’s boyfriend.
The man who had seduced Cassie the night that Lissa had committed suicide at the club.
Cassie had no time to think before—
splash!
—Radu was dropped head-first into the cauldron of Razor-Leeches. His screams wheeled away, his skinned arms and legs thrashing amid the leeches.
No love lost there, but Radu’s mindless torture was hardly relevant. The bald bartender has been deliberately left here in Lissa’s place, and Cassie realized all too well what this actually meant:
The whole thing was a set-up! We all just walked into a trap!
(IV)
From his field post at the intersection of Adam Street and Eve Avenue, Ezoriel’s grim stare never averted. Even Angels have bad days, and this was starting to feel like exactly that. He knew that something was wrong. He could sense it.
The first part of the attack couldn’t have gone better; initially he’d deployed a dozen battalions to establish a defensive perimeter, and from there his search and destroy companies had attacked outward, into every corner of the district. Government buildings had been razed, weapons depots and armamentariums ransacked, Constabulary barracks destroyed as were any local command and control centers. Ezoriel’s troops had cut off all supply lines and communications posts before any defensive measures could be engaged.
It was magnificent.
Ezoriel knew that any immediate counter-attacks would be weak and disorganized, and of this he took full advantage. His own troops quickly surrounded all pockets of resistence and sealed them off. The result was sheer carnage. Thousands of Conscripts and other Constabulars had been butchered in place. It was a turkey-shoot but, here, demon loyalists served as the turkeys.
Then, when his own defensive perimeters had been sufficiently secured, the
real
battle began.
Ezoriel had opened more Nectoports to either side of his command post, and then rank after rank of his best knights stormed the Flesh Warrens.
Behind him, now, much of the district was in flames, the smoke rising so densely that the Fallen Angel could barely even see the face of the spiring Mephisto Building just ahead. Instead he watched veined pink walls of the surrounding Flesh Warrens tremor.
The Warrens appear healthier than ever,
he thought. How can this be?
He’d sent a thousand knights into each orifice of the Warrens....
All he could hear from within were screams.
At first it had been Ezoriel’s angelic sensibilities that had told him something was wrong.
But now he saw it with his own eyes.
I don’t like this at all,
he thought.
This reeks of a doublecross.
“Lord, I don’t understand,” he said aside to General Barca, his second-in-command. “I guessed that Lucifer would have diverted so much sorcoriel power to the Commission that the Warrens would be drastically weakened.”
“Instead, we’ve been drastically misled,” Barca commiserated. “The Flesh Warrens have never looked so strong. They should be at the brink of decay by now, yet instead, they seem to thrive.”
“Our troops aren’t providing the blight we had hope for. Instead, the Warrens seem to be using them for food, digesting them with a gusto. That organic monstrosity appears to be primed and ready for an attack such as this.”
“But at least we’ve destroyed the rest of the district.”
“Satan will simply rebuild it,” Ezoriel said. “Anything less that total defeat he regards as a victory for himself. I just can’t conceive of what went wrong. How could we possibly have made an underestimation this grave?”
“Lord!” a foot soldier rushed up. He handed Ezoriel a roll of vellum. “A terrible missive has arrived from our messengers!”
The answer to Ezoriel’s questions were given to him right there in the burning street.
He read the script ... and slumped.
“Order a total withdrawal at once,” he told Barca. “We’ve lost the day.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for withdrawal, Lord,” Barca told him, pointing forth.
The vast snakelike body of the Flesh Warrens was constricting, and each orifice began to expel the red slush of digested knights.
It was abominating to watch.
Ezoriel’s troops were indeed being digested, heartily. Enzymes poured forth from the inner channels of flesh, arteries gorging with more and more blood in order to take away more and more raw nutrients. The soldiers who had entered last fled screaming from the gaping orifi, their armor—and faces—half melted by the Warrens’ version of stomach acid; some crawled out on dissolving limbs, flesh falling off the bone like hot wax. Others merely collapsed upon their exit and sizzled down to liquid.
Then the orifi widened, expelling the rest.
The thousands that had entered, hoping of victory, were now being vomited out, in defeat.
“I’ve failed utterly.” Ezoriel’s voice now fluttered like a dimming light. “I’ve let myself be outwitted by Lucifer. I can only pray to the God I abandoned that the Holy One will not be captured for my recklessness. Open the Nectoports at once. I will personally lead the counter-attack on the Commission.”
After the latest field orders had been dispersed, the troops preparing for full retreat, Barca seemed hesitant. “You realize, Lord, that the Power Relic has more than likely already been defeated.”
Yes,
Ezoriel thought.
And I will be to blame for the enslavement of the First Saint of Hell.
Chapter Sixteen
(I)
The screams and sounds of battle never abated within the labyrinthine walls of the Commission of Judicial Torture, but they were certainly beginning to fade. Via took this observation to be a great sign, an indication that they were winning.
Cassie’s tearing the crap out of this dump, she felt assured, and Ezoriel’s soldiers
are
cleaning up shop. By the time they’re done, this whole place’ll be a big stone box full of demon meat.
And, hopefully, Lissa would be rescued.
Hush seemed antsy, though, disconcerted when several more troopers hustled into the expansive room. It was the Homing Griffin that had brought the blackest news. The ugly vanged thing sat petched on a knight’s arm, and it was with some serious trepidation that another knight informed Via of what had really happened back in the Mephisto District ... and at Ezoriel’s dungeon.
“A Hex-Clone!” Via yelled. “That can’t be true!”
“I regret that it is,” the knight sullenly replied. “It’s been officially confirmed; there can be no doubt.”
“Then that means the
real
Btackwell—”
“—is probably already in the compound,” the knight feared.
“Shit!”
A moment ago, Via had been convinced that the assaults here and near the Mephisto Building were succeeding, but in one second she learned not only that she was totally wrong but also that the entire plan had somehow been sabotaged in advance.
Xeke,
was the only word she could think.
Cassie’s physical body remained standing upright next to them, the blank eyes of her trance staring outward.
And Cassie’s spirit,
Via thought further,
is still out there, wandering around in the Power Relic.
Only four knights were here for protection. That wouldn’t be enough, she knew.
“We have to get Cassie’s body to a safe place,” she insisted to the knight. “All Blackwell’s got to do is touch her, and the Power Relic dies.”

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