City Infernal (36 page)

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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: City Infernal
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Hush was peeking out the front entrance of the Commission. Then she agitatingly began to point.
Via glanced out too—and saw what thundered down the street.
It was Grand Duke Blackwell, tall and horned, his wedgelike face set in a hideous grin.
“He’s already here!” she shrieked. Apart from the entrance, there was only one other doorway, which led into the facility. “Grab Cassie!” she ordered the knights. “We’ll go this way.”
One knight threw Cassie over his shoulder, and they all rushed for the inner door until—
SLAM!
—an iron portcullis slammed down over the doorway. The first knight who’d stepped ahead of them was crushed immediately.
There’s no way out,
Via realized.
We’re trapped.
 
Cassie’s skeleton legs took her swiftly back through the Commission’s stone-walled maze of corpse-clogged corridors. She knew she had to get back to Via and Hush, and to her inert physical body as well.
Something was
all
messed up.
She could even feel it: she could feel herself weakening, going sluggish. The pace of her steps forward began to drag as though she were trudging through hip-deep mud. But she knew one thing at least, that this “surprise” attack had been no surprise at all.
Lissa had been taken away in advance, and Radu had been left for them to find in her place. It seemed as if Lucifer had staged the entire scenario, allowing thousands of his defenders to be slaughtered just to make the ploy seem authentic.
And she didn’t even want to
think
about what might be going on at the Flesh Warrens....
That dragging sensation against her empowered bones persisted, heightening. Even as a skeleton animated by the darkest magic, Cassie felt fatigued; she felt like someone obese trying to mount a high flight of stairs. Even though her heart was not within the skeletal chest, she could feel it racing against the accelerating waves of exertion. Her vision began to dim.
What’s WRONG with me!
Then she stopped.
The cessation of her movement was not of her own volition. Suddenly, the bones of her body seemed frozen, not budging an inch in spite of her efforts; it was like trying to walk through a brick wall.
Worse was the sickening sensation that followed....
She felt ... hands.
Someone’s ... touching me....
Hands, large hands that she couldn’t see, were vigorously molesting her. She could feel them quite intensely, slithering up the cage of her ribs, pressing against the area of space where her breasts would be, pawing up between her legs and squeezing her there.
After that, she simply collapsed.
The bones of Blackwell’s skeleton disassembled and all at once fell to a pile on the floor.
Cassie’s consciousness hovered bodiless now, in thin air; it was as though her spirit were encased in a transparent balloon, and the balloon wobbled upward. Without eyes, she was looking down at the toppled bones.
Then—
Jesus Christ!
—her spirit seemed to turn to smoke, and the smoke was being sucked away down the corridor at hundreds of miles per hour. She could feel the mad velocity, could feel herself being drawn out to a thin nonsolid string, like a stream of cigarette smoke being drawn away by a hard fan.
She was drawn through piles of corpses, drawn through stone walls and closed doors. She was a roller-coaster flying off its tracks....
And next—
zzzzap!
She was in her physical body again, back in the Commission’s entrance hall.
The dizziness made her senses swirl; everything she saw at first was little more than a spiraling blur. But then the sensation of being touched trebled.
It was no longer a sensation.
She
was
being touched—
Oh my God.
She was being touched by something absolutely monstrous.
Hook-nailed hands the size of baseball gloves held her physical body aloft, cupping up under her armpits.
Now she
knew
she was back in her own body; when she feebly held up her hands, she saw them, not bone hands but her real hands of flesh. And that’s not all she saw.
She saw the face of the thing that was holding her up.
The face seemed composed of wedges and angles, with skin the color and tone of sanded granite. Trapezoidal eyes burned blood-red, and the angular mouth grinned at her, showing teeth like long white nails, behind which a stout black tongue shined. The breath that gusted from the thin, saliva-glossed lips smelled like something that had been dead in the sun for days, and dark, awl-sharp horns, each over a foot long, sprouted from the flattened forehead.
The voice sounded like a pack of snakes sloshing in a swamp....
“Hello, Cassie. I’m Grand Duke Fenton Blackwell, and I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,” the thing said.
Cassie’s consciousness winked out.
 
When the monstrous thing had bulled into the room, its huge booted footfalls left cracks in the stone floor. Then it bellowed, and the cacophonous sound hit Via and Hush with the impact of dynamite.
They were blown across the room, slammed to the wall.
Via looked ahead, dipping in and out of consciousness. The small squad of black knights fearlessly charged the Grand Duke, swords high, but ...
Oh, no....
The Grand Duke chuckled throughout the entire skirmish, pulling the knights apart like straw dolls. Their pieces were strewn aside with glee.
Via knew what would come next.
Us....
Grand Duke Blackwell turned, its red eyes glaring at Cassie’s physical body which remained where it stood, still immobile in the trance. Based on what she’d read in the Witchcraft tomes, Via knew that all it would take to break the transposition spell was the slightest touch, and Cassie’s spirit would be pulled instantly back into her body, leaving the Power Relic useless.
Via also knew that once that happened, the after-effect of the severed spell would leave the Etheress unconscious for hours....
The only way to kill a Grand Duke was to cut out its heart and quarter its head, but right now neither Via nor Hush were in any shape to even move.
When Cassie had fully returned to her body, she passed out after one glance into her abductor’s primeval face.
Her body hung limp as a wet rag in the Grand Duke’s grasp. “Oh, what luxuries I could have with thee,” it croaked. Its black tongue emerged from the demonic lips, and slowly licked up the side of Cassie’s neck. Then it slithered across her eyes and roved inside her hanging mouth. “I could suck the delicate organs right out of this pretty mouth, swallow them whole like sweet meats. But first I would plunder your living womb, use it for—say—a hundred years or so until I tired of it....” The Grand Duke sighed. “But, lo, it shall not be. You are Hell’s greatest prize, and my Master covets you. When his Bio-Wizards are finished leeching your Ethereal energy, Lucifer will walk upon the earth again. And for this he will surely reward me.”
Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!
A Nectoport opened in the room, its glowing-green maw widening. Blackwell threw Cassie over its wide shoulder and began to step toward the port.
But then he stopped.
He turned, grinning, and looked to Via and Hush who still lay collapsed in the comer.
Via dragged herself up.
It’s useless,
she realized,
but I’ve got to try....
She grabbed a fallen ax, struggled toward Blackwell. Hush was straggling up behind her.
“Such amusements,” came Blackwell’s spiccato chuckle. “But how could I forget such lovely vessels for my need?” A thin kaleidoscope of light sparkled across the room when Blackwell’s immense hand opened. “A Paresis Spell for you two—”
Via and Hush collapsed, totally paralyzed.
“We’ll have such pleasures together,” and then the monster grabbed Via and Hush by the hair and hauled them into the Nectoport.
 
Again, Via was sucked into the wormlike churning of the Nectoport, the sorcerous passage folding space and distance in a dark glowing whirlwind. It was like a manic plume of smoke bending in the air. But as the mad motion and twisting seemed to increase to the point that her body would fly apart—
It stopped.
Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!
A few dreadful moments ticked by; Via was being dragged again by the hair, and so was Hush, like someone carrying two plastic bags of groceries one-handed. The pain barked at her scalp but, still, every attempt she made to move her own muscles faltered.
“Welcome to my abode,” Via heard. The Nectoport emptied into a vast room of Victorian decor, though it didn’t take Via long to realize what the place actually was: a beautifully-appointed torture den. Her eyes moved around in their sockets, but that was all the movement she could muster. The Paresis Spell left Via and Hush as dormant as if their necks had been broken.
The beast that was Fenton Blackwell dropped them both on the floor. Careful not to damage the treasure, he placed Cassie down on a long cushioned récamier couch. The red hellborn eyes lingered on the delicate body. A taloned finger stroked Cassie’s cheek.
“Lucifer’s servants will come for you shortly, with a worthy reward, no doubt. I’m sure my Master will be pleased with me, and with this gesture of ultimate faith. After all, most Grand Dukes, with their greed, would surely keep you secreted away for themselves, to play with you for eons. But not I. You’re a very
special
toy—the first living human in Hell—and it will be with eternal devotion that I will give you up to the Lord of the Air.” The monster bowed, to lick her face again with the stinking black tongue. “The taste of
life,”
it guttered. “Like fine wine. It’s such a shame I can’t empty the entire bottle....”
The place they’d been abducted to smelled of a nauseating meld of rich perfumes and human filth. Via’s eyes darted to the end of the room, where she noticed the most harrowing sight. Amid the vast room’s plush tapestries, carpets, and marquetry, amid its fine statues and grandly framed portraits, the classic furnishings and adornments, her eyes fell in horror upon a row of naked females—some demonic, some human—hang—ing from the wall by ornate hooks.
Not the corpses of a madman’s gallery—no, they were all alive, squirming in place as they hung by fettered wrists. The ligaments and shoulder sockets of several had long-since failed, stretching feeble muscles and skin between the detached joints. And the skin of several others had turned to great masses of wet festering.
But despite each individual condition, these women had all clearly been hanging here for decades, like a collection of oddities, the gimcracks of Blackwell’s obscene pastime.
All of the women were possessed of a single commonality, and by now it came as no surprise to Via at all. Their bellies all stretched grossly forward.
They were all pregnant.
Another flick of her eyes and she noticed another of the room’s details: the long stone dolmen in the center of the room left no doubt about what Blackwell did with the offspring of these women.
He’s doing the same thing he did in life,
Via understood.
Siring babies
...
and sacrificing them to Lucifer....
The red eyes roved to Via and Hush. “My Transfiguration allows me to impregnate any kin in Hell. You’ll have the honor of being raped by me for eternity, and providing me endless infants for the sacrificial slab. Please take heart, though. You’ll get to watch it all over and over again. Indeed, the miracle of creation, the gift of
your
god exploited for the homage of
mine....”
A heavy metallic clicking resounded when Blackwell walked out of view; a moment later he reappeared, hovering over Via. The unspeakable hands slowly descended, manipulating a pair of iron cuffs joined by a few links of chain, and then Via’s wrists were quickly shackled after a few more clicks.
“Think of these as wedding bands, my love,” the Grand Duke amusedly remarked. “By the powers invested in me, I now pronounce us husband and wife, through lust and hatred, through indulgence and abuse—and you can rest assured that death will
never
do us part.”
Via was picked up effortlessly and carried across the spacious room. She was then hung from a hook next to a shivering pregnant She-Troll.
“You’ll hang here forever—how quaint!”
The huge hands reached forward then, to begin stripping off her clothes.
“The pretty package, now, needs to be unwrapped. Let your beauty be appreciated by all of your new companions. Congratulations, dear. You’re now a part of my sacrificial harem!”

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