Ransom For Hire - Appointment In Hell (2 page)

“What’s it going to take to get me in?” Ransom asked.

Al’Gamesh did not answer right away. Ransom took it as a good sign.

It was one of the universe’s great mysteries how a thing with no eyes could stare through him like that.

When Al’Gamesh finally spoke again, it was with a voice like cracking ice. “Be careful what you offer me, human. Whatever you bargain with me now can not be returned.”

“Just tell me what you want.” Ransom knew he was on dangerous ground here, making deals with the next best thing to the Devil.

But he loved his wife that much.

“I won’t ask you for your life, Ransom,” Al’Gamesh told him. “To be perfectly honest I don’t think your life is worth the price of what you ask. But there is one thing you can pay me with.”

Ransom waited. “And?”

The creature in its dark cloak floated closer. “You were one of the best hunters ever. Human or otherwise. Your skills were legendary. But you set it all aside for the love of a woman.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Not in my experience,” Al’Gamesh said without hesitation. “But those skills of yours are still there. And the one who is able to bring those skills back into play first, on their side, will be at a good advantage against other opponents on the playing field.”

Ransom did not like where this was going.

“So here is my deal, human. I will allow you entry through the Veil. And in return, you will give me five years of your service.”

The offer was nowhere near fair. It was all one sided, and not in Ransom’s favor. He knew he’d say yes to it anyway. But he couldn’t let Al’Gamesh see he was too eager to accept. “You’re asking a lot,” he said.

A foul and cold breeze breathed out from Al’Gamesh. “A lot? In exchange for the chance to save your wife? You’ve sent far too many beings to Hell, Ransom. How many of them do you think hold grudges against you? And more than that, how long do you think it will take for them to figure out who your wife is? What do you suppose they will do to her when they know she is the wife of the great Ransom, slayer of souls, Harbinger of Death?”

Ransom hadn’t been called Harbinger in a long time.

“All right, all right, fine, you thieving bastard. But one year only.”

“Five.” Al’Gamesh’s voice was like dry stone.

“Make it two,” Ransom countered.

What he could see of Al’Gamesh roiled like dark sea water during a storm. “You want to bargain? With me?”

“Two years, Al’Gamesh. Two years from me is worth ten from most.”

Al’Gamesh seethed, and his voice spit and hissed before more words came out to assault Ransom’s senses. “Five.”

“All you have to do is open a doorway! It’s not like there’s any effort involved in it for you!”

“Doors are not opened lightly, Ransom. There is always a price. And my price for you, is five years.”

Ransom thought of his wife, surrounded by the worst creatures that Earth, Heaven, or anywhere else had ever created. “Three years. That’s more than enough to pay for what I’m asking you to do.”

There was silence between them that stretched for long minutes. Ransom ground his teeth and waited the Veil keeper out.

“Fine, human,” Al’Gamesh whispered loudly at last. “I will have you for three years when this is done. If you survive.”

“You’ll have my services for three years, you mean,” Ransom corrected the Veil keeper. “Nobody ever owned me. Not even you. And I will survive. I have to. My wife’s life is at stake.”

“Most would accept her fate and move on.”

“I’m not most people.” Ransom shook his head. “You and I both know she was taken wrongly. The people who did this to her will pay. But first I need to get her out. She doesn’t belong in there.”

Al’Gamesh turned away from him and moved further into the chamber. “I’ve never met anyone who thought they belonged there. Not even Satan himself.”

Ransom watched the creature and wondered again, as he had so often before, what was really under that cloak. He had never seen Al’Gamesh without it, not once in the two decades or so that they had known each other.

Ransom had started into his former line of work early in life. It had been something he stumbled into accidentally, but it didn’t take him long to see how good he was at it, and how much money he could earn doing it. One of the first to get him started down that road, had been Al’Gamesh. They’d known each other for a very long time now.

Which was why Ransom knew Al’Gamesh could give him what he needed to survive in the plains of Hell.

At the far end of the chamber from the stairs, a stone arch stood out from the wall by a few feet. It was an empty doorway that could be walked straight through without any hindrance. It led to nowhere. Until the Veil keeper opened it.

Then it led to Hell.

There were other gateways in this space, that all led to different places. Ransom had been through most of them. Including this one here.

The sleeves of Al’Gamesh’s dark cloak raised into the air. An incantation of power started, the calling forth of energies from the very stone around them, the Earth’s own life being fed into the malevolent intent. Ransom could neither hear it nor see it being done. He felt it as a pressure inside his mind. Very unpleasant. Very unsettling.

He watched as the air between the frame of the stone arch shimmered and then coalesced into a slowly churning, liquid gateway, red and yellow colors moving through it in curls and undulating swirls that had no pattern. He had seen this done twice before. And he had the same creepy sensation now that he’d had those other times, that the doorway was hungry, and that it wanted to swallow him whole and never give him up.

Al’Gamesh faced him. “I will not stand here and wait for you until eternity ends, Ransom. This doorway can not remain open for long. Find this woman, and get back here, if you expect to find your way out still here.”

“This woman, is my wife,” Ransom said, heat in his voice.

“And you have bargained three years of your life to me in exchange for her. Don’t waste yourself unnecessarily. I have plans for you.”

Can’t wait, Ransom thought. But that was a worry for a later time, after Julia was safe. For now, he couldn’t allow himself to think of anything else except saving her and getting out again. Not if he expected to survive.

Speaking of which.

“I need something else from you,” he told Al’Gamesh.

Misty blackness filled the distance that had been between them and then the thing that was Al’Gamesh was inches from his face in a split second’s time. Ransom stared into the depths of darkness and nothingness that existed inside that black cloak.

Al’Gamesh whispered. The deafening roar of it nearly put Ransom on his knees. “OUR BARGAIN IS SET. DO NOT SEEK TO CHANGE IT NOW.”

Ransom breathed, slowly, and had to swallow twice before he found his voice. “Okay, fine, but think about something for a minute. If I go in there, through the Veil, with nothing to protect myself, what are the chances you’ll ever get those three years of service out of me that I’m supposed to pay you?”

Freezing cold slid off Al’Gamesh in waves. “What do you ask?”

“Give me the Orb.”

A hiss was the immediate answer. “You are mad. Insane.”

“My wife has been kidnapped and dragged unwillingly into Hell. I’m bargaining with you to get myself inside so I can save her. Yes, I’m a little insane right now. I’m close to an edge I can’t return from right now, actually, and I know it. But that’s not my point. I want to get out of there with Julia. You want me alive when I do. So help me protect your investment and do what I have to do.”

Al’Gamesh retreated, leaving Ransom shivering as he tried to control his racing heart. There were few things he had ever faced as frightening as Al’Gamesh. And the two of them were—almost—on the same side of the unholy game.

“Fine, Ransom, you will have the Orb. And it will be returned to me when you come back.”

“Of course.” Ransom doubted he’d be able to deliver on that promise. The Orb was the only item he knew of with enough power to get him out of Hell in one piece. Except for maybe his old sidearm. But he had mothballed that weapon after meeting Julia. He wasn’t even sure where it was, now. But he knew where the Orb was.

Al’Gamesh held out an arm, and from the end of the sleeve appeared a floating, shining silver sphere about the size of Ransom’s fist.

It floated across the room from Al’Gamesh to him, and Ransom plucked it from the air. It felt heavy in his hand, heavier than he remembered. It shined brightly one last time, then turned dull and gray in his hand. Perfect.

He put it into one of the front pockets of his coat. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me, Ransom. This is no favor. This is business.”

“I know. Thanks, anyway.”

Al’Gamesh didn’t answer, but Ransom actually had the feeling that the creature was surprised by Ransom’s gratitude.

The Veil stood open. He was armed, so to speak, with the Orb. And Julia was waiting. Time to go.

He stepped up to the shimmering liquid surface of the doorway. Holding in a deep breath he reached his hand out to it. It seeped over and around his skin, sucked at his fingers, pulled at him, drew him forward, and he took another step, and another.

And then he stepped into Hell.

There are a lot of depictions of Hell, each one more poetic than the last. Pit of souls. Blasted wasteland. Lakes of fire. Landscapes made of broken and tortured bodies. Rivers of blood and tears.

None of them even come close.

Ransom stood on a field of flowers growing from cracks in the hard clay. They were black roses, with short, hooked thorns, and the buds were filled with mouths. They struck out hungrily at his feet as he stepped through them, sucking and nipping at him. Ransom’s heavy boots kept them from getting at his flesh. The ones he stepped on screeched in pain and gushed black ichor.

The air was thick with ash. It floated everywhere, gray and hot. He was choking on it in seconds and had to stop to take out a handkerchief from an inside pocket to cover his mouth. He tied it around his face as he tried to get his bearings. The sky was a red that never existed anywhere in nature, full of black swirling clouds.

And all along the distant horizon, fires blazed tall and eternal.

Ransom knew the basic layout of Hell. Everyone in the business did. And because he did, he knew he was nowhere near where he needed to be.

He needed an Imp.

The Imps were the little gophers of Hell. Almost literally. They took care of the place, ushered the dead to their proper holding area, kept out intruders. Intruders like Ransom.

He surveyed the rock-hard earth at his feet where the gluttonous flowers thinned out. Sure enough, he found just what he wanted.

Waiting for the right moment he reached down quickly, between the grasping mouths of the flowers, and grabbed into the fresh furrow the Imp had been digging under his feet. One of the roses bit into his wrist deeply. It ripped from the ground, its teeth dug deeply into his flesh, and hung limply from his skin as he pulled the Imp up by its collar. Ransom tore the flower off and tossed it aside.

The Imp squirmed in his grip, little hands trying to pry his fingers loose from the back of its garment. It was more of a filthy rag than a piece of clothing, really, that wrapped the Imp from shoulders to crotch. It had sagging blue skin, and was big for its kind, which was to say it might have measured two feet tall if it stood erect. Its yellowed and cracked teeth jutted out of its mouth at odd angles from an underbite. And it glared at Ransom.

“You lemme go,” the Imp demanded, shaking its fist.

“I no let you go,” Ransom mocked in an imitation of the Imp’s speech pattern. “You gonna show me how to get someplace.”

The Imp gave up its efforts to force Ransom’s fist open and crossed its arms over its chest. “Why me do that? You trespasser. Trespasser no belong here.”

“There’s someone else here who doesn’t belong, either, Imp. My wife. You’re going to take me to her.”

“Am not.” The Imp waggled its head.

“Yes, you are.”

“Am not.”

Ransom shook the little creature. He wasn’t gentle about it either.

When he stopped, the Imp’s eyes rolled around in opposite directions. “You going to show me what I want to see now?” Ransom asked.

The Imp’s purple tongue lolled out of its mouth, but it nodded its head to show agreement.

“Good.” Ransom smiled with relief. Without the Imp’s special method of travel, he might have been days climbing over the landscape of Hell to get to where he wanted to go. “My wife. Now.”

“When your wife die?” the Imp asked in a petulant voice.

“She didn’t die. Someone brought her here before her time.”

The Imp’s yellow eyes got very wide. “OOooh,” it said, slowly. “You mean
that
wife.”

Ransom shook the Imp again. “What wife? What do you mean?”

“Stop it! Stop shaking Romock!”

“I’ll shake you until those rotten teeth fall out of your skull, you little toadstool! What do you know about my wife!”

Ransom stopped shaking Romock when he heard its teeth clacking roughly together. Then he waited.

The little Imp hung its head and almost looked like it wanted to cry. But it answered Ransom’s question. “Bad things bring woman to here. She not dead, but she here.”

“Where?” Ransom asked through gritted teeth.

Romock sighed out a nasty smelling breath. “In caves.”

“Caves? What caves?”

“Caves where you no go!”

The Imp reached up behind its head and grabbed Ransom’s hand, then it pulled itself over until its teeth could bite.

It clamped onto Ransom with a painful sinking in of its sharp, pointed canines. Ransom cried out and shook his arm wildly, trying to get the Imp to let go.

Which was what the thing had wanted.

Ransom shook Romock loose, and the Imp fell to the ground, laughing and digging into the dirt under the black flowers.

But Ransom was faster. He grabbed hold of the Imp’s left foot and pulled until it came out of the ground with a loud sucking sound.

This time Ransom grabbed it by its scrawny neck and squeezed. Romock gagged, and choked, and scrabbled at Ransom’s wrist. Ransom squeezed harder and shook the thing again, unmercifully. “You little bastard! I’ll choke you to within an inch of your miserable little life if you do that again.”