The Scarlet Gospels (20 page)

“What? Me? What about fuckstick over there?” He threw a ragged gesture out toward Felixson. “Why not him?”

“Because Hell has made you its business. Or you have made Hell yours. Perhaps both. I would be excused nothing by a witness such as you. Indeed I encourage you to seek out the tiniest sign of frailty in me and, should you find any, magnify it in your final testament.”

“My final testament?”

“You won't simply witness what is going to unfold in Hell from this point outward; you will make a testament of it, wherein my acts and my philosophies will be recounted in full detail. They will be my Gospels, and I will forbid you nothing in their chapters and verses, as long as it is observed truth, however far from my ideal of myself I may fall.

“Your job is to witness. To see and remember; changed perhaps by the sights you will have seen, but amply rewarded.”

Norma reached out to D'Amour, starting toward him, but Caz caught hold of her arm and gently restrained her. He couldn't restrain her tongue, however.

“I know how these deals end up,” Norma said.
“
There's always a catch. Always a trick.”

“I have made my intention clear,” the Hell Priest said. “What is your decision, Detective?”

“Somehow the words ‘fuck you' don't seem strong enough,” Harry said.

As if in response to the Priest's anger, the flames around the fiery door suddenly lost the parity of their brightness, tainted by the darker colors, as though something was being burned alive, its boiling blood darkening the blaze. Pieces of its fire-withered stuff tumbled from the walls of conflagration, sending up columns of black-gray smoke that eclipsed the flames.

“What part of ‘fuck you' don't you understand?” Lana said.

The demon uttered an indecipherable order as he made a counterclockwise flick of the wrist. The action sent Lana flying across the street at speed. She crashed against a chain-link fence, knocked unconscious before her head even hit the ground. Though the demon's incantation went unheard, his message was clear; the demon possessed a power he wasn't supposed to have.

“What is your answer now, Detective?” the demon said.

By way of reply, Harry pulled out his gun and walked toward the Cenobite, firing as he did so. He didn't bother wasting bullets on the torso—even minor demons could take a lot of lead and not be slowed by it. Instead he aimed for the head. If he could, he'd take out the bastard fuck's eyes, Harry thought. He leveled the Colt, aiming as carefully as speed would allow, and fired. The bullet entered the Cenobite's cheek an inch below the left eye, and the force of it jerked back his head. He didn't lift it again, and this offered Harry a clear shot at the creature's throat, which he took. It opened a hole in the middle of his throat, and air whistled out.

From behind him Harry heard Norma yelling, “Let go of me!
Harry?
Help me!”

Harry glanced back to see that Pinhead's accomplice had slipped past Caz and had grabbed hold of Norma's hair. He held a crescent-bladed knife, like a small scythe, pressed to the lower portion of her abdomen. By the crazed look in his eyes and the vicious way he pushed the point of the weapon into her it was clear that he would be happy to eviscerate her if Harry or his compatriots made one false move. Caz held his lanky arms in the air and was pleading with the thing.

“Take me,” Caz said. “Let her go.”

“I like them vulnerable,” Felixson said, backing away toward the hell gate.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw that Dale was making a slow move toward the magician, apparently unnoticed. Harry felt a momentary sense of relief. And then the Priest uttered an incantation. Harry felt a stinging in his sinuses and turned to see that the Cenobite was leaking a dark, ominous ooze that was so potent it was dissolving the asphalt upon which it fell.

The black ooze was a dark blood that ran from the wounds Harry had inflicted in the demon. The blood followed the lines of the scars on the Cenobite's face—down, across, down, across—until the drops cascaded down his neck and forked off toward each arm.

The blood dance held Harry's gaze for a long moment, long enough for the power accruing in his adversary's hands to reach critical mass. The Priest flicked his hands toward Harry and a few stinging flecks of the black venom broke loose and burned Harry's gun hand.

An idea formed in Harry's mind, and before he had time to rethink it he advanced toward Pinhead, taking off his jacket. As he did so, Pinhead unleashed another burst of his murderous mud that Harry quickly dodged. Harry was determined not to give the bastard a third chance.

“What are you doing, D'Amour?” Pinhead demanded.

As if in answer, D'Amour wrapped his jacket around his hands, and then, with no time to formulate a clear plan, he used it to catch hold of the demon's arms. It was a move that had proved effective before, so, Harry thought, it couldn't hurt to attempt it a second time.

Pinhead let out a cry that had a measure of fury in it but was mostly repugnance and outrage. The wild thought flashed through Harry's mind like sweet lightning. And his notion proved true. The demon had for so long lived uncontaminated by the proximity and, certainly, the touch of humanity that a rush of revulsion passed through him and momentarily gave Harry the advantage. He used it. Before the demon could entirely regovern his will, Harry pressed the demon's arm toward the ground between them. The churning filth continued to erupt from the creature's fingers, the asphalt it struck cracking and scattering fragments in all directions.

Harry wrenched the creature around, but with such violence and suddenness that the flow of filth emanating from his arms was spat off into the dark street. It hit Caz's van, the metal shrieking as it was torn open, the muck apparently throwing itself around inside the vehicle, causing more damage than seemed possible.

Five seconds later the gas tank exploded in a fat blossom of yellow and orange fire. There apparently was something combustible in Pinhead's killing muck, because the flame instantly followed the trail of filth back toward the demon.

It came with incredible speed, faster even than the demon could summon the words to extinguish it, and crawled up the poisonous arms that Harry had been gripping. Harry had barely let go of the remnants of his jacket, which was all but eaten away, when the fire consumed it and a burst of searing energy struck him so hard he was hurled to the ground.

The demon was blown back, and the conjuration of poison and flammable filth seeping from his arms disappeared as though it had never existed. The demon rose to his feet and tried once more to concentrate his efforts on reclaiming the mystical killing force of his black blood.

The trouble was that this magic wasn't any part of his training as a Cenobite; it was something he learned from an obscure magical treatise—the
Tresstree Sangre Vinniculum
. He had been certain he'd mastered it, but there was instability in the summoned matter that the treatise had made no mention of: once a taunting element had been introduced—D'Amour's filthy presence at the Cenobite's left, the fire on the right—the equations were catastrophically thrown off.

Had he exited Hell using the conventional methods, he simply could have utilized his hooked weapons of choice, but that option was no longer available to him. And in calmer circumstances he would have quickly scanned the contaminating outside forces and dispatched them, but with the confusion of the moment and his defenses compromised he had no option but to retreat.

He took three quick backward steps toward the threshold, looking for Felixson as he did so. The Priest noted that, to Felixson's credit, he had taken hold of the blind woman, whom he'd judged to be the second-likeliest source of trouble on this field of battle.

Felixson's maneuver had had the effect of driving the whole of Harry's entourage back. The two males, one a wan, brutish thing, the other a diminutive fey specimen, were on their knees, in thrall to an incantation of dubious efficacy.

Both men were forcibly resisting; the taller of the two's body was twitching with the effort it took to pull himself up, but it was clear that he was seconds from breaking free of Felixson's magic manacles. Clearly, there was nothing to do but go and leave D'Amour and his allies to the elements. However, given the strength he sensed in the attachment between D'Amour and the blind woman, the demon realized that something could still be recovered from this failed coup.

“Felixson! Bring the blind meat with you.”

“Don't you fucking dare!” D'Amour shouted.

As ever, the magician was quick to obey his master's words and, ignoring D'Amour and his empty threat, pulled Norma toward the burning door, dick and balls flapping as he wrenched her closer to its fiery archway. She fought furiously, scratching and kicking at Felixson over and over, but none of her blows were powerful enough to make him release his grip.

The scene was too much for Harry: the all-too-crisp night air, the scent of infernal fire, the imminent loss of another partner at the hands of a malformed beast. The combination was too specific in its repetition to be believed and it rendered Harry utterly immobile.

When the magician turned, the last of his powers over Caz and Dale went out. Caz, freed from Felixson's hold, got to his feet and immediately went in pursuit of Norma. But Felixson had gained the door by now and in a few strides he and his captive were through it and gone from sight, leaving only the demon on the threshold.

Lana had finally regained consciousness and picked herself up from off the ground, though her short waking exposure to Pinhead's toxic secretion had left her feeling nauseated and unsteady. The demon disregarded them entirely. He continued to step back through the gate and into the bright passageway beyond. In that little time, the flames from which the door was formed had already started to diminish.

“Do something!” a man's voice said somewhere very far from Harry. “Jesus Christ! Harold! Fucking wake up!”

Harry snapped to attention. It was Caz who had been screaming at him. He looked about and found that his friends were bruised and battered but heading directly toward him, toward the porthole through which one of the most notorious demons in Hell's army had just fled with his best friend. Harry realized he had no time for measured decisions; he had to move, but quick.

“Right behind you, asshole,” he heard himself say.

Hell had come for Harry D'Amour on this street and, failing to catch him, had taken Norma Paine instead. Now Harry would go after her, even if he had to go alone. Without even thinking, Harry leaped through the gate.

Harry heard Caz yell something behind him, but with the flames dying out and the passage through becoming harder and harder to see Harry didn't dare risk looking back. Another two, three strides and he drew a breath that was denser—no, dirtier—than the breath that had preceded it. And two strides later he ran into what felt like fresh cloths hauled from a pail of hot water and shit being pressed against his face and thrust down his throat as though to smother him.

His momentum faltered, his heart hammering as he tried to keep panic from overcoming him. It was the greatest of his terrors—smothering—and he was sorely tempted to retreat a step, or two, or three, back into the crisp, merciful air of the world at his back. But his friends were at his back now.

“Fuck.
Me
,” Lana said in short, suffocated bursts.

Harry looked at them with disbelief in his shit-teared eyes.

“This is my fight. You have to go back,” Harry said.

“My dream told me to be here,” Dale said. “And here I will stay.”

“We're not leaving you, or Norma, behind,” Caz said.

“No way,” said Lana.

“You guys sure about this?” said Harry.

“Not at all,” said Caz.

Harry nodded. They pressed on. No more was said as they made their way through the miasma, never once looking back.

 

10

From the first, Hell surprised them—even Harry, who had caught a fleeting glimpse of its geography in Louisiana. They stepped out to the other side of the place of passage into a far from unpleasant sight: a grove in a forest of antediluvian trees, their branches so weighed down with age that a small child could have picked the large, dark-purple-skinned fruit simply by reaching up. However, none such child had been on duty to harvest the fruits and as a result they littered the ground, the sickly stink of their corruption only one part of the stew of smells that had added its own particular horror to the oppressive stench that had stopped Harry in his tracks as he'd passed from Earth into Hell.

“Goddamn,” Lana said, “I thought the roaches in my apartment were big.” She was looking down at the brown-black insects that appeared to have a close familial relation to the common cockroach, the main difference being they were perhaps six times larger. They covered the ground at the base of the trees, devouring the food that had fallen there. The sound of their brittle bodies rubbing against one another, and of their busy mouthparts devouring the fruit, filled the grove.

“Anybody see Pinhead?” Harry said.

“Is that his name?” Lana said. “Pinhead?”

“It's a name I know he hates.”

“I can see why,” Dale said, chuckling to himself. “It's not a very kind nickname. Or even accurate for that matter.”

“Is he some kind of big noise in Hell?” Caz asked.

“I don't know,” Harry said. “I'm sure he thinks so. I just want to get Norma back and fuck off out of here.”

“That's a good plan in theory. But the execution might prove a bit more difficult,” said Caz, gesturing toward the door through which they'd come, or rather toward the place where it had once stood. The door was no longer there.

“I'm sure we'll find a way out,” Harry said. “It's easy enough to get in. We should all—”