The Scarlet Gospels (24 page)

“You've been thinking about this quite a lot,” Pentathiyea said with a hint of distaste.

“One has to dream, General,” Suth replied.

“Until a few minutes ago you didn't even know we had the bastard at the gates.”

“No, but it was only a matter of time before somebody challenged us, wasn't it? Have faith. The Cenobite won't carry the day. He is one, and we are—”

“—fewer than we should be,” L'thi said. “Hasn't anybody wondered why our glorious leader isn't here today? Absent without explanation on the very day that a killing fog comes out of the wastes, and that … that
thing
out there, with his face of nails, comes to pay a visit?”

“What are you accusing him of?” the general inquired.

“Who? Nia'kapo or the Cenobite?”

“Buggar the Cenobite! I'm speaking of our leader, Catha Nia'kapo.”

“I'm accusing him of being dead, most likely, General. And Quellat, and probably Hithmonio too. All of them missing without explanation on this, of all days? Of course they're dead! The creature outside made it his business to murder as many in power as he could.”

“And then what?” Pentathiyea said.

“Aren't you the general here?” L'thi asked. “All you're doing is sitting atop the leader's throne and asking inane questions. This should be your field of expertise.”

“It is,” Pentathiyea said, rising from his post. “I have led whole armies against the divine horde and seen them beaten back. I once had a place at Lucifer's table. I was Hell's general when it was still a mud pit. And I know exactly what's going to happen next. That demon is coming to kill us. When he's torn the meat from our bones, he will continue his mad quest, wherever it may lead him. In short, we had better depart—no, not just from this chamber, but from Hell itself—if we value our lives at all.”

 

15

As the members of the council discussed their future, the Cenobite who had been the subject of their conversation caused the three triple-bolted iron gates that sealed the Bastion off from the city streets to be thrown open, their locks shattering like ice.

At the same time, the group of weary travelers led by Harry D'Amour entered the city by the easternmost entrance: Janker's Gate. There were watchtowers to the left and right of the compound, but the towers were deserted and the right-hand gate open.

Janker's Gate offered them the least impressive view of the city they had thus far seen. It lay close to the river—the same one they had crossed on a solid iron bridge—and therefore was occupied chiefly by those whose business was with the river: demons who labored to keep alive the damned souls who'd been buried up to their chins in the adjacent mudflats, powerless to protect themselves from the birds that stalked the grounds looking for worms and leeches and finding easier nourishment among the screaming bulbs, eating away their faces peck by peck, eyes, tongue, noses, and nerves, until the short-beaked birds could get no further and left the remaining rations to the infernal varieties of heron and ibis who were better equipped at piercing the empty sockets to reach the fatty and plentiful brain tissue.

But none of those creatures, damned or damning, were now found on the street that led from the Gate. There was plenty of blood, however, to mark their recent presences, the cobbles shiny and the air filled with the fat Doxy Flies that wove around as though intoxicated. They weren't the only life-form feasting here. On the walls, where there were numerous bursts of blood, creatures that possessed the shape and gait of lobsters had emerged from between the bricks and had gathered around these stains, their busy little mouthparts greedily scooping up the bits of blood.

“Is this what the fog did to people?” Caz said.

“I just wanna know where they went,” Dale said.

“Was this not in the dream?”

“No,” Dale said, his voice falling below a whisper. “And I don't like that one bit.”

Lana was doing her best to keep the blood-drunk flies from landing on her, but they seemed immune to her flailing and happily settled in her hair and on her face.

Harry had wandered ahead of everyone, staring on at the street ahead toward the larger and more architecturally ambitious buildings that were visible beyond the modest two-story dwellings of the neighborhood through which they traveled.

“D'Amour?” Dale whispered.

“What?”

“I think we should stick together,” he said.

The observation had barely left his mouth when a figure appeared from the alleyway behind him. It caught hold of Lana, who was perfectly able to deal with her attacker; a blow to the throat, a kick to his lower belly, and, as he bent double, an uppercut to his chin and the attacker was down, sprawled on the cobbles.

“What the fuck is that?” Harry said, approaching the unconscious demon.

“I don't want to alarm you, Harold,” Caz said, “but that is a demon.”

“But what's wrong with him?” Harry said.

For the first time, Harry got a close look at what the fog had wrought. The creature was a demon, Harry saw, well fed and well muscled, dressed only in baggy trousers held up by the ornately decorated belts that younger demons seemed to favor, his prehensile tail emerging from a small slit in the back. Around his neck were several lengths of leather or cord, each of which bore some keepsake. In all of these regards he resembled most of the demons belonging to minor orders whom Harry had encountered in the past.

But Harry saw that the fog had worked a change in this demon, and it was not pretty. At the corners of his mouths and eyes, in the folds of his arms, or between his fingers—wherever, in short, the fog had touched him—it had apparently planted a seed, germinated not by producing same infernal vegetation, but by taking its cue from the spot in which it had been sown and growing a new life-form that was ordained by the place of origin. Thus, the seed lodged between the demon's fingers had brought forth a crop of new fingers, all of which possessed their own beckoning life. And the seed beside the demon's mouth had created new mouths, all of which gaped, many-toothed, within his cheek and his neck. All these anomalies were humbled, however, by the work a seed lodged in his left eye had done, multiplying the number of eyeballs so that from his brow to his cheek were bunches of wet, lidless eyes, their yellowish corneas dissected up, down, and sideways.

The demon reached out suddenly and caught hold of Caz's ankle, his many jointed fingers easily locking around it. Despite the demon's agony—or perhaps because of it—the grip was viselike. In his efforts to free himself, Caz lost his balance and fell back and landed hard on the bloody cobbles. Before anyone had time to react, the maddened demon crawled atop Caz's body, his motion disturbing the flies that had come to rest on his anatomy and creating a ragged, shifting cloud around them both. The demon was a big-bellied creature, and his weight was easily sufficient to keep Caz pinned to the ground.

“Jesus! Fuck! Someone help me!” Caz yelled.

“Where's that damned machete?” Harry said.

“I've got it,” said Lana.

“Give it to me!”

Lana tossed the machete to Harry. No sooner had he caught it than the demon—perhaps dimly sensing that he was about to be opposed—reached out for Harry with one of his many-toed feet and caught hold of his throat, new gnarled toes sprouting as he tightened his grip and cut off Harry's oxygen.

As the demon dug his nails deep into the flesh around Harry's windpipe, Harry took a swipe at the demon and buried the blade in the creature's thigh. Shock and pain made the thing loosen his throat hold on Harry, and Harry pulled away. The seeds continued to offer proof of their fecundity; the demon before him was still transforming. The bunches of eyes were swelling, the mouths spreading down the creature's neck and out of his chest. They were all, by some elaborate reconfiguring of the demon's internal anatomy, possessed of health enough to loose a chorus of screams and pleas. Harry intended to grant the thing the only mercy he had on hand.

“Caz! Now!” he said.

As though they had done this a thousand times before, Caz instantly pushed the demon away from his body at the same time Harry swung the machete through a one-hundred-eighty-degree arc. The blow sliced through a third of the demon's neck before it stuck into the creature's vertebrae. Harry worked the blade free, hot blood gushing from the massive wound and into Caz's open mouth.

“Aw. Fuck,” said Caz, through liquid coughs.

Harry swung at the demon's head a second time, hoping for mercy's sake to deliver the coup de grâce. But there was too much crazed life in the creature, and he moved away as Harry swung the blade. This time the machete cut through the burgeoning bunch of black and yellow eyes and sank deep into the demon's skull. Thirty eyeballs or more dropped from the cluster and rolled around Harry's feet. The demon's mouths were letting out a single sound now: a long, sustained funereal lament.

Harry took it as a sign that the creature was readying himself for death, and the thought put power into his third swing. It went, more by accident than intention, exactly where the second blow had gone and took off the top half of the enemy's head. The demon lurched, and the severed crown slid off and landed on Caz's chest, several eyes popping from the pressure as it struck. The rest of the pitiful thing sagged for a moment or two in Caz's arms, then keeled over dead.

It took the combined strength of Lana, Harry, and Dale pushing from above and Caz pushing from below to roll the corpse away, but when they finally did Caz pushed himself up into a sitting position, where he paused to wipe some of the blood that had spewed on him and then got to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said to Harry. “I thought that was it, man.”

“Nobody's dying on this trip,” Harry said. “Especially at the hand of some underling. Understood? Lana? Dale? You follow? We're going to get through this—”

Lana was staring down at the corpse of the demon Harry had brought down. “Do they all look like this?” she asked. “Too many eyes? All those mouths?”

“No,” said Harry. “That's what I was saying before the bastard sprang back to life. I think that's what the fog did. This isn't normal. Not by a long shot.”

“I think we left normal back in New York,” Lana said.

“Honey. We left normal long before that,” Dale said.

D'Amour nodded in terse agreement. “We've probably got a nice little window to move freely through the city, though, so I suggest we go while the going is still good.”

Everyone agreed and they proceeded up the shallow incline that led from Janker's Gate, continuing through the city at a steady pace. They were being watched, Harry knew, every step of the way. At first he only felt it—that tingling sigil on the back of the neck, the ever-trustworthy UI—but soon there were more obvious signs: doors that had been opened a slit were closed sharply when his gaze chanced their way, crude curtains or drapes were dropped back into place, and now and then he heard voices from inside the houses—cries and arguments and sometimes what might have been demonic prayers, offered up in the hope of some fiendish salvation.

At every intersection they crossed, Harry glimpsed figures skipping out of sight into doorways or alleys; a few were even spying on them from the rooftops, risking whatever was left of their lives as they stalked the four earthly life-forms. Suddenly Harry's tattoos went wild. He said nothing, but, out of reflex, his hand went to the place on his neck where the tattoo sang its warning cry.

“Ah Christ,” Caz said. “I know what that means.”

“What
what
means?” Dale said, his voice barely audible.

“Shit,” Harry said. “My tattoos. Caz, I forget you can read me like a book.”

“I wrote that book,” Caz said.

“Yeah, well. I'm being warned to proceed with caution.”

“Harold, we're in Hell. Caution is a fucking given. I put that fucking tattoo on you. And the way your hand shot to that bit of ink tells me that caution doesn't even come close.”

“Fine. You want the hard sell? We're not alone, and I think we're fucked. Happy now?” Harry said, walking on.

“Very,” Caz replied.

As if on cue, from somewhere near the sound of feet on stone was heard, from another direction a short cry loosed. Seemingly in response, Harry and his friends heard an unholy, deafening din arising from every direction. The loosed sound hadn't been a cry at all. It was a summons, and it was answered in the multitudes.

A horde of terrible voices suddenly punctuated the air with madhouse noises—shrieks, and sobbing, and joyless laughter—all varying imitations of the previous sound, so that within the space of less than a minute the city was no longer silent but filled completely with this cacophony, its source steadily closing on the intersection where Harry and his friends now stood.

 

16

“Listen,” said the Hell Priest.

“What in God's name is that?” Norma said.

They had stumbled together up the Bastion's ninety-one steps, which led them to the massive front door of the regime's sanctuary. It was there now that the Priest attempted to gain entrance.

“I used to live in Los Angeles,” Norma said. “Off a winding road called Coldheart Canyon. At night sometimes you'd hear the yipping of a coyote, then a whole chorus of them joining in as they came to share the kill. That's what that sounds like: a bunch of damned coyotes, howling with happiness because they're about to eat.”

“That's
exactly
what it is.”

“Oh Christ,” Norma said. “Harry…”

“He should consider himself lucky if he dies here and now,” said the Priest, raising one hand and laying his palm flat against the door. “The regime's assassins are afraid. I can hear them weeping on the other side of this door.”