Chained in the Demon's Lair (Hellfire Circus) (2 page)

The cowboy intended to do something
terrible to him and Julie had no way to warn him, chained up in
this tiny humid cell. Did he know what was happening, she wondered?
Was he looking for her?

“Where are you?” she whispered into the
darkness, dreaming of his beautiful face.

***

The night was dark and still, the clear Texas
sky unveiling a tapestry of distant stars and galaxies above the
desert plain. Samuel crossed the dusty earth with a purposeful
stride, his mouth twisted in determination. What his steely
expression did not show was the fear. Fear that he’d already been
too late to save them.

“Are you sure this is the place master?”

Samuel looked down at his companion, the
dwarf Francois who had been by his side almost as long as the time
that had passed since he himself had left the side of
Mephistopheles. The being he had once called master. The one who
had caused him to vow never to call anyone master ever
again.

“Mephistopheles doesn’t make mistakes,” he
said, “and neither do I. This is where he told me to meet him. This
is where he will appear.”

But even still, the desert around them was as
empty as all isolation itself. Nothing but scrub brush and sand
stretching out for miles towards the rock formations that stood,
jagged and alien against the purple horizon.

“But what if it’s a trap?” Francois
protested.

Samuel smiled for the first time since
receiving the demon’s letter, although admittedly without much
humor.

“Of course it’s a trap,” he said, “everything
he does is a trap. Every time he lifts a single finger, each time
he coils his tongue against his rotten teeth to sound a word. A
trap.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We try to deduce what kind of trap it is,”
Samuel said, his eyes surveying the barren horizon in search of any
sign of movement. “And we try to cloak all signs of our own.”

***

Samuel fingered the small mechanical box in
his breast pocket and then immediately pushed all thought of it
from his mind. He wasn’t sure how much of his own cognition would
be readable to Mephistopheles after all this time. All he knew was
that he himself had grown immensely in power and skill since those
days of apprenticeship at the demon’s side, when even his deepest,
most ill-formed thoughts were obvious to the monster. Whether that
would be enough to keep the demon out, only time would tell.

He took one more step across the dusty
wasteland, his boot crunching down on the pebbly scrub, and then
the entire sky lit up with flame as fast as the blinking of a
devil’s eye. Plumes of thick black smoke shot up all around them
like pillars in the palace of the damned, billowing into the sky
more pollutant than any chemical ever made by the hands of man.
Mephistopheles loved to make his entrance.

“
Nice gimmick,” Samuel spoke as he slowly
turned to face the being he knew now stood behind him. “I’d give it
a neat seven out of ten. Maybe an eight with practice.”

“My dear Samuel,” Mephistopheles smiled.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Wondering just where my
little friend got to.”

“Unfortunately we’ve already got a
pyrotechnics guy at the Circus,” Samuel continued, ignoring the
demon’s greeting. “And he’s much more talented than you.”

Mephistopheles twisted his lips in an amused
leer. It was almost as if he was still fond of the other man.
Almost as if he ever had been.

“
Mephistopheles,” Samuel spoke, narrowing
his eyes with intense determination. “I believe you have some
friends of mine. I’m going to take them from you before I wipe you
out of all existence.”

Mephistopheles smiled.

***

A stream of white hot lightning shot from
the demon cowboy’s palm and hit Samuel right in the center of his
chest. In an instant everything he’d ever known was forgotten, his
identity wiped away by the force of a thousand volts, all vision
replaced with searing white light. He hit the ground with a
convulsion of agony, as the hiss of cognizance slowly returned.
Samuel could hear nothing but a loud buzz and it was a struggle
just to unlock his jaw. Such a blow would have been enough to kill
a normal man ten times over. But Samuel wasn’t a normal man and
Mephistopheles didn’t want to kill him. Not yet.

Fighting back the shock, Samuel hoisted
himself up on his hands and knees and then shakily stood up. A
stream of black smoke was billowing from his charred chest. He
looked back at his adversary. Fighting back the pain, Samuel spread
his lips in a condescending smile.

“Cute little trick,” he said. “I suppose you
expect me to counteract.”

“
My dear Samuel,” Mephistopheles said, his
voice losing its cowboy drawl and momentarily reverting to the
aristocratic tone of some yesteryear. “I await it with eager
anticipation. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you practice. Show
me what you’ve learned.”

Samuel chuckled. “There’s time for that
later,” he said, “first you will tell me where Julie and Cassandra
are.”

“Will I now?” Mephistopheles asked, raising
an intrigued eyebrow.

“I know you wouldn’t have killed them,”
Samuel said, “you’d want to taunt me first, give me hope before
destroying it completely. As such, I suspect they’re also somewhere
nearby, no? No doubt you’d have me see what I could not save before
delivering the final blow. So where are they? On top of one of
those rock formations perhaps? Buried up to the neck in sand? Why
don’t you give in to your pride and boast of your latest
cruelties?”

Mephistopheles stared at his erstwhile
accomplice for a moment, as though weighing him up. “Well really,”
he said, “am I that predictable?”

Samuel offered no reply.

“Fine,” Mephistopheles said, “I’ll tell you
where they are, but only because I know it won’t make a difference.
And no, I’m not going to let you see them. It’s enough for me to
know that you knew how much you’d failed. And by the way, it’s only
your latest little cunt I’ll be disposing off. The other one,
Cassandra, has made her own arrangement with me and will be living
to fight another day. Do you want to know what that arrangement
cost her?”

“Where are they?” Samuel asked, ignoring the
embedded taunt.

Mephistopheles lowered his brow with a
menacing glee. “You,” he said, “she gave up you. Your own little
darling. You got too greedy, Samuel. Tut tut tut. Typical greedy
little human.”

Samuel bit the inside of his lip and strove
to keep his expression blank. He wouldn’t allow the fiend the
pleasure of getting to him. Besides, Cassandra’s betrayal was
hardly a surprise. The eventuality had crossed his mind the moment
he’d received the demon’s message. But he did not hate her. Only
felt sorry for the great pain she must have been in to cause her to
take such drastic measures.

“Where are they?” he repeated through
clenched teeth. His entire plan hinged on getting the exact
location and then distracting the demon long enough to instigate
the rescue.

“
A military silo,” Mephistopheles shrugged,
“a quarter mile from here. Really quite an impressive feat of
architecture. Hate can build such wondrous things. That’s an
ancient truth my friend, but it’s as true today as it ever was.” He
peered at his opponent with strange wonder. “Oh Samuel,” he said,
“Why didn’t you ever listen to me? Why didn’t you
use
the wisdom I gave you? You
could still be at my side today if only you’d learned. You would be
a hundred times more powerful than you are now.” He shook his head
in mock sadness (everything Mephistopheles did was a mockery of
normal human emotion. The only things that truly moved him were
mischief and hatred, evil and destruction) “Now I have to
extinguish my past mistakes. This is a mess I’ve been waiting a
long time to clean up.”

With a flash, he hit Samuel in the chest with
another bolt of electricity. As the magician hit the ground, he
prayed that the force had not been so great as to destroy the radio
transmitter in his pocket.

***

“Julie.”

Julie froze in her cell. Cassandra had never
once addressed her by her actual name. But now here she was hissing
at her from the other side of the thick iron door.

After a moment’s silence Julie spoke.
“What do you want?”

“I have water for you. And some bread. You
must be hungry.”

Julie bristled beneath the warm metal of her
neck brace. It was true, she was hungry, but still she didn’t want
to accept anything from Cassandra. That woman had always despised
her and for all Julie knew the bread and water could easily be
laced with poison.

“Leave me alone!” she called.

There was no reply.

Finally Julie heard the grinding sound of the
door unlocking as the huge metal portal began to open. A sliver of
light shot through the dimness and she looked up at Cassandra’s
beautiful face, now somewhat gaunt, peering within.

“You must eat something Julie,” she said, “at
least have some water. You must need it by now.”

“Yeah?” Julie snorted from her position in
the corner where she sat in her underwear, clammy from sweat and
the hours she’d spent in confinement. “And what do you care?”

Cassandra sighed and suddenly she looked more
vulnerable than Julie had ever seen her. But still, she wasn’t
ready to give up on the idea that this too might just be another
ploy.

“I care,” Cassandra said. “If you could see
how much I care it would block out the sun itself.”

“Well that’s hard to believe,” Julie replied,
studying the other woman closely. “I saw you down there you know,
sucking that monster’s cock. I heard what you said about me.”

Cassandra raised her forlorn eyes and looked
at the other woman. There were tears brimming at the corners. “I
was trying to protect you,” she said, “don’t you see? He wanted to
rape you. I saved you from him by drawing his attention back to
me.”

Julie folded her arms. Despite herself,
she couldn’t help but concede that Cassandra’s emotion did seem
genuine here. “And what do you care about that?” she asked, “Aren’t
you the one who brought me here for him? Aren’t you the one who
betrayed Samuel?”

At the mention of his name what remained of
Cassandra’s resolve crumpled and the tears began to roll silently
down her cheeks.

“How could you do it?” Julie asked, stepping
forward from the darkness. “How could you do it to him when he only
ever showed you kindness? How could you do that to everybody else
at the circus?”

“You don’t understand,” Cassandra spoke,
universes of pain in her choked voice, “I had no choice.”

“
There’s always a choice Cassandra,” Julie
said, “even if it means giving up your own life, there’s always a
choice.”

“No,” Cassandra moaned, shaking her head as
her sorrow became more vehement.

Julie didn’t know whether to comfort the
woman or attack her, to plead to her better nature or to force her
into submission so she could escape. As she watched the woman
collapse into emotional chaos before her, a lithe figure silently
stepped out of the darkness and raised a pistol to the back of
Cassandra’s neck.

***

“It’s over Cassandra.”

It took Julie a moment to place the voice and
then a wave of delight washed over her. It was Baptiste St. Jean,
one of the Ringmaster’s oldest friends and a voodoo priest of some
renown.

Another voice spoke, as the dwarf Francois
stepped out of the shadows.

“Dear Cassandra, oh my dear. What have you
done?”

The woman closed her eyes in an instant
and fell to her knees. With the gun still leveled at her head
(though his expression now quite a bit more sympathetic) Baptiste
looked over her shoulder at Julie.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “Did they hurt
you?”

“I’m fine,” Julie said, “where’s Samuel? Is
he ok?”

Baptiste and Francois exchanged an uneasy
glance but did not say anything.

“Cassandra,” Baptiste spoke, his voice firm
but not punishing, “where are the keys for Julie’s chains? Hurry
up, we don’t have much time.”

“Here,” Cassandra said, “in my pocket. But it
won’t matter anyway.”

“
Why not?” Baptiste asked, snatching the
keys and tossing
them to
Francois as the dwarf ran to Julie’s side.

“Because the bastard has set this whole place
up to blow in fifteen minutes. Three nuclear warheads.”

A silence settled over the group.

***

“
But why?” Baptiste asked, “Why the hell
would he do that? Doesn’t he think he’s strong enough to take
Samuel alone? I don’t understand why he’d have to blow up this
whole silo and half the desert along with it.”

Cassandra snorted with humorless laughter and
looked up at him. Her face was streaked with mascara from her
tears. She looked like she’d been through hell and back.

“Why?” she said, “why not? Because he can,
that’s why, because he was here at all. That’s who you’re dealing
with, a being for whom nothing is too much and no feat of
destruction is ever enough. Why? Why no more than to amuse himself,
that’s why.”

Over in the corner, Francois got done with
unlocking Julie’s chains.

“Thanks,” she whispered to him and he
squeezed her arm briefly before walking back to the others.

“Can you stop it?” he asked.

“What?” Cassandra said.

“You’ve been here with that demon from the
beginning, did you see how he activated the missiles? Do you think
you could override the system?”