Diabolical (34 page)

Another dropped immediately behind it, then another. The sound of them hitting the chamber floor took on a percussive rhythm for several seconds. Thump, thump. Thump, thump, thump. Then it abruptly stopped.

Hatcher steadied himself. He eased one foot back, waited, eased another. There were too many of them to count, well over a dozen, at least.

He moved back one more step, only to have a head punch out of nowhere over his shoulder. His body snapped rigid. The growl was like a feline scream, almost deafening so close to his ear. He could smell it's breath. Hot, almost sweet. A hint of something putrid.

He swallowed and tried to remain still. Sedim didn't react well to sudden movements.

The thing hissed again, then slowly drew back. But not very far. He could still feel its low growls, rumbling across his ears.

Morris Sankey stood. He smiled broadly, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket. His lips revealed a mouth of small teeth.

Hatcher cocked his head slightly, spoke back over his shoulder. “I don't suppose you have any treats you could loan me?”

“No,” Deborah said. “So I would suggest you don't try any more misguided heroics.”

She walked past him, weaving around several Sedim on her way to the platform. When she reached it, she turned on her heel, a model on a runway.

She rolled a palm toward the man standing behind her. “I'll assume no introductions are necessary.”

The man hopped down from the platform. The Sedim parted to make way for him. They seemed to drop their heads as he passed, submissive, almost reverent, in the way they held themselves.

Anger began to well up. The man drew close and Hatcher felt himself tense. Talons immediately dug into his arms, locking onto him. One Sedim on each side. The pain brought him up on his toes. They were so goddamn fast, reacted so goddamn quickly.

“Call me Morris,” the man said. He withdrew his left hand from his pocket, then used it to pull his jacket while he tugged the other one. After a bit of effort, it slipped free.

Hatcher recoiled at the sight of it. It was huge. Two long appendages, uncurling, flexing, curling again, like some alien ungues. Segmented lengths of lean muscle, covered by a thick, flaky hide.

Morris held it up, tentacling the digits open and shut in front of Hatcher's face.

“I'd offer to shake, but . . .” He let the words trail off, shrugging.

A pause, then he leaned in, whispering.
“Now you get to see how lucky you are.”

Morris backed away, and movement caught Hatcher's eye. Torches, approaching through a tunnel to his left. All carried by women. Beautiful, radiant women.

Some of them looked vaguely familiar. He had no doubt these were the Carnates he'd encountered in New York. Many of them, anyway. Mixed in with others from who knew where. They marched into the chamber in two columns. Some of the faces stood out. One of the redheads he'd seen before, definitely. He could almost remember the name of the black gal, second from the front. She looked over at him as they entered and winked.

The shape of a larger figure among them started to emerge, its details obscured by the raised torches. Hatcher recognized him the moment he came into view. His enormous bulk slouched forward, prodded to move from behind, yanked from in front, wrapped in chains.

Sherman
.

The Carnates flared out of their single-file lines, forming a huge circle. One of the Carnates walked Sherman into the center. The end of a thick chain tugged him from the waist and wrists, tensing across to where it coiled and wrapped around the woman's forearm. She twirled her arm free and let the chain drop, leaving him there.

Sherman took a breath. His bald head glistened in the torchlight. Hatcher could see the long row of stitches along his scalp. His eyes swam in irritable circuits. His mouth was pulled down on one end, sneered a bit on the other. He looked cranky, wary, generally unhappy.

But mostly, Hatcher realized, he looked bored.

“When are you stupid bitches gonna let me out of this shit? I mean, fuckin' A. They're rubbin' me raw.”

The big man glanced around, his expression shifting to one of increasing annoyance. He did a double-take when he noticed Hatcher.

“Him?” Sherman said, mouth widening. “That's why you brought me here? Hell, you didn't have to chain me up for that! I'd have begged for the chance!”

Morris bent his head slightly toward Hatcher. “Watch. You should enjoy this.”

As if responding to some unspoken command, the Sedim lined up to form a path from Morris to the circle. Morris strode forward, slipping between two Carnates into the makeshift ring. The Sedim holding Hatcher dragged him closer, taking him almost to the edge.

Morris walked up to Sherman and stopped. Hatcher wondered if, were he to have gone without food long enough, Sherman would simply pick the guy up and eat him, the size difference being what it was.

Sherman looked the much slighter man up and down. “Who the fuck are you? Jesus, what the hell is with your hand? Was your mother an ostrich or something?”

Morris said nothing. One of the Carnates approached Sherman and unlocked the padlock securing the chains. The big man shrugged several times, wriggling his arms, before they finally rattled to the floor in a pile.

Deborah leaped onto the platform and walked her high heels to the edge overlooking the circle.

“You know the stakes.”

Sherman rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You told me a bunch of times.”

“The loser forfeits his life. And his soul.”

“And all I gotta do is take him?” Sherman shook his head, his face barely able to contain his grin. “You gotta be kidding.”

“Without your consent, the challenge has no value. Do we have your consent?”

“Anything to get you crazy broads off my back and get the hell outta here.”

“Do we have your consent?”

A disturbing sensation crept down the back of Hatcher's scalp, tingled along his neck. He eyed Sherman, his swollen frame, hard mounds of muscle curving between every joint.

“Yes,”
Sherman said, snapping the word. In a lower voice, he added, “stupid bitch.”

Deborah tilted her head with a shrug and dipped her chin sharply.

A smug, self-satisfied grin spread itself across Sherman's face. He raised his hands in front of him, palms out, like a wrestler.

“You know,” he said. “I should feel bad about this. But there's just something about your face that pisses me off. So I think I'm gonna enjoy it. Can't say you will, though. Freak.”

Sherman feinted, throwing his huge bulk forward, then drawing back. Morris flinched, but didn't move.

A hum filled the air, sounds of murmuring. At first Hatcher thought it was the Carnates, whispering among themselves. But they all were still, calmly watching the men in the makeshift ring. He heard a fragment of the sound right next to him, louder than the din, and realized it was the Sedim. They were making a noise in their throats, a harmony of deep, visceral growls, droning in unison as they watched the fight develop. The sound of dogs staring at a door, hearing something on the other side of it no one else could.

Anticipating something about to happen.

Hatcher tried gently to move an arm. The pain was instant. The talons dug in, the squeeze of a vise.

Then, it was over.

Sherman started to circle to his right a bit, then back to his left, then he pounced. He lunged toward the smaller man, ready to throw his enormous arms around him, only to be met in the face with the deformed Hand.

The Hand slapped down in an arc, the flat of it over Sherman's nose. The two long, tubular fingers spread wide, wedging Sherman's head between them, circling the side of Sherman's skull like ram horns, spiraling in a nautilus curl as if they were screwed into the man's ears.

Sherman grabbed at the arm, started to pull it away, only to stop. His body language abruptly changed. His hands drifted off Morris's arm and hovered unsteadily in the air.

A second later, maybe two, Sherman screamed.

It was a piercing, shrill sound. A vocalization of something incomprehensible. Sherman's hands shot to the sides of his head. He was grabbing at the phalanges on each side, trying meekly to tear them off, screaming that disturbing, inhuman scream the whole time.

Then his hands moved down to his throat. No sooner did they get there than his head ripped off his neck, leaving his fingers to claw at the torn flesh and muscle and bone, a fountain of blood pumping out. His heart beat three more times, judging by the number of gushes. Pump, pump, pump. Then Sherman's body collapsed to its knees and slammed forward to the floor.

Morris held the head up high and started to walk forward. He stepped over Sherman's body, the soles of his hiking shoes trampling through the spill of blood, and kept going. The Carnates moved aside, clearing his way. The Sedim's growls were louder now, reaching a crescendo, and they seemed to be following Morris's movements intently. Sherman's head was still wedged between the tentacled curl of his two fingers.

Hatcher suddenly felt himself being dragged again. The grip on each arm set his nerves on fire, forcing him up on his toes and making it impossible to resist.

They moved him in the same direction as Morris, following in his wake. The man stopped in front of a large section of wall. At first it seemed like a darkened tunnel, completely black. But two Carnates stepped up to it, holding out torches, and Hatcher saw the surface was reflective. Some sort of black stone, like onyx, polished completely smooth. So smooth Hatcher could see vivid reflections mirroring back.

Including the reflection of Sherman's head as Morris held it out toward the wall. Morris turned his clawed hand over and unfurled his longer tendril fingers open until Sherman's skull rolled level, pinched between two curled tips of those insectlike digits, facing its own reflection.

Facing its own reflection, and still very much alive.

The eyes were blinking, the mouth was moving. A silent scream, deafening to watch. Blood dripped from the base of Sherman's neck like crimson rain.

Morris stepped closer to the wall. He glanced over his shoulder, gesturing with his free hand, and Hatcher felt the squeeze on his arms again. Hatcher suddenly found himself bouncing on his toes and forced to scramble forward with the Sedim. They planted him next to Morris Sankey, still holding tight. He tested the grip, tried to pull free, but the pain stopped him dead.

Morris looked at Hatcher with a sober face, but his eyes twinkled and his lips couldn't resist a smile.

“I never dreamed it had so much power. That I had so much power. Watch.”

Hatcher said nothing. His arms were growing numb, his shoulders searing in pain. Sherman's skull was a few feet away, suspended in midair, clearly visible in the reflection. Working its jaws. Trying to say something. Or maybe just still screaming.

Morris walked forward until Sherman's face was practically touching its reflection. After a brief pause, he took another step, stiffening his arm and pressing Sherman's face against the surface. The wall seemed to ripple, like a vertical plane of liquid. Hatcher noticed Morris's hand change color, turn a strange shade of green, as if it were glowing. Then it pressed into the reflection, taking the head with it.

“Look!”

Even though the wall didn't show any sign of changing, the mirrored surface seemed to have disappeared. Now the section resembled an asymmetrical panel of smoky, charcoal glass. Transparent, though still a bit reflective. Hatcher could see Morris's hand protruding through on the other side. Still glowing. Still holding Sherman's skull.

Hatcher could make out movement along the bottom, bright enough to see by, a luminescence, like water flowing over lights. No, not water. Molten rock. Burning bright and hot.

Something approached. Something on the other side.

A colossus of a figure, probably seven feet tall. It was cloaked in shadow, barely more than a silhouette. Hatcher could make out spired horns protruding from its head, a long face, the reversed legs of an animal.

“It appreciates early delivery,” Morris said. “Not having to wait for a man like this to die years from now. He'll be pleased.”

The thing strode across the molten floor, coming into view with its last step. Its face was like a hide stretched over a skull, two sunken eye sockets, rimmed in shadow, a pair of teardropshaped nasal passages instead of an actual nose, a mouth full of teeth that reminded Hatcher of some sort of deep-sea fish.

It took Sherman's head from Morris's hand, held it to the side, examining it. Hatcher could see Sherman's face. It was still animated, eyes bulging in horror, mouth and jaw flexing and wriggling in an extended scream.

Morris reached his other hand over and placed it behind Hatcher's head, cupping the curve of his skull above his neck. Hatcher squirmed, but the Sedim maintained their painful lock on his arms.

“In just the past few days, I've learned the beautiful, amazing thing about Hell. It's all about customization. That was the word he used, when he explained it to me. Customization.”

Hatcher felt Morris start to press his head forward. He held his breath and strained until the burn in his arms was unbearable.

“You know, he told me all about you.”

“Who?” Hatcher asked, gasping.

“Your brother. He said you more than most would appreciate its ability to inflict torment like few others could.”

Hatcher felt himself being moved toward the wall. He continued to resist as much as he could, but the creatures were too strong, the agonizing pain in his arms too much to bear.