House Infernal by Edward Lee (13 page)

Now you're talking! She fished in the torso's pocket and
pulled out-

"Wow. Where'd you get this roll?"

"I stole it."

"Oh, that's super. A priest that steals."

"I told you, Ruth, I'm on an important mission here.
I've been preparing for the equivalent of a year or so.
Staking locations, marking routes, making connections.
And ... procuring funds."

"How?"

"Same way you used to do it. Ripping people off. Mugging them, jacking them, and taking their cash."

Ruth laughed, dark and hard.

"But there's a difference," he added. "I rip off Demons,
criminals, and scumbags. You ripped off the innocent."

"Oh, bullshit, man! It's all the same. You're taking what
doesn't belong to you. 'Thou shalt not steal?' Ever hear
that one?"

Alexander exhaled as if wearied. "Just go over to that
convenience store and get the stuff."

Such a hypocrite ... Ruth sashayed to another rotwalled building, the door of which jingled when she entered. Everything's opposite, she recited, but some things
never change. The man at the register wore a turban and looked Middle Eastern. But his beard was green rot hanging down to his sternum. A nametag said: HELlo! MY NAME
IS ATrA. I AM UNHAPPY In SERVE YOU!

"Hi," Ruth said.

The man glared. "You-how you say?-fuck you! You
get out my store! We do not serve infidels! Death to all infidels and all enemies of Islam!"

Ruth was appalled. "Hey, buddy, I'm no enemy of anything. I just want to buy a pack of smokes and some
food."

"You look like treacherous American prostitute, just
like those cunning wenches we paid for in Boston before
we fly the planes into the heart of your evil economy
which is the Great Satan! You dirty American whore! One
day my great nation will bury you all."

Even though Ruth had indeed participated in countless
acts of prostitution during her life, she did not like to be
called a whore.

She pulled the flintlock pistol from her belt and put it
right in the proprietor's face. "Listen, spinach-chin. I
didn't start any shit with you, so you got no right to start
it with me. Now get me a pack of smokes, some matches,
and"-she looked behind the counter and saw a grill"are those sesame rice balls?"

The man shuddered with his hands up. "Yes, yes, miss.
I get you all you want. Please no shoot me!"

+"Just get the shit, sparky."

The man fumbled to put her purchase in a bag.

Ruth pulled out the wad of cash. "How much?" But
then she reflected. "No-how you say?-fuck you! I'm not
paying and if you don't like it, do something about it."

She saw now that the man had wet his pants.

"All the money, too, dickstain."

Tears in his eyes, the man emptied the drawer into the
bag.

Ruth leaned over, waving the clunky pistol, big breasts
settling on the counter. "And don't you even think about
calling the police-or whatever the fuck you have for police in this ridiculous Satanic circus you got going here, 'cos if I even hear one siren, I'll come back in here and
blow your shit away before they get me. Got it?"

"Oh, yes, yes, nice American lady."

"My ass." Ruth reholstered the gun and paused to
squint at the trembling clerk. A button on his shirt read
DEATH TO ISRAEL!

"Can't you guys do anything except blow stuff up and
work in 7-Elevens? Get a life!"

Ruth tramped out of the store, breasts jiggling.

When Alexander saw all the extra cash, he said,
"How'd you get that?"

"Same way as you. I ripped it off from that asshole in
there."

"Good work!" He seemed pleased. Ruth fed him the
rice balls, which he ate with gusto.

"Not bad."

"You're right," she agreed, munching hers. "Not as
good as the ones back home but they'll do." She mused.
"We used to get the best sesame rice balls at this place in
Clearwater."

"I hate to tell you this, but those things we just ate
aren't sesame rice balls. They're Imp testicles fried in
Hell-Sow fat."

Ruth stared at him. "Oh, thanks for telling me before I
went into the fuckin' store!"

"Down here, food is food, Ruth. You'll learn."

Ruth paused before lighting one of the cigarettes. "And
now I'll bet you're gonna tell me there's no tobacco in
these, but something fucked-up, right?"

"Shredded corpseskin and ground up dragon hair," he
said.

Ruth tossed the pack into the garbage can right next to
the rotten bench.

"Shouldn't have done that," Alexander muttered.

Within a second a great shadow crossed over Ruth. She
looked up at the nine-foot-tall thing suddenly standing
before her. It looked to be made of clay-like a giant
Gumby, only the clay stank. All it had for a face were slits
for a nose and mouth, and two thumb holes for eyes.

"Meet your first Golem, Ruth."

Holy shit ...

Gray-brown fingers the size of Johnsonville brats
handed her a slip of paper.

By order of the Constabulary, you are hereby ordered to
remit a fine of $50 Hellnotes. If you elect not to pay, you
will face immediate unlawful arrest or be subject to a
public squashing. Officer's choice.

Now it was Ruth's turn to wet her pants. She rummaged through the cash she'd just stolen and grabbed the
first bill she saw with a 50 on it.

The Golem snatched it up and walked away, sidewalk
rumbling.

"That's a cop?"

"One of them. Ushers and Conscripts are police, too,
and certain Hybrids and Mongrels. You'll see them all in
time."

"But what did I do? I thought he was going to bust me
for robbing that store."

"You violated the citywide anti-littering law."

Ruth railed. "I didn't litter! I threw the damned cigarettes in the garbage can!"

"Ruth, here you're not allowed to not litter. Understand?"

"No. But that doesn't matter, does it?"

The priest chuckled. "You'll get the hang of it soon.
Like I keep telling you, everything's opposite here."

Yeah, I guess it fuckin' is.

"Since we're taking a breather, check the gun belt," the
priest said. "Make sure you've got some ammunition for
the sulphur pistol."

Ruth frowned, fidgeting with the belt. She flipped up a
leatherlike compartment. "Reefers!"

"They're not reefers, Ruth. They're powder cartridges.
You pull the end off, dump the powder in the barrel, then
drop in a sixty-nine caliber musket ball."

Just my luck. In the next compartment-"Holy shit! Are
these giant pearls?"

"Yes, they are, Ruth."

She held one up, as big as the biggest marble she'd ever
seen. "It's got to be worth a fortune!"

"It's worth one Antigonus piece."

"What's that? Like, a couple grand?"

"The equivalent of a quarter of a penny. It's the cheapest thing they can use for ball ammunition. Lead's way
too expensive and gold is too soft."

"Huh?"

"Gold's worthless here, and so are diamonds. In Hell
they have alchemists that turn gold into lead. Zircons, on
the other hand, are worth millions."

Ruth was hating this more and more. "That's the dickstupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Uh-huh. What's worthless in the Living World is
priceless here, and vice versa. That's how Satan wants it."

Next Ruth looked in the bag of bills. "And what's with
all this funky money?"

"Hellnotes are the official dollar here. Brutusnotes are
worth fifty, Tiberiusnotes a hundred. Check out the Boni-
facenote, the one with a thousand on it. There's one on
my roll."

Ruth found one. "So this is a G-note, huh?"

"Yes. But look at the face. It's one you'll need to recognize eventually."

Ruth examined the odd portrait on the bill, which she
guessed had been printed on some kind of skin. "It looks
like a fat pope wearing a mask. Why do I need to know
what he looks like?"

"Because you'll be meeting him soon."

Ruth didn't want to know.

Her eyes drifted to some other things around Alexander's neck, next to the Abyss-Eye: a pouch on one pendant
and something like a decorative horn on another. "What's
all that stuff? Hell-jewelry?"

"Hardly. The pouch is just ... a pouch."

"Thanks."

"It's a goodie bag, sort of."

.You mean it's got special things inside, huh?"

"Yes." but his reluctance to talk details was plain.

Ruth glared. "So what's in it? Jesus! Why don't you
ever tell me anything?"

"Because it's too much, too soon, Ruth," he said with
some fatigue. "There's magic stuff in the pouch. It's too
much for you to absorb all at once. You're still a Newcomer. You haven't even been in the Mephistopolis for a
day yet."

"Well then, what's that horn?" she asked next. A pang
of hope. "Has it got booze in it?"

"No booze, Ruth." He frowned in resignation. "All
right, take if off my neck and check it out. But be careful."

She took the connecting pendant off of him to examine
the queer object. The horn was empty, its walls thin and
bonelike. She imagined the last six inches cut off an elephant's tusk, which was then hollowed out. There was a
hole at the small end too, and the horn had been intricately engraved-indeed, like ivory-but the characters
were foreign to her.

"It looks like a hollowed out tusk," she observed.

"Close. It's the fore-horn of a virgin Demonness who
hanged herself in rebellion to Lucifer's authority. Most of
the words engraved on it are in a language called
Enochian, one of the Angelic tongues, and some of them
are in Zraetic, which is even older. It might have been the
language originally spoken by God at Mount Sinai, but
I'm not positive. They didn't tell me for sure."

"They?"

Alexander sighed. "My intelligence source, and some
others, shall we say. The people who recruited me."

"And me, too, I guess, without even asking," she added.

Anger threatened his gaze. "You're not taking this very
seriously. It's not a joke. You'll be transferred from Hell to
Purgatory if we succeed."

"Yeah, but I have to wait a fuckin' thousand years!" she
complained.

"It's better than a million. Believe me, Ruth, it's an offer
you can't refuse. Purgatory's no picnic, but it's not"-he
took a grim look around-"it's not ... here. These are powerful entities we're dealing with. If you keep raising a
fuss, keep complaining, keep being totally ungrateful for
this historic opportunity ... then they might just pull the
plug on the whole deal, and you get nothing. You get to
stay here. Forever."

Fuck, she thought. Men are dicks. "Chill, man." She used
the horn to change the sour subject. "So what's this thing
again?"

"It's called a Vox Unterwelt."

Ruth didn't have a clue. "So you blow in it, like a
trumpet?"

"No, but I can talk into it, to someone very specific,
someone ... in the Living World."

"You're shitting me!" The prospect sounded thrilling.
"Who? Someone you know?"

"The ultimate purpose of our mission here is to relay
critical instructions to this person I'm referring to."

"Who the fuck is it?" Ruth said insistantly.

"Look in the fat end of the horn."

Ruth did so and saw ... someone's name? She wasn't
sure, because the writing was fat, murky, and black, like
Magic Marker, only she had a deeper impression that the
name was written in some kind of charcoal. She looked
closer. "Is it ... Veronica? Virginia?"

"The name is Venetia. From what I understand she's a
theology student contemplating the convent. And she's
chaste-a very important factor."

"Chased by what?"

"For pity's sake, Ruth-chaste! It means she's celibate."

Ruth's head turned. "Celebrating what?"

"It means she's a virgin!" his voice rocked.

Ruth turned furious. "Hey, fuck you and your stupid
Vox-whatever-the-fuck this is! Just 'cos I don't know all
the fancy words you do don't mean you can yell at me like
I'm trash! So you can kiss my ass and shove this stupid
thing up yours!" she bellowed and was about to throw the
Vox Unterwelt at him.

"Ruth, Ruth, wait!" he snapped. "Relax, okay? I'm sorry."

"You better be, damn it. You can't even put this thing back around your neck 'cos you got no arms. So stop treating me like shit 'cos I'm not shit!"

"I know you're not." He calmly paced his words.
"You're a child of God."

"I ain't no child of God, either!" she continued to rage,
hormones in havoc. "'Cos God wouldn't send one of His
children to this shit hole!"

"You sent yourself, Ruth, and I did, too. But I apologize.
I guess I'm not a very nice guy in the long run, which is
my reason for never making it to Heaven. Plus I'm
cranky, irritable, and unreasonable sometimes. But let's
both work together so we can both get out of this-what
you just said."

Shit hole, she thought. Fuck, I need a Pamprin, and they
probably don't have that here either. She continued to halfexamine the Vox Unteruaelt in her hands. "So somebody
wrote this chick's name inside and that makes it magic?"

"That's the best way to phrase it, yes."

"Who wrote the name?"

Another long, weary sigh. "I can't tell you."

'I "bat's great. That's just fuckin' great."

"But it works, so that's all that matters-er, I should say,
it works some of the time. See, for the transmission to be
unfazed, Venetia has to be tired. She can't be fully asleep,
but she can be fatigued or about to fall asleep."

"Sounds like more bullshit."

The priest shrugged. "I think it's because her mental
blocks are down when her brain waves are heading
toward sleep. That's when I can actually talk to her. But
you can see all the time. Take a look."

"What?"

"Put the small end to your eye, like a telescope."

Ruth did, then exclaimed, "Fuckin' cool! That's the
world! Our world!"

"Yes, it is. We see everything she sees through her eyes.
And when she's looking in a mirror, we can even see her.
What's she looking at now?"