Hunting in Hell (18 page)

T
hyrsus screamed once, his sides bubbling as they melted.
 
Her moment of near-lucidity passed, De la Roca dropped to her knees.
 
She mumbled and shivered, until finally, she was still.

"Come Alsvior.
 
We need to get them out of h—"

Before the Mademoiselle could finish, Thyrsus's body burst into green flames.
 
Their intense heat drove her and Alsvior back a few steps.
 

"Does this always happen?"
 
The horse merely grunted.

Something small and round glistened by her foot.
 
Quickly, before the horse noticed, she nudged it closer to herself with her toe.

She didn't dare lean over to pick it up, though.
 
Instead, she started to open the waypoint, but Alsvior bumped her in the chest, hard.
 
Flustered, she let it close.
 
"I don't get it.
 
Do you want me to wait?"
 

The horse nodded once in assent.

"What for?"
And why am I asking a horse that can't speak?

She sat and waited, and the flames burned lower, until only ashes remained.
 
Alsvior walked to the body, his hooves kicking up tiny piles of sand, and began nudging through it with his nose.

Intrigued, the Mademoiselle was patient.
 
An hour went by before he whickered at her, and she approached hesitantly, caught in the feeling of a ritual.
 
He pushed something through the ash.
 
It slowed as he crested a tiny hill, and then picked up speed on the other side, finally resting at her feet.

A marble?
 
No, a kevra stone.
 
With a flash of greed leaned down to pick it up, but he neighed shrilly in warning, his head popping up once to thump her in the chest, hard enough to hurt.

"Goddamnit!
 
What do you want me to do then?"

The horse looked at De la Roca and back.
  

"What? I give it to her?"
 

He chuffed once, and she again tried to pick it up.
 
The fierce blow of his massive head was enough to knock to her to the ground.
 
She sighed in exasperation.
 
"I get it!
 
No touching.
 
Fine."

She returned to De la Roca's body.
  
"I'm glad I didn't wear a skirt today."
 
She paced around it, pondering the best way to approach the situation, eventually deciding on the feet.
 
She wrapped her hands around the mercenary's ankles and tugged hard, but the body barely moved.

"Not going to happen, horse."

He snorted menacingly, and she threw her hands up.
  
"Goddamnit!"
 
She grabbed the ankles again and pulled
hard
, the muscles in her arms popping awake with the effort.
 
She pushed through her legs, half squatting to the ground, and the body slid through the sand a full foot.
 

By the time she had moved De la Roca to the pile of ash, she could no longer feel the cold wind.
 
She mopped the sweat off of her brow with the back of a hand, leaving a sooty trail across her forehead, and stood, stretching her back as well as she could.

"You know," she said, a wistful tone in her voice.
 
"I wasn't always this old."

She turned to face Alsvior, her eyes narrowed slightly.
 
"I wonder how old you are."

Alsvior stamped the ground impatiently.

"Okay, fine.
 
You're the boss, you crazy-ass animal."
 
With considerable delicacy, and perhaps just a tremor of fear, she took the unconscious mercenary's hand and placed it on the new stone, closing the fingers to a fist around it.

De la Roca's eyes suddenly popped open, and she began to scream.

"Oh, fuck this!"
 
In a flash, the Mademoiselle opened the waypoint on the floor.
 
De la Roca's shrieks were getting louder, a wolf-like keening that sent shivers up her spine.
 
"Help me, goddamn you!"

The horse bolted to her side and shoved his head against the body as she pulled.
 
As the rain covered them both, pounding tiny holes in the black sand, they fell through the waypoint.

* * *

She was in Hell again.

A thousand times, the Angel extended her the bargain, and a thousand times she pulled free.
 
Then the scene switched, and she could see Laufeyson, moving in for the kiss.
 
Her heart beat harder in anticipation, but when his face met hers and she pulled away, his visage changed.
 
Half of it turned dark, melting into a mass of black feathers.
 
His eye glowed like a crystal, and a stabbing pain exploded through her stomach.

She looked down.
 
Her midsection was a mass of blood and demon ichor, and next to it was his hand, pulsing with the light of the stone of Muninn.
 

He had cut it out of her.
 

She screamed again, as the scene changed once more, and she was holding a child, its head covered with a veil.
 
Hope surged in her chest, but when she pulled back the lacy fabric, the baby had a lamprey's mouth.

* * *

The rain beat down upon the roof of the Mademoiselle's small house.
 
De la Roca had been held in the throes of madness for ten days, and for ten days, it had not stopped raining.
 
Alsvior had stood watch over her body for the duration.
 
At times, the mercenary would thrash uncontrollably, as if in a seizure.
 
After the second day, the Mademoiselle bound her arms and legs to the bed, to keep her from injuring herself.
 
Other times, De la Roca would scream again, an endless litany of nonsensical curses and wordless utterances that made the Mademoiselle feel ill.
 

Once, no longer able to stand the howls, she had tried to take the stone from De la Roca's hand.
 
The instant her fingers made contact with the smooth surface, her whole body burned, as if on fire, and the two of them had screamed as one.
 
She had fallen backwards, thrown against the wall by some unholy force.
  
Clearly, whatever torture the mercenary felt was not to be shared.
 

* * *

On the morning of the eleventh day, the rain slowed to a drizzle and then stopped.
 
As the sunlight streamed in through the window, De la Roca blinked, conscious of the world around her for the first time since the fight with Thyrsus.

"You are awake," said the Mademoiselle, the rising pitch of her voice more question than statement.

"Yes."
 
She blinked several more times and then raised the hand with the stone, bringing it up in front of her face to examine it.
 
It was black, a deeper black then she had ever imagined possible, black enough that it could not be of this world.
 
She could just make out a distorted image of herself on its surface, and as she stared at it, a milky shadow traveled across the smooth edge and disappeared.
 
Whatever it was, this
kevra
stone was alive.
  
"I have spent ten days in the madness of Thyrsus."

The Mademoiselle nodded, her eyes wide.
 
"How did you know that?"

De la Roca continued.
 
"The demon was not always that way.
 
His disease is a parasite that ate him from the inside."

"Yes.
 
He was once called Huginn."
 
The Mademoiselle's lip was trembling, and her eyes were red.
 
Had she been crying?

Before the Mademoiselle could say anything else, De la Roca put the stone in her mouth and swallowed.

The Mademoiselle leaped up from her chair, her hands white-knuckled fists against her sides.
 
"Are you crazy?"

De la Roca's mind, once blank, once mad, suddenly overflowed with the memories of the last three centuries.
 
"No, I think I am finally sane."

She sat up with considerable effort and reached out to pet Alsvior, her hand running over his nose with considerable tenderness.
 
"I am sorry that I forgot you, my friend.
 
It will not happen again.
  
Thank you for saving my life—yet again."
 
He chuffed once and bowed his head to hers, embracing her forehead with his own.
 

Bracing herself on his massive body, she stood and faced the Mademoiselle.

"And you … why did you have the Eye of Muninn?"

The Mademoiselle could not fully meet her stare.
 
Her knees trembled as she addressed De la Roca.

"It was the only way—"

"And Laufeyson?"

"My plane is empty."
 
Her eyes darted to one side.
 
"His friends have released him and taken him."

"Taken him?"

"Nothing is free.
 
You know that better than most, I believe.
 
The last being to enter my plane opened a waypoint into Hell."

De la Roca thought of the hallucination she had experienced before she awoke.
 
It was the Angel again, his hand outstretched, his body a mass of eyes and peacock feathers that glittered in the light.
 
It is time,
he had said, and as he spoke, the tendrils of madness around his head died, dissipating like smoke.
 
You must hunt the wolf-man.
 

She had awoken with a clear head.

"Then you'd better open me one too."

The Mademoiselle started to speak, but De la Roca raised the hand that had held the stone.
 
In its place was
Bluot.

"I'm going after that bastard.
 
I want some answers and his head on a stake.
 
Now, my arm is steady."
 
She let her eyes slide down to the gun and back.
 
"Open the door, and make it nice and big."

Her eyes wide, the Mademoiselle complied.
  

"No tricks," said De la Roca.
 
"If I get through that door, and I'm not where I want to be, I'm coming back for you."

She rubbed the horse's head.
 
"You ready, Al?"

He whickered softly.
 
Without putting her gun down, she mounted Alsvior and backed him through the waypoint.

PART TWO:

HONOR IN HELL

ONE

D
e la Roca awoke, her eyes still closed.

Her mind was blank, the absence of thought voluntary.
 
Time was infinite.
 
For now, she just wanted to lay in the warm comfort of the sun, bathing in the scents of wet salt and silica and -

What is that?