There But For The Grace (20 page)

“Mortal weapons won’t do much other than irritate me, Darling.”

“Yeah, this isn’t a mortal weapon, near as I can tell. It was a gift, from War.”

He frowned, and then the spark of recognition lit. He tried to thrust me back away from him, and I let him, just enough to avoid
all
the blowback. I wanted to avoid getting too much of Sobel on me, but you know how blowing someone’s head off at close range goes... Yeah, I didn’t either, but I was about to find out. I pulled the trigger without any more hesitation, and his head exploded. I mean blew apart like a melon. Blood and thicker, wetter things splattered across my face, and I was lucky I managed to keep my eyes and mouth shut.

I got the major impression that Iaoel was both stunned and impressed that I’d had the cajones to do it. I was both resigned and a little sick by what I’d done, but at the same time, fuck
that
. I needed to get out of here before some of the freaks in this house of horror quit fuckin’ long enough to realize the master of the house was now twitching on the floor without three quarters of his head. I quashed the urge to vomit and stepped over the body, hitting the top of the stairs leading down. I leapt down the first short flight, whipped myself around the railing, and got around halfway down the next one before leaping that one.

Once again I found myself grateful for all of the cardio involved in Tab’s training as I dodged down hallways and found a door that looked like it just
might
lead to the outside, bearing a strong resemblance to the door that’d let me into this mess in the first place. I reached for the handle just as a rage-filled scream filtered down the stairs. I flung it open, and once again,
jackpot!

I dashed out into the howling wind, hail, and stinging rain and was suddenly more grateful for the drenching as it served to rinse the blood and brain off my face some until I could do a better clean up job. I waded out into the maelstrom until I couldn’t stand the stinging elements anymore and was forced to protect my face with my bandana again, at least until I could get through the storm, which wasn’t much further by the looks of it. The cracked streets hit a low-slung stone wall, with an iron gate wide enough for a car to scrape by, but made more for pedestrians—or maybe a horse and rider. No sooner had I stepped through the gate than the rain just stopped. Like someone had flipped a switch. I looked back over my shoulder at the raging tempest and stood for a half second, scanning the street I was on now.

It reeked of garbage and spoilt food and seriously looked like every movie set in 1800s London or something. Cobblestones replaced blacktop, and the buildings were roughhewn gray stone with wooden shake roofs, or in some cases, thatch. Mist rose off the streets, a sickly greenish yellow color, and I kept my bandana in place, even though it was unpleasant breathing through the sucking wetness. I started off, looking at all of the buildings with their hanging shingles outside their doors. Taverns and inns… the whole thing was nothing but taverns and inns with starved-looking people aimlessly wandering between them.

Occasionally a door would open and a fat innkeeper or bartender or whatever you wanted to call them would throw rotting scraps into the streets. The starved masses, their clothes hanging off of them, would fall on the food, which was oftentimes half mold, half maggot-infested, and would shove it into their mouths by the fistfuls. Nobody going after the food had a care for the person next to them. Shoving matches and fights would break out as they scrabbled around in the muck of the streets for their awful rotten prizes. Every time it happened as I performed my systematic grid search, roving up and down street after street, they would get to their feet as soon as the food were gone, just as starved as they’d started, and wail about how hungry they were.

“What a fucked-up way of spending all of eternity,” I muttered. Iaoel chose to remain silent on the subject, but I could sense her pity. I pitied them too, but at the same time, I knew they’d done something spectacularly shitty to end up here. I was also equally aware that my handing over my protein bars wouldn’t help. Not through the curse of suffering pressed upon these poor bastards. Actually, I think that last bit of insight may have been Iaoel. I was practical, sure. Pragmatic even, but I had more of a heart than that. At least I liked to think I did.

It took me a frustrating amount of time to find the Brazen Bull, which was a tavern. The sign was enough to make me not want to go in, not after the last place. It depicted a bronze bull with a person in the belly, a fire lit beneath it. The person inside cooking to death, flesh melting off.

“It’s Hell, Addy. What did you expect?” I admonished myself harshly and pushed open the wooden door. The inside of the place was cheery and warm, the fireplace big enough to fit a whole cow and then some, with meat roasting in it and tables a-plenty set with all manner of food and drink. The party was in full swing, and when I turned around to take the whole place in, I was startled to realize, the souls outside had their faces pressed to the window, watching the revelry inside and the occupants? Clearly enjoying the fact that they could eat and drink all this good food while the souls starved outside.

A violin played in the corner by the bar, the sound boisterous and gleeful. A woman in a scarlet can-can dancer’s dress played it, her black wings stretching out and to the sides as she expertly drew the bow along the strings. Laughter and revelry rose in a cacophony, and the violinist caught my eye. She winked one acid yellow-green eye at me from beneath the sweep of her auburn bangs, and I couldn’t help but stare.

That must be Pestilence,
I thought, and Iaoel confirmed it for me. I kind of wish she hadn’t. I had enough horrors front and center. I didn’t need sweeping images of people dying horribly from the plague, Merihim laughing as she walked past, people and animals falling in her wake. I refrained from mentally pimpslapping the shit out of Iaoel this time, Gabriel’s words about being nicer echoing faintly, and grudgingly asked her as nice as possible to knock it the fuck off instead.

She obliged, which sort of surprised me, but then again, I think it was more that she was banking on me getting us both the fuck out of Hell alive. We both needed to cooperate with each other if that was going to happen. I went up to the bar and slipped onto the stool next to the one Pestilence clearly favored. There was a flat-screen computer monitor, mouse, and keyboard on the bar top at her place. Facebook was on the screen. For some reason, that didn’t surprise me as much as it should have, the fact that they had Facebook in Hell. I mean, why not?

I waited for her to finish her song, and when she did, it was to quite the round of applause and raucous cheering. I was glad she was fairly close to the fire. I’d dried off for the most part when I’d been searching for this place, but it was still quite a bit damp out there. I’d even managed to clean up even more using my reflection in a windowpane that’d been a bit cleaner than most of the ones around the Third. I’d poured water from God’s canteen into my bandana and had wiped off the remaining flaking blood and gore off my face and hands. Now I was not only drying out the rest of the way, I was actually getting warm. Watching a bit of steam rise off the sleeve of my leather jacket while I waited for Pestilence to take her bow.

She set her violin aside and hopped up onto her stool, looking me over.

“So, you’re the one trying to save the world,” she said, scarlet-painted lips curving up into a smile.

“Not the world, just Tab. The world is pretty much being saved by default at this point.”

Her smile got bigger. “Ah! Well, I can be on board with that. I happen to like the world the way it is right now.”

“Yeah?”
That
was exceedingly easy. After my experience in the Second Circle, I didn’t want to count my chickens before they hatched. “The dude whose head I just blew off schooled me real quick that nothing down here is free. I’ve also learned that taking
anybody
, Arch, Angel, Fallen, or Demon, at face value is pretty stupid. How can I trust you’re on the level, Mer—?”

She hissed and looked angry for a second. “Alex. If you’re going to call me anything down here
or
up there, it’s going to be Alex,” she admonished, then muttered something about Miri with some not-so-nice words that added to my already impressive vocabulary of swearing. She crossed her legs. “As for Azael…that was you?”

“Meh, he went by Sobel. I gather you all don’t use given names down here.”

“It’s inadvisable. Names hold power,” she said, as if that should explain everything.

“You’re being awfully helpful,” I said.

“And you’re being awfully suspicious, which I get, but knock it off, Sister. I already told you. I’m on your side.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” I raised an eyebrow as I spoke, and Alex laughed.

“Okay, I’m on your side for this particular mission of yours insofar as it accomplishes what
I
want with little to no effort on my part. Is that better?”

Iaoel gave me a mental slap, and I scowled. The rapid-fire images basically told me not to look a gift horse in the mouth, to take what Pestilence was offering and to get on with things. I was actually on Iaoel’s side this time, but the fact that she was in such a rush made me only that much more suspicious.

“Here, take this.” Alex pulled what appeared to be a folded parchment out from under her computer’s keyboard. I took it and tried not to cringe at the texture in my fingers.

“Is this?”

“Human skin? Yeah, but beggars can’t be choosers, girl. Open it.”

I unfolded the thin but leathery skin, and inked into it or onto it was a map. Not just any map, but a map of Hell—an
interactive
map of Hell, the ink shifting and moving. I swallowed.

“X marks the spot, Girlfriend.” I glanced up from what was basically a real-life, albeit infernal, version of Harry Potter’s Marauder’s Map, and Alex smiled again, taking a sip out of a goblet of wine that the barkeep set in front of her without asking. The dude had a pig’s snout and tusks. I kid you not.

I let my eyes fall back to the shifting ink, and desperately sought out an ‘X’, I found it much lower than I would have liked: ‘Tabbris’ inked out beside it, the ‘X’ and the letters of his name in a blood red script.

“He’s all the way in the Eighth.” I steeled myself for what that meant. I had Greed, Anger, Heresy, and Violence to get through before I had a hope of reaching Fraud. This was going to suck.

“Aww, don’t think of quitting now, Sweetheart. The fun is just getting started on Earth, and I really don’t want to miss the party.”

“You know, as fucked-up as what just came out of your mouth is, I actually kind of like you,” I shot back.

Alex’s eyes blazed. “Careful. I want you to save your buddy Tab and keep things going, but I still won’t hesitate to snap you like a twig.”

“Noted,” I said with false bravado. “Still like you. You seem to be the only one I’ve come across that can be straight with me about your agenda.”

Pestilence raised one shapely pale shoulder in an elegant shrug. “You know, the going isn’t going to get any easier the longer you sit on your shapely ass. I’ve given you my blessing, for what it’s worth. I’ve given you what I can to help you out. Now I have some societal moral decay to get back to, if you don’t mind.” She spun on her stool and let her fingers do the walking over the keyboard.

“Never thought of social media that way,” I said, getting to my feet.

“What way?”

“As a plague.”

“I know! None of you mortals do. That’s why it’s so freaking brilliant! And a lot less messy than just releasing a physical plague upon you. Moral disease works even better, because you all can be so much
fun
when you get down and dirty. Now shoo.” She waved me off with her hand as if I were an errant child who were underfoot, and I felt thoroughly dismissed. It grated on my nerves, but then I wondered if that was how I came across sometimes.

Huh. Now
that
was some food for thought.

***

Getting through the Fourth Circle was interesting, to say the least. There were no buildings here, no city streets. Just a whole lot of rock and a slippery, almost shale-like slope. I slid and made the mistake of putting my hand down. At a sharp, slicing pain, I jerked my hand back up.

“Ffffffuck!” I hissed out. I looked at my palm, but I couldn’t see how bad it was for the blood welling rich and deep from the neat slice across it. I ripped my bandanna off from around my neck and shook it out, laying it across my knee. It was awkward as hell unscrewing the cap to God’s canteen with my off hand, but I managed. I pulled it around and steeled myself, pouring water on the cut. I expected stinging. I expected it to hurt like a mother, but it did none of those things. If it did anything, it soothed the sting and burn, and when I looked, the blood had washed away, leaving my hand whole beneath.

“Huh, well that’s epically useful,” I muttered to myself.

I shook the water from my hand, used my bandanna to dry it, and stuffed it into my jacket pocket. I drank from the canteen deeply, grateful that it didn’t feel any less full than when I’d started out down here, past the front gates. I dug into my messenger bag, pulled on the gloves given to me by Famine, and felt like an ass for not having them on from the get-go. Of course, if I had, I never would have figured out the canteen’s bonus properties.

Everything happens for a reason…
I thought to myself and had to sigh. As tired as I was of feeling like little more than a chess piece being shuffled back and forth across a board, I had to admit that I was okay with it as long as it got Tabbris out of Hell alive. I think what honestly bothered me more at this point was that I was okay with being manipulated. It didn’t feel much like I had a lot of free will lately, but at least… at least I had more going for me in that department than any of the poor souls down here.