Soulfall (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 2) Read online

  PRAISE FOR SHAUN O. MCCOY AND THE HELLSONG SERIES

  "By the end of Soulfall my hands were shaking."

  —Monet Jones, Author of the Trace Trilogy

  "McCoy is a talented and bright young writer. Knight of Gehenna is a new kind of novel—a page turner in the truest sense—wrought from equal parts brawn and brain."

  —B. Butler, Author of Murder in Cairo

  "McCoy is a brilliant writer; insightful, intelligent, articulate, imaginative, and funny."

  —McKendree Long, Author of No Good Like it is

  "McCoy masterfully creates characters, scenarios and the Hell where they live. He writes with a passion, layering emotion on fantasy and science fiction, drawing in readers from beyond his genre."

  —Ginny Padgett, President of SCWW

  "Shaun is the real McCoy."

  —Laura Valtorte, Filmmaker, Author of Family Meal

  "McCoy again mixes freakishly paced action with deep emotion and a subtle plot. Soulfall blurs the lines between genres: one part Fantasy, one part Science Fiction, one part Literary Fiction—this sequel delivers."

  —Matt Michaelis, Author of Kids Summon

  "McCoy will certainly go to Hell for writing Soulfall . . . but it was probably worth it.

  —Justin Williams, Author of Blind Faith

  OTHER WORKS BY SHAUN O. MCCOY

  HELLSONG SERIES: ARTURIAN

  Even Hell Has Knights

  Knight of Gehenna

  March Till Death

  Book IV (2016)

  HELLSONG SERIES: INFIDELS: CRIS

  Affliction

  Soulfall

  Convalescence (coming soon)

  Wasteland (coming soon)

  Restoration (coming soon)

  NOVELLAS

  Electric Blues

  Binary Jazz

  Infidels: Cris

  SOULFALL

  SHAUN O. MCCOY

  SISYPHEAN PUBLISHING

  This is a work of fiction. The damnation portrayed in this novel is fictitious, and similarities between it and any actual damnation are strictly coincidental.

  Soulfall

  Copyright 2015 © by Shaun McCoy

  All rights reserved.

  Editor-in-Chief: Gabrielle Olexa

  Associate Editors: Matt Michaelis, Justin Williams, Leigh Thomas

  Consulting Editors: Paris Ward, Amanda Simays

  Title art: Thomas the Younger

  Title Layout: Kirill Simin

  A Sisyphean Publishing Book

  Http://hellsongseries.com

  ISBN:

  First Edition August 2015

  For Taylor (may she find this on New Year’s Eve!)

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’d love to take the time here to thank the Sipub team for working so hard to make this sequel a reality.

  And of course, I need to thank you, the reader, for all the fanmail, reviews, and facebook messages.

  .

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  SOULFALL

  From Neostoicism: Philosophia

  I have never wished to cater to the crowd—for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.

  —Epicurus

  I’m not particularly disturbed by the fact that you, in a fit of self-deceit, devised a deity for yourself to worship. What bothers me is that the deity you created is a malevolent and bigoted fool. Truly, is this the best your imagination has on offer?

  —Endymion

  Q puts his hands on either side of my head. His calloused palms flatten the tears running down the sides of my face. His fingertips press into my hair. His thumbs push into my cheekbones. He pulls me forward until our foreheads touch.

  “Listen to me, Cris,” he says.

  I won’t listen. I don’t want to listen.

  I try to turn away, but he doesn’t let me.

  “I said listen.”

  For some reason, I nod my head. Jesus fucking Christ. I’m supposed to be a God damned infidel.

  We don’t cry.

  “Look at me, Cris,” Q orders.

  Our heads are too close for me to focus on him, and my vision is filled with tears, so all I see is a blur.

  “Are you listening?” he asks me.

  I nod my head again.

  “Your son is in a lot of pain. A lot. It’s not the kind of pain that a person can stand. He screams whenever he’s awake. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone hurting that badly.”

  “I know.”

  I can hear Aiden even now, whimpering in the next room. He’s not conscious, but he moans in his sleep. He tosses and turns no matter how much of the ferment the infidels give him.

  They said he was going to get better. I killed half of Hell to make damn sure he was going to get better. We brought him to El Cid so she could fix him. We did what we were supposed to do.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  “We can’t keep him like this,” Q tells me, “even . . . even if we wanted to.”

  No shit. And of course we don’t want to. We’re going to help him. We’re going to get Aiden fixed.

  We are.

  “I know,” I say. “We’ve got to get him somewhere. To someone.”

  Q takes a deep breath. His hands drop from my face to my shoulders. I hadn’t realized he’d been supporting me. I slouch under my own weight. Under my shot nerves. Under the sleep deprivation I’m suffering after tending to my son for two straight days.

  Under my sorrow.

  He exhales. “Cris, if you were . . . just imagine you were hurting that badly. Or that you were only conscious for an hour here, and a half hour there. Or that your sleep was filled with nightmares—”

  “I know,” I say quickly.

  I don’t have to imagine. I’ve been through that. On Earth, I died of cancer.

  He steps back from me, but I still can’t see shit.

  His hands grip my shoulders more tightly. “If you were in that position, wouldn’t you want someone . . . well, wouldn’t you want to die?”

  No.

  Fuck no.

  I hear my inner demons singing in my ears. Suddenly I’m standing straight. How could he? I shove him away. “The hell’s wrong with you!” My heart explodes with anger. Blood rushes through my veins. I feel snot running out of my nose—snot and some blood.

  Guess I’m not healed yet.

  I push him again.

  Fuck him. Fucking shithead. What the fuck does he think he’s saying?

  “Cris.” His voice is maddeningly calm. “You may have to put him down.”

  Aiden’s a human being. He’s not some dog. He’s not a horse. You don’t put people down.

  My head is spinning. “No.”

  Q steps close to me again. “He’s in pain, Cris.”

  I shake my head. “You said the next Hell is worse. You said it hurt worse. You said we don’t put people down.”

  “Cid’s cut out his wight flesh half a dozen times, but it regrows. He’s not coming back from this.”

  “H
e will!” I hear my voice crack.

  “He’s hurting. He’s in . . . in agony.” Q is still calm.

  “I don’t fucking care!”

  “We keep him asleep all day, but you’ve seen him writhing in his dreams. He’s screaming himself hoarse. Cris, you need to let go.”

  “He’s going to make it.”

  “You are torturing your own son.”

  I take in a deep, deep breath.

  No. He’s wrong. I’m not. Aiden can make it. They said he could. El Cid said it would be hard, but that he was going to make it.

  He doesn’t deserve to suffer. He doesn’t. It’s not his fault his mom was a devil-loving, kidnapping cunt. Aiden didn’t know any better. He was just doing what his mother told him to. He didn’t know wightdust would do this to him. He didn’t know.

  And he and Jenner had been getting along. They were even playing together. He’ll get there, to that thing Cid talks about. Convalescence.

  He’ll reach convalescence.

  I draw my pistol and point it at Q’s head.

  His eyes widen, then his hands rise slowly.

  “Aiden doesn’t die.” The words barely come out of my mouth. I fight to keep myself straight, to suppress the sobs which threaten to double me over. “He doesn’t die,” I say more clearly.

  “Okay. Okay.” Q drops his hands, calm again. “It’s your choice, Cris. You choose.”

  I feel a fire in my mind, burning like it did in Maylay Beighlay. If he dies, his mother wouldn’t have won, not really. She wanted him to become a wight. And if it comes to it, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll turn him all the way. I’ll make him a monster that can go out and slaughter all the people I love. Anything to stop him from hurting, so long as he’s alive. I won’t kill my son. I won’t. I won’t let anyone do it, not even the Infidel himself.

  Only turning my son would be killing him.

  My gun is shaking.

  “Cris, it’s okay.” Q says.

  I bend over, nearly giving into the pain, and lay my pistol on the ground. Standing up seems like too much effort, so I don’t.

  Aiden is screaming again. Only his voice is so raw that the shouts break in and out.

  Footsteps come from behind me.

  I hear El Cid’s soft, feminine voice. “Aiden will rest again soon.” She wraps her arms around me and helps me up. “I’ve upped his dosage of the ferment,” she says to Q. “His tolerance is getting higher. Has Cris come to peace?”

  “He won’t kill his son.”

  I feel one of Cid’s small hands on my side. I look at her, her face also blurred by the tears in my eyes.

  “I refuse,” I tell her. “I won’t let him die.”

  “Your opinion doesn’t matter, Cris,” she says with that infidel calm. “Your boy’s does.”

  “But he doesn’t understand! He only feels pain. He doesn’t realize he’ll get well.”

  The vague image that is El Cid’s head shakes back and forth. “No. You do not understand. He’s not getting well. It’s his decision.”

  I reach down and grab my pistol again. I point it at her. Unlike Q, she doesn’t seem to care. She turns her back on me and walks toward Aiden’s room.

  She’s going to do it, she’s going to kill my son.

  I fire a warning shot at the archway over her head. The report echoes throughout the chamber. I hear the bullet ricochet off a far wall. The spent shell casing bounces and skitters across the stone floor.

  Aiden’s screaming becomes louder.

  “The Devil help me,” I say. “I won’t let you kill him.”

  She keeps walking.

  “I won’t let you!”

  I chase after her into my son’s room, grabbing El Cid around her waist. She doesn’t resist me and goes limp in my arms. I can see my son over her shoulder, lying on a stone slab. He’s pale, paler than a corpse, as pale as a wight. His eyes are closed so tightly that his young face is lined with wrinkles. His back arches, a wave of pain washing over him. His mouth opens in a silent scream. Spit flies from his lips. For a moment his voice catches through his hoarseness, and I hear again his cry of agony. I can’t watch this. I can’t. Mercifully, the tears I’m holding back take away my vision.

  I vaguely notice El Cid as she releases herself from my numb arms.

  Aiden is breathing quickly. He sounds like he’s hyperventilating. I wipe my eyes and force myself to look. His jaw is clenched against the pain.

  El Cid kneels by his side, taking up his hand.

  “Aiden,” she whispers. “Can you hear me?”

  He nods.

  He mouths a pair of words.

  “What, sweetheart?” El Cid asks him.

  “It hurts.”

  “I know sweetheart,” she says. “I know it does. I gave you some ferment a few minutes ago. You’ll be asleep soon.”

  His nods come in jerks. His entire body is shaking.

  “I want to ask you a question,” she says. “A serious question. Can you focus long enough to answer it?”

  He nods again.

  “Just stay calm, okay? We want to put you to sleep this time in a way where you won’t wake up in pain again. Would you like that?”

  His nods come more fiercely.

  “I’m not sure you understand, Aiden. You need to know we’re going to kill you, okay? So that you don’t feel this pain anymore.”

  His convulsions grow in intensity.

  El Cid softly puts her hand on Aiden’s forehead. “Do you want that?” She brushes his blond hair away from his eyes with her fingers. A few unruly strands fall back. “Do you want to die, Aiden?”

  He tries to speak. His lips move, but barely a whisper comes out.

  “I’m sorry, Aiden,” El Cid says. “I couldn’t hear you.”

  His fists clench at his sides, his back arches again. “I said . . . I said . . .” He bites his lip for a moment as the pain takes him. “I said . . . I’d have to ask . . . my father’s permission.”

  We huddle up, we six infidels, squatting down in a circle outside of Aiden’s room. The low stone ceiling hovers just above us, bearing down on us like the weight of fate. Two squat black-marble pillars are in the room. One stands straight, formed in Corinthian style. The other becomes warped about halfway up, twisting and melding into the stone-brick wall as if it had been painted by Salvador Dali.

  “The boy has chosen to live,” El Cid says, her brow furrowed, “or at the least, deferred responsibility to his father.” She motions toward me. “I know of no way to cure him. We need to find help.”

  One of the infidels is named Jessica. As best I can tell, she fucks both Eagan and Mason, two of the others in this huddle. How any group can stay on good terms while a woman is having her cake and eating it too escapes me, but now’s not the time to question it.

  Jessica leans forward into the huddle. “One of the ravens would be best. Muninn probably.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I can tell from Cid’s frown that the idea won’t fly.

  “Too far,” she says. “Muninn’s probably deep in the Core right now. The boy’s developing a tolerance to the ferment. We just don’t have the time.”

  Mason screws his mouth to one side. “Now iffin’ you worried ‘bout supply, I got another batch, a whole canteen brewin’.”

  I remind myself that this man is not stupid. That drawl, and the fact that he likes to think things over slowly, might bring a person to that conclusion—but they’d be dead wrong.

  El Cid is shaking her head. “Kid’s only eight. An increased dosage is going to kill him.”

  “That’s how it works in the old world,” I say. “They kill cancer patients with painkillers, staying ahead of the pain.”

  Mason snorts. “Well thankya, son, for bringin’ the bright light o’ optimism to this otherwise morbid conversation.”

  At first I want to smack him, but for some reason I chuckle.

  I guess my mood isn’t so bad. Happens for some reason, after you cry. This,
this I can bear. Us sitting here in this little hellstone chamber, discussing ways to save Aiden. It’s terrible, but at least we’re doing something.

  “How much time do we have?” Jessica asks.

  El Cid crosses her arms under her tiny breasts and shrugs. “Impossible to know. A few weeks. Then we’ll have to start backing off the ferment. His cries are bound to draw devils at that point.”

  Mason nods. “Might be they’ve drawn some to us now.” He looks toward the arched stone entrance to our chamber, his hand dropping to the pistol holstered Eastwood style at his side. “And it’s gettin’ harder and harder to keep Keith and his boys at bay. They’ve got that durned wight helpin’ ‘em.”

  The Infidel Friend weren’t the only outfit in Hell, I’d found. Keith was an enemy of El Cid, old baggage. That is, unless that wight working with him was Durgan. It’s entirely possible he’d taken the death of the Archdevil personally and is coming after me.

  Perhaps.

  That’d be my baggage.

  “A few weeks isn’t enough time,” Jessica says. “We could try to reach Endymion.”

  I wasn’t really sure who Endymion was either, but at least I’d heard of him. He’s a famous infidel. Q likes him, and Q is the best judge of character I know. Hell, Q didn’t like Myla before she fell for that Archdevil.

  “What do you think, Q?” I ask.

  “Not enough time,” he says. “Endymion is closer, but he’s always on the move. Would probably take longer to find him than Muninn.”

  Q’s face is as stoic as any infidel’s, if not more so, but I’ve known him for a long time. A damn long time. He’s noodling some kind of plan.

  El Cid picks up on it and zeroes in on him. The rest of the infidels follow suit, and we stare at Q together.

  “What’s your suggestion?” El Cid asks.