Affliction (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 1) Page 5

  My wrists are hurting. I must have rolled over them wrong in the cuffs.

  The men around me are smiling at my pain. The marble man’s face, however, is devoid of expression.

  He cocks his head to one side and studies me. “Why did the Infidel send you?”

  I meet his obsidian-eyed gaze. “Why are you smelting the lightrock?”

  Someone hits me in the back. The blow moves me to one side, but I stay on my feet. I lower my chin and hunch up my shoulders. They circle around me and throw punches and elbows. In the beginning it isn’t so bad. I kickboxed some during college, so it feels like I’m just in a fight. But then the shit starts to wear on me. There are too many of them, and I can’t get my hands up in front of my face. I do my best to slip the punches, but the blows come from too many angles. I feel welts rising up on my face. Blood starts coming from my nose, causing me to run short on breath. My back and ribs are badly bruised. They may be cracked. The two wights stand back and watch it happen.

  A thing would happen to me sometimes in kickboxing. Sometimes when you’re losing a fight you feel your will break. Your opponent is better, and he’s beating you, and you know you’re going to be defeated. You stop trying to win. You lose your edge. That’s happening to me now.

  My left side is bad, really bad, so I try to keep it away from their punches. It’s useless, though, because I’m never sure from what direction the next blow will come. I can’t circle away from one person’s power because I’m just going straight into someone else’s. One blow catches me full on in the teeth. I taste blood in my mouth. The cut one of the children gave me with a stone has reopened. The blood is mixing with the sweat on my face.

  I raise my chin. Let them knock me out, I’m finished.

  Hagar approaches me.

  He’s got a shit-eating grin on his face. He looks as happy as if he just got a chance to sleep with a supermodel. His right hand is cradled over his chest, so I don’t have to worry about that one. There’s a police baton in his left, though. Sweat is pouring off of his face, soaking his shirt. I can’t let this happen.

  Damn you, Q. I never thought your friendship would get me killed.

  I feel angry. I have never been this angry. My lost child. My backstabbing, kidnapping, Devil worshipping ex-lover. And this—this pathetic excuse for a man who now has the chance to hurt me. A man like this has no right to hurt me.

  He pulls back and swings. I can’t help myself. I charge straight at him. His arm hits me, not the baton. With my hands locked behind my back, there’s not a whole lot I can hit him with other than my head. I slam my forehead into his nose. Cartilage crunches and blood flies. He stumbles back, both hands over his face. More blows come in at me from all angles and I fall to my knees. Hagar rises before me, towers over me, his club held on high. He swings it downward with all his might. I duck low, but it glances off of the top of my head. I shout and try to power my way to my feet. Hands and punches keep me down.

  “Not in the head,” says the voice of the marble man. “We want him softened up, not killed.”

  Hagar circles out of my view. The baton slams into my back on the left side, my bad side. Again, and again, and again. I scream and shake, but all my struggles are useless. I see his blurry form out of the corner of my eye. He’s standing at his full height, the black club held up. He brings it down, all the way down, so that it hits the back of my ankle, right at the bottom of the calf on my Achilles tendon. The club soars back up for another blow. And another. And another. And another. The pain in my lower calf is overtaking me. I think my right fibula is broken. He begins beating my left side again, this time on the arm. I feel it going numb. I try to shrink away from the pain, but there is nowhere to hide.

  Frantically, I throw myself on the ground, but the hands pull me back up to my knees.

  “I know what a man like you hates,” Hagar’s voice is nasal, probably because of what I did to his nose. “I know what you really fear.”

  I try to focus on him, but my vision stays blurry. He’s fumbling for something, though. I can’t see what. He’s got a bag of some sort. My vision is starting to clear. I try to take in a deep breath, but a shooting pain in my ribs stops me. My eyes are watering again as I try desperately to focus on what’s in his hands. I’m taking in many shallow breaths.

  His meaty fingers pull out a pinch of something. There is a gasp from the Devil men around me. He’s pulled out corpsedust.

  Please no. I thrash back and forth against the impossibly strong limbs that hold me. The pain in my chest is almost enough to make me fall unconscious, but I don’t care. I won’t rot. I refuse to rot.

  “That’s not allowed in here,” the marble man tells him.

  “You can confiscate it,” Hagar says, “in just one second.”

  There is some laughter. Men close in around me and lug me to my feet. I’m held still by what feels like a hundred hands. Someone’s grabbing me around my torso, squeezing my ribs. My body tries to scream, but I have no air. I need to breathe, only inhaling causes too much pain. Hagar advances on me. Hands are now around my neck—some are digging into my eyes. My chest heaves for want of air, and my ribs send more waves of searing pain up and into my mind. Fingers pry at my jaw, fishhooking my cheeks. I bite down on some of the fingers as hard as I can, but my efforts are not enough.

  My head is pulled back. I see the ceiling of this chamber.

  There, beyond that giant crucible, is the Devil. His luminescent, yellowish orange skin is brilliant, contrasting wildly with the dark stone behind him. He steps with backward jointed legs around a set of automatic bellows and walks over to a staircase. He’s got someone with him, but my vision is suddenly blocked by a bag. Corpsedust is raining down on my face. The dust coats my bloodied mouth. The arms around my torso give way and I cannot help but pull in a lungful of air. I collapse backward into a fit of coughing, gasping, and worse, swallowing. More is coming down. I swallow an entire mouthful of the stuff.

  “Stop!” the marble man yells. “You might rot him all the way through. We need him to answer questions.”

  But Hagar does not stop. He empties the entire bag. My sense of reality is shifting already. It shouldn’t be hitting me this fast, but it is. Maybe it’s my adrenalin filled state, maybe it’s the nature of this particular bag of corpsedust, but either way, I see the rock walls sliding down over themselves. The men around me are no longer Devil men, but devils. I see the horns coming out of their foreheads. Their angry faces loom above me, cursing me, judging me for whatever great sin I committed to deserve damnation.

  I’m dragged again to my feet. Hagar takes another swing at my body. Suddenly the hands let go and I’m standing free on shaky legs, but Hagar’s strikes keep coming. Two more on my arm, almost dropping me, and then he swings back toward my torso. I turn, taking the blow on my stomach without flexing my abdomen. I vomit corpsedust and bile while falling to my knees. I vomit again, and this time I make sure some of it ends up on Hagar.

  There is more laughter, but suddenly it’s cut short. I hear a voice, a female voice. A voice from my nightmares. “What have you caught?”

  I hope like hell she’s not here. I hope like hell the corpsedust is making me hallucinate. The men are parting to make way for her approach. I look up.

  There is no mistaking it. That’s Myla.

  She’s pale. She’s always had a cream complexion, but now her skin has turned ivory. Her familiar blue eyes meet my own. She’s skinnier than she used to be, I can tell from the way the red robe she wears is draped across her shoulders. She always loved red, but because of her hair, or at least that’s what she told me, she couldn’t wear the color. The robe perfectly matches that bound up hair. She must not have cut it since I’d last seen her. Even now, I cannot help but recognize how beautiful she is.

  Her lips form a small smile. She recognizes me.

  “Kessler found an infidel,” one devil man reports.

  She snorts. “Ha. That’s just Cris. He’s not good enou
gh for that. The infidels would never let him join them.”

  “You know him?” Kessler asks, surprised.

  Her angelic figure wavers before my eyes. I’m hoping I vomited up all of the corpsedust, but I’ve got at least some of it in my blood. Maybe it will help. Maybe it will slow the bleeding or reduce the pain.

  “Yes,” Myla says. “He’s little Aiden’s father.”

  There was a murmur from the men around me.

  “You might as well put him out of his misery,” Myla says. “Trust me. I know that man well, and he’s no Infidel Friend. He wouldn’t make the cut.”

  HOW LONG SINCE YOU’VE SEEN HIM?

  It takes me a second to realize I’d just heard a voice. Everyone quiets. They look toward the Archdevil.

  He’s paused on the stairs, halfway between two steps. His luminescent skin pulled tightly over his muscled frame. His wings are half spread, holding his balance on the stairs. As he moves, the claws on the ends of his two backward jointed legs dig into the stones of the stairs, letting him pause at odd places where no human could. The grace of those pauses, and of his continued descent, gives me the impression that he has complete control of his downward momentum, and that at any moment he might choose, he could stop mid step and go back upward.

  As he joins us, Myla circles one arm around his torso and kisses him on the neck. Bitch. “Three years, milord.”

  INFIDELS ARE NOT BORN, THEY ARE FORGED. SO SURE YOU ARE THAT HE IS NOT ONE OF THEM?

  Frown lines wrinkle Myla’s forehead. She puts her hand up to her mouth and taps her fingernails nervously on her teeth.

  “Kessler saw him with Q,” the marble man reports.

  “They—they were talking together,” Kessler stutters as he addresses the Devil. “I heard them mention something about a mission.”

  Oh, he would have heard that, and of course missed the part where I asked Q to pretend I was an Infidel Friend.

  I’ve got to survive. I’ve got to save my boy from these devil-lovers. And most of all, I’ve got to give Myla what she deserves.

  WHY HAVE YOU COME?

  The Devil’s words wash over me. I have trouble resisting him. I want to tell him that I was coming for my boy. That I never was an infidel. That there has been some kind of mistake.

  But this man, this thing, this Devil—Myla had kissed him on the neck—I will be damned a thousand times before I tell this fucker anything.

  It hurts to speak, so I whisper my own question. “Why are you smelting lightrock?”

  WHY HAVE YOU COME?

  Again, some part of me wants to answer. I feel the truth bubbling up inside me, but it gets buried under the hatred and bile building up in the back of my throat.

  My breath is all gone, but I try to speak up anyway. “Why are you . . . smelting . . . lightrock?”

  The Archdevil shrugs. CONTINUE TO LOOSEN HIM. WE WILL ENGAGE IN THE RITUAL AND I’LL INTERROGATE HIM ON THE BY AND BY.

  Myla crouches in front of me. “Oh, Cris. Baby. You’re such a fool. How long have you been chasing me and Aidi? Didn’t you know we don’t love you anymore?” She smiles. “No means no, Cris.” She stands up and turns her back on me. “Beat him.”

  And they do. And it hurts. And I’d give anything for those old days when she and I were together. When we spent hours fucking by the river that ran through the cavern we’d made our home. For the times we cooked brineberries and devilwheat and shared them with our son. For the days before that she-bitch hadn’t left me for the Devil.

  Her laughter is as high pitched as the thin man’s. It warbles in my ears, either because the corpsedust is still fucking with my senses or because I’ve been knocked senseless—or maybe a little of both.

  There is a moment’s reprieve. I try to get back up to my knees, but I can’t. The muscles in my body hurt too badly. I’m shaking. My breath is coming and going in quick little bursts. When I was four years old, I saw a young squirrel which had fallen from its nest. It was broken. I had tried to save it, picking it up in my hands. It shook in the same way I do now.

  Maybe it’d be okay to die. I’d only lose my soul. Maybe it would all be over. Or maybe the Infidel Friend are right, and I’ll just get a new body in an even more horrid world so the torture can start all over again. Frankly, I don’t care. Whatever it is, I’ll take it.

  Is it over? Has the beating stopped? My shaking is hurting my ribs. I feel that the muscles in my side have locked. I try to push myself up, but my hands won’t move. Turns out that I’m lying on my stomach. Blood and drool are dripping out of my mouth. I look back along my body and see my legs. One of my boots has come off, and my pants are ripped. My ankle and lower calf are horribly swollen. I won’t be able to stand.

  It takes me a moment to realize that the heat in the room has increased. With all my will, I manage to focus my eyes. The crucible is on the second story where I’d first seen the Devil. Heat waves surround it, rising off of it. The Devil walks up to the wall beneath it and looks up, his arms raised. His men are hollering. Myla is clapping her hands. A man on the second floor pulls a chain and the crucible begins to tip. Molten rock, not lightrock, but some other kind, comes pouring down. It splashes along the wall and then covers him over. You’d think that molten rock would kill about anything. Hell, I can feel my skin burning, and I’m all the way across the room. But the Archdevil, it doesn’t bother him at all. It coats his skin. Others toss buckets of water on him. Each blast of water bursts into steam as it touches the molten substance.

  Then, after a few moments, the steam lessens, and the water forms droplets on the black congealed substance which clings to his body, hiding the orange-yellow nature of his skin. Whatever his weakness, whether it be lightrock or not, it certainly won’t hurt him with that shell he’s got on now.

  The Archdevil returns to the stairs.

  Their attention snaps back to me. They circle up again and decide to let Hagar have another go at me. The baton rises and falls . . . rises and falls.

  I hear a familiar choking sound. It’s Myla, and she must be close to tears.

  Hagar kicks me over and I see her. There’s empathy in her eyes. She’s trying to hide it, and maybe the others don’t notice, but I know her too damn well. At the next blow she winces.

  For a moment, I think she might stop Hagar. She even takes half a step forward. Then her jaw sets in the way it used to when we were in the middle of an argument. She stalks out of the room.

  Hagar is wheezing above me. He’s got his good hand and his club on his knee. His bad hand hangs limply at his side.

  “Hagar,” I manage. It’s little more than a whisper. “Hagar, listen.”

  He doesn’t seem to care. Sweat is pouring off of him.

  “Hagar . . . wightdust.”

  That gets his attention. He leans over me. His sweat drips across my face. I can’t even move my left arm, I discover, because when I try to, my entire torso locks up. I reach out with my right hand and grab his bad one. I squeeze as hard as I can, but it’s not enough to hurt him.

  He gives me that shit-eating grin of his and pulls his hand away from me. I try to hang on, but I’ve got nothing left. The baton rises again, and this time it comes for my face.

  I awaken, either blind or in perfect darkness, on a cold stone floor.

  Pain. Pain like I have never felt before rushes through my body like the light pulsing along the lightrock veins. More than that, the pain is real. I’m damaged. Injured. Not just with bruises, but at the core. Bones are broken, internal organs are ruptured.

  My face is swollen around my eyes, but I can tell they aren’t swollen shut because I can blink. I’m shivering. The contractions of my muscles cause me to cry out in pain. I try to sit up, but I can’t. I’m not sure if I could do so even to save my own life. Maybe I could power through the pain. Or maybe my muscles are so damaged I don’t have enough strength. My hands are caught up under my body. One tingles so badly it hurts. I try to shift a little, but my torso won’t move.

&nbs
p; Pain.

  I stretch out my right leg and try to use it as leverage to move my body. I nearly lose consciousness. That leg is useless. My left leg works a little better, though. I roll my weight back up on my shoulders, pushing off of my leg a little to inch my body to one side.

  Pain.

  Blood comes rushing back into my hands.

  The shivering is killing me.

  I try to roll over to my right side because my left obviously can’t support my weight, but the effort is too great.

  I think I must be blind. Maybe they hit me hard enough to detach my retinas.

  I have to try and stay strong. If they find out I’m not an Infidel Friend, they’ll kill me. Maybe that’s what I want. Maybe I just want it to be over.

  I’m sorry, Aiden. I tried. I really did.

  I awaken, still blind. Forever or five minutes—I’m not sure how long I’ve been unconscious. The pain is still with me. It hasn’t gotten any better. With the trick I learned earlier, I use my left leg to shift my body again. This helps ease the weight off of my cuffed hands. My back hurts abominably. Maybe some of the ribs I have back there are broken.

  I make a concerted effort to roll onto my right side, my good side, but the pain in my left hasn’t gotten any better, and I cease my efforts without having moved more than a few inches. Suddenly I’m exhausted. Quick shallow breaths, the only kind I can manage, come in and out of me.

  I reach out with my cuffed arms, desperately trying to move. I touch stone. It’s a wall. With the palm of my hand resting on the wall, I try to use it to lever myself up into a seated position. No luck.

  Using my right leg and shoulder I manage to scoot my body a few inches before the pain overtakes me. The stone is rough. My touch reveals that it is cut into a brick shape. The bricks that make up the wall are about a foot long and six inches tall. I try to scoot some more, but the effort required is Herculean, and the rewards are Sisyphean.

  My body starts shaking again. The pain is shutting me down.