Dust (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 3) Read online

  The truth is I don’t know if you can choke a wight, but there is only one way to find out. The infidels are all about empiricism. Observe and record your results. I’ll choke that fucker until his face turns . . . well more white than it is right now. And then, if he dies, great. If not, I’ll hammer his head in with a rock. That I know kills a wight.

  “Easy on our prisoner,” Keith says. “I know he can’t run right now, but he probably could to save his life. We don’t want to do too much damage.”

  I am suddenly grateful, and very suspicious. I know Keith doesn’t necessarily like all these guys. Is he planning to break from them? Also, where the hell was that suggestion two hours ago?

  Better late than never, I guess.

  Ryan is shedding some hair, and Durgan steps over it.

  I can practically feel how pissed off the wight is right now. Infidels aren’t the only things that could be wandering around in the Carrion, of course, and I’m sure plenty of demons would want to track us down and murder us.

  The shedding is a good sign for Ryan though. Dude was taking a while to heal, but losing that hair probably means the last of his burnt skin is peeling off.

  The path Durgan is taking us along seems rather peculiar. The passages we choose don’t always lead us in the same direction, and the odd stairs and depressions we traverse appear random. At times he stops, lets me down, and scouts ahead. I shudder to think how we would have made it without him. Honestly, we probably couldn’t. Often we pass along ridges where we can hear our enemies above or below us, usually hundreds of them.

  The Carrion is dark indeed.

  If Q and Cid had somehow managed to find a way to follow us through the stadium room, Ryan might be leaving enough of a trail for them to follow, even though our route is so erratic.

  But the thing is, I just can’t see how they’d have done it.

  We eat a little at night in a dim room, and this time I have absolutely nothing to shit. I try, but the most I can manage are a few drops of piss. The room we sleep in has a low ceiling. It’s maybe twenty feet wide or so, and the floor is filled with gravel mounds.

  They lay me down between a couple of them.

  I see the gravel mound to the right of me has melted halfway into the floor. The one to my left is hollow. Inside I see movement.

  Jesus.

  A corpse.

  With one rotten eye and one empty socket, it stares at me through the thin cage of gravel.

  “There’s a corpse in this mound,” I warn.

  Durgan shrugs.

  “I don’t like sleeping next to the dead,” I say.

  “I’m dead,” the wight responds.

  “I don’t like sleeping next to you either.”

  Durgan doesn’t sleep, and come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him sleep. He stands watch at the doorway. A wight can be a damn useful thing.

  And I think of my son, of how things could have been between us.

  Ryan is shivering, and his movement bothers me.

  I close my eyes, but the fact that the corpse is staring at me makes it nearly impossible to sleep. Maybe I’ll sleep on Durgan’s back tomorrow.

  I hear some shifting, and I jerk awake.

  The corpse is still stuck.

  From where I lay tied, I roll over onto my numb hands and look to my right. There Ryan is, shivering in the corner. His right arm is flaking too. I hadn’t noticed that, but the fireball which gave his face that faux-sunburn must have gotten him there as well. Unless—

  He’s rubbing his hand, peeling off dead skin. Pieces fall like a rain of connected dandruff. His fingernail comes off with one chunk of the crusty shedding flesh and falls to the floor by his feet.

  Okay. That’s not a burn.

  Ryan’s shaking alright, not from the cold Carrion air, but from pain. He turns to me, perhaps aware that I can see him. His face is loose, almost like it’s melting off and, I see the beginnings of the healing beneath it—a pale skin, the kind of skin that has never seen even the dim light of these caverns.

  “Durgan,” I say softly.

  “I’m aware, Godslayer.”

  “Did he swallow corpsedust?”

  Durgan, still maintaining his watch, shakes his head. “He’s not rotting.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Should we kill him?” I ask.

  “Probably,” he answers, but makes no move to do so.

  Ryan shakes some more but then does something even more terrible. He looks at me calmly, and becomes completely relaxed. “The men of the Carrion bury their dead under even mounds of stone,” he says. “We must be near a tribe, for the stones they use are mined from their quarries. If the body becomes ambulatory during its somnolence, the hellstone, as it heals, purifies the corpse, taking it piece by piece, atom by precious atom, with it into the stone.”

  And then he goes back to shaking.

  Fuck me. Something is so severely wrong with that dude that I don’t even know what to say. Does he have some kind of walking stilling? Still men can waste away, but I’ve not heard of them shedding their damn skin.

  Is there some kind of hellacious parasite that burrows into a man?

  None that I’ve ever heard of, but Hell is vast and full of strange evils.

  I resign myself to a night of wakefulness.

  The cool stone seeps into my ankle, and I thought that might make me feel better, but instead, the new flavor of pain is more distracting. But hey, it’s not like I was going to be sleeping anyways.

  The corpse struggles against its gravel. I see the stone has healed into its body. In a few years, maybe decades, it would heal the whole corpse away, if Ryan is right.

  “I feel you, brother,” I whisper to the corpse. “I feel you.”

  I can’t explain it, but I awaken fresh and alert. I may have slept for an hour, tops—and it can’t have been good sleep because my God damned ankle feels like the armies of Mordor strolled over it last night—but shit all if I care how I got this way.

  How do we take Hell? One day at a time.

  Let me tell you a secret. I think I can walk today. My ankle is horrific, but I bet after a few minutes, it would limber up. I’m sure as hell not telling anybody though.

  I turn to the corpse beside me. For all I know, it’s been staring at me the entire night.

  “I love you too, sweetheart,” I tell it.

  Fin’s shadow covers me. “You sick motherfucker, flirting with a corpse.”

  I shrug. “He wants me.”

  With a careful motion, I roll up to my knees, holding my hands back so that Fin can untie and retie them in front of me . . . but I feel sly. Before, I’d laid my wrists flat against each other when they tied me up. Not this time. This time I blade one wrist.

  Keith, though he’d watched Fin the first two times he tied me up, apparently now trusts the guy’s knots. Honestly, they’ve been pretty darn tight. I’m sort of amazed my hands haven’t fallen off. Had Keith been watching me now, though, I’m sure he would have caught my little bit of deception.

  Fin, bless his cancerous little hyena heart, doesn’t notice shit.

  Guess whose hands are getting circulation today? This guy’s.

  To boot, if I struggle, I should be able to get my wrists free. A little bit of a distraction and I might even get to test my theories on strangling wights.

  I give Durgan a seductive look as Fin steps away from me. “Hey, sweetie. You ready to spend the day with me?”

  Durgan’s black eyes betray no emotion, but I like to think I frustrate him.

  The hyenas are in bad shape, of course. They’re under a lot of pressure, Soulfall has soulfucked them, and they’ve got another day of Carrion marching ahead. Then, to put the whipped cream on the fabulous milkshake that is today, they have to barter me for a favor and something to do with an Angel, and though Keith likes Igraine, I get the feeling that the woman makes the rest of them nervous.

  That all makes s
ense. It’s my sanity I’m questioning.

  Or should I? It’s not like it can get a whole lot worse for me, so maybe I should be looking forward to a change in masters.

  Durgan bends down and brings me back up into his fireman’s carry. The ceiling is low enough that the tatters of the back of my shirt brush up against it.

  The cancer men look at us.

  “Onward faithful steed!” I say.

  If it takes two people to make a joke, I didn’t tell one, but honestly, I’m the only dude here I want to impress—well, and the corpse.

  The corpse’s rock pile is still as Durgan carries me out of the room.

  I’ll miss you, sweetie!

  I ride my mania and my wight mount through the halls. In the back of my mind, I remember having this kind of glee before—after I’d been diagnosed with cancer in the old world. It had come after a deep depression, a sort of childlike delight at life, a denial that eventually peeled away to reveal how poorly a mind God had designed for men. I crumbled. They said I was dying with grace, but only because the rose-colored glasses of the living are themselves tinted with denial. I must die well, or my parents, my friends, and that one Christian bitch who tasked me with Myla, wouldn’t be able to handle my death.

  Why? I don’t know why. I just know.

  Maybe it’s because they were going to die too, and they’d need that death to be met with dignity as well.

  The Carrion is deadly, dark and deep, its twisted caves and arches giving new meaning to the hyenas’ paranoia. For once, I feel a strange kinship with the work of the Architect. The twisted stone pillars which rise and fall from the ceilings as stalagmites and stalactites, the devils near enough that we can hear their breath but who are never close enough to see, the dark rooms and distant cubbies whose light promises darting shadows of both friend and foe, they are all arrayed against Keith’s group.

  And so am I.

  In Maylay Beighlay I’d led Durgan and his men back into the slums to face a pack of rabid half-rotten children. I’d used the chaos Xyn had created against him. This is what it means to be an infidel. Hell is sometimes an opponent, but sometimes it’s just home.

  What am I, then, if I can call the Carrion my home?

  As Durgan scouts the halls ahead, he is forced to put me down again from time to time.

  “I hate this route,” Harris mutters while we await Durgan’s return.

  “Even Igraine’s people use this pass,” Keith replies softly. “There’s not a better way through the Carrion.”

  “Yes there is,” Ryan says, but no one listens.

  Durgan returns and leads us onward. The devils slow our progress, but I don’t mind. What have the dead but time?

  I hear the rushing of either a waterfall or some rapids. I’m sure it’s a branch of the Lethe as I’ve been told that river dominates much of the Carrion. The stone around us seems different somehow. Darker. Colder. Maybe the condensation of the nearby source of water keeps the area even colder than the rest of this damn region.

  Flecks of colorless crystal are embedded in the worked-stone walls here, and the brilliant glimmers of their reflected light seem like a star-filled night sky. A set of stairs hides in the shadows of our room, and one by one, Keith and his men disappear down the steps.

  For whatever reason, Durgan and I go last.

  The sound of the waterfall is deafening as we enter the next room.

  A light blue skystone vein snakes its way through the high natural ceiling, providing only enough light to keep the cavern from being completely dark. The nearly black rock here is entirely unworked, and were it not for the unusual light of the skystone, I could have mistaken it for an old world cave.

  Water tumbles through the ceiling along the back wall in a wide stream which is perhaps seventy feet across and fifty feet tall. The velocity of its waters is sufficient to make me think the fall must have descended for at least another two-hundred feet before it enters this chamber. Its rolling descent is made uneven by brave, sharp boulders which jut out from the wall of whitecapped water. The waters form a lake of sorts, with islands of stalagmites rising out from its surface.

  “Watch out for the whirlpools,” Durgan shouts above the deafening roar. “Much of the water escapes this chamber through cracks in the whetstone floor. The suction at times can be enough to rip out your intestines.”

  The hyenas nod quietly.

  They haven’t been here before, I realize, otherwise Durgan would have no need to warn them. So was Keith Igraine’s bitch before he joined the Order, then? Or maybe everyone just used a different entrance?

  A million and one questions.

  We make our way over the uneven stone. In places, the current picks up and is quite strong, but as we move along the left edge of the room, we come to a portion of the lake which is nearly still.

  Durgan is the first to enter.

  My feet are the second, and the water is so unbelievably cold that the toes on my good foot curl inside Jessica’s boot. As we continue, the water rises to Durgan’s shoulders. Since he’s got me in a fireman’s carry, I have to arch my back and lift my head to breathe. Fortunately, the buoyancy of the water makes that easier than I’d expect.

  The hyenas fan out around us, and I see them steering clear of the patches of current, heeding the warning Durgan had given earlier.

  We approach the wall of water.

  “No sudden movements!” Keith calls out over the rush. “They’ve spotted us.”

  “Let’s hope there hasn’t been a coup,” Harris yells back. “Maab wants your head, you know. They could shoot us all down right now.”

  “I don’t even know these motherfuckers!” I yell to whomever might be watching.

  None of Keith’s cancer men has a sense of humor, but maybe, if I can be heard over the waterfall, one of the men supposedly watching us does.

  “Don’t worry,” Keith calls back to Harris. “She still has to deal with Lucreas Crassus. As long as they need him, we’re good.”

  It’d be neat if he was wrong, but then again, I might get hit in the crossfire. And what an ironic way to die that would be.

  A light, perhaps from a flashlight, shines out from behind the waterfall where I expected there to be only stone.

  “This way!” Keith shouts.

  We slog up to the fall. The force of it is tremendous on my back as Durgan and I become completely submerged. My ankle isn’t taking this well.

  The wight’s muscles power us upward.

  Then the water gives way and we’re in a dim corridor. I sputter and cough until my breathing evens out.

  Shotguns are pointed at us, wielded by darkly dressed men. They look different from the Order in that the weave of their grey fabric is looser, though their faces are just as cruel.

  I wonder if they know their shot and slugs won’t hurt Durgan.

  One by one, the hyenas crawl in from the waterfall. Unlike Durgan, it is a supreme effort for them, and like me, they sputter and cough.

  Not Keith though, he arrives gracefully, cutting through the water to stand with us. “I’ve brought Igraine a present,” he says, pointing to me.

  “Wait here,” one man says. “I’ll check with a priestess.”

  The priestess is a slender blonde woman with the apparent disposition of a corporate raider. She has a strong widow’s peak, with her long, straight hair pulled back into a ponytail. It reminds me of Cid. At her side is what one of the men addresses as a “Little Lady.” The Little Lady is around four and a half feet tall and probably somewhere between seven and nine years old.

  Durgan has laid me on the side of the cavern, and the priestess gives me a once over before turning back to Keith. “You can’t seriously expect me to believe that’s Cris.”

  In the dull light, I can’t tell if her eyes are blue or green.

  I spent three years trying to track down Myla. Without Q’s help, I probably wouldn’t have been able to catch her. However, I wonder if maybe he knew she went to the Carr
ion and didn’t tell me. It’s possible. If so, it probably saved my life.

  I kind of doubt it, though. Q was always a swim-at-your-own-risk kind of guy.

  Keith smiles. “It’s Cris. It definitely is.”

  “I can vouch for this,” Durgan’s voice rumbles.

  “He’s an infidel, too!” Fin pipes up, impressing no one.

  The priestess’ cold eyes return to me. “Igraine will be able to smell a rat. Her and Myla spent two nights together when Xyn was here.”

  Slut.

  Keith spreads his arms. “It’s him. I’m telling you, he’ll get you to Blood Pass.”

  “I still don’t believe you,” she says in an annoyed tone, “but I see no choice but to let you have an audience.” She nods toward Ryan. “You need to leave your leper here. Is he in withdrawal?”

  The swim through the waterfall hadn’t done Ryan any favors. His skin is a mottled patchwork of alabaster white and corpse-like grey. A leper he’s not, but I have no problem leaving him behind.

  She’s right about the withdrawal, though, that dude is shaking. Maybe he’d taken something in Soulfall, something like corpsedust or wightdust that I just hadn’t heard of, and he’s suffering its absence now.

  His face, a mask of terror, calms in that weird way of his. “I will wait here on the while.”

  That dude is gone.

  Durgan hoists me over his shoulders again and Ryan takes my spot against the cool stone.

  “If you say any of that ‘onward faithful steed’ bullshit,” Keith says to me sternly, “I swear to God I will blow your brains out, Angel be damned.”

  The Little Lady begins snickering. From where I’m slung over Durgan’s shoulder, I give her a wink.

  As a response she mimes sucking a dick by opening her mouth, moving her fist back and forth, and sticking one tongue against her cheek.

  The idea of someone so young doing something so sexual makes me want to retch.