Affliction (Hellsong: Infidels: Cris Book 1) Read online

  The finger returns to my chest and presses harder this time. A bit of agony escapes from my lips before I clamp my mouth shut. I try to breathe through my nose, but the pain is too intense. The burning eyes keep staring. If I tell him now, he’ll know I’m telling the truth. Then he’ll kill me. This will all end.

  I open my mouth to confess, but I can’t. I just can’t. Maybe when he reads my mind he’ll understand why. I don’t know. It’s just that the giving up gets caught in my throat. His eyes narrow farther and the pressure gets heavier. He must see my will caving. Who knows what my soul looks like to him? Is it a mess? Does it seem strong? Unremarkable? Can he see it crumbling?

  Myla is right. I need to let this one go. I can try again in the next life. My son is just going to have to be his.

  The finger raises and I do my best to get more air. The finger is only gone for a second.

  SUCH AN INTERESTING CHILDHOOD YOU HAD. YOU WERE SO PRECOCIOUS.

  That’s where he must be in my soul. He’s probably working through my earliest years, making his way up to the top of my mind. Digging through me until he makes it to my recent memories. I can feel him in there, displacing parts of my identity.

  I’m allowed another breath.

  SUCH AN AWKWARD THING YOU WERE, WITH WOMEN.

  He’s getting closer, the pain increases. There has to be a way to hide myself from his prying mind . . . wait a minute . . . oh hell no. All children are precocious. All men are awkward with women in the beginning. And you know fucking what? I was punished for what I did to that poor girl. I had to spend recess inside. I still felt guilty afterward because I hadn’t been punished enough for what I did to her. She hadn’t complained about the beating to the teacher, she’d complained about me stealing the sandwich.

  It’s one of the formative moments of my life, something I sometimes tell to people I get really close to, people like Myla—except that I tend to leave out the recess I spent indoors because it’s not important to the story. It confuses them and makes them think that what I did to the girl wasn’t all that bad.

  I dabbled in some illusion on Earth. In fact, I learned to pick cuffs while preparing to be a magician’s assistant for a Houdini trick, and because of that I have no patience for pretenders. Real magic is illusion, anyone who claims they’ve got anything else is lying to you. And here it is, right before me, this motherfucking Archdevil is trying to do a cold reading—technically a hot reading since Myla must have prepped him—on me. This sort of deception, and the fools who fall for it because they’ve mistaken faith for a virtue, are the true face of evil.

  This thing is not the Devil. He’s a charlatan. A damn powerful charlatan who could rip me to shreds, who’s basically invincible and who’s fucking my girlfriend and raising my child, but a charlatan nonetheless.

  I feel a hatred and a contempt building up inside me that dwarfs the despicable loathing I hold toward whatever God sent me here. This thing needs to be stopped. This Archdevil is going to die—by my hand.

  “I . . .” I begin.

  He takes his finger off of my chest.

  YOU WISH TO TELL ME SOMETHING.

  The wights exchange a look, the little one bending his head back to look into the tall one’s eyes. They must assume the Devil’s victory is at hand.

  “I do wish to . . . tell you,” I manage. “I have to tell you . . . that I’m the kind of person who . . . has a lot of acquaintances. But I only really have a few close friends. But to those friends . . . I’m extremely loyal . . . and I’ll do anything for them.”

  His head pulls back as he tries to digest what I’m saying.

  “I’m an enthusiastic achiever . . . but I’m . . . easily discouraged.” Breath is hard to come by, but I go on giving him every Barnum statement that comes to my head. “I’m, I’m unhappy with damnation. There’s a girl . . . I’m close to. I might be married to her . . . or just infatuated with her, but I think about her a lot.”

  The thin, black lips open and I can see the molten red colored insides of the Devil’s throat. His black teeth gleam in the heated light of his mouth. He lets out a hiss.

  “There’s a person . . . close to me,” I continue. “Their name starts with the letter ‘h.’”

  He roars loudly, a sound as loud as a train horn. He stands.

  THIS ONE VERY WELL MIGHT BE AN INFIDEL. I WILL RETURN TO BREAK HIM ON THE BY AND BY.

  The Archdevil leaves my room and the door shuts behind him.

  I go back to lapping up the devilwheat meal, not because I’m hungry, but because that bobby pin is in there. I find it with my tongue. I do my best to remember where it is in the slop and use my scooting technique to get one of my hands on it.

  I twist my wrists inside the cuffs so that my thumbs and forefingers are together. I bend open the bobby pin and close it. Open and close. Open and close. Open and close.

  I can’t believe that devil almost fooled me. I mean, I would have never been tricked by such bullshit on Earth. Hell has different rules, though, rules that I don’t necessarily understand. Rules like stones healing themselves, like scars disappearing, limbs regrowing, and the dead rising again as corpses if they’d been exposed to corpsedust. That must have been how the people on Earth were tricked by charlatans there. They didn’t know the rules of how that universe worked, so they chose to trust the people who were taking advantage of them.

  Open and close. I can feel a bit of heat on the end of the pin.

  Open and close. Open and close.

  I don’t care how long I have to bend this damn pin. Time doesn’t matter to me. I’m here for as long as it takes.

  The bobby pin breaks in two. I feel the edges with my forefinger. Both are too jagged to be of any use to me, but I don’t care. That fucker must fall. I must get my son back, and I’m going to give Myla one hell of a wakeup call.

  I put the sharp edge of one half of the pin against the stone and begin rubbing it back and forth, wearing it down until it’s more flat. Only a minute more and I’ll be ready.

  A lot of those Earth sayings aren’t true here. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, for instance. Who was it that said that? William Congreve? Sure, Myla might be pissed, but old William never met me.

  The firelight returns and keys rattle clumsily in the lock. The door opens.

  Kessler enters with his torch and a second bowl of food. He sets the torch down in the corner and surveys the mess I made of his last meal. “Didn’t like the devilwheat?” He laughs at his own joke. “I’m not cleaning that up for you, Infidel Friend. You can wallow in it.”

  “I have,” I speak quietly in a hoarse voice so that he can barely hear me. “I have . . . something to tell you.”

  He steps toward me. “What? What did you say? Speak up.”

  I shake my head and swallow. “Barely . . . talk. Confess . . . to you.”

  I’m hardly saying the words, but he catches the gist of them and leans forward, getting close to me.

  “Closer . . .” I say softly. “Let me speak in your ear.”

  He does get closer, but he’s wary. “If you bite me, I’ll kill you.”

  “Confess. I need to . . . confess . . . to you.”

  He leans in even farther. I grab the bowie knife from his belt and run it across his throat. He clutches at the wound. With my adrenalin surging I stab him under the chin, hoping to drive the blade into his brain. I don’t have enough strength, so it just sticks there in the skin under his jaw. Kessler topples over. He tries to speak or call for help—I’m not sure which—but frothy blood and spit are all that comes out of his mouth.

  Though I’ve managed to get the rat, I still can’t sit up. With the adrenaline now running through my body, I figure I’ve got a chance. With all my might and all my will, I try to push myself upward. My body hardly moves. My neck cranes upward, but that’s about it. It’s as if I can’t even get the muscles in my abdomen to start pushing. My efforts have me twitching almost exactly like the poor, dying Kessler.

  I
give up on this strategy and scoot over to the door. I’m rushing as fast as I can because I have no idea how long it will take for someone else to come. Air is hard to come by, and my chest hurts abominably, but I can’t stop. I reach up with my right arm and grab at the door handle. Then I push back with my left leg to try and get myself up against the wall. My hope is that with my right arm pulling I might be able to stand up on one leg and try hopping.

  I’m coming up, and up, my back is pressing higher against the stone, but since the door isn’t shut it swings on its hinges sending me toppling, face forward, into the blood and devilwheat. The pain from my chest and right leg is so severe that it takes me a minute to be able to see again. The pain does nothing to slow the beating of my heart.

  That Archdevil must fall.

  I’m not standing, but with my stomach to the ground I can try to crawl. I use my right arm and left leg to push me forward over the floor. I can’t get up on my hands and knees, and my strength is barely sufficient to get my torso off of the ground, but maybe I can move far enough to find some place to hide.

  My shallow breaths are coming in and out so quickly that I feel a burn in my lungs. Spots are starting to form in my vision. They move about, winking on and off like fireflies as I look around for Devil men.

  The burning light of the torch behind me illuminates part of the corridor beyond. I drag myself forward over the smooth rock at what in my present condition I’d consider a breakneck pace. There is a room ahead that is lit. Since I have seen no other passages to go down, I don’t waste any time thinking about whether I should go there or not. I peek my head around the corner. The room is similar to the one where I received the beating. It is lit by a few torches, which I guess means I’ll probably have company shortly. The aqueduct snakes along the back wall. I can hear the water running through it over the sound of my hyperventilation.

  There are a few exits, I start heading toward one of the dark ones but stop. I remember Jenner, the little girl who tried to kill me before guiding me through the city.

  There is a service ladder for the aqueduct.

  I crawl toward it like a madman.

  I cling to the first rung with my right hand. Pain erupts along the left side of my body and I hear something tear, but I don’t give a damn. I push with my good leg. This gets me ready to reach for the next rung, but my body is hunched over. I try to straighten my back, but with my abdominal muscles not working, I have no way to do so. I grit my teeth. I feel my nostrils flaring. I snake my ruined left arm through the second pair of rungs and reach up with my right hand.

  A small whine of pain escapes my lips.

  With my right arm I pull up, straightening my back. I push forward with my left leg along the stone and my body gets a little more vertical. I jam in my left arm again, clenching my jaw and trying to swallow the pain that wants to escape from my throat. With my right arm I straighten my back again. Finally, my left leg is no longer pushing against the floor, I get it up on the bottom rung.

  Looking up the twenty or so foot ladder, I realize this climb is probably beyond my physical endurance.

  As I shift to move again, one of my bruised or broken ribs bumps into the ladder. I almost fall.

  Tears form in my eyes and I feel snot pouring out of my nose. The spots in my vision are getting worse. I feel a horrible queasiness in my stomach.

  I know that feeling. I’m scared shitless.

  I close my eyes and put the idea of someone else coming into the room out of my mind. All that matters is man versus ladder. The thing looks indomitable—I might as well be looking up Mount Everest—but maybe I’m too stubborn not to make it.

  I begin the ascent.

  I pull myself up, and then push with my leg. And up and push and up and push. Sweat is pouring off my body. My shaking is getting worse, but my breathing is getting more even. I think that my current state of terror is allowing me to breathe more deeply without feeling pain.

  I’m halfway there.

  Up and push. Up and push.

  There are footsteps coming from behind me. I freeze there on the ladder. Maybe they won’t see me since I’m almost twenty feet up and they don’t know I’ve escaped yet.

  It’s Kessler. His bowie knife is still sticking out of his chin. Corpsedust might not be allowed in the Core, but he was an addict. He had it all through his body. Of course he’d rise. He’s one of those Greek souls now, a shadow of his former self, an undead body that only wants to kill.

  Up and push. Up and push.

  I look down. Kessler’s corpse has spotted me. New corpses don’t move very well, but he’s a hell of a lot more dexterous than I am right now. I wouldn’t consider a corpse very dangerous under most circumstances, but at the moment he terrifies me.

  Up and push. Up and push. Just a few more rungs to go.

  Kessler shambles closer, coming up to the base of the ladder. He begins climbing.

  Up and push and up and push.

  One more rung. I feel him gripping my good leg. I kick down, shaking his clumsy hand loose. Up and push and up and push. This time he grabs my swollen leg. Agony comes shooting up from my ankle and I cry out. I look back, but I can’t kick with my good leg now because my arm isn’t strong enough to support me.

  He comes up a little higher, mouth open.

  I pull my bad leg upward, bending it at the knee. Oh heaven help me, I can’t do this. I can’t do this. His free arm rises higher. I have to. I’ve no other choice. I brace myself.

  With an insuppressible shout I stomp his face with my wounded leg. My vision blurs for a second, but when it clears I see that Kessler has dropped down a couple of rungs. Since I’m at the top of the ladder, I pull my torso forward onto the lip of the aqueduct. Then I push with my leg again, and pull with my right hand. My torso comes over the lip, plunging my face into the rushing water.

  I can’t breathe, but hell, breathing isn’t really one of my strong points at the moment. I push with my leg again and let the water pull at me. My body topples over into the aqueduct. I flail out with my good arm, grabbing hold of the lip. More pain, but I’m beyond that now. I pull myself back to the ladder. The corpse’s hand is cresting it. I brace myself again and put my bad arm over the lip, holding on with the muscles in my armpit. The water pulls at me, and the stone under my arm presses miserably into my ribs. I get the cuffs out from my belt, slap one end around the ladder and then the other around Kessler’s wrist.

  I let the water drag me along a little down the edge. Kessler’s body comes over the side. He lunges for me, but the cuffs cause him to fall over into the water. The corpse is confused. It reaches for me, unsure of what’s holding it back. The bowie knife is still sticking out from its chin.

  I give myself three breaths.

  One.

  Kessler’s eyes seem more alert now that he’s dead. Water crests over his head as his fingernails claw at the fabric of my shirt.

  Two.

  He’s close, very close. I can feel his fingers getting a grip.

  Three.

  I push out with my right palm and jam the bowie knife farther up into his head. Kessler stops moving for a second time. The water pours over him as his body submerges. The cuff is at the very top rung, and this part of the aqueduct is in the back corner. I’m hoping it won’t be very visible. I get my left arm back over the side with a grunt and grab on with my right. Slowly, I let the water take me forward.

  There is some noise below me. It’s the Devil men, coming this way. “Not sure why? Maybe he’s trying to interrogate the infidel?”

  They’re looking for me already. How long has it been? Maybe I’m lucky I even got this much time.

  The water pulls me into a tunnel where there is no lip to grab on to. I don’t have enough strength to swim.

  The water has me at her mercy.

  I manage to get another handhold in the crucible room. Footsteps of men running back and forth through the chamber below echo up through the aqueduct. I have to cough up some wat
er, but the noise and the pain it would cause keeps me from doing so. Instead I softly clear my throat. It doesn’t help much.

  “I don’t know where he’s gone! I don’t even know where Kessler is,” someone shouts from below.

  “Kessler has betrayed us!”

  “There was blood all over the floor, but we don’t know if it’s from Cris or Kessler. Cris is too wounded, though. If he’s alive, he can’t have gotten far.”

  “He’s a God damned Infidel Friend. He was probably exaggerating his injuries.”

  “He couldn’t have fooled the Devil, he can see minds.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but I’m not sure how Cris could have escaped if he was as beaten as I thought he was.”

  There is some more shouting, and then the footsteps continue. The aqueduct takes me farther. I know I’m going to run into a wall at some point, since the water doesn’t get out to the middle sections of the city. However, I do know that the aqueduct is running in the Heart, and my guess is that it will take me out of the Core.

  After another couple of tunnels, I realize my luck has run out. The aqueduct is actually at ground level in this upcoming room. I find a handhold on the wall, though the effort of catching it drops my head underwater for a second. Men are running back and forth throughout the room. A line of workers is moving through here too. I feel my grip loosening. I hang on with all my might, but the stone slips out from my weak grasp. The aqueduct tugs me forward. I stay limp and let the water cover me over. The world looks odd from beneath the surface.

  I see blobs of light where the torches are and the shadows they cast of the men. The water will take care of me. All I do is relax. If they see me, they see me. Nothing I can do about it.

  I cross the room unnoticed and enter another dark tunnel. When I emerge I’m in the Heart chamber, perhaps twenty or thirty stories up.