House Infernal by Edward Lee (2 page)

A lone feminine shriek pierced the open air.

The creatures that hauled the wagon were known as
Metastabeasts, something like a horse, only twice the
size, that had been placed under a mutation conjuration.
Cancers had been implanted into their musculatures and
stimulated rampant growth, so the beasts could haul astronomical loads. Eyes bulged from mutated sockets over
long snouts of bone, while irregular fangs twisted from
their mouths. They were hairless and gray, and webbed
with veins.

By psychic command, the beasts stopped. A slugskinned Usher opened the wagon's door of iron bars and
pulled out its only occupant.

"She's quite comely," Boniface observed, surprised.
"Are you certain she's chaste?"

The wagon's prisoner fainted the instant she glimpsed
the Usher's face. The young blond-haired woman was
flipped over the Usher's runneled shoulder; eighteen years old, perhaps. Strips of rags comprised her clothing, between the gaps of which showed a supple, fresh physique.

"She is quite chaste, my lord," Willirmoz assured. "Six
teams of Channelers and Tactionists have examined her
memory. She's untouched. Unblemished."

"She can't have been Damned long, judging from the
excellent condition of her Spirit Body...

"A relatively new arrival, which is how she managed to
avoid being raped. It was a Golem on Ghettoblock duty
who reported her. The dead thing could smell her virginity issuing from the alley crevice she lived in. That's when
the nearest platoon of Ushers was summoned; they took
her posthaste to the De Rais Asylum for psychic inspection." The High Priest's crusted black lips turned up. "She
was Damned for murdering her parents-for a land inheritance. And her father ... was a Methodist minister."

"Lucifer, bless her!" Boniface chuckled.

"Another inmate murdered her in prison ... then she
came here."

"It's our good fortune, Willirmoz. Finding virgins in
Hell is no easy feat. Simply finding the first three took
long enough."

"And now we have the fourth, and final, sacrifant, my
abhorrent lord. It's providential that she be so stunningly
attractive."

Boniface watched as the girl's limp body was laid on
the fourth Dolmen and stripped of the rags. Were she not
so essential for the rite, he would've liked to go down
there and eat her alive, but not before a fastidious carnal
ravaging.

Below, from one of the De-Vestry arches, scarlet smoke
began to pour and fill the courtyard, but when the smoke
thinned, a coven of Arithmetrices stood around the
fourth Dolmen, where the fainted girl had now been tied.
These occult mathematicians belonged to a rarefied sorority of witches known as the Cultes des Pythagorae, and
they'd existed in damnation for thousands of years. All of
these ancient women were obese and grimly stood naked,
every square inch of their pallid bodies branded with tiny numbers and equations. Even the whites of their eyes
were inscribed with the most minuscule numerals. The
Arithmetrices were masters of the conversion of number
systems into quantifiable abyssal energy.

One, the fattest and squattest, began to read from the
only existing copy of the Book of the Involution, perhaps
Hell's rarest tome. But it was not words that drifted from
the witch's branded lips but theorems, in a language
known only to the Culte.

"I can feel it," Boniface whispered.

"Indeed, my lord." Willirmoz's charred gaze held fast
to the nearly silent spectacle below. "Only through the
skills of the Arithmetri does metaphysical ideology become palpable, as solid as the blood bricks lain to erect
the walls of your fortress."

Boniface felt his immortal skin crawl beneath his vestments; the intonations below made the air chum, and the
remnant censer-smoke left hanging in the yard began to
draw out in long vermillion lines and then began to spiral
inward....

When the witch fell silent and closed the unholy book,
Boniface saw with some startlement that she was no
longer hideously obese-none of the coven were now. Instead they stood emaciated, the rigors of the secret spells
having converted all that body fat into energy.

Then the entire coven looked up to Boniface in the
Watch-Turret. In the air, Boniface made the sign of the inverted cross and nodded. The coven turned and straggled
back to the De-Vestry.

Willirmoz mouthed something in total silence, a psychic command to the Sergeant at Arms below. This
Sergeant, armored in demonic hide and with a great
bronze helm, came from the lauded Diocletian Brigade.
These conscripts were the most loyal Human-Demon Hybrids in the city, and proved their allegiance to Lucifer by
murdering-and devouring-their families. In a voice
like heavy wood splitting, the Sergeant ordered, "Render
of the House! Front and center!" and from the sacristies a
Cutter-Demon emerged. The tall, chock-faced thing wore nothing but wrist-cuffs and a chain mail kilt while his
arms, legs, back, and chest remained all bare black-green
skin and muscles. Renders were experts with the blade,
and hand-forged their own cutting instruments, and on
this one at least a dozen blades were in evidence. There
were no scabbards, however; instead each knife was
buried to its hilt in the Render's own flesh.

He followed the Sergeant to the Dolmen. The Human
girl remained unconscious. An attending Usher hung her
head over the Dolmen's edge, and directly below this
point stood the wide stone Cistern, like a birdbath, waiting to be filled.

"In the name of the Lord of Lies, once God's bringer of
light and now Hell's bringer of darkness!" shouted the
Sergeant. "And in the name of Boniface the Exaltedcommence!" And then the Render withdrew a small paring knife from his left pectoral and very quickly slid it
against the side of the girl's throat. Even in unconsciousness, she hitched on the slab, released a garbled scream,
but then the Usher's taloned hand grabbed her hair to
hold her head down. Meanwhile, the Sergeant had straddled her, pinning her down.

And the blood poured like a tapped keg into the Cistern's stone basin.

It drained quickly, rife with rich, red bubbles. When the
flow began to retard, the Sergeant pumped the victim's
bare chest-a heinous CPR-to coax more blood into the
font. Eventually four Soubrettes approached each corner
of the Dolmen, their wanton faces wide with grins. The
Soubrettes were Boniface's chambermaids, bred for sexual appeal, breasts, privates, and other features hexegenically enhanced. Each woman, all dressed in clinging pink
tongue-gowns, raised one of the victim's limbs and massaged it from top to bottom. Smaller gushes renewed at
the gash.

"Lovely," Boniface whispered.

When no more blood could be squeezed out, the
Sergeant climbed off and dismissed the others.

"It is done, Exalted Duke!" he barked upward.

Boniface's salt-mask nodded. "Give what's left to the
streets of my proud District, and cover the precious blood.
Post guards."

The Sergeant snapped orders, then more teams of Conscripts and Ushers came into the yard. A field Archlock
slid a stone lid over the Cistern, so that the blood would
rot properly, while Golems and Ushers were posted at all
four comers of the courtyard.

Still more attendants tightened a noose around the
girl's ankles; then she was hoisted up to the rampart and
expeditiously thrown over the side. She wasn't "dead," of
course; as one of the Human Damned, her Spirit Body
could never die unless completely destroyed. But drained
of all blood?

She'd he paralyzed in the streets. Now that her virginal
blood had been secured, her body didn't matter. She'd
likely be raped and eaten in short order, or perhaps some
crafty Broodren would get to her first and sell her body
parts to various vendors....

Boniface looked at the Hasdrubal Clock Tower in the
distance. All clocks in Hell had no hands on their faces. "It
is nearly time," the whisper escaped the lip slit in his mask.

"Another week, perhaps; little more."

Boniface grasped the sleeve of his High Priest as if desperate. "I must succeed, Willirmoz. I must achieve for Lucifer what has never been."

The charred face within the hood could barely be seen.
"You will, my revolting lord. In the visions of my manes,
I've already seen that it will all be so."

"Swear to me, Priest."

"I swear, my lord. If I'm wrong, I shall feed myself to a
Ghor-Hound."

Boniface allowed himself to relax; he sighed through
the mask. "It's so difficult to be patient in Hell, Willirmoz.
And that doesn't make sense, does it? Where everything
is forever?"

"It makes perfect sense, my lord. The four Cisterns have
been filled. All that remains is the final conditioning of
our most important visitors." The charred hand bid his underlord toward the stone stairs. "Let us go to the Lower
Chancel ... to bid them our best wishes...."

Boniface and his Priest went down the spiral stairs to a
very special place deep in the bedrock of Hell.

"I'm familiar with all the rectories, monasteries, and theological academies in New Hampshire, but St. John's
Prior House?" Venetia commented from the backseat of
the Cadillac SIN. "I've never heard of it."

"I don't even know what it is," her father remarked
from the driver's seat. Richard Barlow, as he'd aged, reminded Venetia of the father on that old black-and-white
show called Dennis the Menace, but just a bit more cynical.
He and Venetia's mother seemed perfect for each other in
their oblivion. A pipe-which he wasn't allowed to light
anymore, due to blood pressure-hung from the man's
mouth. He chewed its end while he talked. "When your
mother told me about the assignment, at first I thought
she said fry house. I thought, That's just great. I put my
daughter through college so she can work the fryer at a
fish-and-chips joint."

"Your father's being ridiculous, as always, dear." Maxine Barlow thrust her bosom between the seats. Venetia's
mother would be called "pleasingly plump" now that
she'd arrived into her midforties: a stereotypical New En gland housewife who was always preparing for a Tupperware party or the Saturday night spaghetti dinner and
fund-raiser at the church. She always wore smocklike print
dresses and old-fashioned Earth Shoes. "Motherly" was a
good word for her, chunky but still curvaceous, and with a
hefty bosom that still turned heads. Her shoulder-length
hair was a mix of blond, brown, and gray. "A prior house,
or priory as they're sometimes called, is like a monastery.
Surely, Richard, you know what a monastery is."

"Yeah, our bedroom." Then Venetia's father broke out
into a very uncharacteristic round of laughter.

All Verietia's mother did was smile and bat her eyes.
"See what happens when you let animals out of their
cages, Venetia?" Her smile beamed. "We'll see how hard
he laughs tonight when I stick that absolutely ludicrous
pipe right up his-"

"Mom!" Venetia exclaimed.

Her father smiled back over his shoulder. "Don't worry,
Venetia. Your mother thinks of herself as far too cultured
to use the word 'ass."'

"He's right, honey. And after we drop you off, I'm going to spend the whole ride home thinking of a nice alternate word for the thing I'm going to kick tonight."

Richard Barlow chuckled through the pipe. "Sounds
like it might be a pretty good weekend after all."

Jeez, Venetia thought. Those two. She'd only been back
home for several days, and her parents' jovial sniping was
already wearing her out. But it had been her mother
who'd gotten Father Driscoll to send the recommendation
to the university. Most field studies for theology students
involved little more than endless research at church libraries and diocesan archives. But ... restoring a Prior
House by a famous Vatican architect?

The prospect sounded fascinating.

Since she'd been back, the neighbors had all parroted
the same sentiment: "Oh, my gosh, Venetia, we're so
proud of you! You're about to get a college degree after
only two years! That's amazing!" It seemed, however, that
the only person not impressed by this feat was Venetia herself. Big deal, she concluded. If I'd worked harder, I
could've gotten it in a year and a half. She was at least proud
of her discipline to remain goal-oriented. The rest of life
will come later. For me, now, it's school, and then.-. .

That's what she wasn't sure about yet. The then.

She'd been worrying too much, and that wasn't like
her. Why worry? She'd only just turned twenty-one. I'm
young, she reminded herself every day. I don't have to decide right now if I really want to become a nun....

Up front, Venetia's parents were bickering over radio
stations. "Come on, Maxine, the Sox have the damn Yankees at home!" "Just ... shut up, dear, while I find the
gospel station." Venetia was grateful for the break. A bad
night's sleep left her limp in the backseat. She tried to let
her thoughts disband by watching the beautiful New
Hampshire countryside sweep by in the window. Thank
God it's summer. The summers up here were a marvel of
nature; it was the winters that had dragged Venetia down
during childhood and adolescence. Too depressing. She
thought that going to school in Washington, DC, would
be something of a relief from all the snow ... but all she
got instead were ice storms and rain. At least the
weather-not to mention the crime wave-had kept her
inside most of the time, to focus on her studies.

Eventually, she caught herself nodding in and out of
sleep as she tried to watch the rolling green fields beyond
the window. That weird dream, she groaned to herself. I
barely got any sleep last night. She rubbed her eyes, then
briskly shook her blond head in hopes of rousing herself.

"Honey, are you all right?" her mother's face hovered
between the seats again.

And her father added, "To tell you the truth, you don't
look too good."