House Infernal by Edward Lee (40 page)

Alexander ground his teeth at the sight of her. "God,
you're ugly."

You got that right, Ruth thought. Then she noticed that
each of the face's yellow pocks was occupied by a tiny
red worm.

"I'll have you sealed in a keg and steamed for eternity,
you wretched heretic!" the monstrous face spat.

Whack!

Alexander rammed the butt of the knife against the top
of Voluptua's head. Her flailing ceased at once; now she
lay still, unconscious.

The priest gave Ruth a very dark look. "You probably
don't want to watch this."

Ruth crossed her arms. "I don't wanna watch anything!
I want to know what's wrong with your fucked-up brain
to think that I can pass for her! You're pissing in the wind,
man! It'll never work."

"Look carefully, Ruth." Then Alexander took off Voluptua's scarf, revealing a ring of crumpled flesh about her
throat.

"What the fuck ... ?"

"She's a Bi-Facer, Ruth." Alexander grabbed Voluptua's
mane of blond hair and pulled.

The awful Putridox face stretched thin as it was pulled
off the woman's skull; at the same time the queer folds of
skin about her neck disappeared as a second face slipped
over her skull.

"The bitch's got two faces?" Ruth nearly howled.

"Yep. The Putridox face was surgically grafted on top of
her Human face. Anytime she wants to change faces all
she has to do is pull up or pull down, like a stocking
mask," Alexander explained.

Voluptua's Human face was pretty but ... Not as pretty
as mine, Ruth thought.

Now the first face hung as a flap of skin off the top of
the skull. Alexander casually cut it off with the knife, explaining, "In the Living World they've got face-lifts, implants, and tummy tucks; here, they've got Bi-Facial
surgery-very pricy. You can have any face you want
sewn on top of your own-if you've got the money, and as
Boniface's favorite whore, you can bet she's got plenty of
that."

Ruth's stomach grew upset from some unbidden dread.
When Alexander finished cutting the Putridox face away
from the Human face, he shook it out like a piece of laundry, blond hair and all.

Alexander shot Ruth a cunning grin. "Got the gist yet,
Ruth?"

Her voice sounded like gravel when she replied, "You
want me to wear that face, don't you?" She blinked, staring cold. "That ugly-ass, gross-out, Demonic monster
face."

"Yes, Ruth. Without you, we're done. You're our only
hope, and it's the only hope for you, too. Do you want to
go to Purgatory in a thousand years"-his Usher hand
gestured the stinking, smoking city-"or do you want to
stay here, forever and ever?"

Ruth gulped.

"Remember, Ruth, our minds are limited. God's is not.
Sometimes we have to let ourselves be redeemed the hard
way. Take your choice."

Ruth shimmied in place. "All right, I'll wear the fuckin'
monster face. Jesus ..."

"Good girl," the priest grinned, then-

Crunch!

He stepped on Voluptua's head with his Usher foot and crushed her skull flat. The stunning body hitched once,
then fell still.

Ruth wasn't sure but just as Alexander's foot squashed
the head, a thread of blue-black mist seemed to waft up like
smoke and then snake its way to a crack in the alley wall.

"Was that-"

"Her soul," the priest said. He looked at the crack in
the wall. "I'm happy to say that Voluptua is now occupying the body of a Brick-Mite."

Next Alexander took the woman's Bone-Sandals off.
"Put these on now, Ruth, and then your Hand-Bra and
Tongue-Skirt."

Great, I get to wear that freaky shit again, she lamented.
She changed quickly, and found the Bone-Sandals to be a
perfect fit.

Next, Alexander passed her the severed face. "It's time,
Ruth. Just remember what you're doing is for the forces of
good

Fuck that shit, man, she thought, then took a deep
breath, winced-Aw, Jesus, I can't believe I'm doing thisand pulled the Putridox face over her head as though it
were a ski mask.

Alexander put the scarf around her neck, then stood
back and marveled at her. "Ruth, you look exactly like her.
It's even better than I thought."

"Terrific," Ruth muttered. The new face felt like hot,
wet meat against her skin.

"And like I said, I'll be right behind you the whole way."

"How?" she objected to the obvious. "Even if they
don't make me as an imposter, they ain't going to let a
priest into the fortress."

"Leave that to me," he said and then turned his knife
around and began to saw off Voluptua's left hand.

Maybe there is a God, and He was protecting Venetia, Berns
thought. He'd just dropped her off at the prior house and
was heading back to the county substation. He hadn't even consciously squeezed the trigger when he'd shot the
knife out of Dougie Jones' hand, and the truth was he
rarely practiced at the range. That was the luckiest shot in
the history of police work.

Hiding his own adrenaline rush from Venetia and the
manager hadn't been easy; now his hands shook on the
wheel. He wanted to go home and chill out but knew he
couldn't. Dougie wouldn't be long at the hospital; Berns'
priority now was making sure the punk was safe in his cell.

"Two-zero-eight, this is two-zero-zero," he said into his
radio mic. "Give me an ETA on Dougie Jones transport,
over."

Dead air answered him.

"Two-zero-eight, do you copy?"

Nothing.

The clowns must've left their Motorolas in the car. He tried
another unit. "Two-zero-seven, this is Berns. Do you copy?"

Nothing.

I'm going to kick some ass today, he thought, riled. Fuckers
are asleep at the switch. But fifteen minutes later, he was
pulling into the station and noticed all three responding
cruisers parked in the lot. Well, at least they've already got
Dougie back. They're probably securing him in the cell now.

Berns strode in to the station.

The booking desk stood empty. "Sergeant Naylor!" he
bellowed at once. "You better have a good reason for not
being at the desk!"

Bern stood still. No one appeared from the file room; in
fact, nothing could be heard in the station. There should be
eight or ten cops in this place right now! He looked behind
the desk-

"Oh my God ...

The booking sergeant lay crumpled behind the desk, a
pulpy red crater in the side of his head.

Somebody capped him....

Berns drew his gun, struggled through a sudden tightness in his chest, and proceeded down the hall.

The cop in the property room sat slumped at his desk, a
fan of blood and brains splattering the wall behind him.

Dougie Jones, Berns thought and ran toward the lock up.

Another cop lay head-shot in the hall. The air seemed
static; hairs rose on the back of Berns' neck when he
stepped into the jail and found three more cops lying
dead on the floor. Their brains had all been blown out.

"No, no, no," Berns groaned.

The jail cell that should've been occupied by Dougie
Jones stood empty.

"It's called a Hand of Glory," Alexander explained, "a
fairly notorious Power Relic." He held up Voluptua's severed hand. "Used to be a standard discantation would activate it, but only if it was the hand of someone good."

"Well that ain't her, according to you," Ruth pointed
out. She sat huddled with him amid some ill-smelling yellow bushes, just a block from Fortress Boniface. This
close, the scarlet castle looked as impenetrable as it did
immense. What if they don't let me in? she fretted.

The priest admired the grotesque hand as though it
were a unique gadget. "No, Voluptua was an atrocious
person, a hater of God, and a servant to the most unholy
lust. But I have brand-new Celestial Enchantment that
will make this thing work better than they ever have in
the past. I got it from-"

"Your intelligence source," Ruth broke in.

"Right

"So what's this thing do?" She looked at the hand with
skepticism. "It's a fuckin' cut-off hand."

Alexander's gaze sparkled. "It'll make me invisible."

"Bullshit," Ruth smirked.

She didn't like the way he smiled after her remark.
Next he struck a match and roved the flame back and
forth under the fingertips. To Ruth's amazement, each tip
began to bum like a candle. "That's a neat trick," she said.

"Not as neat as this," he muttered as he pulled up his
black shirt. He seemed to be inspecting his navel.

"Checking for lint?" she asked.

His finger trailed over the many cursive scars that now
embellished his skin. "Here it is!" Then he recited, "Um
God per me invisus viflamma." He grinned at Ruth.

"What?" she retorted. "I'm supposed to be impressed?"

"Come on, Ruth, I'm invisible."

Ruth laughed good and hard. "You tool! It doesn't
work!"

"Oh, I forgot, the umbric perimeter. Move back a few
feet."

Ruth slid back over fallen leaves that looked like pieces
of dead skin. One foot, two feet, three, then-

Father Alexander vanished.

"You gotta be fuckin' shitting me, man."

"Told you. And it'll last a long time with that new enchantment," his voice floated from nowhere.

Hand of Glory, Ruth mused. I could've made a lot of money
in Florida with one of those.

"All you've got to do is approach the gate," the priest
said, "and they'll open it. I'll follow you in. But first I need
to tell you the rest."

"The rest?" Ruth didn't exactly revel in the sound of that.

"What you need to do once inside." His voice hovered
around the bushes.

God, I wish I had a cigarette. But Ruth figured it was time
to get serious. "It's got something to do with this chick
you've been talking to on the horn, right?" she said.

"Venetia Barlow, yes. Venetia's not your typical twentyone-year-old girl. She has a special attribute-she's a
Chastitant, which means, one, she's a virgin-"

"Wow," Ruth remarked, impressed.

"wand, two, she possesses a state of corrupted perfection. Her desire to be Godly nullifies her capacity for
evil."

Ruth sighed. "I'm not following you, as always."

"Don't worry about it." The priest's voice sounded aggravated. "For five thousand years, Lucifer has dedicated
his existence toward one goal, and that is to achieve
some sort of passage from the Living World to Hell, and
vice versa, and he's succeeded in a number of waysincarnation, subcamation, spatial transposition, interstitial
egression-but none of these methods effect a permanent
exchange ... until now. His Warlocks and Bio-Wizards
have devised a technique known as Involutionary Redeposition. It involves intricate occultized oblations here and
on Earth."

"Oblations?"

"Sacrifices. In other words. Lucifer wants to bring
Venetia into Hell, and it's Boniface's job to do it for him."

"What's Lucifer want with Venetia?" A notion finally
sparked in Ruth's head. "He wants to pop her cherry?"

Alexander groaned. "No, Ruth. He wants to bring her
here by sending six defiled angels there first. One second
later, over twenty years will have passed. Remember what
I told you about time in Hell?"

Ruth rolled her eyes. "How could I forget that confusing shit?"

"In a little while, Boniface will initiate an Involutionary
Redeposition in his courtyard, which will transport six insane angles to Earth. One second later, acolytes of the
Devil on Earth will initiate their own Redeposition, which
will transport Venetia here."

Ruth frowned. "And in that second, twenty years go by?"

"Roughly, yes."

"So then this Venetia chick goes from Earth to Hell.
What then?"

"She'll be imprisoned and taken to Lucifer for Infernal
Conditioning and Indoctrination. Because of her Chastitant status, Lucifer can corrupt her and turn all of her inborn Godliness into pure evil. He'll be able to use her as a weapon against all of his enemies in Hell. It would be the
equivalent of giving nuclear bombs to terrorists in the
Middle East. This is serious business, Ruth."

Satan can use her as a weapon? Ruth's mind ticked. "So
that's it. Our job is to knock her off when she gets here, or
fuck-up this Involution whatchamacallit so she doesn't get
here."

"No," the faceless voice said. "But that's a good guess.
It's our job to make sure she arrives here safely, at a place
underground called the Lower Chancel. In it there's this
slab of rock called a Pith. That's the Dolmen-or platform-on which the Angels are moved from Hell to Earth
and Venetia is moved from Earth to Hell."

Ruth winced. "On a fuckin' rock?"

Alexander sighed. "It's a magic rock, Ruth, okay? A
magic rock."

Should've fuckin' known. His sarcasm pissed her off.
"Look, man. I don't know what the fuck any of this shit is
you're talking about. All I do know is I get to get out of here
in a thousand years if we pull it off. So let's just go do it,
and you tell me the rest of the funky shit along the way."

Alexander's faceless voice sounded relieved. "Excellent
idea. And on that note ..."

Ruth stepped back into the umbric perimeter; Alexander was pointing the Moon-Sextant upward.

"Time to go to the fortress?" Ruth asked with some
unease.

"Not quite yet. There's only one more thing to do."

Ruth sighed. "What's that?"

"Adopt a baby," the priest told her.

Even with ten live cops in the station now, it still
sounded silent as a morgue. Berns had given his report to
a state deputy chief named Moxey, who seemed young
for the high rank and brawny as a fullback. "Six dead
cops, but only five of them had their service pieces in
their proximity."

"Which means Dougie Jones lifted one of them," Berns
lamented.

"This isn't looking too good for you, Captain." The
snide deputy chief looked back blank-faced. "This might
be the worst police massacre in East Coast history."