House Infernal by Edward Lee (47 page)

"Pull up that putrescent visage," he breathed. "I must
now kiss your Human face."

Ruth felt like a flowerpot had landed on her head. What
am I gonna fuckin' do now?

Boniface stared. "Your obedience is not instantaneous?
Do you wish to be quartered and eaten by Ghor-Hounds?"

I'm sorry, my lord. It's just that I'm so aroused by the
sight of you...."

Boniface seemed pleased by the flattery; then he
moaned when Ruth's hand went to his crotch.

"I just can't keep my hands off you, Duke...."

For a moment, Boniface's mask blushed; then he
reached to yank up her Putridox face-

"Exalted Duke!" the Wizard next to him exclaimed.
"Put aside your lust for now! The Pith is fully activated!"

Thank you, God, Ruth thought. Boniface's wretched
hand fell away from her as he turned to watch.

Ruth watched, too.

"Great Satan, let it be so!"

The scarlet light buzzed; then the Angels on the slab
seemed to melt out of existence.

Is that it? Ruth wondered. But something else was supposed to happen now, wasn't it?

That Venetia chick ...

Boniface had forgotten her, instead grabbing the arm of
the Wizard next to him.

"Fire the Smoke-Light!„ the Wizard commanded.

"Ruth!" Alexander whispered.

Fuck. Ruth ran to the Warlock by the Smoke-Light. "Let
me help!" she said. The revolting magician was about to
touch the oil lamp beneath with a burning twig. Ruth
grabbed it, then-

"Oops! Sorry!"

She faked a 'stumble and knocked the Smoke-Light off
its stand.

Did she feel Alexander's invisible form brush against
her as she fell?

Boniface bellowed at the farce. "You clumsy, ridiculous,
pox-ridden sow! You pitiful Human waste product!"

. "Secure the Smoke-Light!" shouted the Wizard. "If it's
broken, the Chancel will be vulnerable!"

Boniface was insane with anger. "I will have your blood
replaced with the piss of Gargoyles, you useless trollop!"
Then his hands wrung her neck.

"Calm yourself, Exalted Duke," fluttered the voice of
the Warlock. He picked the Smoke-Light off the stone
floor. "The Totem is intact." Then he lit the oil lamp and
set the device back on its stand.

"I'll deal with you later, whore." Boniface shoved Ruth
away.

Fuck you and your mother, Ruth thought.

What hovered off the Smoke-Light now was an illumination that was black yet somehow as bright as flashbulbs
on a camera. It seemed to cover everyone in the room
with a dark, glittering caul and seemed to stretch out fingers into the brighter crimson light coming from the Pith.

Then the stone slab seemed to scream.

Someone whispered, "Glory to Lucifer..."

Two shapes on the slab appeared like two things melting in reverse.

All of the chamber's occupants fell to their knees.

Ruth blinked, but when she looked again, the red light
was fading, and on the slab stood a woman in a cloak and
a younger woman-blond-in a black skirt and torn
white blouse.

That must be her, Ruth realized.

"It worked, it worked, it worked!" Boniface blubbered
with joy.

The two women seemed frozen at first; then they began
to blink.

"The Chastitant is among us!" yelled the Wizard. "Conscripts! Seize her and shackle her at once!"

Several soldiers with chains rushed toward the Pith.

Bam!

The first Conscript's helmet blew off, along with half of
his head. The other two flinched, then bowled over howling as a knife from nowhere plunged into their bellies.

"Infiltrators have switched the Smoke-Light with a
fake!" the Warlock yelled, then a knife-slash appeared at
his throat.

The Wizard pulled Boniface aside. "Someone must be
working a Stealth Charm or a Hand of Glory. Ushers! Conscripts! Scythe every square inch of space in the Chancel!"

Pandemonium ensued as the servants of Boniface
raised great hewers and sickles and began to systematically thresh them through the air.

Ruth tried to back up into a comer. She noticed that the
two women on the slab were beginning to move, but she
also noticed this: Boniface was staring right at her.

The squat, masked hulk barged toward her. "Something's amiss and I fear it starts with you!" he yelled. He
grabbed her, yanked off her scarf, then-shhhhlup!-
yanked off her Putridox face.

"An impostor! Cut her down in place!"

Ruth rammed both fists into the Duke's face; the mask
fell apart in chunks.

"Oh, fuck you, man!" She shrieked when she saw the
ruination beneath. "Your face looks like pimples on a Gorilla's ass!" She kicked him between the legs so hard they
both fell over at the same time. Boniface howled. As Ruth
fell, a great blade swooped down and just missed the area
of space that her head had occupied a second earlier.

When the Usher raised its blade for a second strike-

Bam!

Alexander's sulphur gun split its head. Chunks of
something like green goulash flew this way and that. But
the remaining Conscripts and Demons were converging
in a single line, their weapons blurring through the air.

Looks like this is the end, she realized.

Boniface croaked up at her, "Despicable heap of Human shit ..."

"I'm glad you said that, you ugly fat fuck," Ruth
replied, and stomped down hard on his face. The spiked
heels of her Bone-Sandals sunk deep. After enough
stomps, the face collapsed like darkly stained styrofoam.
"And you've got a little dick, too!"

Alexander finally appeared, throwing aside the Hand
of Glory. He rushed toward the Pith. "Venetia! The Power
Relic! Now!"

The blond woman seemed to snap out of a trance; then
she shrieked when she saw the chaos around her. The
cloaked woman beside her looked about in disarray, then
glared at Venetia.

"Venetia!" Alexander screamed. "Don't tell me you forgot the Relic!"

The cloaked woman lunged ... just as Venetia pulled
something from a pocket ...

What the fuck is that? Ruth wondered, squinting.

Venetia had withdrawn some small unidentifiable
thing.

Is that a chunk of bone? Ruth asked herself.

Then came a deafening shriek like wind through the
highest mountain peaks-

"Holy shit!" Ruth screamed.

And everything turned white.

Some inchoate forced knocked Ruth across the chamber, as if she'd just been hit by a speeding truck. It was a
concussion like dynamite going off, but without the explosion, just the inhuman shriek.

The preternatural force dropped Ruth hard on her
back, slamming the wind from her lungs. She began to
black out, but even on this verge of unconsciousness, the
blinding white light prevailed....

Ruth knew she was about to be destroyed. By now she
truly did regret the outrageous sins of her life but still she
thought, What a ripoff .. .

It seemed like hours had passed when her vision finally
cleared. Her first sight upon coming to was a monstrous
hand reaching down for her.

Ruth screamed-

"Relax, it's me," Alexander said. It was his Usher hand
helping her up.

'Oh, fuck, man, you fuckin' scared the fuck out of me."

He bellowed right into her face: "Damn it, Ruth! Would
you quit cussing!"

After all that shit, I deserve to cuss all I want. She took a
moment to catch her breath. Memories returned like a
steady drip. "What happened?"

"Look around."

The Pith sat inert-nothing more than a slab of rock.
Askew piles of something white and sandy lay everywhere, but there were no signs of the Conscripts, Wizards, or Demons that had previously dominated the
Chancel.

"Where did they all go?" she asked.

Alexander gestured to the piles. "Turned to salt-all of
them. When Venetia secreted the Power Relic from the
prior house to here, she brought something holy into an
unholy perimeter. Any being motivated by evil has
been-for lack of a better term-sterilized. With that
bone, Venetia-via her power as a Chastitant-will be
able to consecrate a great portion of the Boniface District,
and more."

"You're fucking shitting me...."

Alexander winced. "She's already up in the courtyard,
doing the same as she did here. The Fortress Boniface will
now become the first anti-Satanic stronghold in Hell."

Ruth noticed that the Werewolf hands and the tongues
of her apparel had stopped moving. "Where's Boniface?"

The priest pointed to another pile of salt.

"Cool!" Ruth cogitated. That chick with the blond hair sterilized all the evil out of the whole joint. "So does that
mean we-"

"Succeeded in our mission? Yes. Let's go up now."

Where the stones of the labyrinth had once glowed
crimson, they now glowed white. Ruth could've used
some sunglasses. This is cool as shit-the plan worked, and I
get to go to Purgatory in a thousand years.

The monster-limbed priest led Ruth through the
labyrinth by following a long pink thread that wound its
way back through the catacombs.

"You did that, didn't you?" Ruth guessed. "So we could
find our way back out. You're a pretty smart dude!"

Alexander rolled his eyes.

"But where'd you get pink thread in Hell?"

"That's an astute question, Ruth."

Ruth's brow creased. "Hey. Where's my Yuck Foo
T-shirt?"

Alexander held up the thread. "It's all I had on hand."

"You fucker! You used my favorite shirt!"

The priest moaned. "Don't worry about it, Ruth. Besides, you don't need to be wearing that shirt in front of
the person you're about to meet."

"Who? That Venetia chick?"

Alexander didn't respond. Eventually he led them out
of the last catacomb, into the courtyard.

"Wow," Ruth breathed. There were hundreds of piles of
salt everywhere. The blood bricks had all turned white,
each emitting a mild luminosity.

"Miraculous," the priest said, awed. "She's consecrated
the entire fortress already." His eyes darted to the wideopen gate. "She's out in the District now."

"How much of the place can she consecrate with that
bone?"

Alexander smiled. "Who knows..."

Ruth followed him outside the walls. "Hey. The place
doesn't stink like it used to either."

"There'll be a lot of things changing in the District."
Alexander's wide Demonic feet carried him to the first
street. "And you get to be part of it. Venetia will need some assistance as she assumes her destiny. It's the perfect way for you to spend the next millennium while
you're waiting to go to Purgatory."

Doesn't sound too bad at all, Ruth thought. But the
worldly cynic in her kicked in. During her life, she'd been
ripped off countless times on deals that sounded too good
to be true. "How do I know that'll ever really happen,
man? How do I know it's not jive?"

"In a minute, you'll see."

The fortress seemed to glow white behind her. As she
looked down the block she said, "Check that shit out,
man!" She could see Venetia slowly walking down the
main roads just outside the fortress, a cloud of white light
following her. The blood bricks whitened as she passed,
and any Demonic being in her proximity immediately
froze, then collapsed to a pile of salt.

"It's wondrous," Alexander whispered. "It all
worked...."

Ruth followed him without thinking much. "Where we
going now?"

"Just looking for a puddle of water," the priest said.

The fuck? "A puddle? Why? Let's just go out there with
Venetia-"

"You'll have plenty of time to do that later, but right
now..." The priest stopped with a satisfied expression.
At his feet was a puddle of dirty water. He just stood
there, looking down.

"I'm getting pissed now, man," Ruth spoke up.
"Why're you staring at a fuckin' puddle of dirty water?"

Alexander looked fretful. "Shhh! Of all the people you
shouldn't cuss in front of, it's her."

Ruth's face screwed up. "Who?"

He pointed to the puddle. "Look. The charm is working, just like she said...."

"You're scaring me now, man! What charm? That's no
charm! It's a fuckin' puddle!"

Alexander winced yet again at the profanity. "Not like
a lucky charm, Ruth. It's a charm like a spell. It's called a
Transference Charm. Water's the best base to use for this kind of spell-even dirty water. It doesn't matter." A
taloned Usher finger pointed down. "Look. See her?"

This guy's gone nuts all of a sudden. But when Ruth
looked straight down into the puddle ...

Holy shit "Is that ... a face?"

The image couldn't be denied. Indeed, what Ruth saw
in the puddle was the face of a woman, but it clearly
wasn't her own reflection. The face was pretty in an edgy
way, and the woman had long shining black hair save for
one gothy streak of white along the left side.

"Hello, Ruth," the image in the puddle greeted.

Ruth's jaw dropped.

"My name's Cassandra, and I'm speaking to you
through a Celestial technology."

The woman's face in the image had a rim of light that
made Ruth think of a halo. "A-are you like-an angel?"

"Something like that. I'm the intelligence source that
Father Alexander told you about."

I don't believe this, Ruth thought. I'm talking to a fucking
puddle of water.... "Where are you talking to us from?"

"That's unimportant, Ruth," the mysterious face said.
"The important thing is you both succeeded and have
proven yourselves worthy servants of God. You've both
sufficiently redeemed yourselves, and I don't mean by
working for us in exchange for a reward, but in spiritwhen you weren't even aware of it."

"What do you mean?" Alexander asked, confused.

"By showing good will to Ruth, for instance, you sealed
your redemption, Father. By assuming an extra burden
that could lead to her own exit from Hell."

Alexander's brow popped up.

The eyes in the puddle looked again to Ruth. "And
Ruth, you sealed your own redemption back at the adoption agency. You didn't know the baby was a Hex-Clone.
You thought it was a real baby, and you were willing to
risk your own reward by saving it. Remember?"