Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (19 page)

31 · A STROKE OF LUCKY

LUCKY STIRRED AWAKE
across the street from the Barry M. Deepe Funeral Parlor. The sky was darker. The street was still. The smell of humans was faint.

He sniffed his makeshift bed, Milton’s navy blue Windbreaker, and yearned for its owner.

Lucky had dreamt of hot, stale, enclosed spaces. And fear. He knew his master was in trouble.

His pink eyes winced at the harsh yellow radiance of the streetlight. Lucky wriggled across Jordan Avenue like a swift white caterpillar.

Outside the funeral parlor, Lucky stood on his fuzzy haunches and sniffed in the night air with his moist pink nose. He could taste Milton’s smell, faintly, in the back of his throat. It was different. The odors told a story, and the ending stunk. Like burnt popcorn.

His nostrils drank in an invisible trail of scent, leading
him to the side of the building in an alley full of strong, biting smells that made the ferret hungry.

There was a door. It was closed. Lucky sniffed the door’s metal jamb. There was a narrow piece of rotten weather stripping at the bottom. Lucky tugged at it with his teeth and soon made a small gap, just large enough for him to squeeze through.

The ferret spilled down the steps, untying the knot of odors with his expert nose. He followed the loops of smells down a hallway soft with grass-green carpet, stopping at a pair of metal doors bookended by potted palms.

The doors were open, but two men in blue robes stood barring the entrance, looking inside the room. Lucky’s nose was temporarily distracted by the smell of chicken blood on the front of one of the men’s robe. The ferret caught his master’s scent again and squirmed past them.

“What the—?” Sentinel Shane exclaimed as he backed away from the fuzzy white creature darting past his feet.

A number of men circled a charred crate that was more ash than wood. A ring of burnt popcorn cinders surrounded it. The smell slapped Lucky dead in the face. He recoiled from its intensity. It confused him. It smelled like his master, but it wasn’t. At least not anymore.

“That’s Milton’s ferret!” yelped Necia, her face streaked with dried tears.

The Guiding Knight broke the circle around Milton’s remains. “Grab that thing,” he ordered Warder Chango and Sentinel Shane, aiming his long bony finger at Lucky.

Lucky stopped and sniffed the air. He hissed. There was something about the spindly, ratlike girl he didn’t like. She smelled like two people instead of just one. Lucky turned and fled toward a large plywood box.

Again, another familiar yet less-than-comforting smell assaulted his delicate senses. He jumped onto the box’s handles and pressed his nose beneath the lid. A cruel boy who had devoted much of his waking life to tormenting his missing master lay sleeping in the box. Lucky hissed.

“Shoo!” Chaplain Charlie said as he stepped toward Damian’s casket. “Get away from there!”

Lucky breathed in the blast of his master’s smell that was slung across the strange man’s back. Milton’s knapsack! Lucky leapt toward it.

“No bite!” the man yelped.

Chaplain Charlie dropped the knapsack to the ground. Lucky had dug his claws into its fabric and was now coiling himself inside this nest of comforting, reassuring smells.

“What’s this?” the Guiding Knight inquired as he knelt to the ground, his blue robe bunching up to reveal black socks and sandals. He picked up a stack of papers that had fallen out of Milton’s knapsack.

“The Subtle Energies Commission?” he murmured as he pored through Milton’s notes. “Etheric energy trap … life force …
reanimation?”

The skeletal man licked his thin lips and gazed at Damian’s casket. He opened the lid and stared inside at the sneering boy in his cheap navy blue blazer. The Guiding Knight rubbed his chin until he, too, was sneering.

“Sentinel Shane,” the Guiding Knight said after a prolonged pause. “I have an idea and will need your help in carrying it out.”

“Of course,” the man with the weather-beaten cowboy face replied. “Anything you wish.”

Necia appeared at the Guiding Knight’s side, eyeing him quizzically as he leafed through the stack of papers in his hands.

“What is it, O honorific one?” she asked humbly.

A smile broke across the Guiding Knight’s drawn face, like the arctic sun peeking through the clouds, teasing, before retreating for several months of blizzards.

“If a bridge goes out,” he said mysteriously, “you simply take a detour.”

32 · WARREN PEACE

MARLO RACED PAST
the dissipating paintings, sculptures, and glasswork that lined the hallway leading to the Grabbit’s warren. As she ran, she left small explosions of plaster dust with each footfall. Marlo was caked with the stuff, a sleepless, punch-drunk powdered doughnut in stirrup pants, her head nearly cracking with schemes restless to hatch.

She wanted to tell the Grabbit all about the perfect heist she was just about to execute. It involved all the essentials for a classic caper: dupes, disguise, psychological profiling, and brazen brinksmanship. Marlo wasn’t even completely sure what that last word meant, but it sounded smart and confident in her head.

As she made the turn leading to the Grabbit’s golden door, she nearly ran smack into the bionic
bunny as three straining demons wheeled it down the hall on a massive bronze dolly.

The Grabbit’s leer had grown wider ever since the twin atom smashers had been attached to the creature’s sides, like coiling tentacles spiraling inward.

“Oh, hello, Grabbit,” Marlo said, jarred by seeing the vice principal outside of its warren. It was like seeing a mountain going out for a leisurely drive. “I just wanted to tell you about … you know … our
little job.”

The demons grunted as they heaved the Grabbit forward. Marlo trotted at their side.

“It’s actually happening right now,” she continued with pride. “My part is just about to—”

“We don’t have time for your babbling,” one demon with a gold sash tied across his heavily muscled chest growled. “If we stopped for every Chatty Cathy who wanted to suck up to the Grabbit, it would be late for its own ceremony.”

“So scram!” yelled another burly demon, wincing with exertion as it lurched the Grabbit onward.

Lately, Marlo reflected, everyone seemed on edge. Tempers flared, emotions ran high … the entire Rapacian population was restless, seeking some kind of relief. It didn’t help that, with the exotic fur carpet outside the Grabbit’s lair, every step built up a charge of static electricity that either nested within you like a swarm of hornets or nearly electrocuted anyone you touched.

“Don’t get your togas in a bunch,” she called out,
watching the demons wheel the Grabbit around the bend. As each beam of fluorescent light grazed the Grabbit’s metal skin, hidden grooves and crevices were illuminated, turning its cheerful smoothness into something ancient and malevolent. It was like watching someone’s fake smile fade when they thought no one was looking.

The Grabbit sang—if you could call it that—as it was carted away:

Marlo shrugged her dusty shoulders and began to walk away. She paused, a mischievous grin spreading across her chalky face as she looked behind her at the Grabbit’s warren. The golden door had been left open. Marlo trotted into the Grabbit’s warren for one brief glimpse of Mallvana to give her the electric tingle she needed to pull off her part of the heist.

The warren was deathly still. Spotlights sliced through the dark in languid sweeps, spilling down from Mallvana through the bronze ceiling grate. Marlo crept across, scraped the Smash ’n’ Flash Atom Cannon crates across the floor, then clambered atop them to peer through the grate.

She could just make out some activity in the main concourse. There was a stage, some scaffolding, and a large screen. Even though the sharp angle made it difficult to fully discern, Marlo thought that—if she squinted her eyes just right—she could make out Yojuanna on the screen, jabbing her elbows out to her sides and bobbing her head back and forth. She sang into her pearlescent microphone headpiece.

Marlo could see two demons in overalls working beneath the screen, securing aluminum supports and railings to a platform on the stage.

Yojuanna jerked in fits and starts. Her face was a scrolling menu of expressions—joy, determination, sultriness, despair, and mania. She also had a disturbing tendency to burst into static when she clapped her hands together.

One of the demons tapped a microphone with his finger. “Testing, testing,” he repeated dully.

Yojuanna waved her hands in the air as if she just didn’t care. She pumped her fists in front of her, sparring with an imaginary foe. Then, the pop screen saver began to lose herself entirely.

“Ugh,” the demon said to his partner with a shrug
of his bony shoulders. “Before, at least she had a good beat and was easy to dance to. Now she just creeps me out with all that hopping and depressing gibberish.”

The digital diva continued to degrade as she lapsed into a blur of tiny jagged squares. Then, suddenly, the collection of blurry boxes that was Yojuanna just winked out of existence, leaving behind a small, hot-white throb of light that dimmed nearly imperceptibly. The demon sighed as he knelt for a rope by the microphone stand.

“Good riddance … help me with this, will you?”

The other demon worker scrambled up onto the rostrum. The two yanked ropes through pulleys mounted on the ceiling until a bright green banner rose above the stage:
WELCOME TO MALLVANA DAY: EVERYTHING MUST GO!

“They must be having one heck of a sale,” Marlo murmured. “Everything must go …”

She glanced down at an antique great-great-grandfather clock in the corner. Its face read half past VII, which Marlo assumed meant seven.

“Everything must go …
including me
!”

She hopped down from the crates and saw a huge painting in another corner covered by a billowing gray drop cloth. The exposed corner revealed a brilliant green …
rabbit’s foot
.

Curious, Marlo tugged the cloth free. She gasped. Before her was a nearly life-sized portrait of the Grabbit,
ancient by the looks of it—cracked paint, chipped varnish, and canvas peeling out of its intricately carved silver-leaf frame. Marlo’s exhaustion-rimmed eyes narrowed.

“Perfect,” she purred.

She knelt beneath the towering portrait and worried the peeling flaps of the canvas with her fingers until she had freed the entire painting.

“I might just pull a rabbit out of a hat after all,” she snickered as she rolled the canvas up tightly, bundled it in her arms, and hurried down the deserted hallway.

33 · POETiC iNJUSTiCE

MILTON COULD BARELY
breathe inside the scratchy burlap sack the demon guard had pulled over his head. Through a slight tear in the fabric, he could make out the walls of a tunnel, which were the color of bruises and contusions. Sporadic flashes of electricity made the tunnel seem somehow alive, creating a horrible confusion of trembling shadows.

“Owwwrrmphh!” Milton protested through the gag in his mouth as the guard shoved him into a gleaming black stagecoach with the two other boys.

“What’s wrong with
him?”
the stagecoach driver asked the demon guard. “Speech impediment?”

“No, Byron. Just mouthy.”

“It’s
Lord
Byron!” the driver snapped. “And if being mouthy were a crime, half the employees here would have scarves in their gobs!”

Lord Byron peeled Milton’s chin free of the sack and untied his kerchief. Milton stretched his aching jaws. His mouth felt like a lint trap after drying a dozen wool sweaters.

“Thanks,” Milton managed through cracked, dried lips.

“I assure you,” Lord Byron replied, “it has nothing to do with kindness. It’s just that, as a lover of words, I cannot tolerate them being muffled. Language must be allowed to run free, like a stallion.”

Lord Byron cracked a whip over his skittish horse’s albino head. “Get a move on, Leucous!” the veiny red demon shouted.

The stagecoach lurched forward. The three captive passengers were slammed to the back of the carriage.

“Ouch!” one boy yelped from beneath his burlap hood.

I need to figure a way out of this
, Milton thought desperately.
A kid like me wouldn’t last a second in Sadia. It’s full of bullies … big
, bad
bullies … bullies like …

Milton gulped.

Damian
. Of course.
He’s dead, which means he’s here, which means that—being the baron of barbarity—he has to be in Sadia. They’ve-probably already-put his face on all their money. I’m doomed
. Milton tried to shake his mind clear of anxiety. He had to think of something…

Milton leaned forward. “Lord Byron?” he asked.

“Byron!”
cackled one of the boys. “What a nerd name!”

“Weren’t you a poet?” Milton continued, hoping to establish some rapport with the driver. “Up on the Stage?”

“I was
the
poet!” Lord Byron shot back. “And still am!”

“I’m
. a poet, too,” brayed the donkey boy.
“Here I sit, brokenhearted …”

“I will have
no
lavatory doggerel in my carriage!” Lord Byron ordered.

The demon stagecoach driver turned to Milton and smiled: a jagged fence of exposed teeth with lips curled on the inside. “Would you like to hear one of my poems?”

Of all the questions in the universe, “Would you like to hear one of my poems?” is the hardest, as there is no good way of answering it.

Milton sighed. “Yeah, sure.”

“While it’s not yet fully refined,” the demon went on, “it is evidence that my Byronic mastery of the English language did not expire upon my death.”

He coughed, clearing a throat that Milton could plainly hear was clear to begin with.

“Bunnies will go to France, and they will look up teachers’ underpants, then do the latest bunny dance—”

Laughter exploded from beneath the burlap hoods of the two other boys.

“Underpants!”
they chortled in unison.

Lord Byron stiffened. “It’s experimental,” he said
defensively. “I obviously don’t literally mean
underpants
, per se, but instead the feelings that we all keep hidden away—”

“I think I know one of your poems,” Milton interrupted. “One of your
old
ones.”

Lord Byron puffed out his exposed chest until the ribs stuck out like a batting cage.

“How flattering,” he said in a sorry excuse for false modesty.

Milton dredged his mind for scraps of remembered poetry until a verse surfaced.

“A
thing of beauty is a joy forever …,” Milton said.

“KEATS!!” Lord Byron bellowed.
“THAT WAS KEATS!!”

“Byron! Byron! Face like a moron!”
the two hooded boys chanted.

“THAT ISN’T EVEN A PROPER RHYME!” the peeved poet screeched.

Lord Byron slowed his horse’s canter down to a trot and reached behind his seat.

“I’ll teach you shabby scapegraces that words are a privilege, not a right!”

He stopped his horse. Then he pulled out a handful of rags, jumped down from the driver’s box, and proceeded to gag the two hooded boys.

“It astes ike oogers and not,”
one boy groused.

“You should be so lucky,” Lord Byron muttered as he stuffed Milton’s kerchief back into his mouth.

Lord Byron climbed back onto the driver’s box. He snapped the reins, bringing his draw-and-quarter horse to a full gallop.

“A
thing of beauty is a joy for no one,” he grumbled. “It’s just nature showing off.
Keats …
that birdbrained, winged wannabe, he couldn’t tell a good poem from a cuttlebone …
wait.”

Lord Byron looked down from the stagecoach at the mottled red and purple channel. The way was blocked by a series of bright orange cones.

“I need this like I need an X-ray,” the driver groaned.

A large, handmade sign hung on the wall, with an arrow pointing to a branch of the channel:
SADISTIC CHANNEL REPAIR UNDER WAY. SHORTCUT TO SADIA
.

The pulsating meat demon flicked the reins, and the stagecoach veered down the bypass. They soon arrived at a grand foyer, carpeted in blood-red shag and flanked by two huge Gothic columns. A paper banner hung from the ceiling of the channel:
UNWELCOME TO NORTH SADIA
. A tall, black-robed figure emerged from the foyer and staggered shakily to meet the demon and his cargo.

“Whoa, Leucous!” Lord Byron called to his nervous horse. The stagecoach came to a squeaky halt.

Milton’s eyelashes brushed the lens of his glasses as he pressed his eye against the gash in the hood.

The demon grabbed a burgundy pouch next to him. The disgustingly visible veins of his arms bulged from
the strain, though the pouch seemed no bigger than a change purse. Lord Byron hopped out onto the ground. Milton rubbed his burlap hood against the glass of the stagecoach window until the slit aligned perfectly with his right lens.

“So,” the teetering figure said in a higher-than-expected voice, “you have what we are waiting for?”

“What?” Lord Byron said. “Oh yes. Atrocious grammar.”

He patted the velvet pouch he held in his trembling hand. “I’d like to take it inside myself, if you don’t mind.”

The robed entity paused, swaying like a tree in a storm.

“Of course,” it said finally. “As you wish. Only, I thought you might want to hurry to Rapacia and deliver poem for ceremony.”

“Poem?” Lord Byron said, smiling. “Really?”

“Yes,” the figure replied. “Grabbit wants poem for end of Mallvana ceremony. But if you want to deliver diamond personally, I am sure Keats can give poem.”

“Keats!” Lord Byron screeched. The veins and arteries laced across his skin pumped with fury. It was as if he were having a heart attack on the outside.

Milton leaned against the stagecoach door to give himself a better view.

“Yes.” The robed figure nodded. “He was just here. He is very excited about giving poem.”

Lord Byron flushed all over, darkening from red straight to purple, ignoring fuchsia in the process.

“I’ll pluck that preening parakeet with my poetic prowess!” the bright red demon alliterated as he turned on his exposed heel. The robed figure coughed for his attention. He swung around, his red-rimmed eyes quivering with impatience. The figure held out its tiny hand.

“Oh, right,” Lord Byron said vaguely. “Of course.”

He wrested a larger-than-normal diamond from the sack and dropped it into the figure’s hand. The weight of it made the robed figure wobble and lurch.

“Thank you,” the figure replied. “You do your job good.”

“Well,”
corrected Lord Byron as he ran back to his black coach. He stopped suddenly by the carriage door. “I almost forgot …”

The wooden door swung open. Milton tumbled onto the ground. Through the slit, he could see Lord Byron grabbing the other two boys with his slimy meat hooks and flinging them out of the stagecoach.

The demon climbed onto the driver’s box. Leucous reared into the air, whinnying, his muzzle flecked with foam.

With a snap of a whip, Lord Byron and his unsettling draw-and-quarter horse charged into the swollen darkness of the tunnel of bruises.

The looming, listing figure stood silent. Its black
robe billowed in the rippling gust of sour wind from down the channel. In the crook of its arms, it held the dense, despairing, and dazzling diamond. The figure shook off its hood, freeing its pink hair.

“All clear,” the Japanese girl said as she tousled her cotton-candy bob.

From behind a column emerged a squat girl with a haircut that was either really, really bad or the latest thing; Milton couldn’t be sure. The girl looked down the Sadistic Channel nervously.

“You think he’s really gone?” the girl asked.

A voice as thick and dark as a smoker’s chest X-ray gurgled from beneath the Japanese girl. “Norm, can you get Tokyo off of me?”

“It is
Takara,”
the Japanese girl replied as the girl with the hacked-up hair—named Norm, apparently—helped her off the shoulders of another person: a hulking, big-boned tank of a girl who had served as the robed figure’s sturdy trunk. The frail Japanese girl cupped the diamond in her trembling hands. Norm and the big, creepy girl peered down, mouths slack with awe, at the glittering jewel.

“It is so heavy!” Takara said. “But so small. It looks like tear.”

Behind them, a Gothic column flanking the grand foyer tilted, then slammed into the other. Both pillars smashed into shards of paper and dust as they tumbled to the blood-red-carpeted floor.

“Good thing veiny poet demon gone!” Takara said.

Norm looked over at the damage. “Yeah,” she replied. “No wonder the drama department was going to throw them out.”

The beefy girl—
Where have I seen her before?
Milton thought as he eyed the scene from the ground—blew her blond bangs out of her face. Her wide-set eyes twinkled with greed as she gazed down upon the diamond. “Let me see it.”

Norm looked up at the strange girl’s squared head and thick features with distrust. “You
are
seeing it, Amandi.”

“You know what I mean,” the hefty girl snapped.

Norm and Takara looked at one another. Takara shrugged and rolled the diamond into Amandi’s palm. Amandi—
What a weird name
, Milton thought—was the only human so far who didn’t struggle with the diamond’s surprising weight.

“It’s …
-perfect,”
she said as she licked beads of sweat from her fuzzy upper lip.

The girls looked at Amandi suspiciously.

“So what next?” Takara asked.

Norm smirked, shaking her head. “Well, I guess that’s up to Marlo,” she replied with a shrug. “Wherever she is.”

“Marlo!” Milton yelped with surprise, though to the diamond-distracted girls beyond him, it sounded more like a muffled, “Mlow!”