Okay, this is the last collection that I'll post. After this you get single episodes, posted one at a time. A new character, and signs that things are about to go to Hell.
RED JACK
EPISODE FOURTEEN: “ROUND ONE”
“Talk about what?”
“Silverberg,” Jester said with resignation.
“Do we have to?”
He nodded slowly. “I’m afraid so, Jack. Take Mina, for example. She wanted to kill you to shorten her sentence, until she decided to be infatuated.”
“She did what?”
“Later. After Mina, there was Acuzio. He out and out gave it away that one of his superiors ordered him to send you Down Below.”
I slid my knife back into my sleeve. “Fine, I’m listening. What’s going on?”
“Something. We can be sure there’s something going on. I’ve been down here a long time and I’ve learned how to notice when the Demons are acting strangely.” He got up and went to the window.
“Come on,” I urged him, “tell me what’s up.”
“Down,” he said. “Remember where you are. And come to that, do you remember what Silverberg said?”
“Silverberg says a lot of things.”
“He said that the bosses were interested in you. You know, the whole ‘most dangerous mortal’ thing.” Turning back to me, he tugged at his gloves. “Something big is going down in the Down Below, and the bosses are recruiting.”
“You think so? How can you be sure?”
“I can’t,” Jester admitted. “But I’m willing to bet damnation that I’m right.”
*****
A few hours later, I walked back to my apartment alone. Mina was probably worried about me—I’d put a lot of effort into giving her the slip. On this particular day, there was quite a crowd of Lost Souls cluttering the storefront I was walking past. When I say “storefront,” I really mean something like “lower-end red light district,” which is the closest thing they have in the Valley. It was getting dark, but that never stopped the locals from going about their sordid business. You’d think that I would be all over a strip-mall brothel, but since my encounter with a scattergun-wielding Italian my taste for hookers was somewhat diminished.
Somebody was yelling. I mean, everybody was yelling, but somebody was really making their voice heard. It was a female of some kind. Out of morbid curiosity, I pushed through the crowd to get closer.
Thinking back on it, I wasn’t really surprised when I saw her. Things stop surprising you after a while down there. Tall, lean, obviously of Negroid descent, there she was. Not thinking, I called out, “Holy crap, Shassa?”
She whirled around and leveled her usual glare at me. “You!” she screeched, advancing on me. “I heard you were here. Where the hell have you been?”
“Exactly,” I said without thinking. A hand came out of nowhere and snapped my head to the side. Even after five years, I think it was, she still had a painful slap.
“You murdered me, you b*****d!” she screamed, standing a little shy of a foot away.
“Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Sorry,” I said, backing away.
She kept pace with me, using the unfair advantage of facing in the same direction she was moving to great effect. “Sorry? Sorry? You stabbed me in the eye, you b*****d! Why would you do something like that?”
I put out a hand to stop her from coming any closer, gripping her by the shoulder as I calmly explained. “Well, there was this hooker…”
“A hooker?” She stopped straining against me and stood confused as I continued.
“Yeah, a hooker. I’d been cutting her open, and she wasn’t quite dead yet, and then you walked in—”
“You were murdering a hooker?”
“Yeah. And then you walked in, and I knew you’d go to the police if you saw me, so I—”
Crack. Hand to face. “You murdered me because I walked in on you murdering a prostitute?” She was angry for real now, I could tell.
Did she still have them? Yep, out came the tonfa. In life, Shassa was always worried that somebody was going to mug her someday, so she learned some self-defense with these funky weapons called tonfa, like nightsticks but kind of not. She figured that if anybody jumped her and she pulled those out, they’d back away rather than fight a chick who carried foot-long pieces of wood around specifically for hitting muggers with. Apparently, she had them on her when I put my knife in her head. Always prepared, that Shassa.
“Your turn,” she said, and dashed straight in. It’s not like I could have backed down, so I brought my knives into my hands and parried most of the initial wave of frantic attacks. Shassa hadn’t wasted her five-year head start. We fought right there in the middle of that crowd of people, and I can tell you for certain that not all of the bystanders were standing back far enough.
I’ll admit that she was pressing me pretty hard. I wasn’t gaining any ground, and she definitely wasn’t losing any. Thinking like Red Jack, I dropped my guard just enough to let her have a few free hits, then rammed both knives into her diaphragm. The look of surprise on Shassa’s face was priceless, until she swung both of her tonfa around to bash me in the back of the neck. Did you know there’s a nerve point there? I didn’t.
As I stumbled around trying to regain my focus, Shassa relentlessly buffeted me about the head. “Come on!” I shouted louder than I needed to in order to hear myself, “I’m sorry about killing you! We’re both here now, so can’t we be friends again?” Crack. A blow to the temple knocked me sideways onto the ground.
Shassa squatted down next to my head and pressed the end of a tonfa into the side of my head. “I’m going to get my revenge now,” she whispered.
I know she hadn’t counted on me still having enough of my wits about me to ram a knife into her jaw, but there it was. Ripping the weapon free, I rolled away to a safe distance while she was momentarily dazed by the brain-stab. “Bet that brings back memories,” I called out as I got to my feet, using a bystander for support. He gave me a rough shove in Shassa’s general direction, for which I was grateful.
Fire. Lots of it. And it seemed to be coming from Shassa. She really hadn’t been wasting her time, it seemed. I reeled, accidentally inhaled some flames, and went to the ground again. My vision got cloudy, then dark, and finally I passed out altogether.
*****
[Jester]
Jack is…incredibly lucky he has me around. I found him passed out in the street, most of his clothes burned away, with a girl who must have been his opponent in a similar state across the street from him. Shooing away the scavengers, I hefted him onto my shoulder (he’s heavy for a lean guy) and jogged him home.
I guess it was already time for another talk.
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RED JACK
EPISODE FIFTEEN: “RETROFIT”
[This installment is from the perspective of Jester.]
“She used fire.”
“Jack, I’ve been thinking about our encounter with Acuzio again—”
“She used fire.”
“Pay attention, Jack. I think we need to—”
“How did she learn how to use fire?”
I let off a blast that clipped the side of Jack’s head, making him yelp and jump away in surprise. “Are you listening now?” I asked levelly. He nodded, wide-eyed. “Good,” I said, and started again. “Jack, I’ve been thinking about our encounter with Acuzio again. After going over it in my head a few times, I came to realize something. You and Mina and I, we’re tough. We’ve beaten opponents who, by all rights, should have killed us with little or no effort. Granted, we only barely beat them, but we still won.”
Jack grinned. I sort of don’t like it when he smiles. It’s not like mine, which is intentionally warm and inviting (I’m all about effect, you know). His smile is…sycophantic? That’s a good way to describe it. “Win we did,” he said, brandishing a knife at the air. “And if Acuzio ever shows up here again, I’ll show him that Red Jack earned his reputation.”
“Please take this seriously,” I groaned, dropping onto the foot of Jack’s bed. “Like I said, and you agreed, we’re tough, but Acuzio proved that there are Demons—heck, Hammer proves that there are Lost Souls—who can clean up in a fight with us.”
His eyes narrowing like they always do when he doesn’t quite get the point, Jack perched on the edge of the table and idly prodded himself in the thigh with his knife. “What are you getting at?”
I drew myself up, putting on my best serious expression for delivering such an important proclamation. “We need to improve ourselves, Jack. Our fighting, I mean. That bird-woman I fought, Avel, made me use all of the tricks I know before I brought her down. I’ve seen you tear into plenty of people, but I’ve also had to drag you away from the wreckage of your own defeat several times that I remember…including today.” He snorted derisively, but otherwise gave no indication that he’d heard that last bit. “And Mina, she’s too direct for her own good. It might work against others who fight like she does, but against somebody like me or Acuzio, somebody who doesn’t like hitting things as hard as they can until whatever they’re hitting breaks, she’s—”
“Toast,” Jack finished for me. “I get it. What’d you have in mind?” He was visibly fighting telling me off for suggesting that he wasn’t all that. Honestly, I wasn’t liking admitting that I wasn’t, either, but let it not be said that Jester is dishonest where his wellbeing is concerned.
“I already sent Mina off to work something out, so don’t worry about her. As for you…well, I can’t think of anything specific. You could use some way to fight from a distance. You’re great up close, of course, but if you can’t close with the enemy you need another way to go at it.” I shrugged. “Do you think you can come up with something?”
“You bet,” he replied, clearly annoyed. “I’m a cutter, not a tactician, you know.”
*****
The key to fighting the way I do is being able to shape the energy you release. So far I had managed beams, bursts, and spheres, all of which culminated in explosions no matter how I went about it. That seemed to be the nature of the kind of energy I manipulated. Whatever I threw, I could be sure that it would always explode at some point after I released it. I used this explosive energy for direct attacks, and had also managed to use it to go airborne. Both terribly useful, but also limited in their application.
Along a low wall I had set several pieces of refuse picked up out of the gutter. Target practice was really the only way to experiment with my abilities. The only fun way, at any rate. Pointing my palm at an old can, I let off a blast that sent it spinning away through the air. Easy. I’d done it thousands of times before. A glass bottle shattered with my next attack, a narrow beam that lanced through its center. Not a terribly powerful technique, but useful when I had to be accurate. Okay, enough warming up. Time to get serious. Or, at least, time to get some real work done.
“You’re Jack’s friend?”
I jumped. She’d caught me off-guard, appearing out of nowhere like that. “And you’re Shassa?” I returned. She nodded curtly and stepped right up inside my comfort zone.
“Where is he?” Clearly she was agitated. Normally I’d just turn on the Jester charm and take her home, but…somehow it seemed wrong, given the relationship between her and Jack.
I shrugged. “I sent him off to figure out a way to take you out. I don’t know where he is.” It was honest, but of course not the answer she was looking for.
“I’ll find him, then,” was her response as she turned on her heel and started to walk away.
“He’ll kill you, you know,” I warned her. Shassa stopped and glanced at me over her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, so I went on. “I don’t know how you two know each other, but it’s obvious you have a history. That doesn’t matter to him. I’ve known him long enough to be sure of that. Another thing I’ve learned about Jack is that he won’t allow himself to die.”
“How can you be so sure?” The question was quiet—I almost didn’t hear it.
Another shrug, and I cautiously inched toward her. “He wants to get out of here. It’s amazing, I know, but he feels bad about what he did before he came to the Valley. He wants to try again, and he won’t let you, or me, or anyone else take his chance away. My advice to you is to give up now, before he sends you Down Below.”
Shassa snorted, her hands drifting to the tonfa hanging at her waist. “Jack owes me,” she said simply.
I let her walk away then. She was cutting into my practice time.
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RED JACK
EPISODE SIXTEEN: “INSPECTION”
[Back to Jack again for a while.]
I know I was supposed to be practicing. I know. But practicing is boring, and anyway, I didn’t have any ideas. Instead, I was wandering some streets I hadn’t explored before. Honestly, I’m not sure what I was doing there. Maybe I was looking for something interesting to do, but more likely I was hoping a solution to kicking Shassa’s a** would fall into my lap. Fire. Who told her she could use fire?
There was a low, brick building at the mouth of a blind alley. I don’t know why, but my need to go into that building was incredible. The door was hanging halfway open, for crying out loud! How could I not go inside? Nudging the door open with my foot, I poked my head through. It was dark, but that didn’t stop me from stepping right inside and making my way toward the back.
“You’re an idiot,” came a voice from somewhere I couldn’t see. I brought my knives out and spun around to catch my attacker, but found that there was no such individual. “Calm down,” the voice said again. “I’m not looking for a fight. I just wanted to say hello, sort of, but now I’m wondering why I’m still here.”
From the darkness ahead of me appeared an unimpressive-looking old man in jeans and a T-shirt. Not really what I was expecting. “Who?” I demanded.
”Call me Nigel,” he said, “and put away your knives.” With a start, I discovered that I had slid my weapons back into my sleeves without realizing it. “I’m wondering if you could answer a few questions…”
“Umm...sure,” I said with a nod, even though all I really wanted to do was get out of there. This Nigel, whoever he was, terrified me, I’m not ashamed to admit. It was probably the clothes. Nobody down here dressed…well, normally.
“Wonderful. We’ll start with the basics. To begin with, I’m wondering what you were sent down here for?” He was smiling. That was another thing that frightened me.
Shifting nervously from foot to foot, I recounted as many of my murders as I could recall off the top of my head, which is to say most of them. Nigel just stood there and nodded along, occasionally making a small noise of some kind, like he was talking to himself. “And then, of course, you repented and they had you interred here instead of Hell.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. I guess that’s not so odd. Anybody in my position would know what I did to get to the Valley. “I’m wondering, then, why you want to go back?”
“Excuse me?” I was getting tired of people surprising me. “What do you mean? What kind of a question is that?”
“An important one,” was Nigel’s response. “I’m wondering why somebody who so obviously enjoyed what he did would want to start over again. Are you planning to repeat your actions, or, I’m wondering, will you make an honest effort at being a good person?”
“You’re annoying,” I informed him, which apparently didn’t warrant a response. He must have been used to it. “It should be obvious.”
Nigel quirked an eyebrow. “I’m wondering now what you mean by that.”
“Retrospect,” I said. “They say you see your whole life before right before you die. I saw enough of mine to know that I’d done it wrong. Let me ask you, if you’d come to that conclusion, would you be able to live with it?”
“So you’re legitimate,” the old man summarized. “That isn’t what I was expecting. I’m wondering now what I should have expected…”
I didn’t see him leave, but he was gone then. Hurling curses at him in a whisper, I went back outside, my desire to explore the building suddenly diminished. “Creepy old man. What a jackass. Did he think I didn’t want to live again? That’s stupid. That’s really stupid. Phenomenally. I can’t believe he’d ask something like that!” I kicked a stray rock in frustration and watched it skitter over the ground.
Come to think of it, though, why did I want to go back so badly? Was there, in fact, any chance at all that I could redeem myself? Granted, it shouldn’t be that hard to do better than I did the first time around, but if that wasn’t enough I was still screwed. Things would have been so much simpler if they’d just damned me and called it good. No, I shouldn’t think like that.
I jumped and let out a shriek as an arm slid around my shoulder and what appeared to be a violet-skinned woman with matching hair and a third eye in the middle of her forehead pressed up against my side. “I hope old Nigel didn’t frighten you too much,” she said by way of greeting.
Normally in this situation I would throw such a scantily-clad woman to the ground and cut out her guts, but I found myself unable to move. “Not too much,” I lied. Apparently I could still talk. Great, more talking.
“Good, good,” the Demoness crooned, giving my shoulders a squeeze. “Nigel’s a wonderful investigator, the best, but his people skills are somewhat lacking.” I grunted agreement. “Now, I’m wondering—oh dear, I’m talking like him now! Forgive me.” I grunted agreement. “Do you want something to drink while we talk?” I grunted agreement.
*****
It wasn’t my kind of bar. Way too classy, with proper tablecloths on the tables and a bartender that looked like he actually bathed occasionally. The place was far too clean to be a typical Valley bar, so I figured it must be a Demons-only establishment. She and I were seated at a table for two close to the center of the dining area—what kind of place was this supposed to be, this close to Hell?—with a bottle of something-or-other she had ordered between us that she refilled my glass from as I emptied it somewhat more rapidly than I really should have.
“Jack, dear, do you feel like answering a few questions?” she asked innocently, giving me a smile and winking at me…with her third eye. That was kind of unsettling. I held back from telling her as much, though, for some reason, merely nodding my consent. “Wonderful! My name’s Estrelle, by the way, and it’s a great pleasure to meet the infamous Red Jack.” Done spewing empty felicitations, she filled my glass again and sat back in her chair.
She didn’t ask me anything particularly significant, it seemed. Just things like what my favorite color was, my favorite foods, where I wanted to take a vacation. She asked me about growing up, which I had a hard time remembering, and about my life right before I started my career as a butcher of humans, which was even harder to recall. Then we talked about her for a long time, but if you asked me to tell you what was said I couldn’t do it to save my life.
“You’re messing with my head,” I finally managed to get out after what must have been two or three hours.
Estrelle smiled. “Yes, I am. What about it?” Not even trying to hide it. I wasn’t as scared of her as I was of Nigel, but there was definitely something threatening there. Wasn’t there always, though? That’s the way it seemed. I went for my knives and came up empty-handed. “You dropped them off at home on your way here, don’t you remember?” she asked with just the slightest hint of amusement. I didn’t remember, of course, and that started to make me angry. She was making a fool out of Red Jack, which could not be allowed under any circumstances. At least Nigel hadn’t been so damn smug about it. I tried to stand up, but my legs didn’t work. “You’re going to hurt yourself,” Estrelle warned me, which I responded to by slamming a fist down on the tabletop. Maybe “slam” is the wrong word, though, as the best I could manage was gently laying my palm next to my glass and glaring very slightly. With another infuriating smile, Estrelle said, “I think that’s enough questions for today. Goodbye, Jack.” Then, as seemed to happen entirely too often, everything went dark.
I woke up in my bed, Mina kneeling next to my head with a blank expression that on anybody else would have signified concern. “I’m fine…I think,” I assured her. “How long was I out for?”
She glanced out the window. “Two days,” she said. “What happened?”
For the life of me, I couldn’t remember.
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RED JACK
EPISODE SEVENTEEN: “ROUND TWO”
“Try again.” Mina raised her cleaver, sliding one foot back to get into her defensive stance. I tightened my grip on my knives, wiping sweat from my forehead with a sleeve. She just stared at me, waiting. Why had I agreed to this? Come to think of it, I hadn’t. She’d just grabbed me and dragged me outside out of nowhere, muttering something about practice.
Well, since she wasn’t going to let me out of it, I might as well get something out of the session. I ran at her for what must have been the hundredth time, faked a jump to the left, hurled myself to the right, and spun low, trying to cut her legs out from under her. Mina was gone, then, but I knew where she was. Sure enough, her cleaver came down on my head a second later, plowing me into the dirt and sending chunks of grey matter into the air.
When I regained my feet, Mina was sitting cross-legged next to me, wiping my residue off her cleaver. “Again,” she said as she started to stand, but I reached out and caught her by the wrist.
“No more,” I growled. “You’ve won every time. I’m done.”
Mina sat back down. “That is because you did not practice like Jester told you to,” she pointed out.
“Shut up!” I put my knives away, jammed my hands into my pockets, and started to stalk away. Mina walked too close behind me at my left shoulder—I could feel her staring at the back of my head.
“Are you not concerned?” she asked, placing a hand at the small of my back.
I shivered. “Concerned about what?” I already knew the answer, but some part of me was lying to the rest of me that I wasn’t about to have this conversation.
Mina must have killed that part of herself. “More Demons will come. They will kill you and take you to Hell if you are not able to defeat them. Are you not concerned?” She stepped in front of me and took hold of my jacket, preventing me from simply going around her.
Only a little annoyed (it was, after all, Mina), I let my forehead rest against hers and mimicked her motion, winding my fingers through the holes in her rags. “Mina…the only thing that concerns me right now is that I might burn in Hell. The Demons? I could care less about them. It’s what they want to do to me that bothers me.” Before she could respond, I slammed my hip against her pelvis, pivoted, and dragged her through the air over my shoulder, throwing her down on her back. “Point to Red Jack,” I growled as I turned and started to walk away.
Her hand clamped onto my shoulder faster than I was expecting, and so caught me off guard. Not that it mattered, because at that moment there was a gout of flame in my face that knocked me off my feet. Coughing violently and choking on the heat, I staggered upright in time to see Mina charging Shassa, cleaver arcing in from the right only to be deflected by one of Shassa’s tonfa. The darker girl swung around her other weapon with surprising speed, catching Mina in the side of the head—she dropped to her knees, eyes wide, a hand clapping to her left temple.
Shassa advanced on me, tonfa whirling, creating a spiral of flame that grew with each revolution. Mina swung around on the ground, hacking at Shassa’s ankles, but Shassa merely hopped up and came down on Mina’s cleaver, pinning it. She then turned and leveled a tonfa at Mina’s face, gathering fire at the head. I barely managed to get over to them and hook a knife under the tonfa, forcing it up, before a column of fire erupted into the air. The other tonfa came around at my face, but I was able to get my other knife up and deflect it. Mina was on her feet again, swinging her cleaver straight down at Shassa, who leapt back and away from us as we pressed the attack.
She was too fast; I had to stop her from moving somehow. So, having no better plan, I crouched low and threw myself at her legs. A foot came down on the back of my head, putting me once-again face-down in the dirt. The pressure was lifted, and I saw that it was Mina, not Shassa, stepping off of me. She hopped over my prone form and launched herself at Shassa again. I realized, with a twinge of annoyance, that she honestly didn’t care if I was there or not. She had made Shassa her personal opponent. Well, that couldn’t be allowed. Shassa had a grudge against me, not Mina.
Shassa’s tonfa connected with Mina’s face at the same time my heel hit the back of her head. She dropped straight down, collapsing in a heap as I stepped around her and lashed out at Shassa, knives whirling. I was fast, but she was still faster, and while I could tell she was having a hard time defending against all of my attacks, I was having a much, much harder time keeping her from returning fire, pun intended. Finally, though, she broke through, jamming the head of a tonfa under my chin and snapping my head back. I stumbled backward as she landed blow after blow to my stomach, putting all of my effort into just staying on my feet. There was a moment of hesitation—I struck. Shassa jumped back, out of range. I pulled back my arm and brought it down, hurling my knife at her forehead.
Nothing happened. Shassa stood where she was, laughing hysterically. I looked down, and discovered that my knife had caught on a loose thread on my sleeve and was now dangling impotently. “What’s the matter, Jack?” Shassa crowed. “Can’t get it up?”
My knife was in my hand again in an instant as I crossed the distance between us and renewed my attack, leaping and spinning and diving, coming at her from every possible angle. No matter what I did, though, there was always a fireball or steel cylinder waiting to push me back again.
She was just out of reach now, falling back as I came forward, gathering fire. I had to act quickly if I didn’t want to die. A faint hissing caught my attention. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mina staggering to her feet, scraping her cleaver across the ground. If I didn’t do something soon, she would steal my thunder or get herself toasted.
Ah! That was it! Shassa was still out of reach, but I lashed out anyway, sweeping my knife through the air. She was laughing at me, making condescending remarks about the futility of striking out of range. That quickly stopped at my knife plunged into her throat, and then I jerked on the thread it had caught on, brought it back into my hand, and struck again, cleaving her open at the windpipe as I pulled on the thread again. As she started to tumble to the ground I pounced on her and thrust with abandon, jamming my knives into whatever caught my eye. When I stopped, Shassa was barely recognizable.
Mina came and stood next to me, looking down at Shassa’s carcass. “She will get back up,” Mina said quietly. “I know she is your friend, but you should finish her now.”
It was practically a replay of the aftermath of my fight with Mina way back when. I knelt down and took Shassa’s head by the hair, preparing to take her head, and then stopped. Cursing quietly, I got back up and put my knives away. Mina looked at me quizzically as I tried to say what I was thinking without actually admitting to anything. “I…I feel…not good about this,” was the best I could come up with.
“Guilt?” Mina obnoxiously translated.
“Don’t say it like that!” I hissed, clapping my hands to my ears in the hopes that it wouldn’t be true if she didn’t say it again.
But Mina didn’t understand that sort of thing. “You feel guilty because you murdered her before and stopped her from taking revenge,” she explained. “Should we go?”
That one caught me off guard, I’ll admit. Mina wasn’t in the habit of showing mercy, and neither was I (shut up), but it seemed like she got the point this time. I just nodded and walked away, Mina tagging along behind.
Guilt is a pain in the a**. That doesn’t count as admitting it.
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RED JACK
EPISODE EIGHTEEN: “OPENING MOVES”
Wars are fought for any number of reasons. Usually they’re fought over resources or personal grudges, with a healthy sprinkling of territorial claims for flavor. There are times, though, when nobody, not even those involved, can understand why a war is being fought. Everybody just keeps pushing through because, while they don’t necessarily know why they’re fighting, they know that losing is bad. That’s basically the story of my life. I was never entirely sure what was going on, but I knew that if I stopped fighting—or, more importantly, stopped winning—that bad things were going to happen. It was an odd twist of fate that bad things happened to me anyway, and odder still that the guy handing out judgment was giving me a chance to undo it all. Even after all that time, I still wasn’t sure I trusted the situation, but all I could do was keep pushing forward and pray that everything turned out well.
Between the three of us, I think I had it the worst. Jester always seemed to know what was going on, and Mina just didn’t care. I was the new guy, and the one with, as far as I could tell, the most on the line. That was probably a large part of why they were helping me, or maybe they were getting something out of it. Maybe they were just bored. Whatever the reason, I’ll admit that I was glad to have them on my side. Taking on all of Hell on my own was not an enticing prospect.
It honestly didn’t surprise me when Nigel was waiting in my apartment when I came home one day. I’d managed to give Mina the slip, but I was less proud of myself now that I had probable cause to believe that Nigel was somehow involved with it. “I’m wondering if you ever clean this place,” he said offhandedly. “You really should.”
I blinked at him a few times, taking off my jacket and hanging it from the back of a chair. “More questions?”
He shook his head slowly. “Not so much, but I was wondering about your take on something.” I noticed, with just a hint of annoyance, that he was sitting on my bed, which was where I wanted to be sleeping just then.
“Can we make it fast? I’m kind of tired.” I knew full well that I would end up talking to him whether I wanted to or not, so I just pulled out my jacket-hanging chair from the table and sat, waiting for Nigel to mess with my head.
Surprisingly, he didn’t. “You’re an idiot,” he said, “if you think you can challenge Hell, and I’m wondering why you would want to in the first place.” I started to make a retort, but he held up a hand and motioned for me to let him finish. “The fact is, Jack, that nobody has ever made it out of here. Sure, if you finish your service, the Boss will let you go. He has to. But he always, always, always manipulates things so that you can’t hold up your end of the bargain. That’s just what he does.” Nigel leveled a very sympathetic look at me. “I’ve worked for him since the beginning of time. I know how the Boss operates. I’m wondering why you haven’t figured it out yet, yourself.”
“That it’s a trick?” I clarified, and he nodded. “I’ve always known, are you kidding? I never believed for a moment that Hell would play it straight.” Lazily directing a forefinger at Nigel, I gave him my best Serious Look. “Believe me, though, when I say that I’m going to get out of here one way or another.”
“I’ve always wondered why every Lost Soul believes that,” said Nigel. “It’s so easy to go either way. It’s easy for a damned man to reform if he’s offered salvation, and it’s just as easy for a damned man to continue damning himself if he thinks he can get away with it…or just doesn’t care.” He stood and smoothed out his filthy T-shirt. “Anyway, I wonder if they’re expecting me back by now. I should go.” And he was gone.
Almost immediately after Nigel left, there was a knock at my door. I wasn’t in any mood to answer it, but I did anyway. Have you ever seen those really stereotypical cultist-types, the ones with the black cloaks and the hoods that hang down too far over their face? There were three of those standing outside my door, armed with, I kid you not, scythes. “I’m already a member of the church of the Grim Reaper,” I said, and started to close the door, but there was a scythe in the way. “Well, damn,” was all I had time for before the three had forced my door open and attacked me.
I jumped back away from the door and ducked to the side as a scythe came down at my head. I had to get to my knives, but there were three Death fanboys with weapons between me and them. I put my foot to the scythe’s haft and pushed it away, then switched directions and kicked its holder in the nose. He reeled back as the other two came forward, slashing wildly. Rolling under their attacks, I came up between them and grabbed their cowls, hauling downward and bringing them to the floor. As the first one came again, I pushed up into a handstand and let him have it in the face again with both feet. All three of my opponents momentarily disabled, I dashed to the table and slipped on my jacket—have to fight in style, right?—and unsheathed my knives. I caught the blade of the scythe ripping through the air toward me between my blades, forced it down, and threw my shoulder against the hooded b*****d. He went down again, his friends leaping over his prone form and striking viciously. I was already up in the air again, though, delivering a kick to the head to each of them before switching it up and cramming my knives through the tops of their skulls. Ripping my knives free as they sank to the floor, I turned to meet the remaining opponent, scissoring his neck before he had a chance to attack.
My moment of satisfaction was interrupted by more of the asstards running through my door. I turned and hurtled through my window without thinking, crashing to the street below. My knees screamed, but I forced myself to stand—and meet the dozen or so more enemies that were charging toward me. How many of these guys were there?
I spun, slashing and thrusting at anybody who came close enough, but more and more of them kept appearing and I was slowly being overwhelmed. Very fortunate I was that Mina chose that moment to finally run me down, smashing right through the middle of the horde and leaving a trail of corpses that made me just a little envious behind her. “Do not leave my vicinity until they are all dead,” she instructed me, but I had a better idea. I grabbed her by the hair and hauled her along behind me as I ran headlong through the opening she had just created. It closed behind us like a lame version of the Red Sea, scythes falling all around us. For our part, we took down at least a score of them as we fled, or rather as I fled and forced Mina to come with me.
They were pouring out of the surrounding buildings, coming at us from all sides with no apparent regard for their own safety. Mina and I had to fight hard just to advance down the street, and they just kept coming and coming, more and more every second. “What is this?” I hollered over the screams and the general clamor. “Why are there so many of them?”
“One of the bosses must have sent them,” Mina explained, putting her back to mine. “There are too many for them to be Hunters.”
As I scattered another wave of attackers, the mass parted and I was facing off against a black-cloak armed with a pair of kama, I think they’re called, rather than the scythes the others hand—probably an officer. He came at me screaming and whirling, and I threw myself against him to push him back. Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw that Mina was engaged in fighting another one like my opponent, which made me wonder how many there were. My guy fought with long, sweeping strokes that, while easy to block, hit hard and came in just fast enough to be a problem. He cut low at my legs, forcing me to hop over, then thrust his other kama into my gut. The wind knocked out of me, I came back down just in time to catch a blow to the side of the head that made me stumble sideways, but as he came at me again I ducked under his attack and headbutted him in the chest. Before he could recover, I swept my knives up and out in a semi-circle, slashing open his throat and knocking his kama back down before he could attack again. A follow-up headbutt to the throat knocked him on his a**, after which I would have finished him had another officer not come up behind me and hooked his kama over my shoulders, jerking me backwards. Then the rest of the crowd pressed in again. This was getting ridiculous.
Fire and smoke engulfed the cluster of black-cloaks directly in front of me, inciting an orgy of screaming and pleas for mercy. I seized the opportunity, plunging into the midst of the burning mob and laying about me until I’d cleared a reasonable circle. I could see Mina any more; the crowd had swallowed her up. I called out to her, but I could barely hear myself over the din and I doubted she could hear me any better. “I’m coming with you,” said a voice in my ear. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of dark skin and black, wiry hair.
“Come again?”
“When you leave the Valley. I’m coming with you. I’ve decided.” I shrugged my approval (one can never have too many allies in Hell) and started forward, intent on rescuing Mina. Shassa caught hold of my jacket and pulled me back.
“She’s already gone,” she told me. “They captured her.”
I experienced an odd emotion then. I’m not really sure how to describe it. Something like anger at having Mina taken from me and deep concern that she would be dead by the time I found her. I suppose it was the first time I’d ever really cared about another person. Don’t get any ideas, now. I wasn’t infatuated. That’s Mina’s shtick. She was, you know, my friend, and I guess you could say that the idea of being in the Valley without friends was a bad prospect for me at that point. That’s all.
The black-cloaks were starting to dissipate, now that they had their prize. I grabbed one, an officer, by the back of his cloak and started to question him, but before I finished the first thought he had slashed his own windpipe. The grin he gave me as he died told me everything I needed to know. He knew that they had won that encounter, and he knew exactly what I was going to do. “I’m going after her,” I informed Shassa, heading back into my apartment building.
She followed me inside, eyeing the décor with distaste. “Do you know how to do it?”
“Jester will know. Jester knows everything.”
*****
Jester’s house had seen better days. The corpses of black-cloaks were piled everywhere, smoldering quietly. “I have to get rid of the bodies somehow,” he said when nobody asked. I explained our situation to him, and he immediately began to do that thing he does, where he knows things he has no real reason to know. “You’re set on going after her?” he finally asked. I nodded, since words weren’t coming to me. “And she’s coming with us?” Shassa acknowledged her willingness. Jester smiled and straightened his crown. “Then I’ll get Hammer. We’re going to Hell.”
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Conviction is the key. Without conviction, nothing you do will sit right.
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