It was hard to keep his eyes open, after spending an entire 'night' meandering the sea-side city in the ring of Greed. The small goat was utterly indefatigable, though, so that as the hours went on, Sam slowed, but Apoc just kept going. Only when Sam almost fell on his face did Apoc finally call quits and hire them a taxi back to the border with Pride.
"That was an interesting first day, if nothing else," Apoc said, as the taxi slammed to a halt. If only they didn't drive like maniacs, Sam might have been able to catch a nap while they went. But alas. Apoc reached into a pocket and pulled out a roll of green bills, starting to flick through of them until he had a decent sized wad which he held toward Sam. "This probably isn't the whole of the money I owe for your services, but it'll get you a safe cab home and something to eat tomorrow."
"I have no idea how much this is even worth," Sam said, unbuckling. It might have been an insulting pittance – which would have been appropriate considering all he'd done all 'night' was stand behind Apoc as the small goat demanded repayment of debts. Besides the first, all of them had been eager to either hand over money, or laughable excuses. Apoc brushed off the latter, offering seventy-two hours to repay or forfeit. Most of the imps and fiends lost their bluster at that. What Apoc offered also might have been a king's ransom.
"If you don't believe me and I'm lying, then you have wasted one night being screwed over by a goat in a fine jacket," Apoc said. "If I'm telling the truth as to its worth, then you can ask literally anybody else and they will confirm it."
He had a point there. Sam took the money. It felt... like it was trying to flee. The currency in his hands quivered in his fist as though struggling to escape his grasp. Whatever. He left the cab, crushing a yawn with his fist. "Shouldn't I... just drive home?" he asked.
"Until you get used to crossing the wall? No," Apoc said. "Getting pancaked between the Border and the back-seat isn't fun. Especially when you get ground-beefed through the back window. So cross it on foot, hire another cab."
"And you?" Sam asked, noting how Apoc wasn't following him.
"I've got another place to be. But I'll be in contact with you. You should get a hellphone, if nothing else. You live in a society, even if it is a terrible one."
"I suppose I do. And you still have a lot of questions to answer," Sam said. Apoc just smiled, staring off into the distance, before turning and starting to walk away. Sam didn't know what to make of Apoc, on the whole. While yes, he had been tremendously helpful during Sam's disastrous first day, Sam wasn't even close to trusting him. There were too many things he didn't talk about, and too many things he'd pointedly avoided. Sam might not have been to college, but he knew when somebody was being shifty.
Sam's gait was slow as he approached the gate back into Pride, which was as before marked by a checkpoint, a lot of cars holding imps and fiends... and a large pit, full of smoldering carcasses, which was new. The stink of burnt meat reached his nose, a foul stench not at all like beef or pork. The incineration of something inherently foul, maybe. He sauntered over to it, his fatigue for the moment shelved.
The cadavers were all bestial in shape, many moths and spiders and lizards and even an odd fish. But they were united now in that they were closer to charcoal than a person. As he watched, another carcass was hurled into the pit, this one still smoldering slightly, which dragged Sam's eyes up to the edge of the pit, and from there, to a car which was on fire. The people working the checkpoint didn't even bother trying to put it out. They just yanked it out of the way, hurled the incinerated driver and now, the passenger, into the pit, and let the thing burn.
Sam wandered closer. "What's this about?" Sam asked, as one of the long-horned men who were striking the smut off of their bright yellow gloves passed close by.
"Some idiot tried jumping the border," the fiend said. His coworker gave a loud, braying laugh.
"If you're Damned, stay in Pride, fuckin' dumbasses," the coworker said. "Don't even give us the pleasure of eatin' 'em. Just fries 'em right up."
"This happen to all Sinners?" Sam asked, an unsettled feeling settling on him.
"What, d'ya fall off the back of a turnip truck outta Wrath?" the bright-gloved fiend asked. "Lucifer's Law! Sinners get Pride, everything else belongs to us. And if they ever try to leave, phbtbtbt!" he made an exploding gesture with his hands. Sam just nodded, and looked to the car. The burn marks started a few steps ahead. Right about... the exact spot the Pride Border lay.
He walked, that sinking feeling now leaving him feeling hollow, as he reached the barrier, and pushed. It felt like walking against the wind, but it didn't even come close to slowing him the way it had before. With a faintly metal click, he was through, and the sky went indigo. He could feel the boldness and the avarice in the air again, hear the gunfights in the distance. See a sun rising sullenly over this corner of Hell.
"Apoc almost killed me," Sam said, turning a glance over his shoulder. All that had saved him from becoming a charcoal briquette was... he wasn't even sure. Naked luck? Being an 'Elemental', which he still hadn't had meaningfully explained to him? A pulse of outrage hit him, of 'how dare he', but the fact was, he was still in the bottom rung. Where Apoc might be manipulating him, it was obvious the goat still considered him an asset worth developing, instead of a resource to be exploited and discarded. "Hell is bullshit."
"You're tellin' me bud!" the fiend from the checkpoint shouted as he ducked back into the concrete bunker beside the lanes.
Another yawn snuck out, and Sam could only fight fatigue so long. He wanted a shower, and he wanted to sleep. And he wasn't particular as to which one came first.
Chapter 3
Before Is Not Now
Sam jerked up and out of the chair, almost falling onto his face before the nightmare fled. His heart hammered in his chest, the room bathed in a faint orange glow for a moment as the last vestiges of the phantasmagoria left him. He couldn't even remember exactly what the nightmare was about, only the feeling of being thrown down, from a great height, by somebody. Somebody who had a plan. A few seconds, and the dream was gone, though the fear remained. The glow died, dropping the room to almost blackness, only the paltry light cast by his hair and eyes defining edges.
"Sleeping in the chair again," Sam muttered, giving a glance to the leather lounger that had been his crash-point last night. Maybe it was just that he'd gotten so used to sleeping in chairs that beds were an exotic flavor now. Whatever the case, he'd pretty much entered the Hotel on autopilot. He was pretty sure Charlie had said something to him, but he was too zonked to register what it had been.
He felt clammy and oddly sulfurous, which he guessed was part and parcel of him being a demon now. Which was bullshit, theologically speaking. Angels were a set quantity, hand-crafted by God, according to scripture. Demons could just be any poor son of a bitch who died after not getting forgiven for doing ill. It gave worrying balances to the power of the afterlife, now that he gave it thought. With billions of demons, and only a few thousand angels spoken of and named, how the hell did God still hold his throne?
Blasphemous thoughts followed him as he shucked yesterday's clothes and got into the shower. The water rattled and banged for almost a minute, before blastingly hot water hit him in the face. He was fairly sure that it was just shy of boiling, but didn't bother him at all. In fact, he felt invigorated, eating the heat and letting the funk of an all-nighter wash away. He almost shut off the taps after a subconsciously counted two minutes, but as his hand landed on the brass, he finally saw what he was doing. "I'm not paying the hot water bill," Sam whispered, and just let the water continue.
It was the longest shower he'd had in years. He eventually just slid down the wall, letting the water drench him and soak through knots in muscles that had been iron-hard for most of his life, and continued after into his death.
Luxuries such as this were not to be turned away. And there was probably even food that wasn't several days past its expiration date somewhere downstairs. And he even still had money in his pocket, even if it was money that bore the faces of lion-men, owl-men, or frog-men, and one-and-all sported the obverse of an fruit that wasn't exactly an apple with two bites taken out of it.
Was he living better now that he was dead? Sam could only wonder. There was no mercy in life, no fairness nor justice. Maybe Hell had taken the grain of it that should have been up there in the living world. Wouldn't that be the highest of irony. Or as the case may be, the lowest. He almost reached for the brass again, when he heard something. A snort, wet and abbreviated, coming from the other side of the wall Sam was leaned against. He knew that sound. It was somebody trying to weep silently, and failing.
"These walls are really thin, you know?" Sam said. There was silence for a moment. "You alright over there, Wendy?"
"No," The answer came back.
"Want to talk about it?" Sam offered.
"What for?" Wendy asked. "I don't even know what I'm doing here. I've tried everything, but I can't... Nothing I do ever helps."
Sam nodded. He knew people who'd said those very words. One of them had been him, not so very long ago. "How dare they?"
"What?" Wendy's wall-muffled voice was clearly confused.
"How dare they do that to you? How dare they decide that they're better than you? What gives them the right to make you small?" Sam pressed.
"What are you talking about?"
"These fucking animals have the audacity, the unmitigated motherfucking gall, to stomp on somebody who'd done nothing to earn it; how dare they? How fucking dare they do this to you?"
"You're nuts," she said, but to his credit, it was around an incredulous laugh.
"And right there, you've said to yourself, even silently, that you don't deserve this bullshit. The first step to getting out of a sprung trap is recognizing that you're in one. So what do your trap look like, Wendy?" Sam asked.
Silence, then a squeak of the other faucet being turned off. There was a rattle inside the walls as the pipe went dead, and as silently as she so often seemed to be, she was gone from the other bathroom. Sam just smiled a bit, and pushed himself to his feet. Heaven for the scenery, as the saying went, but Hell for the company.
Ending his shower and getting dressed didn't take much time at all, now that he felt awake again. Or better yet, he felt more awake than he had in years, alive or dead. Wendy's door was still closed, probably locked, but he decided not to poke that bear any more than he already had. She had her own ghosts to deal with.
The elevator rattled down the spine of the hotel, zipping past dingy hallways and an inexplicable stretch of concrete and marble before it reached the lower floors, and released him into the lobby. Only the fuzzy spider demon was in attendance, idly playing with a paddle-ball with the amusement of a child. He kept doing it until Sam was practically next to the chair he was lounging in. At which point he gave a start and flinched away from Sam, though the ball kept bouncing. "Jeez buddy, ya' gonna gimme a heart attack!" the spider-demon declared.
"Would that even do anything?" Sam asked.
"Maybe, I do know I got one in here somewhere," the spider said.
"Sam," he offered his hand. The spider stared at it for a moment, and his smile took on a slightly more predatory glint.
"Angel Dust," he said, taking Sam's hand almost daintily.
"Really? That sounds like a porn-name," Sam said.
"It is," Angel said smokily. Alright, that was something Sam had no desire to plumb.
"Gotten over your hatred of me that soon?" Sam asked, not releasing Angel's hand. His smile curdled a bit at that, but he pulled it back into place anyway.
"Eh, I was just a little startled seein' one of yous in the building. I don't mean nothin' by it."
"You were pretty vocal about wanting me out," Sam pointed out.
"Yeah, well, you're Elemental, and that's kinda a bad thing to deal with," Angel said.
"How so?" Sam finally released Angel's hand, now that it was clear he wasn't going to do anything squirrelly.
"You know how nobody up here dies for good, right?" Angel asked, which was directly refuted by Sam's experiences in the last day and a half. "Well, that's a problem, 'cause it means that there's billions of Sinners and shit up here and there ain't enough room to hold 'em. So the Big Guy Upstairs decided to put a timer on our lives; every three hundred sixty five days, God hurls a bunch of Exorcist Angels down into Hell and let's 'em run rampage for a day. Just like that, Hell's crowding's a thing of the past week."
"And where do Elementals come into that?" Sam asked.
"Exorcists kill any demon they come across, without carin' too much about who they're offin', with one exception. You. They look for your types, and they won't let anything get in their ways."
"Great. So the next Purge I'm going to have an enormous target on my back," Sam said.
"And if you wouldn't mind takin' that target somewhere the fuck else, that'd be the cat's-pajamas," Angel said, snapping two finger-guns toward him out of four. Where were his other two arms?
"That's fair, I'm not going to screw around with the one person who actually seems to care about the wellbeing of others down here in Hell," Sam said.
"She really does, don't she?" Angel said. He turned a different look at him. "So while you're waitin' around, got any ideas of how we could pass the tiii~me?"
"No," Sam said, immediately getting the man's implication.
"Oh come on. Don't knock it 'till you've tried it," he said, reaching to run a finger down Sam's forearm.
"Do you like licorice?" Sam asked. Angel's hungry look twisted into confusion. "I don't. You're licorice. You might even be fantastic licorice. I'm still not interested."
Angel took that in for a moment, then gave a barked laugh. "That's gotta be the nicest way anybody ever told me they weren't a fag that I've ever heard!"
"And from the way you talk... died in New York in... the Nineteen-Fifties?"
"Fourties, the bronx," Angel said, still paddling the ball but otherwise switched gears from 'I am going to fuck you' to 'holy shit I get to talk about this'.
"What got you?" Sam asked.
"Heroin," Angel said with a chuckle. "Waaaay too much heroin."
"And that was enough to send you to hell?" Sam asked.
"Hell naw! I'm in Hell 'cuz of all the jagoffs I killed," he answered.
"Hmm. Mafia?" Sam asked.
"You know it torch-top," Angel said. "I was respected, feared..." Angel then wilted a bit. "Okay, I wasn't respected, per se, but I was feared!"
"Why not?"
"You want me to actually say it?" Angel asked.
"Say what?" Sam asked.
"'Cause I was a fruit, ya happy?" Angel snapped.
"Right. Fourties were kinda shit about that," Sam said.
"Yeah, well... What landed you down here?" Angel prodded.
"Got shot," Sam said.
"Lots 'a people get shot, torch-top. Why are you in Hell?"
And Sam didn't have an answer for that. "I honestly don't know."
"Gawd Almighty, I might actually be closer to redemption than anotha' guy in Hell. What a thought," Angel said with an abrasive laugh. "You gotta figga that shit out, my man. You ain't goin' nowhere if you can't face what brought ya' here in the first place."
"I suppose not," Sam said. "Is Charlie around?"
"Office. Makin' some sort of 'program' for us now that I'm not the only mook unda' this roof."
Sam nodded, and headed to the office. It was unlocked, which was fortunate. Beyond was a sitting area with a small desk, and a wicked looking harpoon propped against a corner. There was something about the metal of its tip that seemed... off. Like it was slightly out of phase with the rest of reality. Like it was dangerous. He made a note not to touch it.
The next door had a rainbow sticker spanning its entire window of frosted glass, something so out of place in this pit of suffering that Sam could only chuckle at it, as he turned the knob and opened the door. Inside, Charlie and Vaggie were both hunched over Charlie's desk, which was something that looked like it belonged in a supervillain's lair, and took up most of the room in the tiny office. Come to think of it, how did one get from his side to theirs without walking on the damned thing? "Hey, I..."
"You're up! Did you want to offer some input into our program!" Charlie asked with a thunderous enthusiasm.
"Charlieeee, the coffee's not even done yet. Let me..." Vaggie, contrary to Charlie's chipperness, was draped over her corner of the desk with all the elan of a cadaver, limply reaching for a coffee machine that she couldn't have reached if her arms were four times as long. Morning people versus evening people, or perhaps, morning people versus coffee people, it seemed. Seeing no cups, Sam just grabbed the carafe and handed the whole thing to Vaggie, who began drinking straight from the pot.
"That was nice of you. Do you always do these kinds of little good deeds? Because that might mean there's less needed for your redemption than even I could have hoped!" Charlie gleamed.
"I'm guessing there's a lot more to it than that, otherwise this place would have been bursting to the seams with people looking for the way out," Sam pointed out.
"Yes, well, um," Charlotte said. "We haven't... actually... gotten a person into heaven yet," she admitted. She then immediately perked back up. "But that doesn't mean we can't! We just need to find what is at the heart of redemption and go after it. Easy peezy lemon squeezy."
"Uh huh, and if it's actually super rough walnut tough?" Sam asked.
Charlotte looked a bit annoyed at that. "Pessimism won't help us toward the future, Sam. We're all in this together. Believe it or not, we are on your side."
"And you might be the only person in Hell to make that statement with a straight face. You might even mean it. But you know what they say about intentions," Sam said.
"Hey, you're out of line," Vaggie said.
"Maybe," Sam said. He puffed out a breath. "Fact is, I have no idea what I'm doing here. As far as I know, I shouldn't be in Hell. Purgatory maybe, but not Hell."
"Then maybe we need to get to the bottom of what got you Damned in the first place," Charlotte said, not dissuaded in the slightest.
"...right now?" Sam asked.
"Well, we still need to figure out..." Charlotte said, before Vaggie cut in.
"Helping out might be a good first step. Prove that you're willing to work for it," Vaggie said.
"Right, yes," Charlotte caught on. "Do you have employment already? I hope whatever you're doing isn't too... well, evil. There's all kinds of really bad jobs out there, that pay you for doing things that will absolutely get in the way of redemption."
"I'm pretty sure I don't do any of those," Sam said.
"You keep associating with the Goat of the Apocalypse!" Vaggie pointed out.
"Vaggie," Charlotte said.
"And what exactly does he do that's so evil? He makes people keep their word," Sam said.
"Is that what he told you? That he's just an adjudicator? Because he's a lot worse than that," Vaggie said.
"You don't know that, Vaggie," Charlotte said.
"Dealmaker, Charlie," Vaggie said.
"Caveat Emptor," Sam said. "You can't save people from their own bad decisions; they'll make them whether you're involved or not."
"You can't..." Vaggie started.
"The Goat of the Apocalypse is not the matter at hand, Vaggie. Sam is," Charlotte finally butted in. "And what is your job with him, Sam?"
"Keep people from stabbing him in the back," Sam said.
"Bodyguard work! That's pretty ethically neutral," Charlie said with a pair of thumbs up toward her partner. Vaggie merely palmed her face. "Have you ever done any... I don't know... work with your hands? Helping people with other skills?"
"I did notice your hotel in terrible shape," Sam said. "My shower works but my taps don't, the heater doesn't work, the AC either, and there's a big section of the hotel that the elevators literally can't stop at."
"Would you be willing to help with those?" Charlie asked.
"I've done my share of guerilla plumbing, and I've read as much on electrical work as some people who work the trade," Sam said.
"Great! You can help by fixing up the Hotel while we figure out the particulars of your Damnation," Charlie said. She turned to Vaggie. "And do you have any complaints?"
"I – ugh," Vaggie sighed. "Fine. Having a handyman around would make the place a lot more pleasant to live in." She pointed a finger at him. "But if you become a threat to this hotel..."
"You're talking to a guy who knows not to piss off his landlords," Sam said.
"Great. I'll whip you up a list of things to start out. Vaggie do we have tools?"
"I know we do not," Vaggie said, her one eye locked on Sam. Let her doubt. It didn't wound him at all.
"Then I'll get started," Sam said.
Thus it went, that Sam got a scroll – literally a scroll writ with a red fluid that Charlie reassured him was not blood – with things to purchase and an account to charge them to. Then, he was walking the streets. Again, Pride pressed in, the Damned and the Hell-born alike doing their best to screw each other over for the slightest advantage. And it was easier than falling down stairs to get his hands on a 'hellphone', which looked like it belonged in any tech store, but had a bunch of Apps that were distinctly hell-themed. Instragram knock-off? Check. Facebook parody? Check. Apps for sex, apps for drugs, apps for ass-kickings. He was somewhat leery at the last one, because it was non-specific as to whether one called that to commission an ass-kicking, or called to receive one.
The city was weird. In some places, sky-scrapers penetrated the sky, only to right next door be tiny houses or convenience stores. Strip-malls abutted against what he presumed were luxury goods vendors. A brothel shared the same graveyard as a church dedicated to Satan, based on some truly obscure iconography that Sam hadn't seen in years, bereft of the more expected pentagrams and Saint Peter's Crosses. A shopping mall ended at the edge of an army base which was currently engaged in combat against an airship.
And despite all the weirdness, it was still a city. Unless things directly impacted the throngs of Sinners walking its streets, they didn't bother looking. Never mind how a two headed Damned was engaged in a fist-fight with himself. Never mind how hypersexualized beings of either or neither apparent gender rutted against buildings or in the seats of parked cars. All was normal to them, and thus, beneath their notice.
"Typical," Sam said.
"It is, isn't it?" a distorted voice came from somebody who was staring at a bank of broken televisions behind a broken window, 'protected' from the crowds by a surly looking worker with a shotgun dangling from his hand. The source of that voice was a tall demon in a red suit, who's red-black hair sprouted small antlers. "Everything in all of Hell, strange to the point of absurdity, and yet in the end, everything is boring!"
"I'd say it's the hedonic treadmill in action, but..." Sam shrugged. The tall demon turned to him, revealing a very broad grin with very sharp teeth, and a monocle tucked against his right eye.
"Hello~," the stranger said, and Sam could feel a strange weight surrounding him, forcing his feet to press harder against his shoes, his shirt to drag hard against his shoulders. Like he should be frightened, but without a clear signal as to why. Sam, burned out by years of hypervigilance, was inured the growing anxiety for the moment, and offered a hand. "Well aren't you a polite one. Hell so sorely lacks people who give a fellow the time of day!" he took Sam's hand and gave it a vigorous pump. "My name is Alastor! And you would be new in Hell, otherwise you wouldn't be walking around the way you are."
"Like what?" Sam asked.
"Like a rube," Alastor's smile grew patronizing. "This city lives to eat people like you, the naive, the foolish, the weak. I say, let them try! If nothing else, the fight you put up will at least drive away the boredom of an afternoon!" and he broke into electrically distorted laughter.
"You don't seem to have much of a problem with that," Sam said.
"I know, it's tragic," Alastor said with a wounded gesture. "You'd almost think people were afraid of me!"
"From the look of things, they are," Sam said, noting how no Sinner was even willing to come within ten yards of the red-suited Damned. Alastor gestured broadly toward a cafe which, upon seeing said gesture, immediately fled with reckless haste, upending tables and abandoning food while they scattered out into the streets, some of them to be carried away on the hoods of cars. Well, he was feeling kinda hungry. "Can I assume you're paying?"
"You can assume that," Alastor said, ushering Sam to a table which had not be tossed and which didn't play host to somebody else's meal. "Oh garcon! Would it be a bother to get a menu from you? I'm sure my friend here doesn't know what's good in this establishment."
The white-suited waiter inched close enough to hand a laminated sheet to Sam, held at absolute arm's-length, and Sam took it with a mildly annoyed expression. "You wouldn't have happened to terrorize these people recently, have you?" Sam asked.
"Oh, I don't keep track of such petty things," Alastor didn't answer Sam's question. "It's been quite a while since somebody was willing to have a sit-down with me. So by all means, tell me... what brings you to Hell?"
"That's a question everybody's asking of late," Sam said with a grumble. "The problem is, I don't know."
"Then it couldn't have been that bad," Alastor said. "After all, who you were Before is irrelevant, you're in Hell now! It's an entirely new life at your beck and your call, a billion new possibilities to be plumbed and a neverending struggle against the worst threat that all of Hell can bring to bear against you; stagnation!"
Sam leaned forward at that. "Most people would put 'being eaten alive by cannibals' as a bit of a higher threat than being bored," Sam said.
"Most people haven't been here for very long," Alastor said. "And most people have very limited imaginations."
The frantic pressing on Sam's panic button might have failed because the button was disconnected, but the clicking of the the button itself was starting to wake Sam up to the unpleasant reality that he was increasingly find himself in. "A failure of imagination doesn't explain why all of the fights in the street have stopped, or why that waiter pissed himself. What are you?"
"Inverted thinking, my boy," Alastor said. "You are much like me, a diamond in the rough. Only, time has honed me, polished me. When I came down here at long last, it was a homecoming, not a damnation. A lifetime of service had earned me an eternity of power. You could probably do much the same thing."
"Because I'm Elemental?"
"Don't be stupid, my boy! That is the barest fragment of what you are capable of, the tiniest blasphemy you now hold in your heart," Alastor cut off to crackling laughter. Sam scowled at him.
"I don't know what you mean," Sam said.
"Really? So did you, or did you not, make a vow that you were going to empty the Throne of Heaven?" Alastor asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the table and his chin propped up on his laced fingers.
"How would you..." Sam began, then paused, finally cluing in from yesterday. "Your voice. You were in the Hotel. You work for Charlie."
"With," Alastor said. "And to the degree and duration of my choosing."
"So what? I don't need to explain myself to anybody," Sam said.
"Please, don't be mistaken, I am in no way going to stop you. In fact, I find the entire endeavor utterly, hilariously ill-thought out. Still, the mere pursuit of it will be endlessly entertaining to watch!" Alastor laughed again.
"And you're not going to inform Charlie that given a chance I would..." Sam said.
"Why would I spoil the surprise? That would be an amusement all its own, an amuse bouche the the main dish of blasphemy and sacrilege. And if by some hilariously unlikely event that you succeed in your plan, deicide is not something that I've seen every day," Alastor chuckled, his grin if anything growing wider. "Why you've decided to do it is irrelevant to me. I just want to see you try."
Sam idly tossed his menu onto another table, embedding it into a still-burning desert. "I have to say, Alastor. It's refreshing how forthright you are that you're just here to laugh at my failure. Most people in my life would try to hide their snickering behind their hands," Sam offered with biting sarcasm, for all such did occur in his life. "It would be an honor to be your dancing monkey."
"That's the spirit!" Alastor said, sitting back and slapping the table. "Why, I haven't seen your kind of moxie since the vaudevilles back in '26!"
"I'll take your word for it," Sam said. "So beyond just using me for your entertainment, what else are you trying to get out of me?"
"Yes, answer him," a third voice cut into the conversation, as a chair was thrust up to the table and a man sat there. Not a demon. A man. Sam stared at him in utter confusion, as it looked as though a normal goddamned man had snuck into Hell and now sat at the third point of the triangle of diners. He was tall, his hair flaxen and very thin, with a bald-spot growing at its peak. His skin was the pale pink of somebody who didn't often see the sun, but wasn't quite sickly, and his eyes were a watery sort of blue behind thin spectacles that had a constant fixation point about eighteen inches behind Sam or Alastor's head, as though he were trying to look at something beyond the people he was sitting with. His thin-lipped mouth was pulled into a distant, wistful smile. For all his seeming normality, though, there was something undeniably wrong and foul about him, wafting from him like the stink of an old corpse. "I wish I could say it was pleasant to see you again, Alastor, but that would be a lie."
"Do I know you?" Alastor asked, his grin a touch more brittle.
"Of course you do," the stranger said, his voice a smooth drawl straight out of the American South. "And I have a few questions for you."
"Do you mind, buddy? I'm trying to get a meal," Sam said. The stranger turned to Sam and his smile widened.
"You may not speak," the stranger said. Sam immediately opened his mouth to retort, only for a strangled sound to escape, followed by a sensation as though his throat were being tied in a knot. The stranger turned to Alastor. "Claim ignorance all you like, I know what you are. And as part of my duties to my patron, I will have you answer."
Sam scowled, his temper igniting in an instant now that damnation had scoured away a lifetime's worth of restraint, and reached over to a nearby table to grab a knife. Fuck the consequences, he was going to stab this turd. As the blade approached, though, the stranger turned a glance to him.
"Stop," he said, and every muscle in Sam's body locked. "Drop," he said, next, and the knife clattered to the table. "Sit," he finished, and Sam found himself seated in his chair as though tied to it. He then turned to Alastor. "It's not like you to play with your food, Alastor. I think you're starting to go soft. And Hell does not respect soft people."
"Oh yes, I remember you now," Alastor said, leaning forward slightly. "You're that Birch fellow that sits in Lucifer's lap and barks at his enemies, as uninspiring a Sinner as exists in all of Hell. I'd ask you what you wanted, but it's probably so banal it would bore a man to tears."
"And you are the maverick who refuses to do his duty to the people who brought him here," Birch said. "Forty years of slaughter and bedlam, which put you amongst the highest echelons of the Damned, and instead of working to ensure the vital machinery of Hell works as intended, you instead break it at every turn. You are an anarchist-qua-anarchist, and I would very much like you to walk in front of a bus."
"And yet you can't make me do it, can you?" Alastor asked, his grin growing cruel. "You're a one-trick-pony to the end. There's only one thing that you can do that wasn't given to you by your owner. And that one trick that you have doesn't work on the fellows that you want to harm the most. It might work on Sam, here, but it doesn't work on me."
"I'm getting stronger every day," Birch's smile returned, staring through Alastor's head. "Time was, it would take hours of talking to get somebody like your peon here to do what I wanted. Now I can do it in a single word. One day, my words will make all of Hell dance on a string. Whatever you've done to gain your moment of immunity won't protect you forever. You will bow to me. Lucifer will too. In time, even God will bow."
"As much as it would be hilarious to watch your ambitions doom you as they so obviously will," Alastor said, his grin growing into a vicious rictus. "I doubt you're here simply to flail ineffectively against me. We both know that if you were to start a brawl with me, the only thing that will protect you is your owner's skirt-strings. So go ahead, and vent your airs."
"Don't mind if I do," Birch said. "Something unusual is in Hell, Alastor. And you, in your utter refusal to do your duty to all of Hell, have put yourself in a position to listen in at the gutters and sewers of Pentagram City. So you would know faster than most if something unique had entered Lucifer's domain. Or if something has... changed," there was a hateful, predatory look in Birch's eye when he said that. "And you will reveal it."
Alastor gave a dark chuckle. "You can keep trying to compel me to action all you'd like, but it won't work," he said. "And the fact that you can't figure out why is endlessly hilarious. You might as well be a clown, clinging to that ridiculous body of yours. To be in hell is to embrace what brought us here, not to clutch the past hoping that it will somehow save you. You know the Rule, Birch. Before Is Not Now. And you're even more the fool to think it doesn't apply to you."
Birch smirked. "You're trying to bait me, to enrage me, to make me lash out so that you can justify claiming my ring," he gestured to the golden ring that dominated his right-middle-finger. It displayed a red stone carved in cameo to display a fruit which was almost but not quite an apple. "And you would fail. A word from me, and all of Hell rises up against you. You might be uncommonly strong, but I have met Lucifer. You, Alastor, are no Lucifer."
"Then I invite you to go kiss off," Alastor said. "You have no power in this gum-bump. All you can do is blow your wind and make a fool of yourself. And you're too dull by a half to be worth my time."
"Too dull?" Birch said with a nod, lips pulled into a pensive look. He pushed his glasses up his nose and turned a look to Sam, whereupon that pensive look turned into a smile almost as cruel as Alastor's. "You, look over there. Do you see that trolley rail?" Sam found himself turning to the street, which had a rail running up its center for a trolley car. He'd only seen their like during that ill-fated stop in San Francisco, and yet here they were again. "Go lay down with your neck across it."
And Sam started walking. He tried to fight his own body, but it was inexorable, moving against any press of will that he could muster. He couldn't even slow himself down as he walked past traffic, that honked and swerved to avoid him. He laid down, facing up the gentle slope that the street embodied. He tried even to shout for help, or just to swear in confusion, but the only thing which escaped his throat was a thin croaking noise.
"Are you trying to intimidate me?" Alastor asked from his place, still at the table. "Because I see nothing that will harm me."
"I have a theory, Alastor," Birch said, crossing one leg before the other and resting his hands on one knee at the very corner of Sam's vision. "That you've started to get soft, as I've said. That you're involving yourself in your usual bedlam as a front to hide the fact that you now have something that you actually care enough about to protect. And when I find it, I am going to break it, in front of you. Just because I can. Just to see your smile finally die."
"Chisel all you want, you're not going to get what you think you want," Alastor didn't miss a beat. A rattling noise began to work its way up Sam's cheek, as something began to move on the rail somewhere out of sight. "And you'll just fail tired, with all of Hell – including your employer – seeing you for the crumb that you are."
"That's a lot of words. Let's just have a sit, and see if there's any weight to them. I think the trolley should be coming by soon. Do you mind watching your pet Sinner get his head crushed? Maybe you'll find it... amusing?" Birch asked, looking insufferably smug.
"Let him," Alastor said. Oh you bastard... "All of Hell knows who I am, Birch. I am the Radio Demon. I am the force which unseated and broke Jingo and broadcast his weeping for mercy across all of the Seven Circles. I wore Von Brutte's daughters as boots as I stomped the life out of him. I cast the entire Clan Cruac over the edge to what once was Despair, man, woman, and child. If you think one man having an utterly survivable maiming will give me pause, you obviously have not been paying attention."
Sam found himself able to turn, just a bit. Not enough to rise, or to speak, but he could turn enough to see the red-suited demon opposite Birch. Alastor was still grinning, but it had taken on an utterly savage bent, an anger behind it. Outrage, barely hidden behind a sharp-toothed mask. And ahead, Sam could see the trolley finally turn the corner, quite a few blocks ahead, and start descending the hill toward where he was still trapped with his head to the street.
"Oh, but I think that I have," Birch countered. "I think the old Alastor would have delighted in what I'd done to that peon. I think the old Alastor would have placed wagers on how far his brain would get toward the other curb, or if a gout of his blood would reach the far window. And yet you are... strangely reserved. So which is it? Are you still the Monster that you want everybody to believe? Or have you become weak with age?"
Alastor started chuckling then, lightly and with his head shaking slowly. "Nathan, Nathan, Nathan... you've never known me at all," he said. "If you had, then you might have been able to be something other than a lapdog, yapping at the real animals that surrounded it. Which then raises an interesting question. Why are you putting so much effort into winding me up? Your status as a wet smack is as known as Buster Keaton, where as my reputation is bigger than The Big Man's Ego. So where do the two meet?"
"I think you know exactly what my problem with you is," Birch said, his smile dying. And that trolley was getting closer, with no sign at all of it slowing down. This was Hell, after all, and that meant that they would probably increase speed if they had the option.
"Really? So it probably happened quite a while ago," Alastor said, now leaning forward on the table, his grin stretching farther than his face should have been able to contain. "Before Is Not Now, Birch. Move forward or be left behind. It's one of Satan's Commandments for good reason. More fool you for not understanding that. Whatever petty grudge you have, is better off sorted."
The rail vibrated under Sam's cheek, and he could see a cat-like thing leaning out the trolley, pointing at him and hollering with glee.
"What's between you and I will never be sorted, Alastor," Birch said. "You have a duty to all of Hell. And I will see that you fulfill it."
As the trolley crossed the last intersection before it did so with Sam's neck, Alastor reached up with a hand, and snapped his fingers. Instantly, a black-orange void opened from the ground in front of Sam and a beyond-black tendril reached out of it. It wrapped 'round the trolley in a heartbeat, crushing the thing and then with a whip, hurled the entire vessel at the table the two of them had been sitting at, aimed precisely so that it would miss Alastor but not Birch. There was a crash and the craft embedded itself with Birch somewhere within into the front wall of the cafe itself. In an instant, Sam was able to sit up, and take a deep breath.
"Mother fucker!" Sam also was able to speak.
"Much as I'd like to continue this lovely jaw we're having, I think it might be best for you to make tracks," Alastor said, his grin growing once more. And that wasn't the only thing. His antlers forked and expanded. His limbs grew sharp and long, and his back was hunched and crooked. His teeth became a row of bronze knives trapped in rictus, as his eyes became radio dials. Sam looked at him no longer than that. As he beheld Alastor turning into the most monstrous form of himself, Sam scrambled to his feet, and started to sprint. Anywhere that wasn't here was a good place to be. And based on the panic of everybody else following likewise, they all saw the value in not being in a spot where two Overlords fought.
"Have you given thought to doing some sort of work for the community? Maybe that will spur some progress," Charlie prodded, but Angel Dust had gotten himself well embedded into the chair and was not going to leave that rut until he was damned well ready. The rhythmic slapping of rubber ball against wooden paddle seemed to be ever-so-slowly cranking the grey broad up, so he kept doing it. I'd be a gas to see what happened when she finally blew.
"Out there? Naw, babe. The moment this fine ass hits those streets, I'm gonna be thinkin' of anything but redemption, if you catch my meanin'," Angel said.
"Why? It's not like you need money," Vaggie said, tweezing the bridge of her nose as though it was the only way to keep a blood vessel from popping.
"Maybe I don't, maybe I do," Angel said.
"Or maybe you just don't want to be seen associating with us," Vaggie said.
"Angel, your 'reputation' is a millstone, you have to know that," Charlie said with a gentleness and earnestness that made Angel Dust feel a bit like a turd, but he wasn't going to let that out. "As long as you're fixated on how everybody else sees you, you're living for them, not for you. Wouldn't it be better, or even just easier, to try not being 'Porn Actor/Gang Warrior Angel Dust', and just being Angel Dust for a while."
"You keep sayin' that like there's any kind a' difference between the two," Angel said.
"This is a lost cause..." Vaggie muttered, but Charlie powered through.
"You came to this hotel for a reason, and you've been incredibly tight lipped as to what that reason is. But you can't keep that up forever," Charlie said.
"Or what? You'll throw me out? We all know you ain't got that kinda ruthlessness in ya," Angel said. Charlie, though, smirked a little.
"See? Right there, you just told me that throwing you out would be 'ruthless'. Which means you're here to protect yourself," she said, somehow looking sweet and smug at the same time.
Angel Dust stared at her for a moment. Damn it all, he had to remember that she wasn't just a big grin under a blond mop. There was a brain half way between the two, and she knew how to use it. "So what? Lots of people need places to lay low for a while. That's Hell, baby!" he snapped a pair of finger-guns at her.
"And you're afraid of somebody who would ruin you the instant they found you, and who has a lot of reach," Charlie continued, ticking things off on her fingers. "Angel Dust, are you afraid of one of the Overlords?"
"What? No, babe! I ain't afraid a' nothin'," Angel said, even though he could feel a chill run down his neck just at the slightest inkling of the Moth. He refused to even name him inside his own head. It was the only way to keep the worst memories away.
"Angie, please. We..." Charlie paused as Vaggie cleared her throat, fists pressed on her hips. "I want to help you. But I can't do that if I don't know what's going on!"
Angel Dust thought for little while, his face growing brittle but lacking the will to shore it up, or to launch out with something distracting and vulgar. Maybe she would try. But could she do anything? The Moth had more backing than most Overlords, two allies he could depend on until Judgment Day, who all-together could probably bring war against one of the Goetia. Charlie was just Charlie.
Whatever answer Angel Dust was scrounging for was interrupted as the world seemed to turn onto its side, static filling the air and blood running down the walls. A low drone sounded, reverberating through the entire hotel, before the shadows snapped into the shape of the strawberry pimp himself. But not as Angel had ever seen him.
Alastor looked disheveled, his suit ripped in a few places and scorched in others. Red blood of Sinners mixed with a strange black ichor, oozing down his arms, chest, and legs, and out of his mouth. And he was still grinning, despite all of it.
"Wha...?" Charlie asked. Alastor raised one finger with a 'hup' and pulled out a pocket-watch. He stared at it, his smile small, for almost an entire minute. Then, with a click, he closed it and tucked it away.
"Seems like he can't follow me here. Gave the old boy the slip," Alastor said, and began to immediately adjust his jacket. As he did, it mended under his fingertips, until only the blood on his face and hands indicated that anything had ever been amiss.
"Whose blood was that?" Vaggie asked, looking so stunned that even her bright red hair-bow started to go grey.
"Mine!" Alastor sounded absolutely delighted. "It's been years since something like this happened! Oh what a thrill!" Alastor broke into laughter, pausing only to spit acrid red-black blood onto the floor, which promptly started to eat its way through the wooden floorboards and down into the basement.
"Charlie, he could have brought them back here, to the Hotel!" Vaggie began, but Alastor waved her off.
"Don't be foolish, little girl. I said I'd given him the slip! And all I need is a moment to regain my vigor, and I'll be right back to it. Can't leave that rampaging around, now can I?" he let out another peal of laughter. The laughter grew lower and lower, into a chuckle, as the shadows swallowed him, leaving one final laugh behind as he disappeared from the hotel just as suddenly as he had appeared in it.
Charlie stared at where he'd departed, then back to Vaggie. "We should probably brace for the worst," Charlie sounded very disappointed she'd had to say those words.
"I'll get the weapons, hon, you board the windows," Vaggie was off to the races.
Angel Dust just sat there, utterly forgotten, thankful that he'd gotten out of having to explain what he was so terrified of. If only because he wasn't sure he had the words to make himself clear. With a tut, he swung the ball up, and started paddling it again.
Redemption would take as long as it took. And even if it never came, he was close enough to Heaven just being here that the thought of leaving never even crossed his mind. Anything was better than back there.
The elevator dinged, and Husk came out to finally man the front desk, five hours late and with a surly look on his face. He turned a glance to Angel Dust, then to the doors. "So what did I miss?" he asked.