A tough little girl with a penchant for medieval weaponry, and a dry wit.
Francis cautiously opened his eyes. His brain was on fire, as was his skin. Even his eyelids felt as if they’d been ripped from his skull, and put back with random staples.
He rolled over on what appeared to be the floor of a cave, the sounds of Hell still reshaping themselves in the distance. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of his surroundings, he forced himself to look around.
A flash of memory—like a hot poker being shoved into his ear—jumped into his thoughts, but was quickly gone in a flesh-rending screech of spiked tires.
Gone, but what he had seen was not forgotten.
He remembered lying on the ground, ready to die . . . ready to be swallowed up by one of the many molten pools opening up on the blighted surface of Hell. And just as he was about to give in to the fury being unleashed, he saw the figure of a man.
A hooded figure wearing tattered robes, and holding a staff that appeared to be made from polished bone.
But then the ground vomited up a cloud of noxious gas and bubbling lava, and he saw the man no more, succumbing to the flirtations of sweet unconsciousness, as what he believed to be the final curtain came down.
The show wasn’t over, though; in fact, it had just been an intermission, and now the main feature had begun.
Francis lifted himself into a sitting position, the pain of this action making him wish for a quick, numbing death, just to make it all stop. Propped against the wall, he quickly examined himself. He was naked; the nasty wounds he’d received in recent battle and the tantrum thrown by the hellish environment had been dressed.
He lifted an arm that felt as though it weighed a ton, and examined the covered wounds. Thick wads of drying Hell-ash had been placed upon his injuries. Hell-ash had natural healing attributes, but if the proper kind wasn’t used—the deeper layers found beneath new accumulations—it could also be extremely toxic.
Whoever had taken care of him knew what they were doing.
He checked himself out; his filthy, naked form was covered with the healing ash. His body had endured a lot of punishment, and Francis realized that he should have been dead.
He took a deep breath and continued to peer through the gloom at his surroundings. He wasn’t too far from the entrance to the cave, and he found that if he leaned slightly to the side he could just about make out what was going on outside . . . and it didn’t look good.
From what he could see, it looked as though he had been taken to one of the caves that dotted the high hills just beyond the valley that had held Tartarus.
The sky outside the cave was dark and still filled with screeching winds and swirling debris. He guessed that Big Daddy Morningstar was still doing his thing: taking Hell apart piece by piece. What he was going to do once that was finished was the ten-million-dollar question.
Something moved in the darkness behind him, and Francis turned toward the sound. Maybe his mysterious benefactor was about to make an appearance.
“Hello?” he called out, his voice sounding incredibly small as it bounced off the walls of the cave. “Thanks for patching me up. Don’t often see folks do such good work with Hell-ash . . .”
Something growled in the shadows, and Francis realized that he might have been a little premature with his thanks.
A Hellion padded toward him from the back of the cave, head low and growling. The Hell beast looked just as nasty as Francis remembered after having gone a few rounds with the filthy fuckers when Tartarus first started to come apart at the seams: thick bodies seemingly devoid of flesh, showing off powerful red musculature. Beady eyes glared at him from its skull-like head.
He tried to move, summoning all the strength that he could muster, but didn’t accomplish anything other than sliding over on his side and rolling onto his belly. Lifting his head, he saw that the beast had paused, watching him.
Viscous drool that hissed and spattered like hot grease as it landed upon the floor of the cave dripped from its mouth in a continuous stream as it finally determined that Francis was no threat, and started toward him again.
Francis tensed as the monster drew closer, emitting a strange, high-pitched keening sound incongruous to its great size.
“C’mon, then—what are you waiting for?” the former Guardian angel growled as he watched the beast’s red, exposed muscles suddenly tense before launching its ferocious mass at his prone and helpless form.
“I hope you fucking choke.”
Fernita couldn’t find her telephone.
She stood in what little open space there was in her living room, closed her eyes, and tried to remember.
The problems with her memory were getting worse, and had been for quite a few years. The old woman did what she could to accommodate the changes. She didn’t go out much anymore, preferring to remain in her home, in a safe environment, where the routines she’d established for herself could be maintained.
Outside, those routines didn’t exist, and things had a tendency to become very confusing. There was something about a trip to the grocery store. She couldn’t recall the exact details, but she knew it had been bad, and that was why she had become more or less housebound.
But she didn’t mind, most of the time. Here in the safety of her home, surrounded by her things, she felt as though she had some control.
That life wasn’t slipping away between her fingers like grains of sand.
Most of the time, but now was one of those times when the familiarity of routine began to crumble, and she was finding it very hard to hold it all together.
“Where are you?” she whispered, eyes still closed, rocking ever so slightly from side to side.
She tried to remember the last time she had used the phone, and decided it was when she had spoken with that nice man Remy Chandler.
Wasn’t it a coincidence that he was exactly who she needed to talk to now?
To tell him that she’d found a clue.
Fernita opened her eyes for a moment, glancing toward the area of the room where the clue had been uncovered. It gave her an uneasy feeling in her stomach to see it there, very much like the feeling she got those few times she had to leave her house.
Her mind started to wander again as she attempted to recall how it was that she’d found the clue, but she was able to pull herself back to the matter at hand.
For a moment, what exactly she had been desperate to find suddenly eluded her, but then she remembered—grabbing hold of the memory with both hands and holding fast—the phone. She needed to find the phone so she could call Remy.
Miles meowed from his perch upon the windowsill, rubbing the side of his neck against the corner of some boxes stacked beside the window.
“Help your mama out here, cat,” she said. “Where did I put that phone?”
The cat looked at her intensely, making a little chirping sound, as if to answer her. He then jumped down into her seat, flipping onto his back as if to show off the black fur of his belly.
“That’s not helping me. Shoulda had a dog,” Fernita said with mock disgust. “I could just say, ‘Fetch me the phone,’ and he’da found it for me already.”
Miles rolled onto his side, letting his head hang over the cushion. One of his paws dangled off the chair and he started to swat at the handle of a grocery bag that she’d brought into the room for some reason or another.
It had something to do with apples, she inexplicably remembered.
Fernita was drawn toward the bag, the chair, and her cat.
She leaned forward, peering inside the open bag to see that it was filled with the peelings and core of an apple she’d had for a snack. When, she could not recall, but it couldn’t have been that long ago.
It was probably a good idea that she put the bag, and its peelings, in the trash before it started to stink up the place, she told herself as she reached for the handles.