''Leave it to Jessica Coran to get into this kind of quicksand," bitched Eriq Santiva.
Before Jessica Coran stretched a lunar and Mars mix of landscape that must appeal to Dante or any aficionado of his Inferno, for here in the vast region of the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone, encircling the wondering gaze of the frail human form, were Hell's venting ports, the life-blood of Hades itself, touching God's morning breeze to singe His breath and turn it to sulfuric clouds. These clouds joined as they rose, moving across the land like the mightiest of ghosts heavenward, while still trailing an attachment for the dark underworld from which they came in the form of silicified rock.
As Jessica raced after the killer, her nostrils and eyes assaulted by the sulfuric acid, the stifling air all around her, she panted with running and swallowing the horrid stench that now enveloped her. The thermal clouds, at once beautiful, fantastic, alluring, captivating, and dangerous, now hid a killer who had enticed her this way, leading her to this time and place all the way from Las Vegas, Nevada, that first night when she heard the dying pleas of Chris Lorentian.
The killer had gotten off the footpath, or else he had stopped stone still somewhere in the sulfuric mist ahead of her. She felt dangerously close to the hot springs, which could be as hot as 180 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. All around her she heard the gurgle and burp, the sputter and swallow of the superheated minerals here, as if they called out a chorus to the aeons-old danse macabre between good and evil here. She could no longer hear Dorphmann's corporeal steps on the boardwalk. Where the hell was he?
Jessica cautiously continued her pursuit. "I'm here, Feydor!" she shouted, her anger rising. "For the first time you have to face a lucid victim, someone with her senses intact. You cowardly bastard!" She hoped insults might instigate a mistake on his part. She listened for any sound.
Nothing.
"Feydor! Feydor Dorphmann! It ends here!" she shouted.
"Yes! Agreed!" he shouted back and her gun went instinctively to the direction from which his voice came. She fired twice into the mist, his form hidden in the steam clouds ahead of her.
"You stand before the Vestibule, the mouth of Satan and the River Acheron," he shouted, and again her gun went up and fired at the sound, this time in another direction.
"Number nine is number one, you, Jessica Coran." Again she fired, this time three shots. She had two left in the Browning.
"Sonofabitch," she muttered, trying to hold her gun firmly on him, or what appeared ahead as possibly him, possibly a tourist who had gotten between them. She prepared to put a bullet through his brain, his heart, whatever it took, should he make one move toward her.
"Number nine is number one in Dante's Inferno, isn't it, Dorphmann," she replied. "That would be Limbo, now, wouldn't it?" she asked. "Satan has asked you to send me there, and that's the reason for this entire deadly charade, isn't it? Isn't it?"
The dark figure ahead of her spoke. ''Yes, I knew that you would finally understand… Wetherbine never fully believed, but you… you do, don't you? You know the power of the Dark One."
"I understand this much, mister: If there's going to be a ninth fire for a soul to be placed in Limbo, it'll be your damned soul and not mine."
A thick, choking cloud of sulfuric mist suddenly divided them, Feydor's form disappearing before her eyes. She fired where his heart had been, but she heard no result, no thud, no outcry. She'd missed.
She leaped into the cloud that had engulfed him, running along the boardwalk in an area without railings now when suddenly she felt someone grab hold of her ankle and snatch her feet from beneath her. She held tightly to her gun even as she fell from the boardwalk and onto the spongy, cracked earth that made up the lip of the hot springs called Hellsmouth. She fought to get to her feet, fearing to stand and take a step, fearing the ground beneath her not solid enough to hold her, but it held. Then she saw him, standing over her, a pair of ragged sneakers at her eye level.
"Go ahead then," he said, "shoot me… Kill me if-"
"If, hell!" she declared. "No ifs!" She raised the gun, but he had already aimed and fired from a Mace container, which she saw at the last moment before snatching her eyes away from the direct shower to her face. Jessica felt him wrench the gun from her grasp the instant she protected her eyes. His unearthly laughter followed.
She clambered to her feet and backed from him, in an attempt to avoid the brunt of the pepper gas he continued to taunt her with. She now backed frightfully close to the hot pool behind her, almost losing her balance, while her gleeful attacker followed with an attempt to shove her into the bubbling cauldron of the white sulfur and winking blue pit. She realized only now that he'd been under the boardwalk, like some ogre in a child's nursery rhyme.
She felt her foot slip and go under the scalding water, and instinctively she went to her knees to gain a foothold before the hot spring behind her, but she feared losing control as she clawed to stay on solid ground, fighting madly to regain her balance, just as he rushed her, kicking out at her, still laughing maniacally.
She dodged his first blow by rolling to one side. Screaming his victory, in hot pursuit and sure of victory, he charged, but Jessica brought up a board from below the boardwalk-left there for years, for this moment, for her to grab hold of-and she brought it against his charging temple. Both the board and Dorphmann fell into the pool, him up to his thighs, screaming with the pain of it, dropping to his waist in his frenzied fight to return to solid ground; the board was seared to boiling like a large hot dog, and then it sank below the superheated water.
He attacked with renewed vigor, although his legs and lower trunk must be tearing at him, burned as they were, smoke coming off his clothing. Unarmed, not wearing a second gun as was her usual habit, because she'd earlier insisted J. T. take it, she attacked him with a molten rock that had solidified here.
This creature was trying to send her to Hell via the hot springs beside them. The rock hit him solidly at the already fried kneecap, sending him dazed, reeling back, struggling anew for his footing, his lower extremities still seething and sending up a small cloud of smoke. Feydor Dorphmann now screamed in frustrated anger as well as pain.
"Get thee behind me, Satan!" she shouted the familiar biblical epitaph just as he lost his battle with equilibrium and his footing. He toppled for the second time into the hottest of the hot springs here.
She struggled now to get a hand out to him, to help him save himself, searching frantically for something at hand to assist, but there was nothing, no trees or branches nearby.
She tried desperately to pull him out, but he appeared rigid, as if rigor mortis had prematurely set in, his eyes still alive, still staring back at her. But he remained unable to move, dead in the water-shock and rapid dehydration, she guessed. He was next pulled under by the heavy, hot saliva of Hell, and she somewhat gratefully watched him go, thinking him the most grateful of the grateful dead now…
Taking a deep breath and regretting it, for she'd filled her lungs with the sulfur fumes free-floating here, Jessica fell back against the earth at the edge of Hell, and relaxed her guard now, panting, catching her breath. Her breathing was just returning to normal when suddenly the scalding waters beside her erupted and Dorphmann's hand reached from Hell to take hold of her, his body surging upward, taking hold of her ankle, desperately attempting to drag her down with him, using his body weight against her.