At last I got a round chunk of cardboard that had most recently been part of the packing for a frozen pizza, then slid it carefully under the glass. The thing didn’t really have feet, more like a pair of mushroom stems that might have been made from slug-muscle, but it didn’t seem too bothered by the cardboard and just stepped up onto it as it slid underneath. Then I took the whole weird package to the living room.
I put a heavy book on top of the glass, then went to see if the Scythians were back and could identify it as one of the Black Sun’s special friends, but they were still out, although it was now almost ten at night. I went back to my place, half hoping that the thing had knocked over the glass and managed to escape the apartment so I wouldn’t have to deal with it, but the horrid little lump was still sitting on my cheap coffee table, staring back at me with three eyes’ worth of incomprehension. I’ll say this, it didn’t seem particularly malicious, but even if it had been wearing the face of a famous Hollywood star, it wasn’t going to get many dates.
It was making the mouth movements again, which made it look more than ever like something crooning invitations across a dark swamp—melted frog seeking melted mate. Taking pity, I lifted the bottom of the glass just a little to let in some air, and when I did so, I heard something thin and squeaky coming from inside the glass.
Words. I swear by the Highest, actual words. In English. I could make out only one, “revenge,” but that was enough.
What the hell was this thing?
I went to the kitchen and rummaged around until I found the strainer I’d used the last time I cooked anything for myself, which had been spaghetti. The answer to your next question is: Probably about fourteen months earlier. I brought the strainer out, put it over the glass, then rattled the whole thing until the glass tipped over.
It certainly didn’t hurry, but eventually the flying frog-thing bumbled out of the sideways glass into the larger enclosure of the strainer. It settled its grotesque little body again, blinked all three eyes, and said, “Dearest, dearest Bobby . . .”
thirteen:
the great dictator
WHEN I heard that ugly little creature say my name, I jumped back about three feet, then threw my jacket over the whole mess, the strainer and the upended glass and the nasty little blob itself. I could still hear its tiny, whiny voice under the jacket. My heart beat so hard it felt like it was going to break my rib cage. No, not just because an ugly little Hell-bug was sitting on my coffee table and knew my name. I was freaking right out because despite its high-pitched, ragged tones, an odd combination of helium and horseradish, the cadence and the phrasing were all too familiar. The voice belonged to Caz.
A moment later, and almost as shocking and sudden as that recognition, I suddenly wondered if this was somehow my Countess of Cold Hands herself, escaped from Hell after being punished by Eligor. I jerked the jacket away. The thing was still droning on. If it was Caz, she sounded like an answering machine message that was starting to wear out.
“. . . hope you’ve stopped shouting at this thing by now. It’s not me,” the little horror was saying. “It’s a nizzic, a minor demon—a message carrier. Don’t worry how I got hold of it, or how it got out of Hell to reach you. Now, if you got yourself that drink I suggested, sit down and get comfortable. I need to tell you several things.”
I was too stunned to do anything but slump onto the couch and stare at the winged gob of phlegm as it parroted back the message my beloved had somehow taught it.
• • •
“The first is that I lied to you. Don’t feel bad, I lied to myself, too. It’s only now that I know you’re safely out of Hell that I can tell you that whatever you wish to call it—need, obsession, insane attraction, love—well, I also feel it, Bobby. I have since the first. But everything else I said is true. It doesn’t matter what we feel, because everything else is against us. And I mean everything. I won’t torment you with thoughts of what could be, because they can’t. But I won’t cheat you out of the most important part any more. Whatever it is you’re feeling, Bobby, I feel it, too. I cannot imagine not seeing you again. But that’s exactly how it has to be.
“Eligor is finally satisfied. His cruel trick worked. He got the feather back, he made you suffer, he made me suffer and even had the extra pleasure of making Marmora, the drowned girl, suffer as well. But knowing you, you’re determined to get some kind of revenge.
“You must forget about it. As things stand, he’ll probably leave you alone now. You can’t hope to survive his full attention again. But I will survive, Bobby. I will go on. I am not some mortal woman, some comparative child, who cannot live with pain and difficulty. I will survive. I shared the best moments of my life and myself with you. That will keep me during the times ahead.
“I love you. There. I’m sorry I never said it to your face. Now, please, forget me.”
• • •
When it finished reciting, the nizzic sat there slowly, blinking all its eyes but otherwise motionless as a lump of particularly dirty wax or a dead mouse that had been under the couch a long, long time. After a few moments it started over again from the beginning of the message in the same disturbing, not-quite-Caz voice. I listened to the bits I’d missed when I’d covered it with my jacket, none of them particularly important (except that they were more words from the woman I loved and who I sometimes thought I’d never hear or see again, and so each was as precious as a diamond). But as it got back onto the part I’d already heard, I decided I’d had enough. It was like listening to Caz down an old-fashioned long-distance line as she demonstrated the effect of multiple strokes on human speech. I threw my jacket over the little horror again.
But even though a part of me was grateful (no, ecstatic) to hear from Caz, and thrilled by the substance of the message—she did love me! She did!—I was also feeling a slow burn that was beginning to heat up. It was Eligor’s name that started it, or rather it was the way Caz had suggested that now was a good time to slink off into the undergrowth so Eligor the Horseman would forget all about me.
He was in a good mood, she said. The monster who had tortured both Caz and me, not to mention brought untold horror to human lives for countless thousands of years, was in a good mood. Yeah, that cheered me right up. And if I was really, really lucky, he was bored with torturing and humiliating me. I mean, yeah, he was still holding prisoner the woman I loved, probably raping and tormenting her, but I wasn’t supposed to dwell on that.
I’d thought for a long time that there would be nothing higher on my bucket list than squeezing the black, sticky blood out of the Grand Duke of Hell’s black, sticky heart, and that was still true. If I had been given a choice at that moment between destroying him and destroying Anaita, even if it meant she’d get me for sure . . . well, there would have been no contest. Eligor was an obscenity. The entire universe would benefit from his sudden and hopefully violent retirement.
But Eligor didn’t matter right now, because there was literally nothing I could do about him. I’d already made my way through Hell once, suffered hideously, and found that, just as I’d suspected, I couldn’t stand up to him for even a second. And I’d paid for that stupid decision with more hours of horrifying pain than any being could suffer anywhere else in the universe and still be able to renew his magazine subscriptions. But what mattered was that the bastard still had Caz. Anaita had Eligor’s horn, and I didn’t have a chance of getting her without it. I’d failed with the feather, but I knew Eligor would swap my beautiful Countess for the horn without a moment’s hesitation, because it would lift a big weight of concern for him. Without the horn, nobody in Heaven or Hell could ever prove that he’d made a deal with an angel. He might not give a shit about Bobby Dollar, but he was scared to hand any advantage to the other Hell-lords, fat slug Prince Sitri and Grand President Caym and the rest.