Read Letters From Hades Online
Authors: Jeffrey Thomas
Letters From Hades (7 page)
Blood was caked around each nail. It had flowed the plain of her belly then dried, matting her pubic hair into a scabby crust. It twined around her limbs and streaked down her wings, cracking and flaking. Fresh blood still oozed, however. It was as black as India ink.
The Demon gave a savage jerk that electrified her whole body. We both took an involuntary step back. The spikes did not loosen.
Seeing that growling at us wasn’t going to help it any, the Demon tried to bully us instead, taking on an air of authority despite its helplessness. But I could hear the pain and weariness behind the throaty, deep tone of its voice.
"Set me free, you two! Now! If you don’t, you’ll be the sorriest souls in Hell, I promise you!"
"Let’s go!" Caroline implored me, taking hold of my arm. I couldn’t blame her; the Demon’s voice frightened me as well. But not more than her eyes did. They were feline; huge and wide-spaced and feral. There was a glassy sheen to them of mad fury, and though they were heavy-lidded they seemed to bulge with emphasis.
But there was another thing about the Demon’s eyes. They were wet. Her cheeks were wet. When we’d surprised her, tears had been flowing down her cheeks.
"Who did this to you?" I dared to ask the creature.
"Your kind, fool, who do you think? Do you think that’s amusing? Do you think they were smart? They won’t be so smart when I track them down. I know their smell. If they were smart, they would have killed me…"
"We should," Caroline whispered in my ear.
I bent to her.
"Should what?"
"We should kill her!" she hissed.
Deep chuckling made us both look up. The naked woman was wagging her head slowly. "Don’t be more foolish than you are. I’ll forget that you said that. Set me free."
"You’ll kill us!" Caroline whimpered.
"I won’t, you stupid cow! I promise you…you have my word. If you set me free, I won’t harm you. Why would I? You didn’t do this to me. But I tell you…the longer you hesitate, the angrier I’ll become." Despite her wet cheeks, a terrifying smile oozed along her cheeks. "Now I know your smells."
"Let’s go, please!" Caroline pleaded, trying to pull me away. "Please!"
"I’ll get you, little hog," the Demon purred, eyes fixed on my companion.
"She can’t get away. Hurry! We need to go!"
My eyes lowered to that terrible skewer through the woman’s guts. The pain must be extraordinary. I should know; I’m an authority on extraordinary pain. Would she survive even if I freed her?
I took two uncertain steps toward her.
"That’s a good boy," she cooed huskily. It was like an obscene lullaby.
My eyes rose to her breasts, which were not much touched by the inky blood. They were full but not overly large. Oddly, the nipples and their soft aureoles were a subtle gray color. And her skin itself was white. Not pale white. Not even the white of a bloodless corpse. She was paper white, her flesh without pigment. She looked like she’d walked out of some black and white movie. Her hair, long and damp with sweat, was black as oil. Her cat-like eyes were a pale gray. And her lips were the same gray as her nipples. Those lips…they were almost a caricature of fullness. Lushly overripe, fruit too long on the vine and about to spoil. When she closed her mouth, they seemed to pucker in a mockery of a little girl pout.
My eyes strayed over her long feet, her strong thighs, her androgynously broad shoulders and muscular arms. The tendoned arch of her neck. And when I met her eyes again, I flushed with embarrassment.
"Lust is a sin," she said, her full lips spreading in a smirk.
I actually felt ashamed for objectifying a female Demon. Political correctness in Hell.
"I’m sorry," I muttered, and lowered my eyes from hers. But I drew closer to her.
"I’m going!" Caroline whined.
I looked sharply over my shoulder at her. "She swore she won’t hurt us!"
Caroline backed further and further away. "I’m going on without you!"
"I can’t leave her this way!"
"Why? Why? Look—she’s one of them!"
"Well I’m not one of them. I can’t be that way. I have to let her go."
"You wouldn’t let one of the baboons go. You want to help her because she’s beautiful!"
"No. Because she’s almost human. Look at her!"
"I’m going!"
"Even if she did hurt us, what more could she do than the next Demon will do? And the next after that?"
"I’ll put off my next beheading as long as I can! You forget, I just spent years buried on that plain back there! Years! I can’t bear to be caught again so soon!"
"Go, then. I’ll catch up with you."
"Fine! Catch up with me…if you can still walk after she rips you apart!" And with that, Caroline bolted madly into the thick of the woods, batting branches out of her way, plunging into and then lost in the dark vegetation.
Returning my attention to the impaled monster, I swallowed and said, "Do you want me to…should I…"
"Pull the spear out, first," she said, her voice somewhat softer now, letting a groan mix with it. "Then, use its tip to start prying loose the nails."
"If I take it out, will you bleed to death?"
"I can take a lot of pain, and a lot of bleeding. And I’ll heal. Not as fast as you can, and I can’t grow back severed parts like you can, but I’ll live."
"But you can die." I looked more directly at her.
She looked directly back. "Yes. I can die. So. Are you going to kill me after all?"
"No. I said…I’m not like you Demons."
"Yes, I know. You’re better, more advanced, blah blah. But who’s the prisoner here?"
"Who indeed?"
She smiled once again. "Come on. Be chivalrous, my fine little human. Prove your humanity. Take the thorn from my paw."
I reached out my hands, curled them around the rough shaft of the heavy iron lance. I squeezed my fists tighter around it, hesitating. I was afraid to hurt her.
And when I gave a sudden tug, she screamed. My eardrums were nearly rent by that wail, which was like the one that Caroline and I had heard initially.
It took more than one pull. On the last one, I fell back and nearly lost my footing. I saw fresh blood running out of the punctured belly button as if it were a bullet wound. Black blood ribboned around her thighs as it flowed out the inevitable wound in her lower back.
And when I lifted my eyes to her face, I saw tears gliding freely down her cheeks. Her face was no longer smug, but a mask of anguish. Her lashes were black, and around her eyes was a subtle grayness of the flesh, these heightening their striking effect. Sometimes I think women are more beautiful when they’re not happy than when they are. Maybe that’s why men mistreat them. All I knew then was that this unearthly being was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and I wondered if maybe Caroline was right about my motivations for freeing her, all loftiness and morality aside.
As she had suggested, I started using the point of the rod to pry out the spikes, starting with one in her wing. I couldn’t bear to start on her hands or feet, not after the pain I had already caused her. She was moaning, gasping the occasional outright sob. I couldn’t look at her face again.
I worked out the first of the nails, moved to the next.
"My wings are probably ruined," she muttered thickly.
"Will you still be able to fly?"
"Fly?" She raised her heavy head. "Who said I could fly?"
I had never seen the flying monkey devils fly, but I had always assumed they could if they wanted to. I told her as much.
"They can’t fly either. Some Demons levitate, but not my kind."
"So why develop the wings?"
"Develop? Don’t you mean to say evolve? Nothing evolves. See…it’s that kind of thinking that put you here in the first place." She paused to grunt as I levered out another nail. "There are birds with wings that don’t fly, aren’t there? Penguins and ostriches? The Creator gave my kind wings like He gave the peacock a beautiful tail. Because it pleases His eye."
Yes, why give her wings, except out of sheer whim? Why give her that remarkable face? It was like the mantis I had found at the university. A mysterious beauty for its own sake.
After a lot of straining effort on my part, my palms blistering and my fingers slick with her blood, I removed the last of the nails in her wings. They drooped, shuddered convulsively, stirred as if to circulate their blood. Even after she calmed them the best she could they still visibly trembled. Up close to them, I could see that the bigger veins near the point where the wings rooted into her back pulsed with the flow of their blood.
I moved to her hands next.
I freed one. Her groans made my own guts churn. I felt like I was a Demon myself, torturing one of the Damned. Roles reversed. The people who had overpowered her and pinioned her here must have found pleasure in that reversal. From the pose they’d left her in, I wondered if they had raped her…but I was afraid to ask her that.
She reached above her head to dig her fingers into the deeply fissured bark so as not to fall forward while I knelt before her like a worshipper, loosening the spikes that transfixed her feet. I freed one. Then, with a final effort of strained muscles, drenched in sweat, I dug out the last of them. And the Demon allowed herself to drop forward onto the ground, resting her forehead to the forest floor, her elbows and knees bunched under her, her rump pointed in the air and the wings tremulous over her like a collapsed tent of living skin.
"I’m sorry," I said.
She rose up before me then, so suddenly and so tall—at my own eye level—that I flinched violently.
"Thank you, little one," she purred. She was trying to sound cocky, in control again. A proud warrior, an Amazon with bat wings. But I could see that puffiness around her eyes, the droop of the lids, the tightness around her mouth. She felt shame at what had been done to her. Humiliation, that I had witnessed it. That she had needed my help. That she might even have died had I not come.
I let the pike drop heavily to the grass by my feet. She glanced down at it. Then she stooped to retrieve it. She winced and clamped a hand flat against her abdomen as she rose. I gulped saliva. I pictured her plunging the tip of that pike through my eye now…her way of getting back at the former mortals who had bested her.
"I’d better hurry if I’m going to catch up with your friend."
"What? Wait…please…"
"She wanted to kill me."
"She was afraid!"
"So were you. But you helped me."
"But I’m a newcomer here. I’m not jaded yet. I’m…"
"Stop making excuses. Just be grateful that I’m not shoving this up your ass now like I’m going to do to her."
"Please!" I practically barked at the creature now. "Don’t! Do it to me, then, if you have to do it to somebody."
She cocked her head. "You’re an odd one. Yes…you are a newcomer, aren’t you? Not all your lot are like you." She thrust the spear’s tip under my nose. "Those others fucked me with this. Like the smell?"
I jerked my head away. "Go hunt them down, then. They deserve it. Not Caroline."
"Do you love her?"
"I hardly know her."
"But you’ve fucked her." She leaned in close to my neck and drew in a deep breath, lifting her face so that it was practically nose to nose with mine. "I can smell sex on you."
"Please," I repeated. This close, I smelled the tang of sweat and the metallic sting of blood on her. "If you want to repay me for helping you, you won’t…"
"Repay you?" she snarled. Her eyes grew wild, startling me. Bulging insanely. "I don’t need to repay you, understand? I didn’t strike a deal with you! I didn’t buy my freedom! You’re the punished here, I’m the punisher!"
"I’m sorry!"
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