Chapters (60)
- DAW Books Presents
- HAPPY HOURINHELL
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Dedication
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- interlude
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- interlude
- thirteen
- fourteen
- interlude
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- interlude
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- epilogue
See, our river trip had taken us up at least a dozen levels, which didn’t make any sense at all. I certainly hadn’t noticed us sailing uphill, and the Cocytus, black and sticky and noxious as it was, seemed in all other ways to obey the laws of gravity and physics I knew. But this was Hell, after all, and although it was more realistic (for lack of a better word) than Heaven, it wasn’t any more real. As an angel I was used to the slippery distances and untellable time of Heaven, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to accept that some things in Hell, no matter how illogical, just were.
I scrubbed myself with bits of sail-mending canvas to get the worst muck off me, since the river was way too dangerous for swimming. In fact, ordinary souls didn’t use water to bathe in Hell: it was too rare. Then Gob and I waited for Riprash to give us the sign that it was safe to disembark. We sat for what seemed like hours, the boy pacing back and forth across the tiny cabin until I wanted to clout him. I was already wondering what I was going to do with Gob. I didn’t want to take him with me any farther, because I might have to make a hasty retreat from some very bad place, and it was going to be hard enough to figure out how to smuggle Caz out without adding Gob to the equation. On the other hand, I’d dragged him far away from the places he knew, I didn’t have a single iron spit to pay him off with, and leaving him on his own here in Gravejaw might put him in even greater danger.
Then a sudden idea hit me. I left Gob pacing and went to find Riprash. I should have stayed in the cabin like he told me, but I was suddenly fired up with the idea of doing someone a good turn (I am, or used to be, an angel, remember?) and I blundered up the ladder to the main deck.
The first thing I ran into was one of Riprash’s minions, the catlike, bug-eyed one who had gaped at me back at the slave stall in Cocytus Landing like I was some long-lost relative. I couldn’t imagine any reason why this grubby little thing should be looking at me with such insolent familiarity (you can see that Hell was starting to get to me) so before he could work up his nerve to say something, I demanded to know where Riprash was.
“On the d-d-dock,” said Krazy Kat in a high, stuttering voice, “but I th-think, I think . . .”