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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

I didn’t really think I’d be allowed to die, of course. I would either be recycled into some permanent garbage heap of misery or, if I was deemed important enough, get swept up and shuttled off to the infernal body shops for replacement, which would be worse, since they’d probably notice when their meters all read, “ALERT! UNDERCOVER ANGEL! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!”

The lifter kept banging to a violent halt and then just as violently starting up again as people got on and off, more all the time as we rose higher—Phlegethon Heights, Lower Mandible, Brokebone, Shrill Hollows, and a raft of others I was too fuzzy to understand properly. When we started to get to the Lethe levels, starting with the Lower Lethe Basin, I pulled the makeshift bandage tight just a few inches below the wound, preparing to run, or at least crawl, toward safety when I got to my destination.

Upward we shot, through more Lethian stops, then on through a number of the lower suburbs of Pandaemonium. Memories implanted by Lameh told me the Red City itself was stacked many levels deep. The announced stops were all enticing—Ass Crack, Disgust, Filth Lake—but I finally heard the words I’d been waiting for, Styx Loch. See, the waterways of Hell all twine around each other like the strands of a DNA molecule, or at least that’s how I picture it in my head. And though the River Styx surrounded and also flowed through the bottom-most levels of Erebus and Tartarus (and for all I know might have lapped gently at the hooves of the Adversary himself down in the ultimate darkness) it also cradled the uppermost levels, and that meant we had almost reached Pandaemonium.

Even through the delirium and weakness, something struck me. An oddity. You’d have expected that if the Adversary and the most important work of the infernal regions were in the deepest pits, that’s where those courting power would have built their homes. Instead they were all up here, as far from those terrible depths as possible, as if Hell’s most important lords still somehow, at least dimly, hoped one day to climb back toward the light. Maybe Riprash had grasped something important.

The announcer voice went silent for long moments, then said in a flat, doom-laden tone, “Terminus.”