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
Then her eyes went empty again, as if a switch had been thrown. “You could have been one of my immortals, Snakestaff. You would have been treasured forever. Instead you are just another . . . miserable, fickle, lying man. But you’ll never go to your white-haired whore. You belong to me. I found you, and you’re mine!”
Her knees against my armpits, Vera began to fumble at her long skirts, pulling them upward with a loud rustling of crinoline, exposing the layers of snowy white petticoats. I could feel a heat against my belly from between her legs, but no matter how I squirmed and fought I couldn’t roll her off me. She was lost in some kind of frenzy of anger and misery, something primitive and not very human. She rose into a half crouch and pulled the rest of her petticoats out of the way.
Between her legs, a horror.
Purple and dark blue and angry red, it was a bulging, quivering thing like a jellyfish, its ropy strands of translucent flesh dangling on my belly and thighs. A prickling where they touched me became a stinging, then a scalding fire. I screamed. Vera squatted above me and reached down to put her hands flat on my chest, and just before her fingers touched me I finally saw the translucent, flexible spines, like the bristles on a toothbrush, growing out from beneath Lady Zinc’s fingernails and into my flesh. She had been poisoning me. All that time petting me, stroking my hair, she’d been pumping her toxins into me, some stay-happy fluid to keep me stupid and cheerful. But those toxins had been mild. What she gave me now definitely wasn’t.
The acid burn in my groin suddenly went nova, filling me up like flaming brandy in all my veins. I could feel my flesh swelling everywhere. Blood pounded in my brain, and I could hardly see, but her eyes held me. Vera’s mad eyes.
The thing between her legs made a wet noise, a ghastly squelch like nothing I’d ever heard, and then it opened. Beyond the ragged, mouthlike frill, the edges were lined with tiny needle teeth, hundreds of them, gaping from the slippery, shining purple and pink.
I’m sure I tried to scream again, because she pulled one of her hands away from my chest—the finger-tendrils came loose with a string of sucking pops like ivy being yanked from a wall—then used it to cover my mouth as she lowered herself onto me. My heart wanted to jump out of my chest, but my groin pushed up toward her, offering itself, riding the tide of my own infected, blazing blood.