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
Belle hit me one last time, a backhand blow that thumped my skull against the headboard of the bed. It had become a ritual: she cleaned the room, although nowhere near as carefully as before, she emptied my chamber pot, and then she beat the crap out of me. She was built like a heavyweight boxer, our Belle, like one of the old ones, long arms and big torso. I was guessing that in life she must have gone about two-fifteen, two-twenty, almost linebacker size, but here, with the sharp spikes of bone growing from her joints, I’d guess she was a good twenty or thirty pounds more. Bigger than me, in other words, and with all the strength that a demonic body can give you.
“You should kiss her hand and thank her that she’s kept you,” Belle said from the doorway. “I would have pulled your head off and thrown you on the midden. I know how to treat your type.”
“I’ll bet you do.” My head was still ringing and it would have been smarter to keep my mouth shut, but I didn’t really care. Even being destroyed would be better than this, and it would certainly be less humiliating. “I’ll bet the boys loved you, with that pretty face and figure.”
She smirked. “You think I couldn’t get a man? They came and knocked at my door. They brought me money!” She jutted her heavy jaw. “I had as many as Vera. I just wasn’t so sentimental. No ‘immortals’ for me. No, I would have put you in the fire and watched you sizzle, little fella.”
She really was a charmer. I’d like to say that she was bad cop to her mistress’s good cop, but given a choice between the two I’d rather have just been beaten instead of raped, even if my rapist was crying as often as she was cursing me. Man, was I ever being reminded not to trust anyone in Hell. Vera’s joy-juice had lulled me, but my brain had still worked fairly well, so I couldn’t dodge the blame. I’d grown careless, and now I was paying for it. And paying for it and paying for it.
Most nights, Vera wouldn’t even look at me after she’d finished: when her spasm was over she would crawl off me and rearrange her clothing into respectability. Tonight, as if in parody of one of those old movies where the couples sleep in separate beds, she was dressed in an extremely modest nightdress that she smoothed over her long legs, hiding the alien horror between her thighs. She was Mina Harker as well as Dracula, the Victorian maiden and the beast of darkness rolled into one.