BooksBarbecue
Back Happy Hour In Hell Save as PDF
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

Flesh Horse was many acres wide at its base and stretched up so far into the smoky sky that even with the red day lamps burning in the walls I couldn’t see its top. The great, stony castle didn’t actually look like a horse, or like flesh, but it didn’t look like a nice place, either. Still, Caz was in there somewhere, and I desperately needed to get her back. It felt like doing that was the only thing that might keep me sane.

So I spent several days on my due diligence and lots of money on bribes, gathering information and prepping myself. I had a special set of clothes made by a tailor at the Night Market, and paid another visit to Saad the pink tarantula to pick up a few additional necessities. My scars were all but healed now, the bumpiness of my face still just as ugly but a lot less recent-looking.

The night before I started my mission, I drank myself to near-unconsciousness with Phlegethon firewater because I was too tightly wound to sleep otherwise. In the near darkness Hell calls morning, I took one last swallow to burn out the hangover and the musty taste in my mouth, then carefully dressed and prepared myself before walking out into the Red City, whistling the theme to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

Okay, I wasn’t doing that last part. I admit that I was wishing Clint Eastwood could have been there too, but it was only yours truly.

twenty-eight

the drowned girl

HERE’S A tip. If you’re a Mormon missionary or a door-to-door salesman, don’t waste your time and outer skin visiting Flesh Horse. My forged documents got me more attention than I would have liked, but they also got me inside the tower and into an appointment with Eligor’s Chief of Security. The grand duke’s previous head of security, my old friend Howlingfell, had been eaten by a large supernatural monstrosity that was supposed to eat me instead—something I can honestly say I enjoyed a great deal. The new chief, a hideous thing named Snaghorn, resembled a bloody, skinned grizzly bear with snail-stalks for eyes. He’d never seen me before, which doesn’t mean he heartily invited me in, of course: Snaghorn spent a good fifteen minutes just sniffing me. I’m sure he was just doing his job, but he seemed to do it for a very long time. A very, very long time. But at last Snaghorn seemed satisfied. Instead of biting any parts off me, he touched a curving black claw to my forehead. It felt like I’d been branded, and in a way, I had: he’d given me his mark, which meant limited permission to move through the lower levels of the house. Not by myself, of course, and not freely. I had an appointment with someone Snaghorn curtly referred to as “the drowned girl.”