BooksBarbecue
Back Happy Hour In Hell
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

Could it really have been Smyler? But if it had been, why would he run? Was he afraid of all of the others in the nearby room? Somehow that didn’t seem quite what I expected of him. Maybe he was just waiting for a better opportunity to get me alone.

Rattled, I hurried back to the greater security of Riprash’s Lifter meeting, but I had barely slipped back inside when I was startled by a crash and harsh voices from downstairs. I wasn’t the only one: eyes widened in the near darkness all around the room, then a second later our quiet gathering of damned turned into a cockroach party suddenly exposed to light, malformed shapes scuttling in all directions as the first of the Murderers Sect guards burst through the door with whips and torches and nets.

Had Smyler been spying on us for the authorities? It didn’t really make sense, but it was hard to believe his being here was a coincidence, either.

I struggled through the chaos looking for Riprash, but the ogre appeared as if from nowhere, picked me up by the back of my neck like a stray puppy, and carried me toward the window. He held Gob in his other massive hand, and before I could even make sense of his plan, Riprash had leaned so far out of the window that the boy and I were dangling in midair, nothing beneath us until the hard stone cobbles nearly a hundred feet below. I didn’t have much time to think, however, because a moment later I felt a massive yank and Gob and I were flying through the air with everything spinning around us like the view in a kaleidoscope. It took me a panicked half-second or more before we crashed and rolled and slid to a halt, and I realized that Riprash hadn’t flung us down, but all the way up onto the roof of the warehouse. After that, I was too busy to think about anything much, trying to find my weapons and dodge the shrieking Lifters who had found their way to the roof.

I quickly got separated from Gob in the mad skirmish. It was no longer just the other Lifters on the tiled roof now—the Murderers Sect bullies had arrived, climbing up after us, and they were wading into the nearest of the squealing heretics, dealing out what looked like serious pain, tearing flesh from backs with their bladed whips, crushing limbs and skulls with heavy maces. Those they had beaten down were hauled away in nets, trussed, and left at the corner of the roof while the guards concentrated on those of us who were still free.