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
Smyler tipped his head to one side like a puzzled dog. For the first time I realized that he was as naked as I was, but whatever external features he’d once had, like genitalia, were gone, just more ruined, dead flesh. “Eligor?”
“The big old demon who owns this place. The one whose prisoner I am. You weren’t working for him, but for an angel?”
“It loves angels.” The corpse-puppet head bobbed up and down. “It will be angel when it’s done.”
I don’t like these “everything you know is wrong” moments when they happen to me in the course of absolutely ordinary life, but I like them even less when I’m a prisoner in Hell, taking a little break between bouts of indescribable punishment. What was going on here? This monstrous thing, this gibbering killer, didn’t belong to Eligor and maybe never had? Now that I thought about it, the grand duke’s reaction when I mentioned Smyler’s name had been a bit strange, a bit . . . noncommittal. But why would Kephas employ such a creature? Wasn’t Kephas hiding his or her identity from the rest of Heaven precisely because Kephas thought the Highest was too rough on the souls of the dead? How did that gibe with sending a serial murderer after a perfectly blameless angel? Who was the real villain here, Eligor, Grand Duke of Hell, or Kephas, supposed heavenly idealist? Neither of them? Both of them?
“How did you meet Kephas?” I asked.
Smyler stared hard at me, perhaps sensing some of the unhappiness behind my words. “Kephas came. Kephas spoke. Showed it Heaven. Showed it the light. Told it Papa Man and Mama were wrong. It wasn’t bad, it was made for . . . something else.”
“Papa Man? Mama?” Smyler had been alive once, so of course he must have had a family, or at least a mother, but it had been a long time since I had thought of him as anything other than a force of supernatural evil. “Were those your parents?”
“It was their cross to bear. Mama always said. It was borned because Papa Man had the sin of pride. Because he tried to make a baby at her when she was blessed by God to stay a version.”
“A . . . virgin?”