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
Eligor smiled and gestured. The hotel conference room disappeared, instantly replaced by the chamber with the rusted, stained table and cutting tools. A moment later, without anyone touching me, I found myself facedown on the table and unable to move. I felt little Torture Me Elmo climb up onto my back, then move forward until he straddled my neck. Worst of all, I could feel that he had a little furry erection.
“It has to go in at the base of the skull,” the grand duke said. “That way, if you talk to anyone in Hell, I’ll know about it, and if the Mastema catches you—well, our little intracubus will just eat his way out and we won’t have to worry about your saying something you shouldn’t.” He chuckled. “But if you do somehow make your way out of Hell and back to Earth, Mister Dollar, the intracubus will disappear with the demon-body you’re wearing now. And I’ll be waiting to hear from you. You know my office number. Call me when you have the feather, and we’ll arrange our little swap.”
Then Eligor was gone. I could feel his absence like a flame suddenly extinguished. It was just me, the thing in the sphere, and the furry monstrosity who promptly began to gouge a hole in the back of my head with what felt like a rusty screwdriver. Anaesthetic? In Hell?
I had really hoped I was done screaming for the day.
You would have thought that after all the terrible things that had happened to me lately, after all the attacks, torments, violations I’d suffered, this would have been just the latest and the least, a small price to pay for escaping alive or, at least, being given the chance to escape. You’d have thought that, but you’d have been wrong. The hideous sensation of having my skull gouged open paled into absolute insignificance next to the thing that Doctor Teddy pushed into me until it nestled against the meat of my brain. It felt like a hermit crab made of razor blades forced into far, far too small a shell—a shell that just happened to be attached to my neck. Then those legs and teeth closed on my nerve stem, anchoring the thing, and worse by far than the pain was the feeling of its connecting itself to me in a thousand horribly intimate ways. I’ve talked with spirits and demons and guardian angels, and I’ve met things that would make a Green Beret wet himself and never even notice, but I swear I’ve never felt anything as disgusting as having that thing get comfortable inside my head.