HELL’S DARK hours were coming on, which helped a little. I was naked and bruised, bleeding in a few places, but most of the horrible things that Eligor had done to me hadn’t left marks. Nakedness was less common in Pandaemonium than in other parts of the inferno, but it certainly wasn’t unheard of.

As I scuttled through the shadowed places, across cinders and broken stone, I prayed that Riprash hadn’t already sailed back to Cocytus Landing. For all I knew, I could have been Eligor’s prisoner for months or even years, and although I doubted that, some time had definitely passed: the hand that Block had bitten off was now mostly regrown. The gray skin was too smooth, and puckered like burn scars, but the fingers all worked, and I could touch them with the thumb, which meant I could hold things in it. Weapons, was what I was thinking about, of course. Angel bodies are ambidextrous and, apparently, so are demon bodies; I hadn’t suffered too badly by being one-handed, but when it comes to fighting, two hands are definitely better than one.

Even as I made my way down through the outskirts of Sulfur Lagoon, not too far from where I had been entertained so interestingly by Vera, I heard the alarm being raised around the city, the shriek of sirens and the howl of my animal pursuers, the last thankfully still distant. That was little old me everyone was being warned about. Luckily, most of Pandaemonium’s citizens would be locking themselves behind doors, since nobody would want to come into contact with the hellhounds, which weren’t always real selective about what they caught and ate. “I didn’t do anything!” is not an excuse that went very far with either the hounds or their masters. A massive sign hung above the Via Dolorosa at the entrance to the city, where most municipalities had things like “Welcome to Sheboygan!” Pandaemonium’s said “Nobody’s Innocent” in ten-foot flaming red letters.