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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

To my dismay, instead of making camp on the shore, the commissar’s troops immediately began to follow in roughly the same direction I’d just come, as though they’d already picked up my scent. I did my best to hurry my pace, although it was dangerous climbing in the dark. As I got nearer the top, I could see my pursuers beginning to flag: the horses, or whatever the hell they were riding, were having trouble with the steep, rocky slope. At last they reached a relatively flat spot several hundred feet below me and began scouting for an easier way up.

I took advantage of this pause to find suitable rock where I could rest and also keep an eye on them. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but I could tell Niloch was furious. I could hear his shrill tones echo out over the river valley. While he scolded his minions, I watched the hellhounds pace nervously on their chains, each one held by two or three keepers, but I soon wished I had chosen something else to watch.

The hounds were huge, about the length of lions or tigers, with low-slung bodies like medieval pictures of wolves, and pelts that appeared almost flat black. I found out later that they looked that way because they didn’t have pelts at all but leathery, scaled hides, something like what you’d find on a Komodo dragon. Then one of them turned toward the place where I was hiding, and its entire pink snout, invisible until that moment, pushed forward out of the rough black sleeve of its face, like a dog’s penis emerging from its foreskin. Even in torchlight the pink protrusion glistened, damp and sticky-looking, featureless but for two huge holes that I guessed were its nostrils. Then the end of the snout opened, revealing a mouth full of inward curving teeth like a Conger eel’s, and I turned and threw up bile, the only thing in my stomach.

I’ve seen a lot of nasty things, but I haven’t seen too many worse than that, because unlike the horrors in the river, these creatures were expressly after me and me alone. When my stomach had finished spasming, I got up and hurriedly made my way across the hillcrest, looking for a place to climb down on the other side. I was still exhausted, but getting an up-close view of the things that were after me was enough to pump a shitload of adrenaline, let me tell you.