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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

Interfere? I took a step back. The odor of rot that rose off him was so strong that even demon-senses couldn’t entirely deal with it.

He struggled to his feet, although he could barely stand, and to my astonishment he began trying to throw his now-shortened rope over the branch so he could hang himself again. I took a breath before stepping closer, then grabbed at him but caught only his decaying clothes, which tore in my hands. His rope had been tied to the tree at one end, and I had halved its length by cutting it. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get enough rope over the branch to hoist himself aloft again. When he turned toward me, I saw to my astonishment that he was weeping, viscous tears like snail’s tracks edging down his bluish cheeks. “How could you!” he half-shrieked, half-wheezed, then clumsily began to swing his fists at me.

I had only a moment to figure out what was going on and to remind myself that my philanthropic efforts never did me much good even outside of Hell, when something dropped out of the fog that surrounded us and attached itself to the struggling corpse like a vampire bat in a Friday night horror movie. The hanged man was screaming in pain as well as weeping now, and although I knew I’d almost certainly regret it, I had to try to help him.

Remember when I mentioned Dante’s harpies, the creatures who policed the suicide woods in his literary version of the Inferno? The real ones were a lot less pleasant than owls with tits. They looked more like gobs of phlegm the size of koala bears, with insect wings and faces that were mostly flat, square teeth. And it wasn’t just one of them dropping down out of the murk, it was quickly becoming a lot of harpies, and they obviously weren’t just there to punish the suicide, because another one of those horrid vampire boogers leaped onto my neck, beating its horrid fly’s wings in excitement as it tried to gnaw a hole in me. By the time I managed to impale it on my blade, three more were crawling over my body, looking for a way to burrow headfirst into my guts, and I could hear the wings of dozens more as they swarmed toward us through the mist. And while all this nightmare bullshit was going on, my enemies were only getting closer.

forty-one

the pain report

SO THERE I was, being attacked by winged mucus-monsters in the Suicide Forest, wondering what could possibly make my day any worse, when I heard the one thing that unquestionably could: the distant baying of hellhounds. It was like a dagger made of ice right between my shoulder blades.