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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

Was the thing in my head really only a failsafe against me giving up Eligor’s feather-secret if I was captured? How would it decide that my escape was no longer viable and hit the Destruct button? How was a crab-monster in my head going to judge? And maybe—this was a big one—maybe Eligor had lied to me in the first place. Maybe this was all just some kind of new torture the grand duke had devised, letting me run while all the time the intracubus was transmitting information to Niloch and his hunters as well. The hounds might be following my scent, but the commissar and his gang had certainly found me quickly enough here in the Grey Woods, and now the foreign thing in my head was making it hard for me to escape them again. Could all this be the Horseman’s particularly nasty, drawn-out trick? Maybe he’d given up on getting the feather back, or maybe the intracubus was meant to spy on my thoughts and find out where the feather was really hidden, since Eligor had said he didn’t find it, or my body, in the Walker house.

Once I started thinking this way it was hard to stop, and for some reason it made the intracubus even more fidgety. Nerves and muscles spasmed all over my body as the little ball of hate moved around in my head, and it was all I could do not to cry out and give myself away. One hard clench hurt so badly it knocked me off my all-fours crouch and onto my belly.

No more. I had learned Hell’s most important lesson several times over by now: Don’t trust anyone, and especially don’t trust Eligor. It was time to do something I should have done hours before.

I still had the flask of demon rum Riprash had sent with me, dangling on my belt with the pistols and the swords. I took a long swallow of the godawful stuff and let it burn its way down into my belly like a river of lava, but I didn’t take too much. Next I took the knife in my left hand because I didn’t trust the misfiring, regenerating nerves in the other, and bent until I could rest my forehead on the damp, muddy ground like a monk at prayer. Then I poured the poisonous swill that Riprash had given me all over the back of my head. I swear it burned as badly as Eligor’s crematory flames. I had to shove my face deep into the mud to silence my screams.