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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

It took me a moment to figure it out, because so many parts of me were sending back messages of terrible, overwhelming pain, but I was lying on my gun. I reached under myself as unobtrusively as I could, meanwhile closing my eyes as if I had just given up, trying to get Niloch to move closer. One shot left. It wouldn’t save me—there were too many other hunters behind the commissar—but I could at least take Niloch out.

When I thought I was in position to move quickly despite the pain, I tugged the revolver out from under me, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The noise was surprisingly loud for a place with no ceiling, the echoes snapping back off the cylindrical walls, over and over. It hurt a lot to roll and move so violently, so quickly, but it would have all been worth it if I hadn’t missed.

Niloch didn’t seem disturbed that a bullet had just flown past his bony head. “Tch,” he said. “So unpleasant. First you destroy my sweet hounds, now you would attack me, too? For doing my civic duty? Shame on you, Snakestaff, shame.”

I think the rattling noise was him laughing, but I was a bit distracted by the glow now hovering in the air just behind him. Several of Niloch’s nearest soldiers were also staring. At first it was only a fizzle, no more than the smolder of a road flare, but then that fizzle suddenly dove down toward the ground, leaving an unstable streak of light hanging in the air. Just as Niloch himself realized that something was happening, a glowing hand appeared from the jagged, midair stripe of light; a second later Smyler bounded out of nothingness and onto the bridge beside Niloch. Even as the commissar opened up his bony jaw to shout an order, and well before his astonished soldiers could do anything, Smyler grabbed Niloch and jammed his four-bladed knife into the commissar’s neck, then began to twist it around in a way that couldn’t have been pleasant even for an arch-demon. Niloch screeched in pain and surprise. His men came crowding in around him, trying to pull loose the scrawny thing, but they couldn’t get a decent grip. Smyler was literally climbing around on Niloch, clinging like the commissar was a bunch of bananas and he was some kind bionic-murder monkey.

I realized I was staring at all this with my mouth open when I should be running like crazy. I tried to get up, but the heavy rope still ran from the harpoon in my chest and all the way back into the melee, and now it was wound around several people. Every tug as they fought with Smyler made the harpoon twist in my bloody chest, an agony I won’t insult with the weak word “pain.”