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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

“Oh, it like this, Bobby Dollar! Said he don’t give up. Yes! More! It want your heart.” And then he pulled his crazy knife out of the garbage can lid and leaped up onto the wall and stuck there like a lizard basking in a Tijuana courtyard.

I’d lost my gun somewhere in the red rage, but it didn’t really matter. I couldn’t beat him. As long as Eligor or whoever was pouring this much power into keeping him alive and functioning on Earth, I was going to lose. I had nothing left to fight with but the bloody chunk of concrete in my hand. I backed myself along the wall toward a doorway, where I would have the best chance of defending myself, but the body I was wearing was not going to magically repair puncture wounds in seconds like his did, and he probably wasn’t planning to kill me right away in any case. He, or at least his master, wanted to know where the feather was, and I had no doubt he would happily take his time finding out.

The sirens were getting really loud now.

I had lost him again in the shadows, but I spotted movement and realized he had slipped down to the ground where he was harder to see, hidden by the shadow of a dumpster. I braced myself, guessing he wouldn’t wait long. I was right.

Smyler came across the alley like a crab, zigzagging sideways at crazy angles. I caught a glint of his sharklike stare, then the longer smear of reflected streetlight that was his blade. I ducked on pure instinct and the bayonet whipped invisibly past my ear. I only knew it was there when it cut my cheek coming back the other direction.

“Bobby!” someone said. “Close your eyes!”

And I did, a mere moment late, just slow enough that I saw the first burst of fiery light. The rictus mask of Smyler as he loomed over me, his eyes wide but his pupils suddenly no bigger than the heads of ants, was burned onto my retina.

The light burned brighter and brighter even through my closed eyelids, even through the lingering afterimage of Smyler’s terrible face, flaring so intensely that my own head seemed to turn all white inside. Smyler shrieked. Despite everything I had done to him, it was the first time I’d heard him in distress. Then the whiteness was too much, and I fell down and pulled the dark around me for a little while.