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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

I couldn’t stop thinking about it as we trudged through those misty, treacherous meadows, past rows of nodding, death-pale blossoms, the little damned Ballast-boy following at my heels like a feral dog, perhaps having the most fun he’d ever had in his squalid, miserable (but still nearly endless) life. God knows I tried to stop dwelling on the horror of it, but the unwanted thought kept coming back to me again and again.

Eternity? Really?

We began to see signs of life beside the gloomy, solitary flower-eaters and the endless mist.

The first evidence of civilization was that the faint track Gob had been following finally became something more substantial, a road trod through the swampy grasses and down to the stony soil. We began to see houses, too, although it’s ridiculous to use such a word to describe the mean little piles of reeds and stones. Perhaps the inhabitants lived off the flower-eaters somehow, robbed them or sold things to them. Perhaps they harvested flowers and sent them by boat up the crap-colored streams that were beginning to be more common. I didn’t know and I didn’t care, because now I could see the walls of a city in the distance, which had to be Cocytus Landing, and that was where the hard part of my journey would begin.

All I’d had to do so far was keep myself moving forward and avoid obvious mistakes, but now I would be making contact with this guy Riprash, the demon I was supposed to give Temuel’s curious message. I would rather have gone straight for Caz, but I didn’t dare leave the Mule’s errand for later: I had a feeling that when it was time to leave Hell, I might be leaving in a hurry. So Sinners’ Market first, then, if I survived, on to Pandaemonium, the capital of Hell, a mere few hundred levels or so straight up, the demons and freaks getting thicker around me with every step.

It took us half a day to find the ford over one of the Cocytus’s last tributaries, a narrow spot where bug-plated demons pulled an ancient barge back and forth on ropes across the steaming river. When I couldn’t produce any money for the fare, one of them kindly offered to take Gob instead, but we settled on a small cup of my blood, which they acquired with the quick slash of a dirty blade. My demon-blood looked blacker than human blood, but that might just have been the weird light.