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Authors: Jeffrey Thomas

BOOK: Jeffrey Thomas, Voices from Hades
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As one, the assembled Demons gave a deep bow.
The party had strolled further into the hall, slowly, as if to inspect each of the Demons in their rows. They were close enough to Xaphan now that he could hear the Angel named James Colombo snort and comment, "Haven’t they heard of clothes around here? I feel like I walked into
National Geographic
." Over his shoulder, he said, "Check out their color, Tony. Big surprise, huh?"
Their guide, McDonald, put in, "Well, guys, these aren’t the only sort of Demons. Some look like whites, some like orientals…"
"How politically correct."
"I think they’re beautiful," said Teresa Colombo, who unlike her husband had a British accent, dark and smoky. "In a scary way."
"They’re okay," Anthony opined, flicking the nipple ring of one of the female Demons. Xaphan saw her jaw twitch slightly.
The woman’s husband stopped, turned to her with a cocked eyebrow and said, "You do, huh? Well…they’re not as bad as those things." He gestured openly at one of the towering, immobile Baphomets. Xaphan could tell by the fluctuations in its caul of cold flame that it was displeased by the comment, but he knew it wouldn’t have given voice to its disapproval even if it had had a voice.
"Right," said his wife smartly, spinning to address McDonald, Mick as he insisted on being called. "Mick, can those poor children be unharnessed now from that awful contraption we rode here in, and given some food and water and maybe some rest? I never should have stepped into that thing when I saw what was pulling it."
"Uh, this is Hell, sweetheart," said James. "There’s a good reason for those kids to be here, I’m sure."
"It’s their parents’ fault if they weren’t baptized…"
Uncomfortably, McDonald chuckled and put a hand on her arm. "Don’t worry, Terry—we’ll take care of them. And when you leave, I promise we’ll have a carriage pulled by animals."
"What kind of animals? A team of a hundred kittens with their fur on fire?"
Her brother-in-law laughed. "Whoa, that I’d like to see. Terry, you should be one of the torture designers down here."
The guests were shown off to their opulently-appointed rooms, and the ranks of Demons broke up. Xaphan found Vjeshitza and muttered, "I could devise or administer no greater torture than the smile in an Angel’s voice."
««—»»
While Xaphan and Vjeshitza made love, a sandstorm howled outside. Xaphan hoped the two brothers and Mick were on a hunting excursion at this very moment, and had been caught out in the storm. He pictured them hunkered down in the inadequate shelter of the forest of antler-like bone, covering their faces against the stinging sands of dried blood.
That was the main reason the brothers had come to Hades—to hunt the Damned for sport. Though they had brought their own rifles, custom-made for them in Heaven, Castle Urian opened the doors of its armory to guests, and Xaphan had heard that earlier today the brothers had gone down into the tunnels below the palace to fire crossbows into targets. He didn’t know if the targets were Damned prisoners from the palace’s cells, but he didn’t doubt it. These prisoners were released as hunting stock when the free-ranging Damned outside grew scanty in this area.
They were in Xaphan’s room, which was tiny—but he counted himself as lucky, since Demons in other outposts and cities often had only communal barracks to rest in. A red silken tapestry covered one entire wall, the symbol for Castle Urian embroidered on it in metallic purple thread. The sheets of the small cot-like bed were of the same red material. Xaphan was raised over Vjeshitza on the strong columns of his arms, the muscles and cords in his neck pulled taut, his tight chest looking carved from polished ebony. Her powerful legs wrapped around his lower back, Vjeshitza had one finger hooked through both the rings pierced through his nipples, pulling on them just enough that the pleasure didn’t stray too far into pain. Her feathered wings formed a black pool under her that looked like it might swallow them. His, half open, were a canopy that seemed to be casting that intimate pool of shadow.
"I helped prepare a perfumed bath for the woman today," Vjeshitza cooed, staring into her lover’s eyes, which were both intensely focused but oddly detached, as if he gazed at some small object that was the only detail he could recall from a dream.
"Yes?" he grunted absent-mindedly, rocking her hips with his own, their pelvises locked like the antlers of fighting stags. "I imagine she was imperious. Insulting…"
"No. She was polite. She’s bored, though. She’s only here because of her husband, I’m sure. But I saw her body when she disrobed. She’s a horrible thing. Fat, like a white leech gorged on blood. Like fruit that should have fallen from a branch long ago."
"She wasn’t born a warrior, like us. And how old is she?"
"She was forty-two when she died, I heard. Young…for one of them." Both Xaphan and Vjeshitza were only eleven years old. They had left the city of Tartarus, where they had been made, as adults. Had, in fact, been born as adults.
"She doesn’t strike me as being terrible. For one of her kind," he said.
"Don’t let her mislead you. They can’t be trusted. They are all of one evil heart…such as we Demons can only aspire to." Suddenly she darted her head like a snake and nipped him on the neck. His eyes clicked onto hers at last, and she grinned bright teeth in her lovely dark face. "Look at me." Then, more seriously, her smile becoming more subtle, she whispered, "Look at me…" She smoothed her hands over the black globe of his skull, as if to read the future in its surface.
««—»»
Earlier in the day, Xaphan had passed Mrs. Colombo in a hallway. He had lowered his eyes and nodded his head respectfully, but when he glanced up he saw that she had given him a smile. Changed out of her Angel’s customary garments, she was wearing a black long-sleeved pullover and black slacks with flared legs. Her clothing was very tight, emphasizing her overripe figure.
Xaphan felt that his lover had been uncharitable in calling her fat, a leech. Though her body was more voluptuous, more indulged than those of Urian’s devils—which might be taken as a sign of grossness, decadence—he found her shape an artistic abstraction of the features associated with the feminine: her breasts plump, her hips wide (had she birthed children in life?). Also, whereas he, Vjeshitza, and the others had no hair, Teresa Colombo’s flowed down past her breasts, was thick and parted in the center, as black as his own wings. It waved about her face when she moved, and she was always brushing a curtain of it aside to clear her face (with its dark eyes, heavy brows, strong nose, pink lips pressed into that little smile she gave him). Again, compared to one of his kind, her long, heavy hair might seem a sign of lush overindulgence. But the contrast was eye-catching…just as was the brightness of her skin compared to his own.
Later in that same day, as he was turning into a corridor, he heard her voice behind him (its British accent distinct), and turned to see that she was moving briskly to catch up with him. "Excuse me?" she called, gesturing. She smiled more broadly this time, showing large white teeth. He went to her.
"Madam?"
"Can you help me move something?"
"Of course, madam."
He went to her, and she led him back around the corner, down a hallway and to a door of one of the opulent guests suites. He realized it must be her own.
She opened the door, led him inside, and she closed the door after him.
"The desk under the window," she said, pointing. "Can you move that to the corner, and replace it with that armchair? I like to sit and read, but I prefer natural light."
"Certainly, madam." He did as she had instructed. As he lifted her desk, he noticed there were a few books strewn upon it. They were some of those written by the Damned themselves, and published by them as well in the larger cities like Oblivion. These crude booklets had found their way to Castle Urian in the possession of this and that Angel over the years, and Xaphan himself had read several of them in his idle hours (though Vjeshitza had scolded him for it, and had hissed that she didn’t think it was wise for Demons to allow the Damned to express their thoughts in this way, let alone disseminate them to other Damned). He saw that she had a bookmark in one slim volume titled
Letters From Hades
, the author calling himself Dan Alighieri.
Seeing his eyes on it, Teresa lifted the book and riffled the pages. "There isn’t much to do here while my husband’s out hunting."
A little while ago, Xaphan had heard distant gunshots. "There is a subterranean garden, and a pool, down in the labyrinths," he offered.
"I’ve been to them. Yes, the pool is nice and hot, and the garden is pretty, if you like mushrooms and moss. A bit dungeon-like down there for my tastes, though." She set down the book and unexpectedly moved closer to him, reached out a finger that almost but not quite touched one of the perfect, unbroken onyx rings that passed through his black nipples. Her almost-touch made him flinch harder than an actual touch would have. "How do they get these things in you? I don’t see a break in them."
"They put them in my species of Demon while we are still forming."
"Huh; I see. How strange. And these?" She indicated the slashed scars on both his breasts. He explained to her that he had inflicted the wounds upon himself, in a ritual marking the end of his training as a demonic warrior.
"Rrr," Teresa said, pretending to slash her own fingernails down the raised scars on his chest. Then she chuckled smokily. "Sorry." He didn’t know whether to smile or to feel mocked, so he remained stoic.
She moved around behind him now, and though they weren’t as sensitive as his skin, he could tell she was fingering the glossy black feathers along the edge of one of his folded wings. "Pretty," she said behind him.
"Thank you, madam," Xaphan muttered.
"Do you really fly?"
"No, madam."
"Hm. They’re rather pointless, then, aren’t they?"
He found their reflection in a mirror over a dressing table. She was obscured behind him in the silvered glass, but he felt her hand alight softly on his lower back. Slide into its hollow. Then around his side, along his hip. Now he could see her white hand on his dark skin in the mirror. He saw it glide over his hard belly, and then lower. Until it cupped his prick and his balls, and held them firmly. Her thumb stroked his demonhood, coaxing blood into its tubes.
"I’m bored," she whispered against one wing, as she slid her cheek back and forth across its silken sleekness.
"Yes, madam," he managed. She was pumping him languorously now. He grew hard quickly. Her hand barely fit around his black-veined dusky shaft. Its glans gleamed like the head of an obsidian scepter.
"My God," she husked, and she ran her tongue along the skin of his hard-muscled shoulder as if to taste its salt. Then she moved around in front of him, and sank to her knees. It made Xaphan uncomfortable that an Angel should kneel in supplication before a Demon. But when she took as much of him into her mouth as she could accommodate, he let out a small groan, and a moment later could not restrain himself from putting both hands to her head.
He had never touched a human woman’s head before, except in the course of tortures he was obligated to perform. Her hair was a mass that shifted under his palms. That tangled between his fingers. His listened to the slick sounds of her mouth as her head worked forward and back. He felt her nails against the balls they cupped. Sharp, but not painful like the teasing claws of Vjeshitza.
Before he could find release inside her human head, Teresa rose before him, her dark eyes shining with something like a madness. "Undress me," she whispered.
And he did. He pulled off the form-fitting black pullover, the tight-fitting slacks, as if unpeeling a fruit. Her breasts hung heavy in her bra, and he held them in his hands, his thumbs spiraling across her nipples until they pressed at the restraining material. Then he lowered one of his hands, slipped it under the elastic waistband of her briefs, and fingered open the moist slit hidden in the coils of her secret hair. He had never touched this hair before, either, Vjeshitza as denuded there as a newborn mortal. A dark musk arose, and liquid sounds like her mouth had made at his cock.
"Fuck me," she murmured against his chest. With her tongue, she flicked the ring through one nipple, and then pulled slightly at the ring with her teeth. Then, again: "Fuck me."
He fumbled at her bra; she helped him. He skinned her panties down her legs. Seeing her entirely nude, he nearly ejaculated into the air itself. That vista of white flesh, its whiteness only heightened by the black growth below her rounded belly, and pouring down across her rounded shoulders. There were no hard ribs, points of hip bones, sharply defined arm muscles. She was like the offer of a soft bed to a monk who had been sleeping on a stone floor.

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