What the fuck was he looking for?
You’d think with all the Hellions I’ve hacked up over the years, manhandling a dead one wouldn’t be so disgusting. But I just killed them. I didn’t stick around to watch them rot. Mason must have encased this room in heavy magic armor. Before I destroyed Tartarus, dead Hellions blipped out of existence like soap bubbles and ended up in the Hell below Hell. But Mason managed to keep these corpses intact even after they were dead. You have to admire the pure psycho will it took to pull off something like that. Admire it and then kill it. That last is the important part.
So what was he looking for?
I loosen the corpse’s straps and let it fall forward onto its knees. The corpse leaves scraps of hair, rotten uniform, and skin on the back of the chair.
There’s a long shallow divot cut into the wood where the soldier’s head was held back. Whatever was in the shallow hole is gone now.
I undo the straps holding her arms. They’re kind of glued to the chair with bodily fluids. I have to yank off each one, making sure to keep them wrapped in plastic so I don’t have to touch them.
There are divots on each of the armrests where the dead woman’s bare hands would rest on them. I pull her bare feet off the footrests. Divots there too.
I’ve wandered deep into the realm of What the Fuck.
Turn and scan the room for clues. Body bags. Rolling metal tables with drills, saws, and surgical instruments. A blackboard covered with what looks like machine schematics. A pile of empty bags. Rows of potions. Bet most are dope so the guinea pigs wouldn’t squirm while Mason worked on them with a chisel. I keep scanning the room but stop when I see myself pinned to the wall.
The last twelve years of my life are spread across fake wood paneling.
Photos of the dozens of Hellions I murdered. There are notes about how and when they died. There are shots of dead people on Earth too. I didn’t kill all of them. Everyone in the Magic Circle. Parker dead in a motel room with half his face missing. Doc Kinski. A shot of Josef the Kissi wearing his human ubermensch face. A young vampire named Eleanor, her bitch of a mother, and her suicide father. Cabal Ash and his sister. Simon Ritchie, the movie producer. Snapshots of anonymous, well-groomed blue bloods, rich assholes that died during the New Year’s Eve raid on Avila. Mug shots of bald young teenyboppers and worn-out middle-aged White Power morons who probably died when I torched a skinhead clubhouse a few months back. Like the Hellions, they have date and death notes.
There’s a photo of Alice, the girl I left behind when I was dragged Downtown eleven years ago, off to the side by itself. I take it down and put it in my pocket. I’m not leaving her here in this madhouse.
There’s a shot of another young girl. I’m ashamed that it takes me a minute to recognize her. Green hair and pretty eyes. She isn’t wearing her uniform or ridiculous wire antennae in the shot. I like to think that’s why I missed her, but the fucked-up thing is that she’d slipped my mind. She was a counter girl at Donut Universe. Two Kissi murdered her right in front of me. She hadn’t done anything and wasn’t a threat to anyone. She’s dead for no other reason than that she happened to sell me coffee. And I forgot about
