was coming. It’s more like training in the arena. I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t hurt, but it’s a familiar kind of pain and it’s better than another quiet night in, just the Greeks and me.
Fuck you, Epicurus. You stand here with a bunch of inbred mouth breathers looking to cut some payback for their shitty existence out of your hide. Do that and then hit me with some cool, cool Hellenic logic. Convince me and I’ll buy you all the ouzo and microwave moussaka in Athens.
This might actually be fun if Candy was here. By now she would have dropped her human face and let her inhuman Jade side out. Eyes like red slits in black ice. Claws and a shark-tooth smile. A gorgeous killing machine in ripped jeans and worn Chuck Taylors. The perfect girlfriend.
We’ve been dancing around for a couple of minutes and the beating slacks off just a bit. The brain trust is punching itself out. I’m supposed to be facedown getting kicked to death by now. The idiot with the KA-BAR is back on his feet but he’s hurt and punching like his hands are packing peanuts in a bunny-fur muff. I’ve drawn blood from at least two others. Another is down on his face and isn’t getting up.
The punching stops. Then everything stops. Everything. The leggers’ cursing. The sounds of the hawkers. Catcalls from people betting on the fight.
The whole market is looking up the street. The smell of incense mixes with the smells of hot fry oil and garbage. Voices sing softly. Not quite a song. More of a chant. It’s a lot prettier than most Hellion music, not that that’s hard. Hellion music mostly sounds like a wood chipper falling down an elevator shaft.
Then they come into view. Everyone bows their head. It’s a religious procession but not from Merihim’s church. The march is almost all women. Obyzuth is up front in her mask and the other women all wear similar masks. The woman at the head of the procession isn’t masked. Her face is scarred and battered, like she saw plenty of action in the war Upstairs. She wears her long black hair up, wrapped around a set of heavy, yellowed horns that stick out straight in front of her, the steel-wrapped tips pointing the way for her flock. She has to be Deumos.
Deumos is the head priestess of Hell’s other church. From what I’ve heard around the palace, it’s some kind of hard-ass goddess worship. Seems like Merihim and his boys got the giant tabernacle in the center of town and the girls got a piece-of-shit garage down by the railroad tracks. Everything is politics.
On the rare occasions her name comes up, the secret police and Merihim’s Tabernacle representatives have a good laugh. Talking about Deumos and her bunch like an old Haight-Ashbury peace-and-love cult. A handful of harmless babes with love beads and delusions of hippie grandeur.
I’m not so sure they should write them off. The crowd seems to take them pretty seriously, including the men, so whatever Deumos is selling it isn’t just to the women.
The chant turns quiet. Not quite a prayer. More like if you get close enough they’ll tell you a secret. I can make out
