Lucifer's Lottery

“Jeez, I didn’t figure that would happen,” Krilid said. “Pretty impressive . . .”

The Demonculus’s head turned down to Krilid. “You know something? Destroying stuff’s a lot of fun!”

“As long as it’s evil stuff, Gerold,” the Troll accentuated. “And there’s plenty of that here.”

The creature’s inexplicable face suddenly seemed morose. “But-but—” It looked at its horrific hands, then down the line of its corrupt physical body. “But-but . . . Shit, Krilid. I’m a monster.”

“You’re not a monster, Gerold. You’re the most powerful weapon ever made! And if you hadn’t come here, what would you be then?”

Nightmarish, fathomless eyes blinked. “I’d be dead. I’d be nothing.”

“Yeah!” Krilid yelled. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself just because you . . . look different. And you’re forgetting the best part!”

A titan pause. “What’s that?”

Krilid winced. “You can walk, moron! What you wanted more than anything you just got—in spades!”

“I can . . . walk . . .” The voice, however inhuman, seemed suspicious. Very slowly, one leg lifted and—

THUD!

—stepped forward. Then the other—

THUD!

The District tremored like a seismic shift.

“See?” Krilid said from the Demonculus’s hand. “It might take a little getting used to but, hell, what’s the big deal?”

The Demonculus took three more steps in succession. The third step begat a giant crack in the ground. “I can walk!” Gerold celebrated.

Krilid pointed a finger. “Yeah, and look what you get to walk with. The biggest legs to ever exist.”

Suddenly, the Demonculus began to hitch. Its abyssal mouth hung open, and the two ragged back holes that were its nose actually sniffled. Tears like raw crude oil squeezed from the impossible eyes.

“Aw, come on, Gerold,” Krilid implored. “Demonculuses don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it,” the thing sobbed. “I’m happy. And I owe it all to you. Thank you!”

“Don’t thank me, thank your Celestial Destiny—”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Krilid decided. His eyes glittered with enthusiasm as sirens and alarms began to blare from every District, Prefecture, and Municipal Zone for miles. “This is gonna be really cool, Gerold. We’re gonna kick ass and not take names. We’re gonna go on an anti-Luciferic tear-ass like Hell has never seen!”

“Right on!” The ground rumbled when Gerold yelled.

“We’re gonna destroy every Pulping Station, Power Plant, Tortuary, Prison, Police Station, every Grand Duke palace and every Sorcerial College in Hell! We’re gonna be Satan’s worst nightmare and nothing can stop us!”

“All right!”

“And who knows? One day we might even stumble upon Manse Lucifer itself—”

“And tear the shit out of it!”

“You got that right, my friend! So let’s do it!”

Staring, the Demonculus paused, as if bracing itself for a prospect too good to be true. Then it took a step—

THUD!

And another step—

THUD!

And then another and another and another, each stride consuming the length of half a city block, and that’s when Gerold started walking, and he would walk and walk and walk, for time immemorial, each step destroying something vile, each thud of its monstrous feet laying rents in Satan’s domain, each stride celebrating the gift that Gerold had taken for granted but had received yet again.

Indeed, Gerold—the first Demonculus of Hell—could walk, and from that point on, he would never stop—

THUD!

—never stop—

THUD!

He would never stop walking.

(IV)

The suitcases thunked as he clumsily got them down the stairs. For some reason he was not the least bit at odds with the prospect of walking out of an abandoned house with two suitcases full of cash. He bumped the front door open with his rump, then wheeled the suitcases out into the teaming night. Moonlight coolly painted his face; crickets throbbed dense as electronic music. Hudson felt enlivened even after this ultimate sin: his complete betrayal of God on High. Nor was he afraid of the fact that he was standing in a crackburg with six million dollars in cash.

A tiny light glowed above the bus stop just down the street. Hudson looked at his watch, then chuckled and shook his head when he saw that the bus would be coming by six minutes from now.

“Yo!” shot the subtle voice. Dollar-store sandals slapped the cement. Then another darker voice—a man’s.

“Shee-it . . .”

Bags in hand, Hudson turned to face them, unworried.

“This the fuck askin’ ’bout the Larken House,” said the prostitute whom Hudson recognized at once: the woman who’d shown him where the house was, in the zebra-striped tube top. Her white teeth gleamed when she smiled.

Two more figures stood on either side, a slouchy black male with his hair stuffed in a stocking that looked like Jiffy Pop, and a chubby, high-chinned white guy in jeans cut off at midcalf, a ten-sizes-too-large T-shirt, and a whitewall. He had snakes tattooed on the sides of his neck.

The black guy took one step. “What’s in the suitcases, my man?”

Hudson stalled, then laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The white guy bulled forward: “What’s in the suitcases, white boy!” his voice boomed, and from nowhere he’d produced a very large Buck knife.

“Six million dollars. If you want it, you’ll have to take it.”

The black guy nodded to the white one. “Just another poo-putt white muv-fuck.”

“Shee-it,” chuckled the white guy, and then he lunged with the knife.

“Cut dat boy!” the girl cheered on. “Cut him!” But it was only a second later when she shrieked. Plumes of blood launched from the attacker’s eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. His crotch, too, expelled a copious volume, which saturated the ludicrous pants. Then the knife clattered to the sidewalk and he collapsed.

“Ambrose!” shrieked the girl, fingertips to face. “What he do?”

“Don’t know,” crackled the voice of the black guy. There was a click! when he cocked a small pistol. “But he got somethin’ in them cases, so’s I’ll just bust a cap in his face.”

Here was the proof of Hudson’s newfound faith. “Go ahead,” he said. “Bust all the ’caps’ you want.”

The tiny pistol’s report sounded more like a loud handclap. A muzzle flash bloomed in a way that Hudson found spectacular. More spectacular, though, was the way the bullet was instantly repelled by the otherworldly ward surrounding him, and bounced immediately back into the black man’s Adam’s apple.

The man gargled, pop-eyed, and actually hopped about in the nearest weedy yard, hand clamped to his throat. He thrashed into some bushes and collapsed.

Hudson looked at the girl. “I’m protected by Lucifer, the Morning Star. That’s what I did in the Larken House tonight. I sold my soul . . . to Lucifer.”

The girl ran away.