Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [107]
BAM!
The rudely large bullet shot the demon’s hand off with Curwen’s heart still in it. Both hand and heart plunged to the ground.
“Great shot!” Krilid celebrated.
Gerold felt a twinkle of pride. “Yeah, not bad, but . . . now what?”
“Now what?” Krilid smiled. The Nectoport soared down, the force of its movement nudging the balloon platform away. “Now’s when you get to decide if you want to be a hero.”
“What?”
“Look, we’re banking on you saying yes—”
“Saying yes to what?” Gerold snapped, annoyed.
The Egress of the Nectoport sucked right up to and over the ragged hole in the Demonculus’s chest. “What do you want more than anything, Gerold?”
Gerold needed no time to reflect. “I want to walk.”
“Well, look, there’s no way we can send you back to the Living World, but you were going to kill yourself there anyway.”
“What are you talking about?”
“But we can make it so you can walk again . . . or I should say you can.”
Gerold was about to blurt out another objection but then—
He stared at the chest hole, then looked back to Krilid.
Krilid nodded. “I offered to do it right off the bat but it wouldn’t work. See, it has to be a Human heart.”
Gerold’s mind revved like gears in a machine. He took off his life preserver, then took off his shirt.
“Good man,” Krilid said, having already picked up a tool that looked like a branch cutter. “But . . . it’s gonna hurt.”
“I would never have guessed,” Gerold mocked. He lay down flat, hands fisted. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Just do it. I don’t care how much it hurts.”
“You got balls, Gerold.” The branch cutters keened when Krilid opened them . . .
First: crack! as the curved blade slunked into Gerold’s solar plexus and then the sternum was separated.
Gerold bellowed.
Then: click, click, click, click, click, as all the ribs on the left side were snapped.
Pain? Gerold could never have conceived of such pain, but, What did I expect? He’s cutting my heart out! he somehow was able to think even over the insurmountable agony. But just as that same agony reached a terrifying peak . . .
It ebbed away, to numbness, and then Gerold’s spirit felt like vapor spinning round in a blender on the highest speed.
Meanwhile, Krilid severed all the necessary arteries and removed Gerold’s heart.
And he put it, still beating, into the hole in the Demonculus’s chest . . .
CHAPTER TWELVE
(I)
Hudson’s eyes snapped open like someone who’d just wakened from a nightmare of falling. He remained sweat-drenched in the attic chair, stewing in the insufferable heat. The hole in the wall met his direct line of sight, and through it all he could see was the straggly backyard tinted by moonlight.
The candles guttered all around him.
“You’re back,” whispered the deaconess, “from a journey only eleven people in history have taken . . .”
Hudson nodded and drew in a long breath. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
“No. It was the greatest of all privileges.” She stepped from the dark corner, her nude body shellacked in sweat itself. The macabre crucible of the baby’s skullcap remained below the hole in the wall, but the Sterno had long gone out.
“I can tell by your aura,” said the deaconess. “You’ve accepted the Senary.”
“Yes.”
“Praise Lucifer,” she sighed. “You will one day be a Privilato, the greatest thing to be in Hell save for Lucifer himself.”
“After I die, at age sixty-six. That’s what I was told.”
The robust woman handed Hudson a towel. He felt winded yet also content when he dried the sweat off his body and put his clothes back on. “I was also told something about six million dollars in cash . . .”
The deaconess grinned. “Such greed! How wonderful! But . . . first things first.” She handed him a piece of paper . . . and an ice pick.
“I guess this is self-explanatory,” Hudson commented. He didn’t like pain but considering . . .
MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT, read the contract, along with a simplification of everything he’d been promised. And all I have to trade for it is my soul . . .
He winced as he punctured his forearm with the awl, saw blood well up; then he ran the point along the blood.