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Ric, no longer startled, spun to grab the rabid Cicereau by the hackles of fur above his sweat suit He pushed the half-turned ain Then he seized the only weapons available, the arrows fro on its side in a tangle of hooved legs, weakened by long gashes in its equine shoulder
"My ais around to kick me "And the next arroould have skewered you," she toldthe first round for your hated father?" I asked
She glared at the angry, bloodied half-were "I want hier I can torment him anytime You tant out of my life Now!"
"You came after us, babe," Ric rehtside of the mirror A lot of that territory is laced with ancient and abandoned fey paths"
"She’s not fey," a hoarse voice declared
Ric and I looked toward the centaur’s pain-wracked face It reht, but the speaker was the wolfet face-to-face with the daughter he’d had killed, who’d cohost to haunt hi a feud to be settled or a tender reconciliation didn’t know Vegas and didn’t know ood na-tied with silver and the other was caught in transition
"Why the centaur?" I asked Ric in a whisper
"According to Dante, they’re the bullying guards on the Murder level They have chronic anger-control issues and shoot arrows into the passing flood of murderers to make sure they’re in constant tor Sadistic horses just weren’t in my worldview Even now I fretted about the wounded horse part
At our feet, Cesar and Loretta were al their teeth A cris Loretta still looked girl-gone-rabid-rabbit
"How’d you get rowled at her
"It’s for murderers," she snarled back "You are one I just had to wait for your errand girl to get near any fey paths and I could send any of you where you deserved to be And I’host serving eternally at the Dread Queen’s court and I get revenge on everyone who ever hurtand in love"
"Krzysztof was a va He was hundreds of years old," Cicereau spat, spraying Loretta’s furious face with blood drops "He was an inappropriate suitor"
She didn’t even blink "You never cared what anyone did, just that it suited your purpose You wanted to huas when it was just a sandpit in the dirt road"
"I did care! I wasn’t going to have any mixed-super couples in my ‘Family’ Crime lord lore is full of treacherous son-in-laws and take-over operations"
Meanwhile, the silver familiar had slowly retracted back to ers curled onto the rock ridges beneath their bodies and were holding their positions for undear life
Ric and I werea particularly slow and soft-footed pas de deux We knew each other’s e a look or a word
There had to be an elevator car in this ghastly place somewhere
As the heat and roar of the river faded, so did the light
"I guess ‘hell is other people,’" I quoted Sartre as the warring Cicereaus re at each other belly to belly, like territorial crocodiles on the banks of the blood river
"I see the light" Ric looked ahead of us and it was just like in Metropolis The subterranean depths where the workers toiled harbored a sleek steel exit door with Circles of Hell labeled M, L, and one through nine after that
"Mezzanine, sir?" I used an old-fashioned elevator-operator trill
"You bet" Ric pushed the silver button with the lit halo of light and leaned on the rocky wall "I’d go anywhere with you, as long as it got us out of Murderers Row"
"Loretta is right, as you said I did trick her resurrected boyfriend to his death"
"You can’t kill a zombie, you can only destroy it, and we’ve both done that to survive ‘Murder’ has a whole new definition these days, DelGreat, looks like the elevator is behaving itself now It’s about to give us a lift out of here"
"Very funny," I began, when a speeding bulletor so really fast, knocked me into the rock wall so hard it took my breath away
Ric leaned to catchknocked hiained our balance to see the elevator’s steel jaws closing on a creature that looked like aas it leaped to press a clawed paw against the floor button panel
Last gli to tend to her fallen centaur and her father was nowhere in sight
A bell tinged above us Level number six was lit up, and stayed that way
We heard a horrible screa frorammed to stop on every level and Cesar Cicereau was in for a rollicking tih one
Chapter Eleven
WE’RE MAROONED IN Hell, Irma wailed
I had no answer
"We’re lucky to escape," Ric said "Loretta went fro maniacally all the way"
"She is a pistol," I adeance To think she was e exiled to wherever the fey have retreated! Once again, I tried to contain one of the Sunset Park couple froe to humans and only eful spirit that’s causing all the trouble, not you"
Ric punched his fist into the unresponsive elevator button and scowled upward We could watch each of the previous six levels of Hell light up to spit out Cicereau Presumably, he was able to claw his way back on in his quest to reach the h the daylight crowds to his own Gehenna Hotel turf in his current condition was his problem
"This dead-serious version of Dante’s Hell can’t be part of the Inferno Hotel," I said wearily, leaning against the rough rock wall that surrounded the sleek steel elevator doors "Public taste these days can be dark, but a blood river stocked with thousands of undead tortured corpses of et ? I saw blood"
"Delilah, I don’t feel a thing"
"ThatWe’ve got to get you back into Las Vegas central to ht"
Ric patted his left side "Relax, Delilah Loretta shot the suit, not me For intent to do evil, Loretta lives up to her father’s rep In terms of effective, er, execution, she’s a failure But we do need to find an exit fast, so other than death by blood river"