Faith of the Divine Inferno by Leslie Thompson (e textbook reader txt) 📕

Chapter 1

There are places in every city where a person can take part in every kind of sordid act their dark hearts' desire. I have been to hundreds of these places over the course of my twenty-five centuries of life, and very little about them has changed. They are all dark holes tucked away in forgotten corners, populated by criminals and the desperate. The good citizens lie to themselves about these repugnant realms, pretending that there is no filthy underbelly, full to bursting with putrid disease and social cancer.
In Atlanta, that place is the Cellar. Carved from the granite foundation of the city itself, the Cellar is the place where every punk and player of Atlanta’s seedy dark side comes to fence stolen goods and purchase the tools they need to complete their dastardly deeds. Located far beneath Underground Atlanta, and reached by a single entrance through the Little Five Points train station, The Cellar began as storage space for goods waiting to be transported out of the city. Over the years, it had been hidden by the efforts of the local government as it raised the street level to improve the city’s infrastructure.
An enterprising criminal whose name was long since forgotten, discovered the Cellar and expanded it from its original demure size into a vast, uneven cavern. He used the space for prostitution and bootlegging and those early successes quickly expanded into every kind of crime. Such activities attract the most brutal and conniving men and women, but there are a few who come for kicks and to brag to their friends that they knew dangerous people. Almost anyone is allowed to come and go as they please, so long as they pass the scrutiny of the guards hulking near the entrance.
I stood before two extremely large men and tried to look harmless. The first guard was one of those enormous black men with tons of muscle hidden under a thick layer of fat. To look at Baja you would think that he was just one more punk fresh out of the ghetto, but when he glared down at you with his flat, dead eyes, you knew that he could curb stomp you into a red smear and not lose a moment’s sleep. Nothing and no one ever made a fool of this man, not if they wanted to live out the week.
The man standing next to him was one more piece of white trash that the Deep South is thick with. Kootch was as mean as he was stupid, though there was very little he couldn’t do with duct tape, including murder. Otherwise, he was a typical example of his species, from his violently racist and sexist language to the threadbare, second-hand castoffs he wore. Kootch kept his arms crossed over his massive, muscled chest so that a swastika peeked out under the sleeve of a t-shirt depicting a Confederate flag and the slogan; “The South will rise again!”
I’m not entirely sure how these two men were able to work together, what with Kootch’s personal views and Baja’s tendency to squish anything that pissed him off. I suspect that their common denominator was money. It’s surprising how often it makes the best of friends out of the worst of enemies.
“What are you doing here?” Baja asked me with a frown. Even behind the dark sunglasses, I could feel his eyes drilling murder into my brain.
“I’m picking up a special order.” Because cops are notorious for popping up at the most inconvenient moments, acceptable visitors to the Cellar are supposed to refer to business in vague terms. Anyone who says they’re here for specific things like sex, drugs, or gambling are automatically searched, and then beaten within an inch of their lives on the assumption that they are police officers or too stupid to be allowed in. Then they are left, shivering and bleeding, in a ditch far from here. As far as I heard, the guards rarely killed anyone. It’s bad for business if your vendors thought they could be killed at the door.
“You got a gun on you?” Kootch’s dull brown eyes glittered with lust as they slowly crawled along the length of my body. I bristled at his obscene scrutiny, but I otherwise let it slide. There were only three ways a creature like him saw women. Either we were objects of lust, incubators for sons, or personal servants. His attention wasn’t any more personal than the way I eyed a piece of meat I wanted for dinner.
“Of course not, I know it isn’t allowed.” The rules of the Cellar are simple. A visitor was required to conduct business in a manner that would not draw the attention of law enforcement. That meant no stealing, no killing, and no fighting outside the ring. Since criminals are not known for their adherence to rules, everyone is allowed to bring personal weapons into the Cellar, as long as they didn’t use guns. It’s assumed by the powers that be that a man with a knife or bludgeon couldn’t kill many people before he was taken out. It isn’t always true, but then very few people are able to commit mass murder with their bare hands anymore.
“I still have to search you.” Kootch chewed his words like he chewed his food, slow and sloppy. The Southern accent made it hard to understand him clearly, and it dropped my perception of his intelligence by a couple of dozen IQ points. But he was still smart enough to kick my ass if he wanted to. However, the threat of a good beating was not deterrent enough to let the man touch me.
“Step off, bubba,” I snapped. My hand went to the leather wrapped baton tucked into my belt to show that I meant business. Kootch froze with a scowl contorting his ugly face as his sluggish brain struggled to decide whether or not I was capable of backing up my threat. At five feet six inches and slender besides, I am not the picture of intimidation. A man like him could easily overpower me and do whatever he liked. I have lived a very long time, and I have learned many things, the chief of which is that size doesn’t always matter as long as you have skill. And I have lots of skills.
“Who’s your friend, Rebecca?” Baja asked suddenly. Aside from speaking, he didn’t move as he stared over my head into the tunnel behind me.
I looked over my shoulder in time to see a man’s figure take a shuffling step behind the corner in the exit. I had seen him on the street as I was walking toward the train station. He was a Hispanic male in his twenties, of average height and weight, and he wore clothing that was common among men his age that thought they had something to prove. If he had hung back and waited until I had entered the Cellar, Kootch and Baja would have let him through with hardly a pause. But he made a mistake by skulking around, and now the guards were suspicious of him.
“I don’t know.” I lied. I don’t know the man’s name, but I know that he is a member of the Children of Orpheus.
Named for that lovesick bard Orpheus, who had once traveled the paths of Hades to rescue his dead wife from her nasty fate, the Children of Orpheus are convinced that they can learn the method of my immortality by following me around. I’ve tried to tell them that I don’t know how I got this way. As far as I know I was born like this.
The Children are also certain that I know the pathways of the afterlife, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I have never known death, much less glimpsed the paths that lead from this life to the next. Still, they insist on going everywhere I go, and doing everything I do. It amuses me to let them, and so usually I leave them be. Unless, of course, I’m up to something I don’t want them to know about.
“You don’t think he might be a cop, do you?” I suggested innocently. Of course that’s what they were thinking. Neither of them had seen the man before, and the way he was trying to stay out of sight made them think all kinds of things.
Gee, I hope they don’t kill the poor slob. This Child of Orpheus was fairly new and he was already good at following me around without drawing attention to himself. However, I was in the Cellar on personal business, so I had planned to lose the man in the crowd. But I knew an opportunity when I saw one, and so I took it. “You aren’t going to let him in are you?”
“You mind your business, and we’ll mind ours,” Baja snapped. He unfolded his massive arms and smacked Kootch on the shoulder to pull his attention away from my chest. “Go get that guy and drag his ass back here for questioning.” The way Baja said it made me think that the interrogation was going to be a rough one. I sure hope that the Child of Orpheus was a fast runner; otherwise he was going to be toast.
“Go on,” Baja told me as Kootch jogged off to retrieve my shadow. I heard his footsteps snap like machine gun fire as he ran after the man speeding down the tunnel in the opposite direction. Baja gave me a look that meant that I’d better move on unless I wanted a share of the violence. “You have a good evening now.”
Because I know what is good for me, I entered the Cellar without another word. There was a strange taste to the air, as if a hurricane was about to break. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my skin tingled. Visually, there was nothing out of the ordinary. I saw all the same kinds of scum and villainy that loiter in a place like this, along with all the goods and services that they could desire. There was music playing, loud and pulsating, but that wasn’t the reason why the air was vibrating. No, the breeze that trickled past my skin felt strange and harsh, as if a chemical had been sprayed into the room.
I watched the dirty, angry faces around me. Their features held dead, spiteful expressions and their hunched shoulders were more stooped than usual as they shuffled heartlessly from one place to another. Even their voices, lifted so that they could be heard above the music, felt muted and weak. It was as if they were all drugged and struggling to get through the evening. Something was going on.
If there is a true constant among the criminal community, it is that change is bad. Any time there is a shift in power, whether it is a new scheme to make money or a new leader of a random group, it always causes trouble. Even if the change was welcomed, it can leave dozens of mutilated bodies in its wake.
I didn’t worry that a fight would erupt. I was in a place where that sort of thing happened all the time, and I am very efficient at self-defense.