BURN IN HADES by Michael L. Martin Jr. Page B

tunic was draped over the chair at his bedside and his hat sat on top. She waited beside him for a few seconds, watching him breathe and cough violently in his sleep.
    He was another casualty of war, and she gathered great pleasure from his misery and his helplessness. The irony of him living in the land of no-sickness or disease and being bed ridden gave her an extra boost of satisfaction. She regained some of her sight, and saliva lubricated her throat.
    Rowings coughed himself awake and upon the sight of her looming over him, he pushed back in his bed.
    “Ah! Diamond Tooth,” he said, relaxing on his pillow. “So good to see you, although you don’t look very well.”
    “You should take a look in the mirror,” she said.
    “Did you shut the door?” He pulled the blankets up to his neck. “They cannot see me like this. Not yet.”
    “Yeah, I shut it.”
    “Good,” he said, and released his grip on the blankets with a wide smile. “So, I assume your presence means you have the information?”
    She loosened her collar, but was still strangling her. She took a breath and dragged her tongue around in her mouth. It went dry again. “Tivoli is using the name Clem Balfour.”
    “You did a very good thing.” Rowings leaned over the side of his bed and pulled out a burlap sack from his bedside. “Worth three objects.”
    She reached for the sack and spotted the ring on his finger. The Sigil of Ameth flickered in its own heavenly light nearly scorching her eyes.
    He hid his hand and snatched the sack of objects away before she could grab it. His smile turned to a shaky grin. “Did he say anything else?”
    She massaged the back of her stiff neck. “He made mention of a gate.”
    “Yes, yes. The Toran. Did he say where it was?”
    “He didn’t know.”
    Rowings slapped his fluffy mattress. “I told you he would lie. He wants it for himself. You should’ve done what you demons do. That’s why I sent you.”
    “Don’t worry about that. He’ll never say nothing to anybody again.”
    Rowings grimaced and rose off his pillow. “What did you do?”
    “Oh, you only meant for me to rough him up a little. Sometimes I take things a little too far. Sorry about that. But you get what you pay for.”
    Rowings wrenched his comforter and glanced downward at the foot of the bed.
    “If it’s any consolation,” she said. “He was telling the truth. I know when someone’s lying to me. He sort of implied though, that Tivoli knows where to look for your Toran. He gave me this key.”
    “Give it to me!” A sharp tinge of obsession and frenzied-persistence flared in his voice. For a man as cheerful as Rowings portrayed himself to be, it was a wonder why he wanted to leave paradise so badly. He must’ve known what she knew about its illusion.
    She removed the astrolabe from around her neck and handed it to Rowings.
    “Ah, the astrolabe!” His pupils dilated and he reached for it slowly with both his hands as if reuniting with a long lost love. He caressed the object in his shaking palms. The ring on his finger blinked in the light. “Why would he give this to you?”
    “Maybe he thought I’d burn you, find Tivoli and then leave the underworld forever.”
    Rowings laughed like a man drunk on life. She laughed with him. They laughed together, but for different reasons.
    “Funny thing is,” she said, “He was right.”
    Rowings cut his laugh abruptly.
    “You already know what I need from you,” she said. “And there’s only one way for me to get it.”
    Rowings backed away in his bed. She shoved a pillow over his face, aimed her bank nakhs and sent tiger claws into his head, chest and neck. sish. When she removed the pillow Rowings gasped. A wheezing whistle escaped his lungs and his mouth quivered.
    “Don’t try to talk,” she said. “You’ll just burn faster. And we can’t have that. I gotta make it out of here.”
    She plunged into the stench of his convulsions, the sweet scent of his torment. Her mouth