The Devil's Detective by Simon Kurt Unsworth

inside him power the words. “You send us the tube, and it tells us that there’s a body here, that there’s been another blue flash. Were there witnesses?”
    Elderflower turned but didn’t come back toward them. “No,” he said, another unquantifiable look on his face.
    â€œThen how did you know? About the murder, and the flash?”
    â€œBecause this is Hell, Thomas. This is Hell, and this is a place where things are known without understanding the knowing.”
    â€œThen you know who did this, what we’ll find inside?”
    â€œNo, but Hell itself knows, Thomas.”
    â€œThen why should we investigate? If Hell already knows?”
    â€œBecause this is Hell, Thomas—have you understood nothing? We all do what it requires of us, no matter how pointless or trivial those things appear to be. We are, all of us, at the whim of forces and desires and urgencies far greater, far wider, than we can ever hope to recognize or understand. Hell knows what you will find in there, but it will not pass on that knowledge, because you need to find it for yourselves. That, too, is important, although I cannot tell why because I am told as little as you. I simply know that it is important, critical, that it be found. Rhakshasas and the other archdeacons instruct me, and I instruct you. Does that answer your questions? I can see by your face that it does not.Then let me try again, Thomas, and I will keep it simple to aid in your understanding.
    â€œThis is Hell, and there is only the illusion of choice here. If you are told to go, then you go and you hope that you arrive at your destination without injury. You are valued, Thomas, important in your own way, although it may not feel that way to you; you have a destiny, Thomas, as we all do. We are placed in positions designated us by architects that we may never know, in structures we only see the barest fragments of. These are the mechanics of Hell, Thomas. Be happy with this and do your job.”
    â€œYes,” said Fool, thinking,
No.
He turned his back on Elderflower and in the shrieks echoing out of the Orphanage he heard the savage reflections of his own anger and impotence.
    â€œNo,” said Summer.
    â€œIt’s an order, Summer. Both of you, stay here. I don’t know what’s inside, and neither do you. There’s no point in risking us all.”
    â€œNo,” said Summer again.
    â€œBesides, we do,” said Gordie. “They are only children.”
    â€œThere are no children in Hell,” said Fool, “and you shouldn’t believe the rumors that there are. The things in there aren’t children, they’re the young of the succubae and the incubi.” That wasn’t quite true, he knew. There were three or four of these Orphanages scattered across Hell, places where human women came to give birth after being impregnated by incubi. The incubi took the sperm gathered from men by succubae and used it to make the women pregnant, and the resultant children were part demon and part human, and wholly monstrous. The human part of them, Elderflower had once told Fool, weakened them and made them unable to control the burning inside that came from their demonic parentage, and their flesh warped and burned almost from the moment they were born. Most died in the Orphanages; those who lived long enough to emerge tended to become predators out by the wall, where the light was lowest and the living most brutal. In Hell’s past, they might have been given jobs as torturers or harriers, those things that stalked around the lakes of fire or that operated the vast, black wheels of torture; now they became part of the fabric of Hell’s nightmares.
    â€œWe’re coming,” said Summer. “This is for all of us to do. We’re all Information Men.”
    â€œWe know what’s in there,” said Gordie again. “You know I do, better than you probably.”
    Summer’s tone was