Ransom For Hire - Appointment In Hell Read online

  RANSOM FOR HIRE

  Appointment In Hell

  By Shawn J. Wells

  Published by LitePublishing

  Copyright © 2012 by Shawn J. Wells

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table Of Contents

  Limited Time Free Fiction Books

  Request For Reviews

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Back In The Game

  Snippet From Back In The Game

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  Dear Reader,

  The story you have before you is one of my personal favorites. It involves a world of dangers and terrors and wonders like few of us have ever seen.

  And it wouldn't exist, without you.

  After reading Appointment in Hell please take the time to write a review for it here on Amazon. Let others know that the world of Jack Ransom exists in these pages here, and that they should take the time--like you did--for a detour from their reality into his.

  Thank you for your support of these stories. I'm looking forward to bringing you more.

  Sincerely,

  Shawn J. Wells

  Chapter 1

  The rain pounded down on him from above. As if Heaven was angered. A driving torrent to wear down the sinner. Fine, he thought. Let Heaven be angered by what he was about to do. He could accept being the prodigal son for a while. The cause was just, so let the punishment fit the crime.

  His long black coat was soaked through already. Three more blocks to go in this pounding cascade. His fedora had a constant stream of run-off as he bent his head down against the storm and kept moving. It had been a long time since he'd been where he was going. It was part of a past life he thought he had given up. That he actually had given up, until last night.

  There were few people out on the streets of Memphis at this hour, in this weather. Those few souls who had to be out this early gave him a wide berth on the sidewalk when they saw him coming. They could sense he wouldn't be moved. It was possible they sensed something else about him too. Something less tangible, something darker.

  In short order he stood at the mouth of the alley between a Chinese restaurant and a Kosher deli. Both were closed, waiting to be opened later, at a decent hour when decent folk did their decent business.

  There was nothing decent about the business he was here for.

  He took a slow breath and then sighed it out. Slogging through a shallow puddle he went to the back of the alley, where a shabby green-painted steel door was set into the brick wall. A weak light shone down from the bare lightbulb over the door, illuminating little in the heavy rain. But it was bright enough to see the security slot in the door at eye-level. He rapped the back of his knuckles against the door, twice, pause, three times more. The pattern was a code that would be recognized by the person keeping watch inside.

  A few seconds later the eye-slot slid open. He could see the dark eyes of a man staring back at him. Nothing more. “Well now, ain't y'all up early this mornin',” the man behind the door said in a loud drawl. “Now what you think you want here?”

  He lifted his head up then, showing the man his face. “Tell Al'Gamesh that Ransom is here.”

  The eyes behind the slot widened. It was a long moment before the man spoke again. “Ransom, y'all know you can't be coming here. There's rules we got. You make an appointment, then you come back. Appointment only.”

  “Tell Al'Gamesh that I'm here,” Ransom repeated.

  “Shoot, your listenin' skills busted? We done got rules. You ain't been gone so long you forgot about that.”

  “Hang your rules, and hang you. Tell Al'Gamesh I'm here.”

  Ransom forced himself to unclench his fists. He didn't know this guy. But it was clear the man knew who was knocking on his door, and Ransom could tell the man was nervous about it. Not just because Ransom was here demanding entry, either. Ransom was putting the man in a spot. Rules were rules, all well and good. But getting caught between a rock and a hard place usually only leads to getting dead.

  Ransom was the hard place in that particular analogy.

  “No sir,” the guy finally decided. “I ain't going to tell no one nothin'. You go and make your appointment. Then y'all can come back and we'll see—”

  “Enough,” Ransom whispered, more to himself than to the man with his rules. From under his coat he drew a dagger, turned it handle out, and struck the door with the blue-jeweled tip.

  The door immediately quivered and warped like it would melt, then vanished from sight. Ransom walked through the empty space the door had occupied, pushing the man back. He stepped into a long entry hall, lined with dark-colored stones that led up to a curving ceiling overhead. The place was just like he remembered it.

  Behind him, after he was inside, the door appeared again with a "pop" of displaced air.

  The man, muscular, bald, with uneven teeth and dark tattoos scrawled across one side of his face, gaped openly and stepped back two more steps even after Ransom had lowered his hand. Coming back to himself, the door guard drew a Sigma handgun from a holster strapped to his side in a shoulder rig.

  “How'd y'all do that?” he asked, leveling the weapon at Ransom.

  “Old trick. From an old trickster.” Ransom returned his dagger to its special pocket with a flourish and pointed to the man’s gun. “You can put that down now.”

  The man shook his head. “No, sir. You want to leave now. That's what's gonna happen here. You ain't got no appointment.”

  Ransom sighed. Like he had time for this stupidity. “You do realize where you work, right?”

  “Uh-huh. I ain't dense, ya know. And I know who you is. Don't matter to me, though. This here Sigma's got some special ammo. Don't think you'd like it much, even with your old tricks.”

  Special ammo? Ransom decided he didn't care, but didn't want to take chances either. “Mishnana,” he spoke.

  The gun burned in the man's hand. The metal turned instantly red hot, then white, before he could react. Ransom watched the flesh steam, smelled the odor of barbecued pork. The man yowled and tried to drop the weapon that was now seared to his skin. Shaking his arm violently he managed to get the Sigma to tear away, flying to the floor to clatter down the hall, bouncing off the closely set walls. “You…you burnt me! You burnt me! I'll kill you, you filthy mudsucker!”

  Mud sucker? Ransom wondered. What was a mud sucker?

  The man lunged for Ransom. Ransom brought the dagger back up defensively, blade first this time.

  He never reached Ransom. He became stuck in mid-lunge, suspended in the air in front of Ransom, eyes wild with hate, his body stiff.

  Not Ransom's d
oing. Which meant…

  “Hello, Jack Ransom,” the deep voice echoed at a level below normal human hearing. From the end of the long hall stepped a shadow wearing a black cloak. Holes that should have been eyes, as deep as the depths of space, peered out at Ransom. The power that held the man suspended in air came from this being.

  “Hello, Al'Gamesh,” Ransom greeted him. “I tried to get your employee here to tell you I was waiting.”

  “No appointment, Ransom. It is not your time.”

  Chills washed over Ransom every time Al'Gamesh spoke. His skin crawled as the voice broke against him. “I know that. I don’t have time to make appointments with you. I need to—”

  “You need NOTHING,” Al'Gamesh interrupted in a tone that left echoes like thunder shuddering through the air and allowed for no argument.

  Ransom planned on arguing anyway.

  Al'Gamesh turned his attention now to the man he held in stasis. As Ransom watched, the man's head severed along a neat horizontal line, the body crumpling to the floor. Blood pooled. The head twisted in the air until it was looking at Al'Gamesh. “We will speak of this later,” the dark voice promised. The bodiless head desperately tried to scream, the jaw muscles twitching, the tongue lurching in place. Still alive. Not allowed to die.

  Al’Gamesh directed the head through the air to settle it down on a table next to the door. Ransom had a brief moment of sympathy for the guy before Al'Gamesh was standing right in front of him.

  “You interfere in my business,” the terrifying voice told him. Inside the depths of the hooded cloak there was only darkness folding in on itself.

  “Your business has become my concern,” Ransom answered.

  Silence. Then, “Yes. I suppose it has.”

  Chapter 2

  Al’Gamesh turned away and started down the hallway. Ransom followed. To the end, and then to the right a stairway led down. Most people never came this far. Not willingly. Ransom had been here several times before. Back in the days when he worked for people and beings like Al’Gamesh. Back then he hadn’t cared where his income came from, as long as he made his money.

  Then he’d met Julia. And started to care.

  Here, torches lit their way down the spiraling stairs. The steps were stone and worn down. The air got colder as they descended. This was an ancient place. Ransom had never known how old, but had seen it laid out on a map from the early 1700s once.

  “I will speak to you, Jack Ransom,” Al'Gamesh finally said when they were about half-way down. “But I can not give you what you seek.”

  “You're the only one who can. No one else can give me what I'm after.”

  “That is true. But it is not your time.”

  “It wasn't Julia's time either,” Ransom countered. “You know that. They took her without cause.”

  “Your wife has been taken to Hell. And you seek to reclaim her.”

  “I aim to bring her back. Yes.”

  Ransom had gone as close to insane as he’d ever been when he found Julia was gone. Knowing where she’d been taken, knowing what might be happening to her, had broken him inside like fine crystal being shattered. All of the thinly laid boundaries he had created for himself, the moral codes he had adopted to contain the darker parts of his heart, were torn down in the instant Julia was taken.

  Al'Gamesh laughed. The sound was disturbing, like someone snickering during a funeral. “What you ask isn’t possible.”

  Ransom shook his head defiantly. “Nothing is impossible. You told me that once.”

  “Do not make assumptions on our friendship.”

  “Why, Al'Gamesh, I've never pretended we were friends.”

  They had reached the bottom of the stairs. An open chamber with high ceilings of intricate stonework spread out in all directions.

  The thing that was Al'Gamesh laughed again. Ransom's spine crawled from skull to tail bone.

  Now came the hard part. Convincing Al’Gamesh, the keeper of the Veil, to let him through. Ransom needed to get through. He was his wife’s only chance. If he thought he could force Al’Gamesh to do it, he’d already be pounding his fists into that dark space beneath the hood. But that’s not how these things were done. So instead, a deal would have to be struck.

  If he couldn’t get through into the realm of Hell, then his wife would be stuck there for all of eternity. There was no one else to save her. No one else who would care to even try. But appealing to Al'Gamesh's humanity was out of the question. Hard to be humane, when you're not even human.

  “What’s it going to take to get me in?” Ransom asked.

  Al’Gamesh did not answer right away. Ransom took it as a good sign.

  It was one of the universe’s great mysteries how a thing with no eyes could stare through him like that.

  When Al’Gamesh finally spoke again, it was with a voice like cracking ice. “Be careful what you offer me, human. Whatever you bargain with me now can not be returned.”

  “Just tell me what you want.” Ransom knew he was on dangerous ground here, making deals with the next best thing to the Devil.

  But he loved his wife that much.

  “I won’t ask you for your life, Ransom,” Al’Gamesh told him. “To be perfectly honest I don’t think your life is worth the price of what you ask. But there is one thing you can pay me with.”

  Ransom waited. “And?”

  The creature in its dark cloak floated closer. “You were one of the best hunters ever. Human or otherwise. Your skills were legendary. But you set it all aside for the love of a woman.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Not in my experience,” Al’Gamesh said without hesitation. “But those skills of yours are still there. And the one who is able to bring those skills back into play first, on their side, will be at a good advantage against other opponents on the playing field.”

  Ransom did not like where this was going.

  “So here is my deal, human. I will allow you entry through the Veil. And in return, you will give me five years of your service.”

  The offer was nowhere near fair. It was all one sided, and not in Ransom’s favor. He knew he’d say yes to it anyway. But he couldn’t let Al’Gamesh see he was too eager to accept. “You’re asking a lot,” he said.

  A foul and cold breeze breathed out from Al’Gamesh. “A lot? In exchange for the chance to save your wife? You’ve sent far too many beings to Hell, Ransom. How many of them do you think hold grudges against you? And more than that, how long do you think it will take for them to figure out who your wife is? What do you suppose they will do to her when they know she is the wife of the great Ransom, slayer of souls, Harbinger of Death?”

  Ransom hadn’t been called Harbinger in a long time.

  “All right, all right, fine, you thieving bastard. But one year only.”

  “Five.” Al’Gamesh’s voice was like dry stone.

  “Make it two,” Ransom countered.

  What he could see of Al’Gamesh roiled like dark sea water during a storm. “You want to bargain? With me?”

  “Two years, Al’Gamesh. Two years from me is worth ten from most.”

  Al’Gamesh seethed, and his voice spit and hissed before more words came out to assault Ransom’s senses. “Five.”

  “All you have to do is open a doorway! It’s not like there’s any effort involved in it for you!”

  “Doors are not opened lightly, Ransom. There is always a price. And my price for you, is five years.”

  Ransom thought of his wife, surrounded by the worst creatures that Earth, Heaven, or anywhere else had ever created. “Three years. That’s more than enough to pay for what I’m asking you to do.”

  There was silence between them that stretched for long minutes. Ransom ground his teeth and waited the Veil keeper out.

  “Fine, human,” Al’Gamesh whispered loudly at last. “I will have you for three years when this is done. If you survive.”

  “You’ll have my services for three years, you mean,
” Ransom corrected the Veil keeper. “Nobody ever owned me. Not even you. And I will survive. I have to. My wife’s life is at stake.”

  “Most would accept her fate and move on.”

  “I’m not most people.” Ransom shook his head. “You and I both know she was taken wrongly. The people who did this to her will pay. But first I need to get her out. She doesn’t belong in there.”

  Al’Gamesh turned away from him and moved further into the chamber. “I’ve never met anyone who thought they belonged there. Not even Satan himself.”

  Ransom watched the creature and wondered again, as he had so often before, what was really under that cloak. He had never seen Al’Gamesh without it, not once in the two decades or so that they had known each other.

  Ransom had started into his former line of work early in life. It had been something he stumbled into accidentally, but it didn’t take him long to see how good he was at it, and how much money he could earn doing it. One of the first to get him started down that road, had been Al’Gamesh. They’d known each other for a very long time now.

  Which was why Ransom knew Al’Gamesh could give him what he needed to survive in the plains of Hell.

  At the far end of the chamber from the stairs, a stone arch stood out from the wall by a few feet. It was an empty doorway that could be walked straight through without any hindrance. It led to nowhere. Until the Veil keeper opened it.

  Then it led to Hell.

  There were other gateways in this space, that all led to different places. Ransom had been through most of them. Including this one here.

  The sleeves of Al’Gamesh’s dark cloak raised into the air. An incantation of power started, the calling forth of energies from the very stone around them, the Earth’s own life being fed into the malevolent intent. Ransom could neither hear it nor see it being done. He felt it as a pressure inside his mind. Very unpleasant. Very unsettling.

  He watched as the air between the frame of the stone arch shimmered and then coalesced into a slowly churning, liquid gateway, red and yellow colors moving through it in curls and undulating swirls that had no pattern. He had seen this done twice before. And he had the same creepy sensation now that he’d had those other times, that the doorway was hungry, and that it wanted to swallow him whole and never give him up.