PodCastle 639: Kiki Hernández Beats the Devil

* Author : Samantha Mills

* Narrator : Sandra Espinoza

* Host : Summer Fletcher

* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh

*

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Previously published by Translunar Travelers Lounge.

Rated PG-13.

The destinies of two women — one, a soldier; the other, a princess — become intertwined in C. L. Clark’s debut, The Unbroken. This is a story about war, betrayal, intrigue, and some truly sexy fight scenes in a desert kingdom inspired by North Africa. The cover art was released on io9 in July. Check out this incredible debut by PodCastle‘s co-editor!

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Kiki Hernández Beats the Devil

By Samantha Mills

Kiki Hernández, rock legend of the Southwest, had seven devils on her tail.

They scurried through the roadside scrub, not even trying to sneak. She could hear their scrabble-claws and clacker-tails, their dripping maws and teeth. If they were trying to round her up for a crossroad deal-making, they were going about it all wrong.

That’s what happened when devils got hungry. They made mistakes.

Kiki hummed as she walked, watching eddies of dust form tornadoes on the road ahead. It was a swagger of a walk, born of a perfect record: Kiki 72, Devils 0. She would have been bored, if she hadn’t been so eager for an encore.

“Come on out!” she hollered.

They tumbled forth in a gray-green tangle of many-jointed limbs, an acrid smell preceding them: sulphur and grave dirt and candy apples stuffed with razorblades. Their voices tangled like a nest of snakes: Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Are you vengeful? Are you sad?

For a moment she felt it—the thirst like three weeks eating salted pork, the grief that could only end in retaliation—and then Kiki popped open her molded-plastic carrying case and pulled out her guitar: Mona Lisa.

Mona Lisa was fierce. She was raw. She was a fine-tuned devil-killing music monster.

They never stood a chance.

Kiki laughed, high and wild, as her fingers danced through “Voodoo Child”—acoustic, sadly, but that was the state of the world these days. In Kiki’s head she was rocking steel strings and a hundred watts. She was playing to a crowd of twenty thousand and crushing it.

The first trio of devils hit a solid wall of sound and crumpled, bloody and squealing, to the earth. The others skittered away, and she chased after them, shouting, “Come back, you cowards!”

She needn’t have worried. They raced for the crossroad, so desperate they didn’t even notice what was waiting for them there.

Kiki’s hellhound.

He was short and squat, with the jowls of a Neapolitan Mastiff and the blue-black coat of a Friesian horse. He had curling horns for ears and deep pits of flame for eyes, and he swallowed those devils in two bites apiece.

“Ozzy!” Kiki scolded. “What did I say about wandering off?”

He slumped hard against her leg, whining, and she pulled out a spare bone pick to loosen the gristle from his fangs. He let out a particularly un-hellish yip when she accidentally jabbed his gum.

“Well next time don’t chomp them around the ribs!” she said.