Tidal Rage by David Evans (best big ereader .TXT) 📗

car. Sebastian was mumbling away beneath the duct tape as Cutler pushed him towards the Fiat.

“Not interested in anything you have to say. Nothing you could say would add anything more to what I know. You killed a beautiful, innocent girl. Now I am sending you straight to Hades.”

Stahmer helped to push the struggling Sebastian into the car eventually. He would not bend his legs and Stahmer took no pleasure in breaking both legs with a small lava boulder. Sebastian no longer mumbled; he was trying to stifle the screams from the agony in his lower limbs.

Cutler taped his bounds arms to the steering wheel while Tuck placed a heavy piece of lava rock on the accelerator. Together Cutler, Stahmer, and Tuck manoeuvred the vehicle to about twenty yards from the cone, and it steep sides.

“I believe you like Wagner,” Cutler said rhetorically. “Today, I am afraid it’s Liszt.”

Cutler removed a CD from his jacket and placed it into the car’s battered old CD player.

“A symphony to Dante’s Comedy, but it's not so comical. It is based on Dante Alighieri's journey through Hell and Purgatory. A journey you are about to embark upon,” Cutler said, with ice in his voice.

Both doors were open. Tuck on the right-hand side started the engine and he whined and roared as the gas pedal was to the floor. Once he was clear Cutler leaned in and jammed the engine into gear.

Cutler was dragged along with the car towards the cone and jumped clear with only yards to spare. The intense heat searing and the sulphur fumes choking.

The car stayed in mid-air for a millisecond over the edge of the cone, clearing the steep sides. The car descended into the middle of the fiery hole. A sudden gas slug and fountain of lava spat out. The molten rock did not clear the cone but raised high enough to engulf the car and its screaming occupant.

“The Devil had reached his arms out for one of his own. May the bastard burn for eternity,” Cutler said, praying for the first time that there was such a creature.