And I got up again. Walked again.
Nearly fell again. I clutched my head, but walked.
Demons under the hill.
I walked, and I recited. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas . . . Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas . . .”
Not much. Not enough. All I could remember: “Exorcise you, every unclean spirit, every satanic power.”
Surely by now my eye was bleeding. The pressure inside increased.
I felt it, then. Felt Remi inside my head. He gave me new words. Knowing him, from the Bible.
. . . they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
I walked again and did not fall. Did not strike my foot against stone.
Light before me. I halted, turned off the Maglite to be certain.
Flame ahead. I smelled smoke, and oil. Scents neither sulfur nor perfume, the odor of other demons.
My eye ached with a fierce, bright pain. It skewered through my head. One-eyed, guarding the other with a cupped hand, I saw lava tubes twisted one upon another. They framed themselves on a circle, made a curved chamber within, rimmed with torches. The walls were the rich color of blood, shining wet and slick in torchlight.
Because my one eye was blinded, I had not seen that the tube walls on either side of me had transformed from rough, natural stone patterned by the lava to walls redefined by design.
I looked at the wall beside me, saw something glinting in the corner of my good eye. I turned on the Maglite, flashed it across the wall.
Someone had carved a symbol. Better yet, sculpted. It was deeply chiseled into the stone so that it looked similar to a firefighter’s axe hanging on the wall. I stepped to it, touched it, because I had to.
It was stone only, but carved in very high relief. The straight haft, plain, ran through the doubled head, blades facing away from one another. A labrys, the twin-headed axe of Minoan Crete.
I turned sharply, looked back the way I had come. What I saw now was different. It was not the tube I had followed. I could go forward. I could go back. I could get lost, and die.
I shut my eyes a moment, turned back. I touched the stone, touched the deep-carved shape of the labrys.
Oil and flame came rushing from behind me, filling the tube. To survive, I could only go forward.
With one eye yet weeping, I walked into the circular chamber as the fire sealed the sole entrance and exit, but came no farther. I saw within the huge chamber an altar, as expected, a massive white stone block stained with red, perhaps six feet tall, three feet deep, eight feet wide. Remi was upon it. Remi as tribute to the god.
But he was not tied down, or shackled, because he was meant to provide entertainment even as I was. He stood upright, untethered, atop the altar as Shemyazaz had stood upon the bar at the Zoo. I wondered inanely if Remi knew how to pirouette.
He saw me, waved his arm, gestured for me to come farther into the chamber. He was hatless, but otherwise exactly as I had last seen him. A Texas cowboy.
“Come on!” he called. His voice echoed. “You’re holding up the show.”
I grimaced. “Can we skip the show?”
“I don’t think so. Not if we want to get out of here.”
I nodded, watching him. He was undoubtedly unarmed. I, on the other hand, was not.
“You know what this is,” he said.
“Of course I know what this is. The two-headed axe in the wall was a dead give-away. And the tubes funneling me in one direction. And now, of course, I can’t escape until the task is done.” I walked farther into the chamber, examined the bright paint on the rounded walls, the torches, the carved altar. “It’s Daedalus’s labyrinth, made for King Minos in Crete at the Palace of Knossos, which was built, umm . . . around 1900 BC. I think. If I remember correctly. I mean, this isn’t the real labyrinth, but close enough.”
“So you know what you gotta do?”
“Yeah.” I reached back and tightened the elastic band around my ponytail. “I have to kill the Minotaur.”
* * *
—
He’s here somewhere,” Remi said. “Legion, or Iñigo Montoya, or Jack the Ripper. Not sure when he might make an appearance.”
I began to pace out the chamber. My eye still wept, my head still pounded. “So, I am apparently proxy for Theseus—and you might be Pirithous, his bestie. They caroused together. But only Theseus fought the bull-man. So maybe you’re taking the place of the nine Athenian kids ‘donated’ to Minos.”
I placed one hand on the walls, felt their slickness as I scraped across it while I walked the stone circle. The ruddy base color was rich. Bright frescoes highlighted the walls: dolphins, flowers, young men. The doubled-headed axe. And bulls. Bulls everywhere.
People are used to seeing the ruins of ancient cultures unpainted, lacking detail. But in Egypt, Crete, Pompeii, other places, the walls, columns, and statuary were painted in brilliant colors. Time leeched pigments away with no surviving creators or cultures, to freshen them. Left behind were the faded remains of architectural and artistic glory. But here beneath the earth, undamaged by sun, weather, and vandalism, the glories were visible.
So, bulls. And one bull in particular.
I kept pacing out the circle, looking high into what appeared to be a tier overlooking the ring. The roof overhead was domed. “The story of Pasiphaë and the bull who impregnated her is physically impossible, of course. We know bestiality exists, but for a woman to be mounted by a bull, and then give birth to a child who is half-beast, half-human? Not happening.”
I stumbled, caught my balance by stiffening my knees. Pressed the heel of my hand against the eye. I was certain it felt swollen, bulging out of the socket and in need of lancing. I turned into the rounded wall, pressed my forehead against it with hands spread beside my head. It was easier just to lean there against cold stone.
I drew in a hard breath. “I can’t see out of this eye.”
“I know,” Remi said. And maybe he did, through the primogenitura.
I moved then, turned to look at him atop the huge block. I’d intended to say something else but the pain in my head intensified. I went down to one knee, bent forward, felt my belly heave.
Remi shouted, and it reverberated inside my skull. “Gabe—get up! Get up!”
I stood, using the wall to provide support. I heard heavy breathing, the rumbling snort of a very large animal.
“Gabe!”
Ah. Enter the bull from Stage Left.
I pressed myself off the wall, hoofed it hard to the altar in the center of the chamber, and used sheer panic coupled with adrenaline to scramble my way up the carved stone block until I reached the top, where Remi stood. He reached down; I grabbed his arm, pulled myself to my feet.
The bull was big and black with a thick set of curved horns and a rolling, angry dark eye. No question of his gender. From the top of his skull between the horns to mid-back, a mane curled against his body, black as the rest of his coat. Between his shoulders rose a hump.
Remi helpfully ID’d the bull’s pedigree. “Brahma cross. The rodeo escapee, I do believe.”
I tried to clear my eye of tears. “You know him personally?”
“We ain’t on speaking terms, if that’s what you mean. But I’ve seen plenty like him in rodeo arenas. Mean suckers, some of ’em. Twisty and fast and almost impossible to ride the full eight seconds. Hard to escape once you hit the ground, too.”
The bull circled the altar. His nose was broad with slick, wide, fluttering nostrils, and dark eyes watched us standing atop the large stone block.
“Conjured,” I said. “The Minotaur was myth.”
“Nothing conjured about this son of a bitch,” Remi said. “Well, ’cept for the carpet on his back. Anyway, you got a plan?”
I slipped a
hand inside my jacket, drew out the revolver. “Gonna shoot him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Even as I assumed the stance, gun at the ready and the bad eye closed, a voice reverberated throughout the chamber. It had an odd metallic sound, slightly distorted, and either the guy was using a metal speaking tube from inside a statue, or he wore a mask.
“Your bullets will have about as much effect on my bull as they did on Cerberus! By the way, I am totally pissed that you killed my dog. You’ve hurt me to my soul. He was a good boy!”
And I remembered the note written in red on the photo of Remi: ‘My name is Iñigo Montoya. You keel my puppy. Prepare to die.’
I lowered the gun and turned my head so Remi could hear me clearly. “Well, that answers that. He’s not a demon. He’s a god.”
“What god?”
“Some called him Pluto. Others called him Hades.” I raised my voice again. “So, what’s the deal with Lucifer taking over? Did you retire?”
“We’re sharing the kingdom,” Hades answered. “Right now he’s got Tartarus. Everything else is mine. I’ve come to earth on vacation, thanks to the hell vents, but I haven’t retired. Still got stuff to do. And Persephone’s on a tear right now. I figured it was better that I give her some space for a while, hang out in my mancave.”
Okay, so he wasn’t a gloom-and-doom villain.
Torchflame roared, spilled additional light throughout the chamber. It also allowed Remi and me to see Hades. He’d been in the shadows, seated in what looked very like a theater box overlooking what we now knew was a bull-ring. He was clothed in black, though I couldn’t see details, and wore a mask of gold. Real gold, I felt certain. It was shaped to resemble the face of a bull. All features but the mouth were flattened, without depth. The mouth, however, was a speaking tube, if abbreviated.
“In this scenario, I’m King Minos,” he announced, “who had leprosy, wore a bull-faced mask.”
“You kill all those women? You here to kill us?” Remi called.
“I’m here to kill everybody,” Hades replied. “Yes, I killed those women. Would have killed Mary Jane Kelly, too, but decided it was more fun to lead you guys on for a while. I did claim you two in the fantasy draft—and yes, it’s a real thing. Lucifer and I co-developed it along with some game designer demons. But let’s stop monologuing! Oh—and don’t say I didn’t give you a chance. You kill the bull, you walk out of here. I’m a god of my word.” He waved a hand, pale in the dimness. “Have at it.”
I turned, aimed two-handed, shot a first bullet at the bull. The round did not quite hit what I aimed at, so the gun’s sight was a little off. No bother. I altered my aim, emptied four more chambers.
Didn’t do a thing.
Well, except for pissing off the bull. “Well, shit,” I said, as it started pawing at the ground.
“Knives, now, right?” Hades called. “Could work. Might not. Remiel, you are the bladesman. How about you take what Gabriel’s got on him and give it the old school try?”
“He’s too calm,” Remi said to me. “Hades is, I mean. He’s not about to tell us how to hit him where it hurts, but nothing harmed Cerberus until another dog took him out. I’ll take your knives, sure, but I’m bettin’ we’ll do no better.”
“What happened to your knives?” I asked.
“Hospital security took ’em. And my gun. Rules, you know. Then I got escorted out by a few Hades’s guys, and here I am, naked. So to speak.”
“I give you the knives,” I said, “and we got nothing.”
“Give me one knife. The Bowie. The target’s pretty damn big. I just have to hope I hit something vulnerable. Even just bleeding, if I hit him right, will slow him down. I figure if we’re fast enough we can run through the fire in the tunnel.”
I didn’t like that at all. “We don’t know how deep that fire blockade is!”
Remi and I both startled as a whining, soprano sound reverberated throughout the polished stone chamber. Not the bull, who appeared to be working himself into a charge. It was—an organ?
“Baseball?” Remi’s tone was disbelieving. “He’s playing the baseball park organ?”
Well, it was that four-beat measure starting high, then low, then two chords bridging the distance between the two, to fill time and rouse the fans. ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four. And the six-beat measure at the end, the Off To The Races fanfare.
The next sound was a deep strangled grunting. It rose in pitch and tone and was unrelenting. I heard heavy inhalations, blatting trumpet-like exhalations.
“Bull’s getting pissed,” Remi said.
Into my right eye, a wash of red came like a tsunami. I went to one knee again, cupping the right side of my face. The migraine was back full-force.
“Get on with it!” Hades wasn’t joking anymore. “Don’t waste my time. If you want to walk out of here, Gabriel, you’d better get cracking.”
The bull’s serenade ran up high and loud, expelled explosively. He sounded like a damn donkey with that unremitting honking squall. I thought cattle ‘mooed,’ or ‘lowed.’ What the hell was this noise?
I yanked the Bowie from its sheath, put it into Remi’s hands just as the bull charged. Its lowered head slammed into the altar, shifting it slightly. I suddenly realized that being up in the air guaranteed nothing save perhaps a harder fall.
Remi’s knees were flexed. “Let him come,” he said. He did not stand at the edge of the altar, but near enough all the same. “C’mon, you son of a bitch, come on back, try that again.”
The bull was accommodating. It trotted away, rounded the ring, then once again charged.
I’d never been up close and personal with an actual bull to judge overall size and weight, but this thing was massive.
As it zeroed in on the altar, Remi let fly with the knife. It rebounded, tumbled to the dirt. Gritting his teeth, Remi stuck out his hand. “Gimme your KA-BAR.”
I unsheathed it. “I thought you were leaving it with me.”
“Was. Now I’m not. Got an idea.”
Well, he sure as hell was better than I at throwing a knife. I handed it over.
“This time,” Remi muttered, “I’m goin’ for an eye.”
“Won’t that just make him angrier?”
“Wouldn’t it you?”
“Well, yeah, but is there an advantage to it? If we lose the knife, I mean?”
“There’s an advantage in that a one-eyed bull is easier to run the hell away from. How are you seeing out of the eye that’s weeping blood?”
“Not so good.” I blotted gently at my eye. “I take your point.”
“So part of your field of vision is blocked. That’s the goal here, too. I’d like to put this through his eye into his brain, but blinding him’ll do.”
Once again Remi stood with knees flexed, blade held in fingers. I decided to help. I pushed myself back to my feet, squinted the bad eye closed, began waving my arms. “Come on you, bovine bastard! Come ’n get us!”
That horrific strangled, blatting donkey trumpet filled the ring again. The bull lifted its head, scented with gaping nostrils, then dropped it low and charged again. Just as it came straight in toward the altar, Remi leaned forward just a little. Then he let fly.
Well, shit.
Unfortunately the bull dropped his head just a shade lower as it crashed into the block of stone. The blade struck him, but the best we got was a gouge between the eyes. The bull backed off, shook his head hard, then charged again.
This time when the massive animal plowed into the altar, Remi went right off.
Oh shit. Oh shitohshitohshit!
In the dirt, Remi lurched back to his feet, cast a glance over his shoulder, ran from the bull. He ducked, dodged, twisted his torso like a Spanish bullfighter, and if he went down he rolled, bounced back up. The bull’s giant head was lowered, hooking with
blunted horns but horns nonetheless.
I saw Remi eyeing the altar as he ran and realized what he was going to try. I dropped to both knees and one hand, moved as he did, tried to position myself as best I could. As the bull made another charge. I dropped to my belly, thrust one arm over the edge, and Remi caught it. I pulled with all my might as he scrambled up, felt myself slide toward the edge. But Remi came up the side in full scramble and dove for the middle of the altar, breathing like a bellows.
I rolled away from the edge, pulled my arms to my chest, and lay sprawled on my back panting. More stress than effort, probably. “Holy shit,” I croaked.
Remi was face down. He levered himself up on his elbows, peered over the edge to mark where the bull was, then hung his head, shoulders bunched.
“Close call!” Hades shouted through his mask. “Almost had you, Remiel!”
Remi suggested hoarsely that Hades do something anatomically impossible with the mask. Then he said to me, “I got an idea.”
“Does it get us out of here?”
“If it works, it will.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“Well, he’ll stomp us. Hook us. Bash us with his head. Smash both front hooves into our chest.”
“Pretty much kill us.”
“Yup.”
The pain in my eye had backed off. I’d arrived at the conclusion that Hades was the trigger for the pain, and all the red and red rum and red death had been in response to whatever spell or power he was wielding. If we kept him busy, he might forget all about my migraine. Might stop messing with me.
I sat up, placed myself carefully in the precise center of the altar. The bull was trotting along the curved walls of the ring, head hooking back and forth, clearly looking for something. His shadow darkened frescoes, made them appear to be moving. “What’s your idea?”
“You feelin’ fleet of foot?”
I frowned at him. “What do you—oh, hell no!”
“Ever been to a rodeo?”
“Once when I was a kid, but—”
“Remember the clowns?”
“Yeah, but—”
Sinners and Saints Page 28
