There were seven, fanned out in a fashion that spoke of ritual and preparation. Each was dressed in flowing black suits, dirty and dusted, with white collars and black brim hats. Around each neck hung a rosary weighted iron crosses.
“You’ll forgive us if we’re not quick to accept new hospitality, friend,” the tallest of them said. His voice was earthy and deep. His tawny face bore a narrow scar across his nose and a thick mustache more silver that black. “There’s many a scoundrel in this land that would gull a man with sweet words from afar only to slip a knife in him when nigh. The Priests know their kind well.”
“Priests?” the Master repeated.
As the tall man stepped closer, Viktor saw his palm rested atop a slender sword in a golden scabbard. It appeared to be a Mameluke. It was like the ones he read about Napoleon wearing.
“Aye,” the tall man responded. “The Priests of Blasphemy they call us. We are the curates of the great garden, enemy to the unholy wherever we may find them.”
“A good name,” the Master said. “And an admirable profession. As you can see, we are no threat. Just three ordinary, God-fearing men.”
“Yea? Which God would that be, might I ask?”
Viktor watched the Master smile as he folded his hands over his knee.
“There is only one true God, friend. And one true Son.”
The priest’s shoulders relaxed a little, though he kept his hand on his weapon. He looked at Cassa and Viktor.
“Come,” the Master said, taking the cast iron pot from the fire. “Sit. I’ll pour you a cup of my wife’s most excellent tea, may God rest her soul.”
The Master poured a cup and held it out. The tall priest eventually took it and sat on a stone a foot from the fire. Viktor realized he’d been holding his breath. As he exhaled, he eyed the other priests, all firmly gripping their own weapons.
“It’s rare to hear courtesy these days,” the priest said. He sipped his tea but couldn’t hide his grimace. “Rarer still to find three men on the plains with only one weapon between ’em.”
“In my experience, weapons are more often the source of offense than the remedy to it.”
The tall priest scoffed. “If that was true, you’d be better armed, not worse. We hunt the blighted. We been tracking a pack of these spawns of Satan for three days now. They led us here to you. Can you explain that?”
The tall priest watched the Master closely.
“No,” the Master said.
If the tall priest was phased by the single, terse response, he didn’t let it show.
“In our time,” he said, “we’ve encountered some that hunt the beasts for sport. Others, to capture and sell. For what unholy purpose, I cannot say. But I know this: both are sins. Grave as any of the ten.”
“And these are the laws you have sworn to defend,” the Master said.
“That’s right. Until the day I meet my maker.”
When the Master looked at the tall priest, he smiled. Viktor felt a roiling in his gut. He had seen that smile before and knew nothing good ever came of it.
“Then we are in your debt, Ser,” the Master said.
The tall priest craned his head. He hadn’t expected that. “How so?”
“For the past few days, my associates and I have shared an uncomfortable feeling, but couldn’t reason why. Now, we know it was because these spawns were tracking us. We give you our thanks and tell you we can take it from here.”
The tall priest hesitated, then laughed a loud, belly-driven laugh, which sounded foreign coming from such a dour man. Viktor felt a moment’s relief.
“You are good, sir,” the tall priest said, shaking his head. “Very good. I venture you could charm a snake with that forked tongue of yours. But I see you for what you truly are—a liar and a charlatan. Those tracks didn’t follow in pursuit of yours, but alongside them. Way I figure, your stories and piety are as good as your wife’s tea, which is worse’n piss in my book.”
The man tossed the tea into the fire before pulling his sword from its scabbard. Cassa reached for his bow, but it was kicked away by one of the other priests, who set a bolt tip to Cassa’s head. Viktor felt his bladder release and let out a nervous giggle.
When the Master looked up, Victor thought he saw resignation.
“Will you at least allow us a final prayer?” the Master asked.
“Get to it,” the tall priest said.
“I find the most powerful prayers—the ones God truly hears—come from hymn. Cassa.”
Cassa raised his pipes to his lips and blew out a familiar note.
“Lord,” the Master said, “Now lettest thou thy servant depart in pace according to thy word.”
A rustling carried in on the wind. One of the priests turned but saw nothing. Then, inexplicably, he was wrenched into the darkness, his screams echoing in the night. The other priests startled and shouted, but the Master continued his canticle undeterred.
“For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”
Heavy panting reverberated across the prairie. The priests twirled around in confusion before another one of them was snatched away.
“What is this?” the tall priest asked.
The Master spoke on. “Which thou has prepared before the face of all people.”
Sickly things flit by in the shadows. Two more priests were seized, their cries falling in tune with the ripping of their flesh. Cassa played the note again.
“To be a light to lighten the Gentiles,” the Master spoke, his voice rising with each word. “And to be the glory of thy people.…”
The tall priest grabbed the Master’s shoulder and screamed, “Halt I say!” He pointed the shaking mameluke at Cassa. “Stop that infernal sound!”
But Cassa played on. Viktor watched, enthralled, as the remaining priests whirled about like dervishes, scanning the dark only to be plucked away one by one until only the tall priest was left.
“What devilry is this?” he shrieked.
“A most singular one,” the Master said. “We call it science. You wanted to meet your maker, ser. Allow me to make the introduction.”
Before the tall priest could move, a lumbering shadow lunged at him from out of the darkness. The Master reached and tore a piece of flesh from the spit, grunting in approval, seemingly oblivious to the screams behind him.
Chapter Nineteen
Scuff
Robinson turned slowly to see the double-barrel shotgun pointed at him. The owner was short with thick clothes, tattered gloves, and a hood of some sort.
“Don’t listen?” the voice hissed, the barrel pressed harder. “Says, don’t move.”
“I don’t want any trouble,” Robinson said. “I thought the building was vacant.”
“Thought wrong. You and the other erred coming here.”
“I see that now,” Robinson said, hands raised. “Is she okay?”
“The girl? Sleepin’ in the stairwell when I passed.”
“Then no one’s been hurt. And there’s no reason to take this any further.” He nodded to the bag of scavenged goods on the floor. “Allow me to put that back and we can all forget—”
“I said don’t move! Not unless you want to die.”
“I don’t want to die, trust me. But I don’t think you do either.”
The figure chuckled low. “I wasn’t the one made a mistake coming here.”
“No,” Robinson replied. “Yours was confusing one of the Aserra for a heavy sleeper.”
The figure hesitated before glancing back. Friday immediately ripped the shotgun away and smashed the stock into the assailant’s face. He fell to the floor. Friday lifted the shotgun to slam the figure with the stock when Robinson called out for her to stop.
Robinson reached down and peeled the hood off the stranger, revealing an old woman with terrified eyes.
“It’s okay,” Robinson said. “I meant it when I said we weren’t here to hurt you.” He extended a hand to help her up. The old woman cautiously took it, wobbling unstea
dy when she got to her feet.
Friday thumbed the shotgun’s break-open action.
“Empty,” the old woman said, her mouth devoid of teeth. “Always been.”
Friday showed Robinson the empty barrels before snapping it closed.
“Where are the others?” Friday asked.
“Ain’t no others,” the old woman said.
“Are those your pens on the roof?” Robinson asked.
The woman’s head snapped up, eyes widening. They’re mine,” she stuttered. “B-belongs all to me.”
Robinson held up a hand to calm her. “Easy. We’re not here to steal your food. Or anything else. It’s just … with the rain coming, we’re not exactly prepared for it. If we took anything that’s yours, we apologize.”
Seeing his sincerity, the old woman grew calmer.
“We are in need of information,” Friday said. “From one who knows this Denver. If you can help us, we may be able share some of our food in return.”
Friday opened her bag, revealing carrots, sweet potatoes, and a few beets. A clammy tongue darted over the old woman’s lips.
They followed her down the stairwell to the basement, her bare feet making no sound. Robinson carried the bag of winter clothes while Friday walked a few steps behind, the shotgun under her arm. From the earliest age, she’d learned never to take anyone for granted, and she wasn’t about to start with a woman that had managed to live twice as long as most men could.
The door in the garage was unmarked, but the lock on it worked. The old woman drew a key from a chain around her neck and opened it. The room was dark until the woman pulled a cord that reined in heavy fabric covering fogged glass near the ceiling. She repeated the action twice.
Robinson and Friday were stunned. Once an underground loading dock, the room had been repurposed into a storage vault stockpiled with relics, clutter, and debris that had been squeezed into every nook and cranny with only the narrowest of channels to move through.
Near the door were towering hills of old newspaper, magazines, books, and music. Next came bundles of clothing in plastic bags and boxes. Shelves stacked from floor to ceiling held flatware, trinkets, picture frames, and toys. Heaped atop dusted furniture sat vases full of gold watches, jewelry and gems. Beside them were stacks of currency, divided by origin, color, and denomination. Wrapped in rubber bands were thousands of small cards with photos that bore the words “driver’s license.” Beneath them were thousands more cards with numbers stamped across them.
Coins, weapons, glass figurines, musical instruments, toothbrushes, combs, purses, toy cars, stuffed animals, shoes, picture cameras, sunglasses, sports equipment, keys, religious paraphernalia—all grouped and assorted according to some obsessively incalculable system. Robinson wished he had time to look through it all.
Under a bowed bridge of doors was the old woman’s living area. It smelled of dank, urine, body odor, and pungent meat. Lying next to an old bed and burrow of blankets was a table with several candles next to a blackened kiln used for cooking.
The old woman turned to Friday expectantly. “Food?”
Robinson nodded and Friday handed over the vegetables they’d brought from Troyus. The old woman smelled them and licked her lips greedily. Then she set about cutting them, adding them to a pan with rat meat.
As she worked, Robinson and Friday sat on the floor, kicking up dust. Friday coughed several times. She was surprised when she looked up to find the old woman offering her a broken comb of honey. Friday took it.
“Thank you,” she said.
The old woman nodded and went back to cooking.
She hummed as she worked. Robinson didn’t recognize the tune, but it eased the tension out of the room. When she was done, she poured three modest bowls of vermin-flavored gruel. Robinson had eaten worse. Stomach grumbling, he spooned the stew into his mouth and was surprised how good it tasted.
“What do they call you?” Friday asked once the meal was done.
The old woman’s eyes narrowed, trying to remember.
“Scuff, they called me once. And knee-high. Though my ma used ‘Cricket.’”
“I am called Friday and this is Crusoe. How long have you lived here?”
The woman shrugged. “Near forever.”
“Have you always been alone?” Robinson asked.
“Some lived here once. Loud ones. Angry. Anger doesn’t do well in the cold. I stayed away from then until they too were gone. Where did you come by these?”
She pointed to the vegetables.
“They were given to us,” Robinson answered, “by friends.”
The old woman tilted her head as if the word was foreign.
“Are there blighted here? In the city?” Friday asked.
“No. Once. When I had more dark hair than light. But I think they don’t like the cold neither.”
Robinson cleared his throat nervously. “We’re looking for a place. Maybe you can help us. It’s called the City of Glass. Have you heard of it?”
The old woman thought about it before shaking her head.
“What about someone called Dia?” Friday asked. “Have you heard of him or her?”
“Don’t know Dia. Don’t remember any names. Even if I did, there’s none around here to claim them.”
Robinson slumped. Friday put a reassuring hand on his shoulder before turning back to the old woman. “Tell us your story, Mother.”
She was born by the coast and grew up with the smell of brine coating her nostrils and the chirping of sea birds filling her ears. It was a peaceful time until the day men came and destroyed their village. They fled into the mountains where the woman’s sister was taken, but her parents and brother survived. The old woman’s father urged the other surviving families to return to the coast, but the others voted to go inland. The days were filled with hard travelling. The first year was the worst. They were coastal dwellers and didn’t understand mountain life. When the first snows came, half their tribe died. The ones that survived learned to hunt, forage, and trade for furs.
By the second year, the family started to pull apart. The girl’s father had an affair with another man’s wife and was run off. Their mother left soon after, telling her son to take care of the girl. At first, the children thought they’d be cast out of the tribe, but the leader had never could father his own children and took the girl’s brother as his son. Sometime after that, their father came for them both, but her brother refused to go, so they left him behind.
Father and daughter travelled around, but one day, the man fell down a hill and broke his leg. It never healed properly. When they came across a dark-skinned people, the father kissed his daughter and made him walk to them. She cried and cried, but in the end, she did as she was told. She never saw her father again.
The new tribe claimed their people founded the land long ago. They were a hard people but not unjust. They lived simply, following the beasts that migrated with the seasons. As the girl grew, she was teased by other children of the village. When she bloodied one of the bigger girls, she was given the name, “Scuff.”
When the girl grew old enough, she married one of the tribe’s warriors, but before she could have children, the tribe was attacked by creatures more monster than man. Her husband was killed. To sow her grief, she walked off into the woods. Like her mother and father, she never returned.
She walked until she saw a city of towers in the lap of many white-capped mountains. There, she made her home. People came and went. Groups made peace and war. She stayed by herself. Her hair lost her luster, her back grew sore, but she was happy to have a home.
“It is a good story,” Robinson said. “But don’t you miss people?”
“There are people everywhere I look. In the buildings, in the homes. I see their stories, and I know them. They are my family, my friends.”
“Sounds like you know the area pretty well,” Robinson said.
He reached into his pocket and extracted the notes he’d made from the log books of
Troyus.
“These notes spoke of another traveler coming from here. Maybe if you could point us in the direction of the library or the capitol—”
Robinson stopped. Something in the old woman’s face had changed.
“I have seen this,” she said of the paper in her hands.
“This writing?” Robinson asked.
The old woman shook her head and pointed at the sketch of the image burned onto the traveler’s hand. “This symbol.”
She rose, hobbled through her labyrinth, mumbling under her breath as she rifled through her possessions. Eventually she returned with an open magazine. She showed Robinson an article about conspiracies. One of the images was identical to the one sketched from the burned man’s hand.
“They are the same,” Friday said.
Robinson nodded, but he had noticed something more important. “Look at the name of the place where this photo was taken.”
Friday enunciated as best she could. “Denver International Airport.”
Robinson swallowed and said, “DIA.”
Chapter Twenty
Dia
The old woman had been surprised when Robinson hugged her out of the blue and responded with an embarrassed, toothless smile. She’d refused to take back the clothes they’d foraged and given them directions to the airport. It appeared she enjoyed company more than she knew.
The muddy streets were easier to travel with the new boots. Robinson and Friday headed east down twenty-sixth street, passing an old zoo before turning northeast. After a few neighborhoods, the city receded into forest with lakes, streams, and cottonwood trees. They saw bison and mule deer, but only stopped long enough to kill, skin, and eat a cottontail before continuing.
The white-peaked roof of the Denver International Airport looked like a field of tents and mirrored the mountain range to the north. Whomever built the place did so with winter in mind, as there were no flat areas to accumulate snow. The only movement they saw was torn bits of canvas flapping in the breeze.
While the outside of the airport was still in surprisingly good shape, the inside was a different matter. While the snow had likely stymied typical erosion, it had also left a scene littered with human remains. Bodies huddled in rooms, log-jammed in doorways they would never escape. Death was splayed out for all to see. It hadn’t mattered who was coming or going—when the transformation occurred, the terminal had become a slaughterhouse.
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