Each world staked its own claim on him, quickly dissolving into the next, lasting just long enough for Hatcher to take in every detail as he passed through, a piece of him knowing he was damned to return.
The victims all seemed to look vaguely the same, but it wasn’t until the last scene that Hatcher was able to recognize who it was. A man, arms and legs missing, two stones in place of his eyeballs, with irises and pupils painted on them. He was being raped by troll-like men with jagged buckteeth as they drooled over his writhing body. The man was Hatcher. So, he realized, were the rapists.
Unable to take it, Hatcher shut his eyes, pushing at them with his fingers, trying to squeeze out what he’d seen. The worst part was the feeling that swelled and churned inside him, a feeling so strong it seemed he was immersed in it, a radio signal bombarding every corner and cranny, boosted and rebroadcast internally from his crown to his heels. A jittery, helpless feeling, the result of millions of neurons firing and misfiring, bombarding his senses into overload. The entire universe narrowed, compressing into the space around him, existence now defined as the complete absence of anything but horror and despair. Pure terror.
When he opened his eyes, Hatcher found himself balled on the ground, apparently in the same place he’d started.
Raum looked down at him from his position leaning against the desk. There was no indication he’d ever left.
“Hope you enjoyed that. I figured I’d skip the maudlin stuff you saw the other day and go for the visceral thrills. That’s the beauty of where you’re going. You’ll never be bored.”
Hatcher said nothing. He shut his eyes, tried to catch his breath.
“I’m supposed to tell you to take the ring,” Raum said.
“What ring?” Hatcher said.
“They’ll offer it to you. Take it. It will make you powerful enough to do almost anything. I’m bound not to lie.”
Hatcher held his breath for a moment. “And if I don’t?”
The demon shrugged. “That wasn’t part of my message.”
The shaky feeling in his gut and limbs started to subside. Hatcher shook his head, trying to clear it, rolled to his hands and knees and pushed himself off the ground. He started to speak as he stood, but stopped before any sound came out. Raum was gone. So was the desk, and the black expanse. There was only the tunnel, flickering in the light of the torch that lay near his feet.
CHAPTER 23
HATCHER REACHED THE NEXT HUB IN LITTLE MORE THAN AN hour. He’d left the torch—again—and was following the bouncing sphere of brightness from his flashlight. Firelight glowed in the distance. As he drew closer, he shut off the flashlight and hugged the tunnel wall. He crept forward until he could see what lay beyond.
A woman was standing next to a stone slab, leaning over it and looking down, her back to Hatcher. Platinum blonde, perfect figure. Tight leather outfit. He had to force himself not to look at her ass. And not looking didn’t remove the image of it from his head.
Soliya.
Hatcher scanned the area. This hub was similar to the prior one, just a space with more tunnels branching out like spokes. There was no one else there but her.
To keep going in the same direction, he’d have to take the tunnel directly across. On the other side of her. Sneaking to it looked impossible.
Carnates were tough. Hatcher knew that from experience. They were strong and agile and skilled fighters. He’d seen one flip out of an armlock in a way that had to have dislocated her shoulder. She didn’t so much as wince.
His hand slid to his jeans, felt the firm outline of the knife clipped to the belt line.
She didn’t seem to be paying attention. He could sneak up to her, slow and quiet, stick the long blade deep into her back, straight into her heart. Would that kill her? Edgar had said it would, but he wasn’t sure how much of what he’d been told—if any of it—could be believed.
But he tended to think it was true. They were still living creatures with beating hearts. If it had a beating heart, stabbing that heart would kill it.
The question was, could he do that? Kill a woman in cold blood? Even one that wasn’t really a woman? Or at best half a woman?
He slipped the knife out from where it was tucked. He opened the blade slowly, let it lock in place with a muted snick.
An image of that Afghani boy flashed through his head.
Stop it.
Just a kid, and he’d covered his mouth, pulled his head back, and cleaved his arteries open. Stabbed the blade into the space behind his clavicle, worked it forward and back to sever the connections to the heart.
Stop, stop, stop. He was an armed sentry fighting for a bunch of murderous fanatics. Would have killed you, killed any American, without blinking.
He hadn’t realized just how young he was, or at least hadn’t considered it, until he saw the eyes. So wide open, so terrified. Realizing he was dying, but too young to really grasp it. The eyes of a child. A little boy playing terrorist, recruited by diseased minds. Dead in five seconds.
It was a memory Hatcher had assumed he’d locked away, one he’d gotten rid of a long time ago. He’d gone years free of it, not letting anything remind him. Until that glimpse of damnation at the hands of Sankey.
He closed his eyes. She’s not human, damn it.
He forced himself to think of Vivian, of Lori. Lori, dead and mutilated. Vivian, possibly still alive.
This was no time to lose his nerve, he told himself. Arm around the neck, pulling her up and back, curving her spine, then one, hard upward thrust of the knife, just to the left of her vertebrae, right below the scapula. Not difficult. Just very hard.
The pistol-grip handle snugly wedged in his fist, he stepped from the shadow of the tunnel into the torchlight.
One step, then another, weight on the balls of his feet, legs bent, ready to spring.
Fourteen. The kid couldn’t have been fourteen.
Hatcher stopped, squeezed his eyes shut. He had to quit thinking this way.
He had an AK-47 and was on sentry duty, damn it! The slightest noise, and the rest of them would grab their weapons, start firing. His duty was to his team, not to some Islamofascist punk who’d put a bullet in any infidel he could, or blow up a nursery school, or cut off a civilian’s head. It was war.
He took a quiet breath, let it out slowly. Sure, that was war. And war was hell. But what’s this? Is it the same thing? What choice was there? They’d killed Lori, taken Vivian. Who knew what they were up to?
He mopped his face, thinking. Maybe he didn’t have to kill her. He had a knife, he could put it to her throat. Stab her in the heart only if she resisted. Riskier, yes. But Carnate or not, she was still an unarmed woman. Sort of.
Another breath, then another step. The decision calmed his nerves, let him focus. She was only a few feet away now, completely oblivious. Unmoving.
One more step, and he lunged forward, thrust his left arm across her neck, cupping his hand back to pull her head and expose her jugular, bringing the knife to it, pressing it just hard enough so there would be no mistake—
The body swung woodenly with his movements, rattling. Stiff arms, slightly crooked at the elbow, pointing outward. A solid, fleshless face. Molded composite material under a wig. A mannequin.
What the—?
“I trust you weren’t planning on slitting my throat.”
Hatcher dropped the mannequin and wheeled around. Soliya was standing against the rocky wall, hands linked casually behind her waist. Her lips were curled at the edges, a bemused twinkle in her eye. Same red leather outfit.
“I mean, really, Hatcher—after all we’ve been through?”
First the stuff with Raum or whoever he was, now this. Hatcher fixed his eyes on hers, taking whatever measure he could, then slowly let his gaze drift around the chamber. Three torches guttered on the walls. Nothing else but a slab, and a mannequin.
But it wasn’t a mannequin a minute ago. That much he was sure of.
“You drugged me.
”
“Did I?”
Hatcher said nothing. If she did drug him, she would have had to touch him, inject him. Give him something to drink. Or inhale. In the cave, it would have been easy. The bangers could have done it on the way. But here?
He glanced around the chamber one more time. Nothing but torches.
Torches.
Fire. She’d lit a fire at the cave, and now torches. The drug was in the smoke. Had to be. He’d even smelled it. Made it easy for them.
“Where is she?”
“It just so happens, I’m here to take you to her.” She paused, apparently considering her words. “In a manner of speaking.”
She pushed away from the wall, smiling as she sashayed past him. Her eyes dropped to the knife in his hand. She arched a brow and winked.
“Don’t cut yourself,” she said, stepping up to a torch and pulling it off the wall.
She ventured into a tunnel, an orange glow throbbing off the walls in her wake. The chamber dimmed slightly. Hatcher watched her recede into the distance, shadows filling in behind her. Something had to be in those torches, some fume in the smoke. Something he shouldn’t be breathing.
“These are just plain old torches,” she said, as if hearing his thoughts.
He didn’t have much of a choice. He stepped into the tunnel and followed, keeping his distance and forcing shallow breaths.
They walked for what seemed like miles. She occasionally threw a glance back over her shoulder, rolling her eyes, until finally coming to a stop and waiting.
She set the torch into a holder embedded in the wall of the tunnel. “We’re almost there. Stop being ridiculous.”
Reluctantly, Hatcher closed the distance, still keeping several feet between them.
“There’s something you need to know,” she said, on the move again.
The light from the flames receded behind them as they ventured forth. The way ahead was pitch black.
“What’s that?”
She reached back and held out her hand. “Remember back at Bronson Caves? Our little interlude?”
The hand was barely visible now, the light fading more with each step. She gestured impatiently and he reached forward and took it. The touch of her skin sent a tingle through his body.
“You mean, your little game of mindfuck?”
“Interesting choice of words,” she said, dropping her voice to an almost intimate volume. “You betrayed her so easily. It hardly took any seduction at all.”
He pushed her hand away, realizing he was in complete darkness now. He swiveled his head to look behind him. No sign of light. Anywhere.
“You’re lying,” he said.
“Am I?” Her voice was close, but he could no longer see her. She may have been twelve inches away, or twelve feet. “Don’t you remember? Your lips and teeth on my skin? Our tongues and limbs intertwined so deliciously? You don’t remember sliding deep inside me with such longing, such hunger?”
“No,” he said, without any of the conviction he’d tried for.
“Over and over and over, I kept asking you if it felt good, and you kept saying oh, yes, yes, yes.”
“It wasn’t real.”
“And I asked you—asked you as you thrust yourself into me, as your pulse raced in ecstasy . . . do you love her?”
Hatcher put his hand out, swept it from side to side, groping the darkness. Nothing.
Another whisper, loud enough to echo. “You said no, over and over again.”
“That’s not true.”
“Which part? What you said? Or the fact you said it?”
Hatcher patted his pockets, trying to find his flashlight. It was gone. Son of a bitch.
He put his arm out again, crept forward.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It will be our little secret.”
Her voice was so close. He kept moving, waving sightlessly, submerged in inky blackness.
Then light erupted all around him. Torches blooming in every direction, lining a circular chamber. Illuminating a crowd. Hundreds of women. Blondes, brunettes, redheads. Pale, tanned, dark. Stunningly beautiful, provocative women. Some sitting on the floor or casually stretched out, others standing farther back, all of them forming an audience. A large ring of spectators.
An arena.
Hatcher stood just inside the circle, hadn’t moved, taking it all in. In the middle of the chamber, the center of the arena, Morris Sankey sat on the throne, looking down from the raised platform. Orange jacket, orange hat. To the left of him stood a man Hatcher hadn’t seen before. A bit older, graying. Well dressed in business attire.
To the right was Edgar. Smiling.
Suspended above them was a figure Hatcher had seen before, but only in sketches. The head, horns, and legs of a huge goat, the body of a woman, naked, a sewn-on penis and scrotum hanging limp between the goat legs. The left arm was pointing up. The right arm was male, stitched to the body, pointing downward. Each forearm had a word tattooed on it. As far as he could tell, it was identical to the drawings in every detail. The Baphomet. Not some living creature, at least, he didn’t think so, but rather a grotesque collection of Frankenstein parts.
Below it, in front of the throne, a large ring shined on its pedestal, bathed in a cone of bright light.
Why do I think I’ve seen this act before? Hatcher said to himself.
“So glad to see you again,” said the gray-haired man.
Hatcher ignored him. He set his eyes on Edgar.
“You were their prison bitch all along, weren’t you? What did they promise you? Supernatural sex?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Where is she?”
Edgar pursed his lips, not quite breaking his smile, and let his eyes roll to the side. He hitched his shoulders in a lazy shrug. “Not my department.”
The sound of heels grabbed his attention. Deborah crossed toward him, cutting through the circular space. She was wearing a black dress that barely covered anything. Hatcher tightened his grip on the knife.
She clucked her tongue, wagging her chin in disapproval.
“Is violence your answer to everything?”
“No,” he said, his back stiffening. “Just to questions I don’t like.”
“Well, keep it in your pants. Don’t you want to hear why you’re standing there?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me no matter what I say.”
Her face tightened into a smirk, and she crinkled her nose. “You are just so adorable. Did you know that?”
“Tell me where she is.”
“Silly man. What do you think I’m trying to do?”
Deborah swept an arm, indicating a direction behind him. He turned to see the section of Carnates part, clearing a wide path. The same path as last time, ending at the wall of black polished stone. Soliya stood in front of it. She stepped to the side, gave a Vanna White gesture toward the wall.
It took Hatcher a moment, but then the movement caught his eye. He squinted, leaning forward. Once he could focus past the reflections, it all seemed to burst into view.
Vivian. She was on the other side, being held by things he could only assume were demons, long-fingered creatures with bestial faces and swept-back skulls displaying enormous rows of jagged teeth. They had her tightly by the limbs, some biting at her, some clawing at her. He couldn’t hear any of it, but her mouth was set in a scream, her eyes wide. Her expression twisted. She was obviously in severe pain.
She seemed able to see out, able to see him. Screaming for help. Screaming for him to help her.
“Let her go,” he said, gritting his teeth so hard he felt one chip.
“Oh, but you see, we don’t have her.”
Hatcher tightened his fist around the knife handle as hard as his muscles would allow. “I said, let her go. I mean it.”
Deborah made a disapproving noise, tilted her head as if in pity. “That’s not the way it works. We really don’t have her. She’s—how can I put this . . . cro
ssed over.”
Hatcher’s eyes darted back to the wall. The dreamy, liquid image of Vivian was still there, still screaming in silence.
“You’re lying.”
“Is that so? In that case, prove it.”
Deborah walked over to the pedestal. She gestured toward the ring.
“This ring will allow you to pass the barrier. You can go get her. If you dare.”
Hatcher stared at Deborah, then back at the ghostly countenance of Vivian. “I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. This is the Ring of Aandaleeb. Let’s not pretend you haven’t heard of it.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of it. You made sure I did. All that crap about King Solomon and demons. Then the visit from Raum. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if you want me to believe something, it’s not true. You want me to use it, so I think I’ll pass.”
“Who said I do? I’m offering you a chance to prove it’s all fake. I’m actually hoping you don’t take me up on it, lest all these carefully laid plans come to naught.”
“That’s not the way you work. I may not know much, but I know that.”
“So you’re admitting that maybe it’s not fake, that maybe she really is at the banks of Fire Lake, ready to be dragged to its depths.”
“Quit the games. What do you want from me?”
“A fair question. I want you to know that you now have a chance to claim the source of more power than anyone has wielded in millennia, power enough to go get your girlfriend and bring her back.”
“Let me guess, if I do that, use that ring to cross over, it will open this Path, some gateway to Hell, so all your demon cousins can come strolling out.”
“My, aren’t we so convinced of our own cleverness.”
Hatcher locked eyes with Deborah, then shifted his gaze to the platform. Something wasn’t right, and with so many things already wrong, that was saying a lot. That freak Morris Sankey was sitting there like the crowned prince of some role-playing game. The older guy next to him was watching the goings-on intently, trying, it seemed, to appear only casually interested. Edgar was grinning uncontrollably, practically urging Hatcher on with his body language.
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