by Meg Gardiner
Mack put a hand to her back and pushed her toward the exit.
Then a sound echoed in the hallway. It came from beyond the walls, beyond the paintings and the nails. It echoed from the tunnel.
It was unmistakable. A cry of pain.
They exchanged a look. She unholstered her SIG and handed it to her father.
They ran back to the hole in the concrete. And descended into Hell’s Gate.
55
Caitlin slung the Remington across her back by its strap, swung her legs over the edge of the pit, and lowered herself to the rickety ladder propped against the side of the well. Above her, Mack aimed his flashlight down the hole while she climbed down the flimsy steps. The muggy air grew heavy as she descended.
The sound came again—a keening, beyond a moan, high-pitched, twisted by walls and echoes. Caitlin’s throat felt as dry as paper.
Mack followed her down, taking care to place his feet carefully and grip the ladder with both hands. Caitlin needed him to hurry but saw that he had to focus on every step. Her heart tightened further.
He stepped off the ladder. Caitlin crouched, peered down through the hole blowtorched in the roof of the subway tunnel, into a darkness where it was impossible to see. She listened.
The moaning had stopped.
Mack swung the beam of the flashlight through the hole. On the struts and beams surrounding it, blood had dried. Her head thudded. She took a baseball-size chunk of broken concrete and dropped it through. It hit bottom with a clop. The drop was doable, and at the bottom of it lay wood and rocks.
Her watch pinged. Eight minutes.
“I’m going,” she said.
She squirmed through the hole, dangled exposed, and dropped.
She hit the bed of a train track. Crossties, gravel heaped along the bed. She stood and raised the shotgun. The Maglite reflected darkly from the tracks.
“Come on,” she said.
Mack wrangled through the hole and dropped awkwardly, landing on one of the tracks and tumbling. He got up, jeans ripped, knee bleeding. Breathing hard, he checked the SIG and nodded.
“I’m fine. Eyes on the tunnel,” he said.
Caitlin swung the shotgun both ways along the tracks.
To her right the tunnel ended fifty yards away, against a concrete wall.
“This is a spur,” she said.
They sent their lights the opposite way down the tracks. The walls were close, covered with moss and dripping water. The tunnel scoped to darkness.
“And it’s abandoned. Looks like it has been since construction ended.”
They ran along the track. The ceiling seemed to press down with the weight of all the earth above it. Caitlin eyed the concrete over their heads, the brown stains that crept from cracks. Earthquake country, and this spur might not have been inspected for decades. The lightless, clammy air carried a fetid undertone.
Soon the tunnel curved and joined another track. They stopped at the fork.
“Damn,” Caitlin said.
The junction in the tracks spread to a vast subterranean world—miles of abandoned, crisscrossing subway tunnels and access corridors. It must have been a construction hub. The wind whistled and keened.
“Which way?” Mack said.
Ping. Seven minutes.
Caitlin’s stomach clenched. The tunnels branched and extended beyond the hot scope of the Maglite.
“It has to be near. We heard the voice from the surface.”
The wind keened again.
Mack said, “Did we?”
It couldn’t have been the wind. She couldn’t let herself believe that. She ran along the main track. Her flashlight hit bright-red paint on the wall of the tunnel.
“Dad.”
Painted on the wall was a crimson face. Its eyes were the size of Caitlin’s head, with serpents’ slit pupils. Horns extended black and sharp from the creature’s forehead.
It surrounded a rusted door in the wall.
Mack approached. “The devil.”
“No. One of the giants that guards the deepest circle of hell. This is the way in.”
Mack reached for the door.
“Wait.”
She picked up one of the rocks that lined the bed of the tracks, and scratched an arrow on the wall, indicating the path.
They slipped through the door, went through an access corridor, and emerged into another abandoned tunnel. She swept the barrel of the shotgun up and down the tracks. Nothing. She marked the wall with another arrow.
They rushed along rusting tracks in the echoing dark. Despite the shotgun, Caitlin felt vulnerable. Heavy cables were bolted to the walls. She eyed the third rail.
“We’re sure the power’s off?” she said.
“Just don’t touch it,” Mack said.
They rounded a bend. The sense of space opened up.
Ping. Six minutes.
Mack swung his flashlight around. It caught an abandoned platform. He inhaled. On the wall was the name of the station. MERCURY.
It was the killer’s lair.
56
Their flashlights illuminated a cold and dripping dark. Chaos and decay. They climbed up onto the long train platform. Caitlin swept her gun-mounted flashlight ahead of her, inch by inch, illuminating ovals of dusty light a foot at a time. Anybody sighting on her had a pinpoint target. But she wasn’t going to stumble around the echoing platform in pitch dark.
Mack stood on her right flank, a step behind, SIG in a two-handed grip, covering the tracks.
Her flashlight scanned the platform. The walls were dense with paintings. A Hieronymus Bosch dystopia, rendered in Day-Glo and spray paint, unskilled and vicious. The images seemed to squirm and fight with one another.
Where was Sean?
The Maglite illuminated a plastic chair. A wooden cabinet. And a cinder-block bookshelf. It was packed with books and tools, spools of copper wire and jars full of a bright silvery liquid. Caitlin felt a draft. To her left, an exit from the platform loomed in the dark, stairs visible to a ticket hall that never went into service.
She swept the Maglite overhead. A disturbing crack ran like lightning across the ceiling.
Ahead, parked carelessly near the wall, was a wheelbarrow. Beyond it were tarps, humped and crumpled. A boom box furred with dust. She crept forward. Felt Mack right behind, matching her step for step.
After ten yards, the light from the Maglite caught the farthest reaches of the platform. Another carelessly tossed form lay on the concrete. Twisted, rag-like, motionless.
It was Sean.
Adrenaline spiked through her, a prickling sensation that opened her pores and vision and set her ready to charge, screaming. But she kept herself from bolting for him.
He was so still. His plaid flannel shirt lay half off his shoulder. His white T-shirt was stiff with blood. Red darkening to black. He hadn’t been wearing a ballistic vest.
The blood spread beneath him on the concrete but didn’t glisten in the beam of the flashlight. It had stopped flowing. She was too far away, and her heart was thundering too hard, to tell if his chest was rising and falling. But he was so still. His face was partially turned away, but the light reflected from his eyes. She let out a breath like she’d been hit with a battering ram.
No. No not Sean not now not like this Christ in heaven please no—
Mack took a step toward him.
Caitlin grabbed her father’s arm. “Don’t move.”
There was always a second phase. An incendiary device, a trip wire, a decoy.
She held Mack back and choked down the urge to yell Sean’s name. She tried to see where the trap lay, where it was loaded, how they would walk into it if they crossed the platform.
She shut off the Maglite. Mack did the same. The darkness didn’t envelop them; it simply was. Absence, to
tal, and no shadows rose even as her eyes adjusted. She heard her father’s hard breathing beside her.
Ping. Five minutes.
“Wait,” she whispered.
From deep in the gloom came a harsh whisper, amplified by echoes. “As Mercury descends, here you are. Hendrix. In stereo.”
Caitlin tightened her grip on the Remington. Slowly, she inched the barrel toward the sound of the voice. A few inches to the right. Off the platform. Farther down the tunnel in the direction they’d been heading.
The Prophet. Live. Here. Out of sight, invisible, a specter, not even a breath. But nearby, taking them in, hungrily. Mack was breathing like he’d just run up a mountain.
The voice rose. “At last you come to the Ninth Circle.”
A heavy switch flipped, an electrical hum filled the air, and an icy light shone on them from the end of the tunnel. Every hair on Caitlin’s head stood up.
“Dad. The track’s live.”
Squinting, turning her face aslant from the light, she snugged the shotgun against her shoulder. Mack raised the SIG.
The voice came again, distant, disembodied. “‘And then it was I could have wished to go some other way. But lightly in the abyss, which swallows up Judas with Lucifer, he put us down.’”
Caitlin held steady, shotgun level, her eyes adjusting to the light, seeing the shadows of the tracks themselves. Nothing else. No movement, no shadows shifting down the tunnel. She hardened her stance, listening. Mack shifted beside her.
“By your own actions you’ve brought yourselves here,” the voice said.
She felt a sense of dislocation. The voice was harsh, was his. The echoes couldn’t disguise it, couldn’t keep it from infiltrating the air from the tunnel, behind the light.
Mack’s hand was shaking, the SIG heavy, his senses seemingly overwhelmed. He focused hard on the source of the light and sound. Briefly, Caitlin thought—he’s focusing too hard on it. Because that was all he could see. His peripheral vision was bad.
Then she saw, beyond Sean, a flashing red light. She heard a new beeping tone.
She stopped breathing. It was a timer.
She inched forward, vision pulsing. The flashing numbers matched those on her watch.
The voice said, “‘’Tis no enterprise to take in jest, to sketch the bottom of all the universe.’”
Something was wrong. The timbre of the Prophet’s voice. Its flatness, a thickness, radio static. The voice from the deep distance of the tunnel wasn’t . . . right. Wasn’t . . .
He’s not there. What they were hearing—the Prophet’s voice, the moans and cries, all of it, wasn’t there. It was a recording.
She barely had time to turn her head before the pneumatic whir and spit of a shot came through the air.
Mack lurched.
Caitlin whirled to fire, Remington leveled, gaze swinging from the spotlight brightness to corners and blackness where she could see nothing.
Another shot came, and another, hitting Mack in the legs. He buckled.
The killer was behind them, nail gun in hand, firing. Titus Rhone, the Prophet, shooting from the dark like a wraith.
Mack went down, hit hard, twisting his hand toward his arched back, trying to reach the four-inch nails that had been fired deep into him. Caitlin continued turning, flipping on the Maglite again, barrel coming around.
Mack shouted. “Cat—he’s . . .”
The blow hit her from the shadows.
Hard, heavy, fast. A baseball bat or two-by-four. Flat to the side of her head. Stars flew across her vision. She felt the air tilt, felt a shove and tackle.
The smell of lye soap.
She hit the platform. Searing pain in her head, the dark and white gone to fractals, spinning, thick tongue, iron taste of blood in her mouth. Hot trickle running down the side of her head, into her ear. Dusty smell, face hitting the concrete, dirt on her lips.
Near her father, the nail gun spit again, twice, three times. Mack roared in pain.
A dark form swept over her, shadow or sail, unfurling. A hand grabbed her wrist, hot flesh, calloused. Yanked her right arm and dragged her across the platform.
Right arm, right arm. Something wrong.
Empty hand. Dammit—shotgun.
She flailed her left hand, found the strap of the Remington, tried to grab it. A foot kicked the gun away. She tried to roll, to grab the shadow’s leg. Her vision was broken, screaming white-black, pulsing with shadows and lights like strobes. Her face fell again to the concrete, dragging. A noise in her ears, ringing, like a fire alarm, deep in her head, and she couldn’t seem to lift her free arm. Too heavy, numb, fingers wouldn’t close. She was in a dream, unable to run, and her head had burst into a shrieking ball of pain.
Her right arm was being pulled hard against her shoulder socket. She felt the stars recede, the hum ebb and swell and ebb. Double vision, but a form above her, breathing, human. She tried to bunch herself to resist the force with which he was dragging her.
He shoved her against the wall. A corner, concrete, the smell of wood. The heavy cabinet. Hand grasped firmly, raised over her head.
The pneumatic blast of the nail gun. He fired it through her palm. Once, twice, three times, pinning her there.
She screamed and tried to fight free. For a millisecond, the nerve signals from her hand had yet to reach her brain. She could tell that the nails had driven hard, all the way through her hand, nail heads countersunk into her flesh.
Then the signals hit. The pain hammered her, sharp, deep, a broken ache.
It woke her up. She was screaming and knew it was her hand, couldn’t move it, felt her arm, raised her head, felt her legs splayed in front of her. Like Shanklin in the hall.
She opened her eyes, saw white light, black walls, shadows. The stars tried to fight her, but she shook her head. Raised her left hand. Numb, heavy, but moving. She bent her legs, tried to bunch them under her, to balance herself. The black sail fled to the periphery of her vision. Lye soap again, harsh, too present, a scrubby smell, trying to erase skin and dirt and existence beneath it.
She raised her head against the spiking pain and light. A man passed in front of her. Tall, wiry, backlit to silhouette. Prophet. Messenger. Mercury.
No. Call him by his name. Titus Rhone.
Long gun on the concrete. At her feet. Black barrel, walnut stock. Rhone kicked the shotgun away from her. It spun, scraping. Just a couple of feet away, but out of her reach.
Near the edge of the platform, facedown, crawling, was her father. Rhone turned toward him. Lanky, long arms, scarecrow smile, eyes black holes, strings of hair slipping in front of his face. He raised the nail gun again.
Dad, look out.
Aloud, say it aloud.
“Dad.”
She couldn’t tell if he heard her. Couldn’t tell if her words carried or were even actually words. But Mack got to one knee. In the white-black light, stripped of color, she could see that he was bleeding heavily. Rhone was a photo negative, slim and strong, stalking across the platform toward him, nail gun gleaming in his hand.
Mack gathered himself. Like a sprinter from the starting blocks, he bellowed and launched himself at Rhone.
The nail gun spit. Bright streaks. But Mack was in midflight, momentum and twenty-five years of rage propelling him, and hit Rhone with his shoulder, solid, in the diaphragm. The collision sounded like bone and meat.
Caught above his center of gravity, Rhone tumbled backward. Mack tackled him. They hit the platform, and the back of Rhone’s head smacked the concrete. The nail gun clattered off the platform to the tracks.
They rolled toward the edge of the platform. Fighting ugly. Punching, grabbing, elbows, fingers scrabbling for each other’s eyes. Knees to the stomach. Rhone on his back, feet kicking, seeking purchase, Mack on top of him, trying to get a hand around Rhone’s throat. W
hites of his eyes. Wild. On the edge of death.
Caitlin heard the hum in her head recede. The stars faded. For a moment, she felt there.
The Remington.
The shotgun had spun away from her feet. To her left. Toward her free hand.
She forced her muscles to work. The effort to send her thoughts down her arm to her hand seemed superhuman, like pushing her way through putty.
The shotgun was three feet away. With her free hand Caitlin clawed for it.
Couldn’t reach it.
Beyond the gun, the red light flashed. The timer beeped. 4:19. 4:18. 4:17.
She closed one eye, squinted, and saw the mechanism—timer, dry-cell batteries, wires attached to a red-and-yellow cord that ran off the edge of the platform and up the track. It was a blasting circuit.
She inhaled, breathed hard, in-out-in-out, huffing. She slid herself along the concrete, ass scratching, feet scrabbling, trying to get closer to the Remington. Reached again. Six inches short. Stretched. Same. She couldn’t possibly grab the gun.
No.
She knew: The Prophet had killed Sean, he was going to kill Mack, and then he would kill her. And when she was gone, he would complete his master plan.
She knew it now. He’d told her—he’d sent video footage of a crowded BART train, had said, The Ninth Circle contains room enough for all. He thought the entire world had betrayed him. He wanted to send that world to the depths for punishment.
3:44. 3:43. The Prophet planned to detonate the stolen explosives in an abandoned BART tunnel. He was going to blow open a pit to swallow the people of the city above.
She had to get the shotgun.
She turned her head to look at the mess that was nailed to the cabinet. Her vision spun up a fresh handful of stars. Across the platform came grunts, punches, cries. Mack could hold out only so long. The nails had buried themselves deep.
Focus. She stilled her head, tried to get her double vision to coalesce. Couldn’t. Looked at her right hand. Throbbing, stabbing, blood chugging from around the nail heads, already grotesquely swollen, fingers white, claws. She had to get loose.
