by Meg Gardiner
She gritted her teeth and bunched her biceps and pulled, trying to wrench her hand free from the nails. The pain deepened and leaped, teeth and claws, shooting up her arm and deep into her brain. The stars shattered across her field of vision and turned yellow and dusty red and her head rolled back, hitting the wall.
Then the throbbing hum returned, and the sound of her father shouting.
She couldn’t black out from the pain. She had to take it. Even if she ripped her hand in half, pulling it free. She yelled to clear her head. Hunched, trying to get the best leverage. Counted in her head. One, two . . .
And she heard a whisper, barely there.
Fear rippled across her. The black sail, was it returning, a shadow that could separate itself from the Prophet and smother her? She turned toward the source of the sound.
Steel scraped across concrete. She gasped.
Sean was looking at her.
He lay on his back, arm outstretched toward her. He tried to lift his hand, pursed his lips. His hand fell back. She knew what he meant. Shh.
With anguished effort, Sean rolled over. He tried to crawl, and couldn’t. He was tangled in—no, tied up with cabling. His free hand lay near the Remington’s stock. 3:12. 3:11.
Across the platform, Rhone punched Mack in the face, broke free, and scrambled for the shadows.
Mack can get the shotgun. Mack can get the gun.
Still clawing for it, Caitlin shouted, “Dad.”
Mack groaned, stood, and staggered up the platform in her direction. Behind him in the tortured light Rhone appeared. He was holding the SIG.
“Enough,” Rhone barked. “Don’t move.”
He racked the slide on the pistol. A cartridge ejected and the sound did the work. The magazine was full. Mack froze.
Rhone took a step closer, limping. He held the SIG straight out from his shoulder, aimed at Mack’s back. “Turn around.”
Caitlin held still, head throbbing, her vision swerving in and out of double. She heard a bare scraping sound to her left. Sean had inched the Remington closer. She tried to see him without turning her head. He was motionless. She didn’t think Rhone could see him.
2:50. 2:49. She touched her fingertips to the end of the barrel.
Mack stood fifteen feet from her, silhouetted. The Prophet stood another fifteen feet behind him, near the edge of the platform. They were all lined up, she thought.
She tried to grip the barrel of the Remington. Sean’s fingers were near the light—if he moved any more, the Prophet would see him. But he was no longer moving. His hand looked lifeless.
Her heart seemed to slide off axis, pain and fear an electric force, building, building. The Remington had a twenty-inch barrel, blued steel, with a sight on the end. But it weighed . . . her mind swam. More than seven pounds. Her fingertips couldn’t pull that, not at this angle. She tried to stretch, tried to dislocate her shoulder to reach. Took a breath and told herself, Don’t scream, and leaned toward it, hanging on her crucified hand. The world went a shrieking yellow.
The Prophet’s voice came through the pain. Talking to her father. He sounded rushed. Not the calm of his phone messages, not the needling, teasing sound of the radio call. It was a naked beatdown.
“You think you can get away,” he said. “You can’t. Even if you ran for the exit, I’d shoot you down. And a second after that, I’d shoot your daughter.”
Mack was straining to hold himself together; Caitlin could see it. He was vibrating. She tried to signal him. Mouthed, Don’t move.
“Bang bang. Right in the forehead.” Rhone’s voice took on relish. “What an utter failure your life has been. And now you’ve destroyed the one thing that could have outlived the catastrophe that you’ve become. Boom. Lights out.”
Mack shut his eyes.
“And everyone will know,” Rhone said. “I control the airwaves, the Internet, the papers, the way people piss themselves and see me in their sleep. I bring the message. I am Mercury.”
He shifted his weight forward. “The public will know that Mack and Caitlin Hendrix brought death on the sheriff’s office, brought death on their comrades, brought death on the city, and finally, on themselves. You’ll be the detritus of the case. Eternal losers.”
Caitlin struggled to grip the barrel of the gun. She didn’t have it.
“Or,” the Prophet said.
Caitlin looked up. She could see only a shadow behind her father, voice from the white hole of light. And, peripherally, the flashing red timer. 1:55. 1:54.
“Or?” Mack opened his eyes again.
He faced her, fighting to hold absolutely still. But he was swaying. Blood dripped heavily from his jeans and spattered on the concrete. Worse, it ran from beneath his ballistic vest. Rhone had managed to shoot him with the nail gun where the vest gapped on his side. He was struggling to breathe. The nails may have been driven into his lungs.
His shadow fell across her left hand, and across the Remington. She searched within herself for the fraction of an inch that would let her get a secure grip on the end of the barrel. It wasn’t working.
“If . . . ,” the Prophet said, drawing out the syllable.
Good Christ, the bastard loved to talk. He talked to his victims. Talked to their families. He used words like a Ka-Bar knife. Every syllable from his lips repulsed her. Keep talking, asshole.
1:32. 1:31. Get the Remington. Neutralize Rhone. Pull the firing wire from the circuit. Sean . . . She wanted to scream to him, but instead kept reaching.
“Spit it out,” Mack said.
“Caitlin.”
The word hissed over her. His voice was velvet, rust, probing.
Caitlin tried to pull the shotgun. Her fingers slipped. Mack’s expression swam from sharp to confused to desperate. She mouthed, Dad.
“I deliver justice. But I understand mercy,” Rhone said. “So tell me, Caitlin. Who deserves clemency? Your loved ones, or the city above?”
She couldn’t see his face but heard the vicious joy in his voice. Mack was rigid, trying to stop swaying. He kept his eyes on her. 1:17. 1:16.
Rhone said, “The last time, you chose your family over your friend. Who matters now? The men who brought you to these depths, or the community you swore an oath to protect?” He paused. “Tell me true, and you can leave here alive.”
Mack held still.
Caitlin shook her head, tightly. “No.”
Rhone’s voice rose. “Tell me, Caitlin. Which? You think climbing out of the Ninth Circle is easy? That it’s painless? Come on. Tell me.”
She stretched, in agony. “No.”
“Coward.”
He took a step back and picked up something from the platform. It was a spool of copper wire, like those on the cinder-block bookshelf. The wire trailed from the reel to the shadows where Sean lay. That was what he was tied up with.
Rhone held it up. “Stop dithering and tell me. Or once I shoot Mack, I toss this on the third rail.”
Caitlin’s heart hammered. :58. :57.
Mack looked at her. “He’s a fool to think this is a hard choice. Don’t hesitate.”
Caitlin clawed two fingertips around the gun sight at the tip of the Remington’s barrel. Mack saw her struggling. She thought, Not enough time.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Yes,” Rhone said. “Yes. Mack, turn around.”
“No.”
Mack locked eyes with Caitlin. He swayed, almost tottering, but kept his balance, standing between her and Rhone. His gaze was piercing. It seemed to hold everything. His life, hers, Deralynn’s, all the dead and those marked for death.
“Macklin Hendrix. I said, turn around.” The SIG wavered in Rhone’s hand. He locked his elbow and centered his aim.
A whisper came from Caitlin’s left. “You’re done. Dead.”
Rhone s
wiveled toward Sean. Mack held Caitlin’s gaze a moment longer. Resolve filled his eyes.
He spun and charged at Rhone. Roaring, leaping.
Rhone’s eyes widened and his arm swung around. The shot was deafening. Mack doubled over, keeling as he ran. Rhone fired again, and again. Mack dropped at his feet.
On the platform before Caitlin, Rhone stood over her father, silhouetted by white light. She screamed. Raising the shotgun with her left hand, she fired.
The blast hit Rhone in the right shoulder. He corkscrewed, screaming like a banshee, right arm flailing. Then he caught himself.
He straightened, savagery in his eyes. His right arm hung bloody and useless. The SIG was gone. But he had a direct run at her. He dropped the copper spool and staggered forward, left hand a claw, to grab the shotgun. She frantically fought to brace the stock of the Remington against her leg so she could pump the action and load a new shell into the chamber. The gun slipped. She grabbed it again. Rammed it against the concrete.
:07. :06. One shot—that’s all she’d get.
She swung the shotgun toward the timer and fired. The gun roared. Chunks of concrete exploded from the wall.
Rhone shouted, “Wolfen bitch.”
The timer continued ticking. :04. :03.
She’d missed. :02. :01. She let out a cry.
:00.
She braced for the explosion, the shock wave, for flames and shrapnel.
Nothing happened.
Rhone stared at the timer in disbelief. :00. He shrieked, “No.”
He stepped toward it, face wild with confusion. Then he stopped himself and spun toward her. His eyes went to the shotgun and he lurched at her, hand grasping.
But, as if hitting a wall, he stopped. His gaze lengthened into the darkness beyond her, and a revelation seemed to overtake him. Some truth, hideous and inevitable. His expression veered between rage and perverse satisfaction. His voice dropped to a rasp.
“So advance the banners of the king of hell.” He glanced at her, backed across the platform, and grabbed the spool of copper wire.
“No!”
Caitlin slammed the butt of the shotgun against the concrete, hand on the action. She jacked the shell into the chamber. Rhone swung his arm, winding up to throw the spool across the third rail.
Caitlin raised the shotgun, stars filling her field of view, and squeezed the trigger.
The shot blew Rhone back off the platform. He hit the tracks. Sparks flew. There was a snap and buzz, then darkness.
57
The echo of the shotgun blast rolled down the tunnel. The dark swallowed all. Caitlin tried to hold the Remington up, aimed where she’d last seen Rhone. Her arm shook wildly. She waited for him to appear, to crawl over the lip of the platform, scrabbling, ravenous, returning for her. A smell crept to her nose, like cloth scorched under an iron. And worse. Burned flesh. Her arm wavered.
“Dad,” she cried. No response. “Sean.”
Somewhere in the dark, beyond her vision, beneath the searing hum in her head, came sliding, skittering sounds. Rats running. Bats unwrapping their wings. Something treacherous, scuttling away, retreating from the barrel of her gun, into the deeper dark. Something that wasn’t really there, or wasn’t anymore.
“Dad!”
She turned again toward Sean.
They were both out of reach. She pulled the shotgun onto her lap and put her finger on the trigger again. The Maglite lit shadows and corners.
Mack lay on his side near the edge of the platform. His hand was stretched in her direction. He moved his fingers.
“Dad. Hang on.”
He was wheezing. His shirt was sopping with blood, dark, low on his right side. Massive internal bleeding; that’s all she could think.
He couldn’t get to her. She had to get to him.
“Hold on. I’m coming.”
She wriggled her phone from her left pocket. Still no bars. Rhone might be gone, but his frequency jammer seemed to still be active. Either that, or she was too far underground to get a signal. She hesitated before trying her police radio, but thought: If a massive electrical surge didn’t detonate the explosives, nothing would. She pressed TRANSMIT. Dead air.
“Sean,” she called.
No answer.
The only way to get help was to get herself loose. She tried to reach the knife in her right back pocket, but, pinned, couldn’t stretch her left arm far enough to get it. She swept the beam of the flashlight in a jerking loop around her, looking for anything to use as a tool.
Near Sean, on the Prophet’s bookshelf, were a screwdriver, a chisel, and a crowbar. They were too far away.
She looked at the barrel of the shotgun. Looked long and hard. Tried again to get the knife. No way. She leaned her head back against the wall. Turned the barrel, estimating.
She raised the gun and tried to see how to position it.
“No.”
Sean dragged himself to her side. He was as pale as ice. Lips nearly blue, eyes too wide, even in the dark. He lay a hand across her leg.
“Give me,” he said.
“The gun?”
He nodded.
“Did Rhone hit you with the SIG?” she said.
“Doesn’t matter.”
His hand was cold. She didn’t think he had much time left. He tried to hoist himself up and managed to kneel against the cabinet. He couldn’t possibly get across the platform to help Mack, much less get out of the tunnel to summon help. He looked at the barrel of the gun, as Caitlin had.
“What’s the plan? Blow your hand off?” he said.
She swallowed.
He braced himself. “Scream all you want. This is going to hurt like a mother.”
He held up the screwdriver from the bookshelf.
He roughly jammed the screwdriver under her hand, against the wood where the nails were lodged. He pried, using his shoulder, and she screamed, and kept screaming. Everything was pain, bright red, heat and fear and Christ make it stop—
With a final lunge against the handle of the screwdriver, he pried her loose. Her hand fell to the concrete, the nails sticking out of it.
“Thank you. Jesus.” She shakily looked at it, bleeding, throbbing, three nails protruding, long and sharp, crazy claws. She reached toward it, thinking to try to push them out, and couldn’t manage. Sean put a hand on her wrist and shook his head.
“They’ll bleed.”
She nodded and tried to stand. Couldn’t. Got to her knees and balanced on her left hand. She tried to give him the Remington. He nodded and sank back against the wall.
She crawled across the platform, cradling her right hand to her chest. Heard Sean topple over, the gun clatter to the ground. She kept going. The beam of the Maglite cut across the platform, throwing her shadow ahead. She reached Mack. Under the flashlight, she saw that he was desperately injured.
She collapsed at his side. “Dad.”
She reached out tentatively. Touched his shoulder. His head lay canted against the concrete. He was wheezing. When he breathed in, she heard a whistle.
She fought the ballistic vest off of him and yanked his shirt open, sending buttons flying. He had a gunshot wound at his waistline. And he’d been shot with nails both at his waist and high on his side, ribs obviously broken. With every heartbeat, blood pulsed from his wounds.
She put her hand against his side. Tried to put pressure on the gunshot wound. He moaned.
“We’re going to get you help. Hold on.”
She looked back at Sean. He was slumped over, the shotgun loose in his hands.
And the scene wasn’t secure. She didn’t know whether Rhone was down for good. She scanned the platform. No sign of the SIG. She crawled her three-point crawl back to Sean’s side, grabbed the Remington, and staggered to her feet. Racked the action one-handed, lurched to the
edge of the platform, and aimed it with a shaking arm at the tracks.
Rhone lay across them, arms out, fingers drawn into claws, head thrown back as if howling. His skin was bright red.
He looked firmly dead. Gone, ain’t coming back. Had to be. And she didn’t believe it. She wrenched herself down off the platform to the tracks. Thought the power was shot but found a piece of rebar and dropped it so it simultaneously touched the main track and the third rail. Nothing happened.
She approached Rhone warily. The smell was horrific. She gagged, and thought: This is the truth of him. A stench and heat that finally killed him. She flashed the light on his face. His lips had cracked. His pupils were wide, and when she hit them with the Maglite they continued staring without reaction.
The electricity had shot through him and created starburst cataracts in his eyes.
She held the barrel of the Remington over his chest. The SIG lay on the tracks near him. She kicked it behind her. The spool of copper wire had rolled against the base of the platform. She tossed it back up. Then she knelt at Rhone’s side and dug through his pockets and found the device, the size of a bar of soap, that was stuffed in his shirt pocket. The radio frequency jammer.
She flicked a switch to turn it off. Staggered back from Rhone’s empty shell. Maybe the rest of him had already gone somewhere else. Somewhere he couldn’t come back from.
She collected the SIG, awkwardly holstered it, then kept the shotgun trained on him while she climbed back onto the platform.
Her shoulder-mounted radio came alive with static and chatter. She pressed the TRANSMIT button.
“Officers down. Repeat, officers down.”
She gave the location, and heard confirmation.
“I scratched arrows on the wall with a rock,” she said. “Follow them, you’ll find us.”
“We’re coming,” the dispatcher said. “Hold on, Detective.”
She crawled back toward her dad. She needed to keep pressure on his wounds until the medics arrived.
Mack looked up and grabbed her shirt. His lips parted but no words emerged.
She pressed a hand to the bleeding wound in his abdomen. “I’m here.”
