When Mac knocked over the covered easel, I reacted without thinking. I grabbed for it, missed and caught the linen shroud instead. The canvas fell face down onto the floor. I picked it up gingerly by the corners, afraid to find that it had been damaged, but it wasn’t even scratched. It was the subject of the painting that took my breath away.
Fifteen years ago, Ssin had painted the very scene in which I stood. There at the back of the room, behind the tables piled high with twisted tubes and dirty pestles was Thomas. His back was turned in the painting, but his hands were a flurry of motion, searching the shelves. Through the open door I could see Mac at the head of the stairs waving towards figures out of sight. And there underneath the three dark windows, was this same painting in miniature sitting on an easel behind a book.
I knew that this is the book that Thomas was searching for. It’s old and worn. The black leather binding was cracked and the silver lettering stamped on the cover had faded into obscurity, but I knew that it’s the one. It had to be. Somehow Thomas’s father saw this day, this moment and immortalized it on canvas. It’s tough to get my head around that concept, but the proof was staring back at me. This painting is the key.
I looked back at the floor and all around, but there’s nothing but the crumpled shroud. Could it be that easy? Was this book hidden underneath that sheet all this time? I set the painting back on the easel and smugly ripped the shroud off the floor. Nothing, there was nothing underneath. Damn! I had thought—
Braaaat, Braaaat, two more short bursts from an M4. It’s close, maybe from the bottom of the stairs. I heard voices too, shouting, cursing, the hurry and rush and then the boom of a grenade and screams of pain. Feet pounded up the stairs.
Everything’s happening at once. My mind seizes a moment and writes it down before jumping to the next. It’s as if everything that’s occurring is happening in a series of still photographs. I see Thomas turning from the last of the shelves, disappointment clearly etched on his face. Snap! In another, smoke pours from the barrel of Mac’s M4. He’s at the top of the stairs providing covering fire. Click! A third picture displays Ramirez and Stevens, Nunez and Bender charging up the stairs, their eyes locked on the top. Bender’s right arm hangs uselessly at his side, but his left clutches a smoky black blade, twin to Thomas’s own. Stevens is half dragging Bender, half sprinting from their pursuit. Flash! In the fourth I’m reaching towards Ramirez, shoving him towards the open studio door.
Boom, boom, boom, they charged past me, I unslung my carbine and Mac and I poured fire down into the stairway below. Click. Click. The magazines emptied and we ran back, slamming the door behind us. Bullets slapped and splat against the heavy wood, but nothing’s getting through. Yet.
Inside the studio chaos reigned, Ramirez and Stevens were shouting, trying to update everyone at once. Nunez tipped a workbench onto its side with a crash of glass and steel. He crouched behind it; rifle aimed at the door. Mac’s changing magazines, throwing the used one to the floor. He gestured angrily for me to do the same. Bender slumped against the shelves while Thomas ripped his shirt into strips for a tourniquet. Bullets rattled like hail against the only door.
“How’d they get here?” Ramirez yelled at Thomas. “I was at the back of the lobby, providing cover while Stevens covered Nunez’s retreat. All of a sudden there’s a fucking fire, a goddamn fire sheeting out by that piano and some asshole with a sword is charging through! He stood there for a second, struck dumb when he sees me. I’d be dead if he was expecting me, instead the fucker dived to the side and I saw others coming through, although those assholes got guns.”
“I caught two with a quick burst and then Stevens was back with Nunez and Bender,” Ramirez continued. He was quieter now as the adrenaline faded. “We didn’t wait around for the rest of the company to show. We ran for the stairs. Stevens threw a grenade. Caught a few of the bastards, but I don’t know how many were left. They were shooting wild, no discipline; could have cut us down before we made the stairs.”
Thomas finished tying the tourniquet around Bender’s arm. “No deathless then, that’s good.”
“No deathless? That’s all you’ve got to say?” Ramirez was pissed now. Lightning flashed behind his eyes. Blood flowed when he got like this. It wasn’t often, but when it came, it struck quick like a summer storm. “Where the fuck, did they come from? Did you hear me? They stepped out of a goddamn fire in your living room!”
“They came in the same way I was planning on getting us out and you to the Pools,” Thomas said quietly.
Whatever else Thomas was going to say was cut off as someone pounded on the door. “Ollie Ollie oxen free, come out, come out wherever you are!” The voice was high-pitched, running the line between manic and flat-out crazy. It was a torturers voice, a psychopathic stalker from a slasher movie. My skin crawled as it broke into a bubbling laugh.
“I know you’re in there, Tommy,” the voice cackled. “You must be. Your Daddy’s dead. Don’t you want to come out and play with your family?” It held onto the last word, dragging it out until it sounded like ‘fam-mil-leeeee’, before slipping into broken-glass giggles.
“Fuck you Eric!” Thomas snapped. “You know you can’t get through that door.”
“Oh, did little Tommy lose his cool?” the voice laughed again. “You always were such an uptight prick, Tommy, even as a kid. Remember how you cried when I used to beat you? You’re going to love what I’ve got planned for you now Tommy-boy. We’re going to have so much fun!”
“I hate that sadistic son of a bitch,” Thomas swore. “His mother should have drowned him at birth.”
“I don’t know what you’ve got planned,” Mac said as the pounding on the door begun again. “But do what you’ve got to do fast. That door won’t hold much longer.”
“It’ll hold for millennia,” Thomas replied. “Anything less than that and the Family would have already come through. Sadly, it doesn’t matter anymore.” He swept his hand around the room, “the book’s not here.”
“What do you mean, it’s not here?” Ramirez shouted. “We’re trapped in a fucking locked room!”
“Out the windows,” Nunez suggested, “it’s only a ten foot drop.” The roar outside the window quelled that idea before it was half-sprung. Ramirez was right. We were trapped inside a locked room with the only exit guarded by a psychopathic lunatic.
“Come out now and I’ll make it quick,” Eric hissed from behind the closed door. “Not for you,” he added, “but I’ll give a clean death to your friends. Otherwise we can fire the house you know . . . let you all roast together. Either way works for me. You’ve got five minutes to make up your minds.”
For the first time since I’ve known him, I saw Thomas afraid. It was only for an instant, but it crossed his face like a lightning bolt before he shut it down. “If we line up here,” he whispered pointing to a space on the floor, “we should be able to concentrate our fire out into the hall. I’ll open the door and you blast everything on the other side. A few of us should make it to the stairs, not sure how much further, but we’ll die on our feet. I’m sorry gentlemen, but that’s the best I can do right now.”
“Wait,” I said as he crossed to the door. I grabbed the painting off the easel and thrust it into Thomas’s hands. “Look at this painting. I think your father left you a clue.”
Thomas looked at the painting and then back over towards the easel. “I don’t get it,” he said. “There was nothing there?”
“No,” I shook my head, “but that’s it isn’t it? That’s the book you’re looking for?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand it. He captured this time for a reason, I don’t think he would have taken the book and left this behind. He knew we were coming . . .
“If I may, Sir?” Bender had slid over to us, his one arm still useless and dripping dark blood. Somehow, he’d sheathed his sword and held his hand out toward the painting. “Might I have a look?”
Thomas held the painting up for him as Bender mo
ved from side to side, peering at it from every angle. “Your father was a master,” he said.
“Yes, I know,” Thomas snapped. “He was the greatest artist since Van Gogh. I’ve heard it a thousand times.”
“You did not let me finish,” Bender chastised. “I was going to say that your father was a master sorcerer, sir. His paintings were complex, but after all the time you’ve spent with them haven’t you noticed what else they are?”
“Hey art-boy, we’re running out of time here,” Ramirez sneered. “In case you haven’t noticed that either.”
Thomas ignored him, turning instead to look at Bender. “What else are they?” he asked.
“They’re windows,” Bender said. “And the thing about windows is that they can be opened.” Without waiting for Thomas, Bender reached out and pressed his hand against the canvas. From where I stood behind Thomas, I watched the canvas bowed and flexed and for a moment I thought Bender’s hand would punch out the other side before he withdrew. “But not, it seems by me. You try.”
Thomas turned the painting around skeptically. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“By oak and iron, what do you have to lose,” Bender sighed. “I can’t be certain, but the resonances feel right. Very little was beyond Salvatore’s skill.”
“Time’s up marshmallows!” Eric cried from the other side of the door. “It’s time to feed the flames.”
“Oh, what the hell,” Thomas muttered. He reached out just as Bender had done, but instead of pressing through the canvas, his hand slid into it. The painting rippled, like the surface of a pond as Thomas reached further and further into the painting. At last his fingers moved over the area where the book was painted and by the surprised expression on his face, I knew he’d found it. A moment later he was pulling his arm out and with a soft popping the book came free.
It was exactly as it had been painted, a black leather book, worn along its edges, the silver gilded title almost completely worn away. “The Ostium Infernum,” Thomas said gazing at the cover. “Father called it his greatest work. I’d hoped that he’d left it, but I wasn’t sure.”
“What is it?” I asked as Thomas opened the book at random and began flipping through the thick pages.
“The Doors of Hell,” Mac whispered and crossed himself. “You’re not planning on calling a demon to fight for us, are you?”
Thomas glanced up, his finger marking a squiggle on a page. “We don’t have time for demons,” he laughed. “I’ll open a door and we’ll use the Infernal Pathways.”
Chapter 31
Shadows Bridge, Thursday 22:00
The Infernal Pathways
For a split-second everything was still and silent, like snowfall on a winter morning. A heartbeat later pandemonium reigned. You’d think that learning we had a viable escape plan would cheer the room, but except for Thomas everyone looked more frightened than before.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Stevens asked.
“Bender, explain it to them,” Thomas asked. “I’ve got to find the proper route. Julian, clear the floor near the windows. We’ll need a bit of room.”
“Each time a denizen of Hell moves into this world it cuts a trail,” Bender explained. “Think of it like a worm eating through an apple, even after the worm emerges the trail lingers. The same is true for the other powers beyond the veil, as they cross between worlds, they leave a path that can be followed, every connection is a two-way street. Over millennia these pathways have grown and merged, branched off and connected to a vast honeycomb that underlies every point on your world. In theory, one could step onto the pathways here and emerge in a specific location in Tokyo, or the Kremlin, or even the Pope’s bedroom.”
“So that’s how that crazy fuck got here so fast,” Ramirez said, “but why didn’t he come out inside this studio or cut us off at the stairs? Why’s he standing outside banging on the door and threatening to burn the house down when he could step across right now?”
“Geometry,” Bender replied. “The laws of this world are not universal and the shortest distance between two points isn’t always a straight line. It might take a week or a month to step across this room using the pathways or you might never find the proper route. There are no signposts where we are going and the Ostium Infernum is the only known map. Salvatore Sinistra spent more time walking the Infernal Pathways than any sorcerer before or since and his book barely scratches the surface of the possible.”
Thomas glanced up from the book, his finger holding his place. “Besides there are guards,” he said.
“Not guards exactly,” Bender explained. “There are watchers and . . . powers, for lack of a better word, that have taken up residence in the spaces between worlds. These creatures don’t honor the compact that Gias Sinistra signed granting his bloodline access. The longer you travel along them the greater the chance that you might encounter one of these beings. Not everyone who enters returns.”
“How many,” Mac asked.
Thomas snapped the book shut. “Approximately a third,” he said. “That was the deal Gias made.”
“Those aren’t great odds . . .”
“They’re considerably better than our current situation,” Thomas replied. “I guarantee you that Eric has no concept of mercy, tender or otherwise. If we stay here, we die.”
“Get on with it then,” Mac grumbled while the rest of the unit exchanged worn magazines for fresh.
Thomas chuckled as he stepped towards the dark windows. “Don’t waste your ammo along the Pathways. Your guns won’t work.”
Ramirez glanced over and caught my eye. “This keeps getting better and better. Remind me to smack you the next time you suggest we visit your friends.”
I don’t know what I expected, a lavish ceremony I suppose, lots of chanting, candles, and entreaties to ghoulish powers. I expected blood, more cutting, pain and swirling miasmas. The ease of transition somehow made it all the more chilling. Beyond the magick and ruthlessness, this was the true power behind the Sinistra family. House Sinister assassins could appear anywhere, at any time, as long as they survived the rolling of the dice.
Thomas held up his hands and ran through a remarkably short series of twisted glyphs before he slid his hands forward and ripped a hole in the world. It was similar to reaching into the painting, one moment his arms were extended and the next it looked as if he’d caught the edges of the air and pulled it apart. A dark crack raced through the empty air in front of him, blue flames licking the jagged edges as Thomas yanked it wide.
Beyond the opening, a dark tunnel ran deep into the night. Orange flames crawled along its walls like veins of ore, casting slivers of light guaranteed to hide more than they exposed. “Out of the frying pan,” I thought as I stepped up behind Thomas.
“Bender, cover the rear,” Thomas shouted as he drew his sword again. “Along the Pathways your weapons are useless. If we encounter something that Bender or I can’t handle, run.”
“Run where?” I asked, but if Thomas answered I couldn’t hear it as the pounding on the door reached a thunderous climax. Eric must have felt Thomas opening the gate and he wasn’t pleased that his quarry was getting away.
The manic giggles quickly changed to screams of incoherent rage. “I’ll hunt you down Tommy-boy, you and all your friends. I’ll carve you into quivering cubes!”
Without looking back, Thomas stepped forward and disappeared into the hole he’d torn in the world. Stevens and Nunez quickly followed. Thomas hadn’t bothered to answer, but Ramirez wasn’t as restrained. Before stepping through the gate, he turned and shouted over his shoulder, “And your little dog too!” He and Mac were laughing as they stepped through.
I didn’t get it. I glanced over to Bender who shrugged his shoulders and gestured towards the rip. It wouldn’t hold open much longer, that much was clear. Even now it was beginning to shrink and the view of the spaces beyond was growing indistinct. I held my breath as I stepped across with Bender at my heels.
It didn’t help. Inside the tunnel the air was rank with the stench of mold and decay floating under burnt sulfur. Thankfully I’d lost my last meal on the boat or I’d have added to the general rankness. Bender bumped into me as he stepped through and sealed the tear behind us.
“Let your eyes adjust for a minute,” he said. “You’ll see well enough in a bit.”
It was true, though it took a little longer than I expected. The crawling veins of fire cast enough light to see, but they didn’t reveal much. The pathway was a tunnel of sorts, a borehole cut through a pulsing cloud of shifting vapors. The figures ahead of me were little more than anonymous shadows fading into obscurity.
“What is this?” I asked, my voice sounding strange in my ears. The highs and lows were overrepresented, the middle tones torn out.
Up ahead Thomas waved his blade. It was the only thing that seemed solid here, glowing with an inner fury that cast crazy shadows across the walls. His voice floated down the tunnel, twisting as it echoed. “Follow me closely,” he said. “Don’t get too far behind and don’t take any turn you don’t see me take. If you get lost, stop where you are and we’ll try and backtrack. And more than anything else don’t talk. Don’t draw attention to yourselves.”
With that warning Thomas set off taking us through a bewildering series of turns. He never stopped or checked his way. Left, right, up, down, we followed the bobbing light of his sword, hoping he knew where he was going. I was lost within moments. North, South, East, West, these are directions relevant on Earth, but they had no bearing in this maze. Left, Right, and forward seemed to be all that mattered.
We passed dozens of branching tunnels. No two were exactly the same. Some looked like natural caverns deep below the earth, sporting dripping stalactites and stalagmites, while others shook and boomed with exploding puffs of flame. Once I caught site of a meadow path, soft dirt and a hint of purple trees swaying in an unseen breeze, but we quickly rushed past.
The Dead Pools Page 22
