by John Meaney
“Not these particular catacombs.”
“Shit.”
That sounded un-divalike.
The city's catacombs weren't all joined up, but any given network was likely to stretch for miles. Occasionally they linked through to the hypoway or sewage system.
In the distance, a thump sounded.
“Can you go faster?”
“Oh, Hades . . .”
“Can you?”
“Yes.”
Here, some sarcophagi were so ancient they seemed mere geological bumps in stone. Others looked freshly carved, just decades old. Donal and the diva ran past them.
Do you feel the bones?
Donal shuddered. “Ugh.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Run.”
They moved faster.
Do you kiss her bones?
Terrible feelings tugged at Donal as they passed into a wider cavern. Odd, fragmented images assaulted him. There was hunger, as if every cell in his body needed to absorb . . . something.
Or do you taste the song?
But then they were through the worst of it, leaving the sarcophagi behind. A closed ceramic door in front of them bore a red mu-sigma-tau logo on an alpha-shaped shield. The Municipal Subterranean Transport Authority.
Once again the emergency lock responded as Donal rammed his police badge into the slot. He leaned back, tugging at the door until it groaned and began to shift.
“You first.”
“It's dark.”
“I know. Go.”
The diva stepped inside and Donal followed, hauling the door shut. There was a soft pressure wave against his face as the door clicked. They were into the subway system, and it was total blackness.
“Grab my hand. Okay, stretch out with the other hand, with your fingertips.”
“All right.”
“Feel anything?”
“No.”
“With me, then.”
Donal led the way. There were no obstacles until his reaching hand felt for the tunnel wall and found it.
For a long time—or maybe just ten minutes—they traveled like this, until his fingertips touched a sheet of heavy, flexible material that might have been rubber. It formed a curtain to hold out dust.
Donal found a vertical slit in the sheet and pulled it open. His eyes blinked, stinging at the sensation of distant light.
“Safe . . .” murmured the diva.
“Perhaps.” Donal helped her through. “Let's try to stay out of sight. There are MSTA workers over there.”
“The ensorcellment—”
“Can reach down here.” Donal's tone was rough.
“What can we do, then? Will it wear off?”
“Not while you're alive.” Donal took hold of her shoulders. “Trust me, all right? I'm going to find somewhere isolated with a telephone. One call, and they'll be flying in federal spellbinders from Fortinium. The feds can break any enchantment there is.”
“All right.”
“They can have a chopper airborne in minutes. What I need is—”
“A phone. That way?”
“That way.”
There was a flat cart on a dark section of the subway track. Donal thought the cart might be called a bogey, although in the orphanage a bogey was something you picked from your nose, synonymous with booger.
At any rate, the cart looked as though it drew power from the rail. It was obviously for maintenance, but there were workers farther along, in the lighted area, and Donal did not want to steal the thing unless it was necessary.
Flying headlong through darkness, possibly straight into an oncoming train, was not the kind of safety he'd promised the diva.
Her hand grasped his upper arm and squeezed: a primate response, a youngster clinging to an adult for protection.
Just then a hammering series of thumps echoed down the corridor, and a thunderous compressor started up. Several pneumatic drills, powered by the compressor, added their own noisy contribution to the din.
Donal and the diva continued to advance along the dusty tunnel, keeping away from the live rail. Finally they reached a length of platform on the right: an unused station. Beyond stood portable floodlights and a big compressor, with the workmen farther inside the tunnel.
Do you hear the bones?
In the cacophony, some strange combinations of tones must have—No. Donal pushed that from his mind. He had work to do.
He climbed onto the deserted platform and pulled the diva up after him. They moved into a short corridor, looking for a maintenance engineer's office, and that was when Donal bumped straight into a barrel-chested mustachioed man.
Hades . . .
Donal slammed the palms of both hands against the man's body, knocking him against the hard ceramic-tiled wall, then ripped an uppercut elbow, harder than a punch, into the man's sternum. The big man fell, his mouth working like a landed fish.
He lay there, groaning.
Donal considered tying the man up, but there was nothing obvious in sight for the task, and they had to move fast. He stepped over the man and pulled open a plain door. An office. An empty phone socket was on the wall, round and black like a mocking eye.
“Why. . .”
This was the diva.
“What is it?”
“. . . don't you kill him?” Hand shaking, she pointed at the fallen man.
If the bastard wakes up, we're done for.
Donal had no proof, but he had an idea that if the ensorcellment took hold of this man, it increased the chances that the maintenance team farther down the tunnel would change, slip into trance, and that would be the end.
“Is he the enemy?”
“I . . . I don't know.”
A blue-and-white schematic was pinned to the wall, and a true-scale map lay flat on a worktable.
She didn't even remember my name.
Irrelevant. He had to work out where they were and where they could go.
Not until I told her again.
This seemed to be an unused branch off the 23rd Street Line.
She's probably forgotten already.
Donal traced the intersections. Police HQ was less than two miles away, but there was no tunnel in the right direction. It would take three changes—no, four—to reach the place.
Every crowded train, every packed platform en route, would contain a multitude capable of transforming into murderous parazombies.
“Shit shit shit.”
“What's wrong, D-Donald?”
He hated being called Donald.
“Nothing.” He could see it now. “We've got a route out of here.”
But the man on the floor was looking up at them.
Thanatos.
Donal kicked the man in the temple.
“Y-You said he wasn't the enemy.”
“Yeah. But”—Donal stared down at the unconscious man: overweight, his breathing unsteady—“they might be able to see through his eyes.”
Donal thought back. He had said nothing about where they might run. The small logo on the map, the skull-and-Ouroboros, did not particularly stand out. If the enemy had linked in to the man's perceptions, they would not know . . . unless they could read the man's own knowledge of where he was.
“We're moving now.”
* * *
Ten minutes later they were on the bogey, using its headlights now that they'd rounded a bend in the tunnel. They sped south, Donal keeping the throttle handle pushed all the way.
At some point they hurtled through another abandoned station where men were working. Several heads looked up, but then they were through.
The diva placed her cheek against his shoulder.
Ha.
Earlier, she'd paid no attention to the man who'd risk everything to protect her, but now . . .
Do you taste the song?
. . . he had to pay attention, that was all, and he counted unused stations as they passed through them. These were truly abandoned, save for a twenty-foot white snake curled up on on
e of the platforms.
Then Donal cut back the power, letting the bogey decelerate by friction. A faint patch of pale gray up ahead was growing brighter.
They coasted to a halt.
Here stood a clean platform, its indirect lighting growing stronger as Donal and the diva climbed from the bogey. Was this in use? There were no exits up to ground level—not according to the map he'd seen—but perhaps freight slugs used these places.
“Where are we?”
Donal pointed. Where the station name should have been, an Ouroboros worm encircled a skull, headbandlike, swallowing its own tail.
“Energy Authority,” he said. “Downtown Complex.”
“Is it safe?”
“I hope so.” At the platform's end, Donal saw a man-sized door bearing a smaller version of the logo. “I sure as Hades hope so.”
They passed along a horizontal shaft and came out at the edge of the vast cavernous complex. Rows of huge reactors stretched back, filling the immense dark space.
A million fingers seemed to slide across Donal's skin, and the diva moaned.
“There's shielding here,” Donal whispered. “Look. See up there?”
He pointed to a small shape set high on the left-hand wall: the director's office. His fingertip traced the path of the rising black iron staircase that led upward.
“All right.” The diva clasped his upper arm, released it.
They stepped into an aisle and commenced walking. It was more like a roadway, and they kept to the left, walking close to each reactor base, as they moved from one pile to another. No one was—
Damn.
A man in a bulky protective suit was working on a reactor casing, maybe twenty yards down the cross aisle to the right. But he didn't look up, and then Donal and the diva were past.
“He didn't notice us,” the diva whispered.
Donal lowered his voice to a murmur, which was less likely to carry. “His protective gear. It might have blocked the spell.”
It had been part of what he'd counted on, taking her to this place.
They walked on, passing seven more reactor piles, and the staircase up to the director's office was within sprinting distance when everything went to Hades. Four men in gray coveralls stepped directly into their path.
“Um . . . hi. I'm Lieutenant Riordan, here to see . . .”
But their eyes were blank. Donal glanced at the diva. Her pale, beautiful face was bone-white now.
Had she noticed that the men didn't shudder when they saw her? Almost as if they were already en—
“Move it.”Donal whipped a circular kick into the first man's thigh, paralyzing the leg and dropping the man. He punched the second man twice, then grabbed hold of the diva and ran, pulling her through the foursome, raking another man's eyes, and then they were clear.
“Fast . . .”
They began to accelerate, but then a larger group—seven, eight men—was blocking their way. Donal stopped, looked back—reinforcements there as well—and dragged the diva sideways, quickly, jerking her arm in its socket, pulling her into a cross aisle—
No.
—and stopped, because the way down here was blocked too.
“I'm sorry.”
Every route was a no-go.
Donal's shirt was soaked with sweat. He'd run hard, but the diva . . . Her feet were bloody, her dress ripped, and yet her face and body were the most sublime creation of the universe. She was so beautiful.
“Save me, D-D—Please. Save me.”
Donal swallowed and pulled out his Magnus. He raised it up, lowered it, and squeezed off a shot. The diva yelped at the loud bang.
One of the men fell.
He was innocent . . .
But the other ensorcelled men did not hesitate. They continued to walk toward Donal, closing in from both ends of the aisle.
Donal glanced upward. It might be possible for him to scale the side of the reactor . . . but with the diva? No chance.
Thanatos.
Donal fired into the advancing group, swiveled fast, and shot down two more men from the other contingent.
Then both groups swelled with reinforcements, more men wearing Energy Authority coveralls, bearing heavy shotguns. Now they had no chance.
Donal lowered his Magnus.
“Save . . .”Do you taste the song?
“. . . me.”
There were six rounds left in the magazine before he needed to reload. There were more than twenty men advancing on him; half were armed with shotguns that could blast him into redberry spray. It was over.
The men advanced closer.
“Please . . .”
Donal was tempted to ask the diva if she remembered his name. Such a petty thought to have before dying, before his personal universe blanked out, like wiping down a blackboard back in the orphanage school.
He remembered Sister Mary-Anne Styx drilling him in math and bandaging him after he took down the three bigger boys who—
The men shuffled to a halt.
What's happening?
One group parted slightly, allowing another figure to advance. The man was narrow-bodied, with a gray goatee, and Donal had a bad feeling he should have expected this all along. It was Malfax Cortindo, director of this place.
There was nothing blank about Cortindo's dark and sparkling eyes. Nothing blank at all.
“Ah, Lieutenant. How nice to—Careful.”
As Donal's Magnus came up, all the ensorcelled men who bore shotguns brought them to bear on the diva. With the two groups facing each other, the men were likely to blow away one another's legs at best, but ensorcelled men care nothing for their own safety.
They were kamikaze pawns.
Donal lowered his gun, then let go. It clattered on the flagstones.
“Did I come here of my own free will?” He hadn't intended to say this out loud.
“Aren't our own motivations”—Malfax Cortindo's voice was courtly, devoid of tension—“an eternal mystery to us all?”
“Screw you.”
“Oh, please.” The derringer that Malfax Cortindo pulled from his silk-vest pocket was a gleaming antique. The ends of its twin abbreviated barrels were dark, malevolent. “A sense of style, if you would.”
Cortindo swung the derringer around to face the diva.
“Time to die, my loveliness.”
Do you feel the song?
“No.”
That was the moment.
Do you touch the bones?
The ensorcelled men held their shotguns steady, but that was not the reason. In the name of Death, fear could never be the reason.
But that was the moment.
“S-Save . . .”
“He can't.”
The moment when Donal could have moved.
Do you taste the . . .
The derringer banged, flashed strontium-red.
Crimson was the spray of drops from that pure ivory neck as the diva spun, toppling to the stone floor as arterial blood arced forth.
And died.
. . . bones?
Too late.
The moment when—
A second shot, red flame, flat bang, a third eye appearing in the diva's forehead . . .
—when Donal could have saved her, but it was too late, would always be too late, a lifetime and a universe beyond the second when he could have acted and made a difference.
“No!”
. . . and dark blood pooled, spreading from her shattered skull.
Then Donal did move.
He flowed into motion, and Malfax Cortindo circled, fast with the pa-kua moves, but he wasn't the only one to have studied the internal arts. Donal followed with a palm change of his own, flipping the derringer aside, then stabbed fingertips into Cortindo's eyes, whipped an elbow into the bastard's throat and a knee below the ribs, targeting the spleen and finding it.
Wrapping one arm around Cortindo's neck, Donal spun, keeping their bodies close like lovers, because that's how fulcrums work. Donal wh
ipped him toward the flagstones, and Cortindo was down.
The ensorcelled men were frozen.
Do you feel the . . .
Down but not dead. Cortindo was a threat. Donal raised his knee.
. . . song?
And stamped down.
Hard.
All around, ensorcelled men dropped and lay sprawled on the hard floor in thaumaturgic coma. Not dead.
Only Malfax Cortindo and the diva were corpses now.
Expected me to save her.
Donal wiped hot fluid from his face. It might have been sweat; it might have been blood.
To save her. Couldn't even remember . . .
It was blood. Some injury he hadn't noticed getting.
Bitch couldn't remember my name.
But she was so beautiful, even now, splayed with eyes open on eternity, pale skin splashed with red, that fine dress soaked with the hot slick fluid of life. While all around, the reactors seemed to glow black, to howl silence.
Do you hear the bones?
Slowly, slowly, Donal retrieved his Magnus and reholstered, all without removing his gaze from the diva, the beautiful diva.
He squatted down beside her perfect form.
So lovely.
Donal slid his hands beneath her body.
Perfection.
Steadied himself.
Do you taste the . . .
And then he pushed himself up to standing, the limp weight of her across his arms. He took one step and then another, and then they were leaving this place for good.
. . . song?
He used the personal elevator that he remembered from before, standing proud with the diva in his arms, one of her arms dangling, as the steel disk rose through the shaft.
Then it shuddered to a halt inside the dome formed of black flanges. The metal folded back on itself. Donal was in the small enclosed courtyard.
In the internal wall, an iron door stood half open, two men collapsed on the ground beside it. Like their comrades below, they were the ex-ensorcelled, so deep into coma that only thaumaturgic intervention could save them.
But that was not Donal's concern.
Perfection.
He stepped over the fallen men, carrying the diva into the larger courtyard, where three finned black cars were parked, each with a raised black skull-and-Ouroboros on the doors. No one was moving.
Half-squatting, Donal tried the door handle of the nearest car. It clicked open.
