Limbus, Inc., Book III

by Jonathan Maberry

  I went through quickly and faded to one side, crouching low in the shadows in case someone decided to take a pot shot at whoever opened the door.

  Nothing.

  There was light at the far end of the hall. It spilled out of an open door. The rest of the hall seemed to be empty and the bloody footprints had mostly faded out. I couldn’t see them anymore, but I could still smell the blood. You’d have to walk fifty miles to lose that scent from a nose like mine. Imagine how much fun it is when someone farts. Unlike actual dogs I am not a connoisseur of ass smells.

  Blood was different. It spoke to something buried very deep inside my soul. It whispered to the wolf beneath my skin. My mom says that we were people who became wolves, but my grandmother disagrees. She says we were wolves who learned how to pretend to be human. None of us know for sure, but most of the time I think Granny was right.

  I crept along the hallway. Yes, crept. I’m a monster. We tend to creep. It’s a thing.

  There were sounds coming from inside the open doorway. I paused to listen. Voices. There was a fresh odor of blood, too, and I could tell that it wasn’t the blood of either the security guard or the cleaning lady. This was a different person. Everyone’s blood has a uniqueness that’s made up of the things they eat and their body chemistry.

  The fish smell, though, was stronger than ever. It made my eyes water. And it also made the hairs on my back stand up. On some deep level below my human consciousness the wolf was reacting to something that scared it.

  Which scared me.

  I listened to the voices inside.

  A man’s voice, young and frightened, yelled, “What the actual fuck?”

  Another man’s voice, older and clearly unafraid, laughed.

  Then a woman’s voice, accented and harsh, said, “Step away from that book.”

  To which the older man replied, “Kill her.”

  And, like an idiot, I rushed into the room.

  -18-

  Hiro Tsukino

  The Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia

  Central Anatolia, Turkey

  One Month Ago

  “They’re coming!” cried Rink. She drew her pistol and began backing quickly away from the tunnel mouth.

  Hiro was just going over the edge of the hole and froze, one foot on the mouth of the vertical shaft and the other dangling over the sheer drop. He had a gun, too, but it was holstered and his hands were busy with his rappelling rope. He turned to where the others stood. Priest, as always, was flanked by Boris and Keppler. His worshippers. Both of them had rifles slung and when Priest nodded they brought the guns up.

  “Wait,” said Hiro, “they’re just guards.”

  “What does that matter?” asked Priest.

  “We don’t have to kill them, for Christ’s sake. We can disarm them or something.”

  Rink looked over her shoulder. She had her pistol out in a shaky two-handed grip and the sounds of men running echoed from beyond the chamber’s rocky opening. They were in the fifth of six sub-chambers that had been cut into the living rock beneath one of the fairy chimneys. The lowest chamber was a shrine sanctified by the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil the Great, who was Bishop of Caesarea, and his younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa. Along with their friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, they had come here in the middle of the fourth century to bury one of the Unlearnable Truths. It had been a sacred and dangerous mission for the three men, and they had undertaken it with the help of a few trusted priests. The bones of those priests were rumored to be down in the last chamber. They had sacrificed themselves to serve as protectors of the evil book for all eternity. That had earned them the rare privilege of a kind of secret sainthood known only to a cabal hidden within the vast bureaucracy of the church.

  Now that book was forty feet below them. The team had followed a series of maddening clues, false leads, dead ends, and obscure references to this remote part of Turkey, and had discovered the network of tunnels that were still protected by Vatican soldiers despite the religious and political unrest here. The Swiss Guardsmen who were coming this way were doing what they believed was a truly sacred duty. They had been told, Hiro knew, that this hidden shrine held the bones of Saint Joseph the Carpenter, the humble Nazarene who had been husband to Mary and stepfather to Jesus.

  And, as far as Priest had determined, the bones of Joseph did, indeed, lie here, brought from Nazareth in secret and with the belief that a man capable of protecting the newborn Christ was up to the task of protecting the world from the Eligoth Ministries. That book was one of several long believed to have been destroyed but whose existence had been confirmed by Priest’s many agents and contacts. The team had already collected two others like it, and when this was done they would begin the hunt for the last two of the Unlearnable Books—De Vermis Mysteriis and the most dreadful of all, The Cloister Manifesto.

  And then it would all be done. The three-year contract that had been expanded to six brutal years. All of the missions to places the rest of the world wanted to forget ever existed. The gradual loss of self—first to horror, then to fear and paranoia, and to the drugs that helped him get through each night and face each day. For Hiro it was no longer the big payday that kept him going. No, it was the knowledge that this was almost over. This job and two others…and done.

  After these two, there were no more books to find.

  Hiro was positive that Priest neither knew nor cared how many bodies they’d left behind, how many lives destroyed. Dozens of the Brotherhood, some of the Closers, and countless guards, museum staff, priests and monks, nuns, imams. And the innocent, too. Bystanders, passersby. People whose karma had put them in the path of Mr. Priest, and who had been swept away. First by Boris and over the last year by Keppler, who had somehow become less of the scientist she had been and was now a thug, a killer who carried a gun and slaughtered anyone who became an inconvenience or impediment to her master. To Priest.

  And now the Swiss Guards here. Men who protected a shrine that even Hiro respected. Joseph the Carpenter. If the Christian stories were true—and Hiro, a lapsed Shinto, was on the fence about it—then Joseph had been a good and simple man who been given a raw deal from God. To marry a girl he wasn’t allowed to touch and raise the child she said belonged to God. Joseph was either the most gullible man in history, or he loved that girl, or he believed the story. No matter which was true, he had protected Mary and Jesus. Or so the stories told. And then, when his usefulness was done he was pretty much written out of the rest of the Bible. Only tales from the Apocrypha—the lost and suspect books of the Bible—ever spoke of him.

  When Priest told the team that this was Joseph’s tomb, none of them doubted him. Priest had never been wrong before. Not once.

  Somehow, coming here had done something to them all. Boris and Keppler had become even more like organic robots. Cold, efficient, and scary. Rink had become less of a total mouse and had become harder. Not like the others, but in a different way. She carried weapons now and she no longer even tried to touch the man who had once been her lover. Hiro wondered if she was planning on killing Priest. If so, why hadn’t she done it?

  As for him, Hiro felt like he was living some kind of dream. More than once he wondered if he was in a coma somewhere and was merely dreaming all this. Or that he was dead and this was his Hell.

  When this was over, he wondered how he would ever be able to return to the world. To any world.

  All of this flashed through his brain in a moment as he leaned out from the edge of the hole. The guards were yelling as they approached, panic and outrage filling their shouts.

  “Priest,” he called, “don’t. Please.”

  Rink turned at the sound of his voice and looked at him and then at Mr. Priest. As she turned, her gun turned with her. Not exactly pointing at the team leader, but there was a sense of dark promise in the way she held it.

  Priest smiled his white, oily, merciless smile. The guards burst into the chamber.

  Boris and Keppler opened up with their r
ifles and emptied their magazines into them. The bullets burned through the air on either side of Rink. Close. So close. She screamed and whatever courage she’d been summoning was smashed away, smashed down. Her gun fell from her hand, hit the edge of the hole and bounced past Hiro to vanish into darkness. The guards—four of them—juddered and danced as the bullets tore into them. Blood and flesh sprayed outward, splashing the rock walls. Gunfire filled the chamber and the acoustics turned everything into a madhouse of thunder. The iron and copper stink of blood permeated the air.

  And then there was a sudden, terrible silence broken only by a kind of broken sigh as Rink sank slowly down to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Gunsmoke hung thick in the still air. Hiro’s head throbbed from the memory of that thunder.

  Then Priest spoke.

  “Reload,” he said, and his two slaves swapped out their magazines with emotionless precision.

  No, not emotionless. As they performed that familiar action Hiro saw Keppler’s face. Instead of the blank nothing that was usually there he saw a curl of lip and a glitter in the eye that told of a deep, hidden, erotic pleasure.

  It was a horrible thing to see. It was worse to know, because it was the truest measure of how far Keppler had fallen.

  Priest walked over to the fallen guards. One of them, despite a dozen awful wounds, was still alive. He was pathetically trying to crawl. Not to the safety of the corridor, but toward the hole. Toward the shrine he had given his life to protect.

  Priest squatted down in front of him and used a hooked finger to raise the man’s chin so he could look into the dying man’s eyes. Priest spoke to him in a language Hiro did not recognize, and the man replied, his words slurred by the blood that bubbled from between his lips.

  Then Priest did something that astonished and confused Hiro. He bent forward and kissed the man full on those bloody lips. The guard shuddered once and then collapsed down with the finality of death.

  “God…” gasped Rink in disgust. She’d watched this from between the fingers of the hands covering her face. “What…what…?”

  She was unable to finish the sentence.

  Priest straightened. “Hiro,” he said, “you’re not going down there.”

  Boris instantly stepped forward, hooked a hand under Hiro’s armpit, and hauled him back onto solid ground.

  “I don’t understand,” said Hiro. “What did he say to you?”

  Instead of answering, Priest walked over to where Rink sat on her knees. He bent and gently pulled her hands away from her face. There was a smile on his face that was almost kind, though it was made hideous by the blood on his lips. He brushed her hair from her face and caressed her cheek.

  “You’re going to go down there, my pet,” he said.

  “No!” she cried.

  But Keppler and Boris closed in on her and pulled Rink to her feet.

  “I can’t,” she pleaded, but Priest only smiled as his slaves clipped the rappelling gear to the small woman. Rink caught Priest’s sleeve. “Don’t make me go down there.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Hiro, stepping forward, but Boris spun and pointed his rifle at Hiro’s face.

  “No,” said Priest calmly, “Rink will go.”

  Rink began weeping and Keppler pulled her toward the edge of the shaft.

  “Please…”

  “You can rappel down,” said Priest, “or you can fall. Take your pick.”

  The lack of mercy in Priest’s face was evident and absolute.

  Rink threw a desperate glance at Hiro, but there was nothing the urban explorer could do. Boris’s dark eyes were as black and uncompromising as the open barrel of the rifle.

  Hiro licked his lips. “It’s okay, Rink,” he said, forcing the words out, “you’ll be okay.”

  “But—”

  “You’ve done this a hundred times. It’s not far. Just remember what I taught you and you’ll be fine.”

  It hurt him to say those words, to become an accomplice in Priest’s plan, but Hiro had no doubt at all that Priest would throw his former lover into the pit.

  Rink turned to Priest. Tears still ran freely down her cheeks but she suddenly gave him a look of such venomous hatred that Hiro recoiled from it. “You’re a monster,” she said, spitting the words.

  Priest only smiled.

  Rink shook free of Keppler, took hold of the rope and pushed backward off the edge. Hiro slapped Boris’ gun aside and went to the rim to watch her fall. The darkness seemed to swallow her at once.

  “Be careful,” he called after her.

  Rink was gone.

  Priest came over and stood next to Hiro, looking down, smiling.

  “She’s right,” said Hiro quietly. “You are a monster.”

  The team leader put his hand on Hiro’s shoulder and for a horrible moment Hiro thought Priest was going to push him in. But the hand remained steady. Heavy and oddly cold.

  “The world is full of monsters.”

  Down below there was a sudden, terrible scream. It spiraled up out of the darkness, high-pitched and raw and wet.

  “Rink!” cried Hiro, and he lunged for her rope, but Boris pulled him back. Hiro fought him, trying to reach the rope, needing to pull the poor woman out of the hole. But then the scream stopped.

  Just like that.

  They all froze and looked down into the silent blackness at the bottom of the shaft. The moment stretched to horrible tautness.

  “Rink…?” whispered Hiro. “Oh god…”

  Then there was a new sound from below.

  Laughter.

  Rink’s voice. Laughing.

  The laughter rose from the shaft and filled the still air, louder than the sound of gunfire. Louder than her screams.

  There was nothing sane about that laugh. There was nothing human about it. Not anymore.

  And it went on and on and on…

  -19-

  Sam Hunter

  The University of Pennsylvania Museum

  3260 South Street

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Tableau.

  There were a bunch of people in the room. One of them was dead.

  They stood in two groups on either side of a man who lay sprawled in a pool of fresh blood. The dead man wore khakis and a cardigan over a white dress shirt. A pair of cracked reading glasses lay next to him. From the picture I’d seen on the Internet, this was Dr. Holland.

  Standing on the left of the corpse and closest to the door were two people who were as unalike as possible. The guy looked like a short, slightly dumpy version of Matt Damon. He wore a heavy backpack a lot like the one I wore, and he looked scared as hell. He held a pistol in a trembling hand. The woman was tall, slender, built like a dancer, with a brunette ponytail and eyes that were dark and dangerous.

  Going out on a limb and guessing this was Harry Bolt and Violin.

  Standing across from them was a group of five people. A tall, sinister-looking guy of about forty with black hair and a cruel mouth. He was flanked by a guy with a flat Russian face and dead eyes and a stocky blond woman with a hard mouth. They held AK-47s in their hands. To one side of them was a thin brunette woman and a Japanese guy. They had handguns.

  None of them looked like what I expected either the Brotherhood of the Lock or the Closers to look like.

  Sitting on a wheeled metal cart next to the corpse was a book. It was about the size of phone book and bound in heavy wood inlaid with lapis and carnelian to form patterns of coiling tentacles. Stiff bands of cracked leather were wrapped around it and buckled securely.

  Before I went into the room I turned back to human form. Much easier to handle the Glock that I pulled.

  The people with guns were pointing them at each other. The doorway was at a right angle to them, so no one had a gun pointed at me.

  “Fucking freeze!” I growled in my best cop voice.

  And then everyone was pointing guns at me.

  Fun times.

  “Who the heck are you?” asked Harry
Bolt.

  Violin looked me up and down and I saw her nostrils flare and a look of surprise flash in her eyes. Somehow—don’t ask me to explain it—she knew what I was. That is creepy as all fuck.

  The tall guy with the dark hair also gave me an appraising stare. “My, my,” he said. “We are an interesting little ménage, yes?”

  That’s when I saw that he wasn’t holding a gun. He had a knife down at his side and the blade was slick with blood. A few things clicked into place for me. Maybe it wasn’t Violin and Harry Bolt who’d killed those people. Maybe they, like me, were a few seconds late to a party that had already started. I mean, let’s face it, the dark-haired guy looked like a villain from central casting, and his crew might as well have been wearing tshirts that said ”henchman.”

  “I know who you are,” I said to Violin. “We have some friends in common. But who are these ass-clowns?”

  “I have no freaking idea,” said Harry.

  “Esteban Santoro,” said Violin.

  “Oh, I haven’t gone by that name in ages,” said the super villain. He had a slight Spanish accent. Spain Spanish, not Mexican or Puerto Rican. “I am Mr. Priest to everyone who’s anyone these days.”

  “Priest?” echoed Violin with a hollow laugh. “Is that supposed to be clever?”

  Priest shrugged. “I considered ‘acolyte’, but it doesn’t scan as well. And, Mr. Church was already taken.”

  “Church?” Harry Bolt and I said it at the same time. According to Acantha, Church was the name of Joe Ledger’s boss. If there was an in-joke—and I’m pretty sure there was—it went sailing over my head.

  I aimed my pistol at his face. His henchmen closed ranks around him, but I still had a shot if I wanted to take it. “You killed Dr. Holland?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why?”

  Another shrug.

  “You’re here for the book, aren’t you?”

  Priest smiled. “I believe we are all here for the same thing. Perhaps we should draw lots. Or maybe we could play rock, paper, scissors, yes?”