A baby cried.
They both heard it. The thin, wailing sound echoed from the chamber’s curved walls. Hank turned his head, as did the beggar, both looking toward the limits of the dark, from where the crying came.
“Ren-Lei…”
Hank said the child’s name aloud. At the exact same time that another voice called out.
He looked down at the filth-encrusted beggar. Who stared up at him in equal astonishment. It was his voice that had also spoken the child’s name.
14.
The sounds of the fighting had gone on for a long time.
Holding on to what was left of the stair rail, Nathaniel peered down into the darkness. When Blake and the gargantuan hit man, fists pummeling each other, had tumbled into the space, the first thing their combined impact had broken away, with a screech of rusted metal, had been the staircase’s vertical support. That had started the complete disintegration of the stairs, every piece of the steps and the curved rail snapping free of the rest, as Blake and the giant Hank had struck them shoulder-first or with the straining muscles of their backs. Nathaniel had instinctively reached to grab Blake’s arm, to try and pull him back to the room, but it had been too late. The two battlers had already fallen beyond rescue, their conjoined descent barely slowed by the wreckage splintering around them.
There was silence now, though.
“Blake!” He cupped his other hand to the side of his mouth and shouted. “You there?”
No answer came. He wasn’t surprised. If the fall hadn’t killed Blake, or stunned him into unconsciousness, then he would likely have succumbed to Hank’s greater strength and mass. The question now was whether either one of them was still alive.
Only one way to find out, he knew. The staircase spiraling downward might be gone now, but that wasn’t going to stop him from investigating. Nathaniel pulled his hand back and folded his arms across his chest. He closed his eyes, letting the darkness from below seep inside him, extinguishing his thoughts …
* * *
The baby’s cry had stopped. For a moment, there was silence in the close-ceilinged stone chamber. Then both men heard a name called out from far in the distance above them.
Blake …
Too faint to leave an echo; Hank turned his bruised head and gazed up the shaft that had held the staircase, its wreckage now scattered about the chamber’s floor. He supposed it was the kid who had shouted, way up in the abandoned town house above. The teenager who had been wearing a tailored black leather jacket, neatly contrasting with the grimy figure of the beggar he had accompanied.
“Is that your name?” Hank looked over at the other man. The dust cloud roiling about them was still so thick that he could barely make out the matted hair dangling before the beggar’s unwashed face. “That what they call you?”
“Yeah…” The beggar pushed himself back into a sitting position and laid his arms across his knees. Blood dripped onto the back of his hands from an open gash on his brow. “And who the hell are you?”
“Hank.”
“Yeah, well…” Blake straightened, drawing in a long breath. “You’re one rough bastard, Hank.”
“I can be.” He gave a nod. “When someone rattles my cage.”
He studied the beggar’s dust-obscured visage, trying to extract a few more clues from what he could barely see there. Rubbing a hand over one side of his rib cage evoked a pain-filled wince. It felt like an anvil had been dropped on him, more than once. That was the result of the beggar’s spinning kicks, which had vaulted through the space between them like cannon shots. He prodded the tender flesh with a fingertip, relishing the pain. That had been the first time he had fought somebody with so much airborne velocity, coming at him from all angles, as though the beggar had been a creature composed of storm winds and lightning rather than earthbound flesh and bone.
The arched chamber’s silence settled around them. Hank knew they were both waiting for the same thing. To hear the infant crying again, so they would be able to tell from what direction the sound came.
“That goddamned coat of yours.” Hank studied the filthy garment on the other man. “What’s the deal with that thing?”
“You don’t want to know.” Blake’s eyes turned to hate-filled slits as he looked down at the red, broken stitches across the overcoat’s lapels. “Believe me.”
“It’s like it’s alive or something.” His forearm looked as though a wild animal had tried to chew it off. “And you wear that thing?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
Hank wondered what that was supposed to mean. A lot more would have to happen—and a lot more would need to be explained—before he would trust this sonuvabitch, whoever he was. Trusting people was how hit men got killed.
A faint sound broke into his thoughts. Both men’s heads snapped up, full alert, as the infant’s cry came again from the chamber’s distance.
Hank looked over at the other. “Ren-Lei,” he said quietly.
“That’s right.” Blake nodded. “Ren-Lei.”
“That’s why you came here? To find her?”
“Not just to find her,” said Blake. “To save her.”
“Okay.” He reached a hand down. “Looks like we’re on the same job.”
The beggar had already sprung to his feet, his movement again preternaturally lithe.
Both men turned, scanning the dust-filled chamber. They could just discern low tunnels branching off in a confusing array.
“That way—” Blake pointed. “That’s where it’s coming from. That’s where she is. I think.”
“Maybe.” Hank leaned forward, peering into the dark. He turned his head, listening, then nodded. “Yeah, I think you’re right.” He looked around and spotted a crude torch smoldering in an iron holder fastened to the wall. He tugged the torch free and held it aloft, sending shadows wavering across the rough stone walls. “Let’s go.”
They headed for the arched tunnel entrance from which the infant’s crying came.
* * *
Nathaniel opened his eyes. Through the settling clouds of dust, tiny shapes began to take form. White things, some of them smaller than his clenched fist. Others thin and fragile as twigs …
He turned slowly about, his skin tightening across his arms and shoulders as he watched the small, dimly perceived objects edge closer to being real. Real enough to touch. He stretched out his hand toward them.
Empty eye sockets gazed back at him. From skulls that he could have held on his palm—he saw now that the walls of the chamber were lined with them. Hundreds … thousands … beyond count, reaching up to the surface of the world from which he had brought himself. Infants’ skulls, broken and gnawed upon, entwined with curving, threadlike ribs. Scarcely larger, femurs and other bones, stacked like kindling, had been split open, the wet marrow sucked out.
Wordless horror overcame Nathaniel. He snatched his hand away, stepping back through the swirling dust. As far as he could … anything to get away from the fragile remnants …
He collided with the wall behind him. It was bones as well—gazing up over his shoulder, he saw a seeming infinity of them, all the way to the chamber’s arched ceiling. In a sudden convulsive rush, he shoved himself away from them. He lost his balance and fell, the wall breaking apart behind him. The minuscule white fragments cracked and scattered in all directions as he landed sprawling in their midst.
Nathaniel looked around in revulsion. It had been a simple matter to transport himself down into this arched stone chamber, lit by flickering torches. Just another one of those tricks his master Death had taught him, to go quickly from place to place when there had been a lot of names on their reaping list. Close his eyes in one place, then open them in the place he wanted to be. As simple as that … for one who knew how.
What he hadn’t known was where he would find himself. What kind of place … what new horror …
Holding his arms close to his chest, he forced himself back under control. He had come here for a reas
on. He had to keep going, no matter what.
Where were the others, though? There was no sign of Blake or the thuggish giant they had stumbled across upstairs. The last sight he’d had of them had been as they had crashed down along the staircase, the fury of their entwined combat ripping the structure to pieces as they fell. But he saw nothing of either one of them now.
Setting his hand down to push himself upright, Nathaniel heard and felt a sickening crunch of tiny bones beneath his palm. He brushed the dry, powdery fragments off on his black jeans. A couple of yards away, the twisted wreckage of the staircase lay heaped about, dust still settling on the broken bits of wood. That must have been where the two fighters had landed, presumably still alive and conscious. Where they had gone from here, and in what condition, was anybody’s guess.
Nathaniel got to his feet. He couldn’t move without stepping on more infant bones and partial skeletons. Everywhere he looked, he saw the grisly aftermath of a feast that had been going on for centuries, soft tender creatures given over to hideous appetites.
“All right—” He spoke aloud, getting a grip on himself. He had been here on Death’s business before, to help his master collect the souls of the slaughtered infants. The sight still turned his stomach. “You just need to keep going.” That was what he had decided when he had been able to see through Ren-Lei’s eyes, back among the Lights of Life—and had realized that this was the place to which she had been taken. His words drifted in echoes down the chamber. “That’s all…”
In the distance, he thought he could hear a baby crying. Blake must have headed that way—if he hadn’t been killed by that lumbering giant.
The crying came from one of the arched tunnels in front of him. He couldn’t tell which one; they were all filled with darkness. Need a torch—
His own shadow wavered toward the tunnels; the nearest torch was several yards behind him. Picking his way as best he could across the scattered baby skeletons, he made his way down the chamber and lifted the torch from its iron holder on the curved wall. But when he turned back around, confusion swept across him. For a moment, he couldn’t tell whether he had come down the low-ceilinged space to his left, or the seemingly identical one to the right. Both passageways were filled with scattered bones. He could still hear the infant crying, but the thin noise seemed to come from any of the tunnel openings farther away.
Holding the torch above his head, he ran forward, then halted, trying to figure out his next move. The light from the torch was so dim, the overlapping shadows it cast seemed as solid as the chamber’s stone walls. Ren-Lei’s cry came from the tunnel opening directly before him—but when he stepped that way, the cry sounded from behind. He turned slowly, hoping to discern the noise’s source from its echoes.
He wasn’t sure, but the crying sounded an infinitesimal bit louder from one tunnel than from the others on either side. He couldn’t hesitate any longer; if the crying were to stop, he would be completely lost, with no clue of any sort to follow. This one or nothing, he told himself. Just go. He held the torch out before himself and headed down the tunnel.
* * *
“Hold up—”
Blake laid a restraining hand across the other man’s chest.
“What is it?” Hank glanced over at him.
“Take a look around you.”
The chamber into which they had fallen, surrounded by the broken debris of the staircase, lay far behind them. Hank brought his gaze around to the walls of the tunnel. Flickering torchlight illumined images painted in black ash and the crusted red of dried blood.
“What the hell is it?” He leaned closer to the wall, squinting as he attempted to make sense of the grotesque scenes.
“Some kind of mural,” said Blake. “Like you see in temples.”
“Look there.” His grimy hand pointed to the wall’s closest section. “You see it?”
“Looks like fighting.” Hank shrugged. “Some kind of battle.”
The mural was filled with interstellar storm clouds and great bolts of lightning, and winged figures tumbling toward the earth below.
Hank remembered the armor up in the Devil’s office. “The war in Heaven…,” he said. “The one that the Devil lost…”
Blake peered closer at the mural, stepping toward another section. He pointed again. “Look—his demons…”
Creatures with the faces of men, and the hooves of swine, swarmed among the painted images. Hank could see how the fallen angels had been transformed, as a punishment for their rebellion, with horns where their haloes had been. And more—brute claws and fangs, scales and bristling fur, tails lashing from their backsides, all walking about on two legs as men did.
“Do you reckon … that’s what we’re up against?”
Blake preferred not to answer. The images were like fragments glimpsed in nightmares, the sooner forgotten upon waking, the better. To think that they might be real …
“Let’s get this finished,” he said. “The sooner we find Ren-Lei, the sooner we can get out of this place.”
He headed down the tunnel again. Hank gazed at the hideous mural for a moment longer, then turned and followed after him.
Blue light washed across them as they rounded the final corner in the tunnel.
The tunnel’s ceiling had lowered, forcing Hank to move in a crouch, led on by the faint sound of an infant’s cry before him. But as he and Blake emerged from the tunnel’s mouth, he was able at last to stand upright, as though they had both stepped into a cathedral’s vast domed space.
“Look,” Blake whispered. “Up ahead—”
Hank turned in the direction to which the other man had pointed. The flickering light given by the torch in his hand was obscured by the fiercer glow from the sulphur burning in a circle of iron braziers. As his vision adjusted, he suddenly spotted a human figure in the center of them, before an altar. Instinctively, his fist clenched and he cocked his arm, readying himself to land the first blow.
Then he saw who it was. The dwarf. The Devil’s Lieutenant—
“That’s him!” Hank brought his mouth close to Blake’s ear. “The one who stole the baby.”
The dwarf was still unaware of any intruders, any witnesses to the ritual he was about to perform. With his hunched back turned toward the men below, he picked something up from the stone platform beside him and held it over his head. An infant, naked and defenseless, its soft skin clutched in the dwarf’s withered claws.
“We’ve got to save her!” whispered Hank. “Let’s rush him—”
“No—” Blake gave a quick shake of his head. “Not while he’s got her in his hands—”
The sulphurous flames rose higher, casting the central altar into high relief. Both men could now see several ritual objects set out on the pedestal. The magnesium breastplate from the Lieutenant’s angelic suit of armor rested on its convex surface, forming a bowl suitable for catching Ren-Lei’s blood. Beside it lay the hilt of a broken sword, crafted of the same darkly gleaming metal, the hilt’s pommel crusted with dried gore and flecks of bone, thin and fragile as eggshells.
On the wall behind the raised altar, the torchlight caught glints from the rest of the angelic armor that the Lieutenant had worn—when his physical form had been undiminished, and he had fought alongside the other rebellious angels in Heaven. A battle-axe, likewise crafted of magnesium, hung beside the armor’s segmented glove.
With eerie calm, the dwarf lowered the baby onto his deformed shoulder, as if cradling her. Then, with his free hand, he picked up the hilt of the broken sword and positioned its butt against the infant’s skull, ready to strike.
“Damn!” exclaimed Blake. “He’s not going to lay her down. We need to move. Now!”
He sprang forward through the shadows with superhuman speed.
At the same time, an image streaked through Hank’s mind of the fight he’d had in the crack house, before the dwarf had hired him. He had needed a weapon then as well, and there had been nothing but a snapped broomstick.
The torch flew like a spear from his grasp, trailing sparks and flame. The bright motion caught the dwarf’s eye; his gaze turned from the infant. Just in time for the point of the torch’s handle to plunge into the center of his brow—
A gasp of shock escaped from the dwarf’s mouth as he staggered backward, collapsing against the wall behind him. With a wail of fright, the baby fell. Blake reached the altar and dove forward, catching Ren-Lei in his outstretched hands as his shoulder crashed into the stone pedestal.
“Here!” On his back, Blake quickly held the infant up toward Hank. “Take her—before she touches the coat!”
Hank didn’t know what the beggar meant. But as soon as Ren-Lei was in the cradle of his arm, she stopped crying, as though the baby with the wide, innocent eyes had realized that she was safe.
Another sound came into the chamber. A low, guttural moan …
They both looked up to the wall and watched as the dwarf grasped the torch protruding from his brow. The flames played over his hand as his grip tightened; he yanked the torch free and threw it spinning across the temple space. A thick black ichor oozed from the shattered bone, inching down along the curve of one eye socket.
The torch went out when it hit the stone floor, as though trodden upon by an unseen boot heel. In the sulphur-laden braziers, the blue flames dwindled to serpents’ tongues.
In a fury, the dwarf’s fingertips clawed into the waistcoat of his suit. “How dare you enter this temple!” he screeched. “How dare you disrupt a sacrifice to our dark Lord!” The silken fabric tore to shreds that he cast aside, revealing the naked flesh of his torso. One gnarled hand dug into the seam of the trousers, ripping the cloth from one side to the other, the rags parting from his bandy legs. He stood before them, hideously naked, his sexless groin covered with the same suppurating boils that covered his chest and arms.
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