A smaller rectangle sat on the inside, about the size of the glass on a smart phone. Very thin. She touched it with the tip of her finger. The screen brightened. A small, unlabeled icon appeared in the center. Amy gave it a tap.
The icon made a virtual motion like it was being pressed, then the screen blanked out. Amy heard a noise, straightened up to listen. Quiet, then she heard it again.
Mechanical. Like a lock turning, a bolt throwing. Abrupt. Quick slide one way, brief interval, quick slide back.
She glanced to her right. It had come from that direction, she was certain of it. Close to certain. The counter space along the wall ended at the supply cabinet. It was a rectangular box, metal, utilitarian. About six feet tall but only a foot deep, maybe three feet wide. Twin doors. She opened one, ran her gaze over the shelves. Cartons of staples, plastic sectioned circles of paper clips, containers of fasteners and packages of pens and highlighters. Typical store of office supplies. More than a store of them, though, she thought. A stockpile.
And everyone's paperless these days. I know we certainly are.
The cabinet was flush against the wall. She ran her hand to the back, tried to wedge her fingers behind it. No space. She put a palm on each side and pulled back. It wouldn't budge. She tried again, harder. Not an inch.
No, she thought. Not just not an inch. Not at all.
She stared at the cabinet for a moment, then moved back to the fake laptop. She touched the screen and the icon appeared again. She tapped it. The sound again, something sliding, short, quick.
She moved over to the cabinet and pulled again. Nothing. She pulled harder, then tried to move it to the side. Her hand slipped and she bumped against it. The cabinet slid back a few inches, into the wall. She put her hand on the door and pushed. It moved back farther, slow and heavy but smooth.
She leaned against it and pushed harder, it kept moving back as she walked with it. Light shone from the side as it cleared the wall and she continued in its wake, stepping into the space it made. She found herself in another room as the cabinet clunked to a stop, standing in a small space along the wall, her feet in between a set of tracks.
She sensed a presence before she even entered far enough to see them, raising and steadying her pistol immediately.
The room opened to her left. Two people were there, standing in front of an array of monitors arranged like a control panel. One was wearing a grim frown, all-business. He was tall, athletic, clad in desert battle-dress camouflage. Dark skin and a thin layer of close-cropped black wooly hair atop his head, an earpiece with a small boom curved toward his mouth. Amy recognized him from her prior time here, his name popping into her head. Calvin. He was staring at her from behind a large caliber semi-automatic, likely a .45, in her estimation, given how narrow it was. It was pointed directly at her, not wavering in the slightest.
As much as her eyes were drawn to the barrel of the weapon, she couldn't help but shift her gaze to the other person in the room. A woman. She wore a concerned, uncertain expression, lips set in a tight line of worry that had seemed to have settled into something almost permanent. She was young and trim and very blond, blonder than Amy had been before the red. Amy recognized her, too, but it took a moment for her mind to accept it.
“You've got to be kidding,” she said. “Seriously?”
Calvin let one hand off the pistol, gesturing with a flick of his fingers. “If you'll just hand over your weapon, Ms Wright, I'll try to explain. There's no need for this to get messy.”
“Messier, you mean. I have a better idea. Why don't you let her do the explaining?”
The woman stepped forward.
“I know you're upset, Amy, but if you'll just listen to him,” Vivian Fall said, clasping her hands together as if in prayer before letting them drop in front of her. “You don't mind if I call you that, do you?”
Amy swallowed, still not believing the woman standing there was the one Hatcher believed was rotting in Hell, the one she'd traveled around the country with him trying to save. A former nun turned interim lover in Hatcher's life that Amy had expended immeasurable amounts of energy trying not to resent. A woman she presently felt herself hating more than she ever imagined possible.
Vivian tightened her lips, then added, “I mean, I know you may have a hard time believing this, but it's all part of the plan.”
Chapter 34
Hatcher was having a hard time understanding exactly what he was seeing. He was on the access platform, maybe one level from the surface launch doors, staring down another four levels into what had been the missile launch pad, the silo itself, where the ICBM had been housed. There was no rocket now, only a huge, cavernous shaft.
There were people. And bodies. Several of those bodies were mounted to gigantic crosses. Another body hung upside down from a rope noosed around its ankles, wrapped from head to toe in strips of white, a mummy in burial cloth. At the very bottom there were golden bowls, saucers containing bright flames, floating on a body of red liquid.
The smell was unmistakable. Blood. Enough to fill a small lake, from what he could see. Maybe a not-so-small one. It certainly filled the lowest level of the silo.
The crosses were all hung upside down from lower level platforms, six of them. Each had a person strapped to it, spikes penetrating their wrists and ankles. Below them, a retractable platform extended out over the pool of blood. Several people stood on the platform, robed, surrounding a wooden catafalque. A boy was strapped to the top of it, partially covered with a sheet over his midsection, each limb restrained separately, windmilling, arms wide with his hands hanging over the sides, legs parted. Straps buckled to each wrist and ankle.
The body wrapped in white dangled from its legs near the edge of the platform at the foot of the altar, dangling out over the blood, arms crossed over its chest, pinned beneath layers of cloth. Hatcher saw there were markings on the wrappings, symbols. He'd seen similar ones before, back in Connecticut. On the restraints.
The three people surrounding the boy all wore hooded robes of red. The two closest to the boy had the hood pulled back. The woman was black, with coppery braided hair, and though the angle of her face wasn't direct, Hatcher was certain it was Sahara Doyle. The man next to her was holding a large dagger in front of him in one hand, point down. In his other was a golden chalice. Hatcher recognized him immediately. Bill Bartlett.
He's lost his fucking mind.
Bartlett gave a solemn nod, as if making a decision, then raised his head and looked directly at Hatcher.
Before Hatcher could say anything, he drew the point of the dagger across the boy's wrist, whispered something into the boy's ear, and quickly held the cup beneath the boy's hand to catch the blood.
Hatcher grabbed his pistol, took a steady aim at Bartlett, center of mass.
“Stop!” he said, projecting his voice as loud as he could without screaming. “Put it down and don't touch that kid again, or I swear to God there will be more blood of yours in the bottom of the silo than left in your body.”
The third person on the platform, hood obscuring his face, backed away, leaving Bartlett and Sahara near the boy.
Bartlett gave a shake to his head, a gentle, almost avuncular wag of disapproval. He held the dagger up, then placed it next to the boy, making a show of it. Sahara held out a cloth for him, and he exchanged it for the chalice, placing the cloth over the boy's wrist and pressing it. He whispered to the boy again.
Sahara raised the chalice and looked up. “Put it down.”
She brought the cup to her mouth, eyes still on him, and held it there. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But this is how it has to be.”
Then she tipped her head back and drank. Hatcher heard a clunk behind him, followed by murmurs and groans from below.
By the time Sahara lowered the cup, all Hell started to break loose.
Chapter 35
“Wha
t did you just do?”
Calvin was leaning onto the table, eyes on one of the monitors. Something had caught his attention, and he'd immediately put his hand on a mouse and clicked it. The .45 was still in his other hand, still pointed at Amy.
“I sealed the blast door,” he said, straightening up. His gaze stayed trained on the monitor. From her angle, Amy couldn't make out what was on the screen, just the glow of it in his eyes.
“What do you mean? Are you saying you locked him in?”
“Him, and everyone else.”
She raised the pistol in her own hand, a Sig-Sauer P229, and leveled it at his head. “Are you out of your mind? Unlock it!”
“I can't. Not from here. It's on a timer.”
Amy bit down on her bottom lip. Her eyes jumped to Vivian, whose expression remained like a sad sphinx, then back to Calvin. “Someone had better tell me what the Hell is going on.”
Calvin stopped peering into the monitor long enough to make eye contact. “You can see for yourself.” He gestured to the screen. “Just put the gun away, and you can come watch. It's not like you're going to shoot either of us.”
“Don't be so sure. You've been lying all along, and I have no idea what you're up to.”
“Please, Amy...” Vivian moved toward her, turning out her palms. “You have to understand, this is the only way.”
Amy's gaze settled on her, sliding down and back up. “You,” she said, barely able to keep the contempt out of her voice. “Do you realize what he's been going through? What he's put himself through? For you?”
The words seemed to sting. Vivian's lips twitched and she opened her mouth to say something, but Calvin cut her off.
“It's starting,” he said.
Chapter 36
The first thing that hit him was the smell. It was metallic, something like an old penny, only chalky in his nose. It grew stronger and he realized it was the blood below, starting to boil.
He barely had time to take notice of it when the movement on the crosses caught his attention. The crucified bodies, inverted, were all squirming. Shakes and tosses of the head, growing more violent each passing moment, until each one seemed to be in the throes of a violent seizure, twitching and jerking.
One by one, they burst from their mounts, arms ripping through hammered spikes and restraints, wrists and feet pulling free of nails. They tumbled down, one, followed by two more, followed by another and another until each of them had plunged the several stories and splashed into the blood below.
The air around him, heavy and stagnant, seemed to carry a charge, sizzling across the back of his neck, causing his hair to stand on end and his flesh to goose. The blood below began to roil, bubbles doming at the surface and popping at a faster and faster rate.
Amy. Whatever was happening, or was going to happen, he needed to get her out of the facility, back to the surface. He'd underestimated this, failed to anticipate the scope of what was taking place. He would return for the boy if he could, but he had to get to Amy, get her moving, back to the escape hatch.
He turned back to the access door and grabbed the latch. It wouldn't move. Locked in place, solid. He pushed on it with all he had, but he knew there was no use in trying to force it. The door was designed to contain the blast from an ICBM launch. It could certainly contain him.
Maybe it wasn't a bad thing, he realized. Containing him meant containing them, which may have meant Amy was safe. But at this point, there was no way to tell.
He turned back and looked down at the blood. It was raging like a cauldron, the crimson mouth of a volcano, bodies breaking the surface, rolling in and out of view.
One of the bodies submerged, then shot up, soaring into the air. It grabbed the rail of a catwalk and hung there, rocking, before swinging itself over and onto the grating. Then another did the same, and another. Within seconds all six of them had ascended in a burst, exploding out of the blood works. Some landed on retractable platforms that ringed the silo in places, others simply clung to the silo walls, hands and feet finding purchase on grates and mounted mechanical boxes and platform mounts, on combinations of tiny wall tracks and conduit piping. Within moments, all of them were looking at Hatcher.
They were the same bodies that had been on the crosses. Only different now. Elongated limbs, larger hands and feet. Fingers and toes that curled into sharp talons. Faces that seemed to be skin stretched over masks stretched over skulls, protruding cheekbones and pointed chins, rows of huge, innumerable teeth that would have seemed at home on something that roamed the bottom of the seas. All of them completely drenched in blood.
And all of them with eyes like jagged crystals.
Well, shit.
The creatures started toward him. Some leaping onto higher walks, others scaling the silo walls.
Not good. He shot a look down at the platform extended out over the blood, its occupants peering up at him.
“What the hell is going on, Bartlett?” he shouted. “Are you out of your Goddamn mind?”
Bartlett said nothing. He stared up with an impassive gaze, a somewhat sympathetic set to his jaw. Hatcher noticed his lips move, forming words he didn't speak. As if he were uttering a silent apology.
One of the creatures jumped onto a nearby platform, then sprang into the air, arcing toward him. Hatcher raised the pistol and double-tapped two rounds to the head. The first caught the eye band, the second the forehead. The thing's head snapped back just as its arms slammed against the railing of the platform. Its legs swung under and it dropped back, tumbling until it hit the blood.
He took a breath. At least they can be killed. But then he thought of the girl back at the Armageddon compound. How Micah had assured him repeatedly that she was already dead. Was the same true of these people? Had it even been true of her?
A voice from below reached his ears.
Sahara.
“That's one!” she said.
Oh, that's just friggin' great, he thought. An array of demonic vessels, in the flesh. Instead of stopping it, turns out I am it.
Another of the things reached his platform from the wall, hooking a hand over the bottom and flinging itself up over the railing more quickly than he had anticipated. This was a woman, or had been. Her skin was coated with blood like the rest, her hair clumped into long ropes. A torn shirt hung from one shoulder, one breast exposed, the nipple curved and hard, pointing upward like a tusk. She bared an arsenal of jagged, triangular teeth. Icy crystals gleaned from her sockets.
Pistol leveled, center of mass, two squeezes, a single, smooth motion.
She moved, one shoulder yanking back, each round catching a piece of shirt as it grazed her. Effortless speed, just like he'd seen from Micah. Same as he'd seen in Kentucky.
And just like in both places, the next move was toward him. Motion that wasn't even motion, more like a movie with frames removed, the creature being in one spot at to start, then instantly in another. Its talons were on Hatcher's throat without any time seeming to have lapsed.
But something in Hatcher's brain had clicked, the kind of combat reaction that comes with considerable experience in unpredictable environments. He'd known what was coming, sensed it before a thought could even take root, and had buried the muzzle of the pistol in the side of the thing's gut as it got there. Three squeezes. Three loud, muffled reports. The crystals in those sockets flashed wide. The talons withdrew, and it dropped, rolling beneath the railing and off the platform.
“That's two!” Sahara said, just loud enough to be heard.
Hatcher spun, raising his pistol as two more scaled the wall, one just ahead of the other, the first getting ready to leap.
No, he thought. That's seven. Eight rounds left. No extra clip. Hadn't given it much thought going in, assuming that any situation requiring that many rounds would be a lost cause, not even worth tempting. Stupid. In hindsight, things often seeme
d to be.
The closest one launched itself toward the platform. Hatcher fired once while it was in mid-air, taking no chance on missing. The bullet ripped into its torso, viscera flowering, blood spattering. But it was still able to catch the railing, still coming at him. Hatcher fired again and it jerked out of the way like the other, too fast for Hatcher to really see, but the second creature was in the air immediately behind it, halfway into its leap, and that round caught it directly in the nose. It dropped back, plummeting down to the blood.
The creature he'd missed was already on him by then, closing like mirage, but Hatcher had started to anticipate rather than react now, firing two shots into it point blank as he fell backward. The first bullet it had taken at the rail seemed to have slowed it down just enough.
“That's four!”
Hatcher pushed the creature off and rolled onto a knee, pistol up and ready. The final two creatures were converging from opposite sides. Moving slowly, like each was waiting to see what the other was going to do before deciding its own move.
Yes, he thought, thinking rounds instead of kills. That's four. Two left for each. Which meant he had to make them count.
Chapter 37
“We have to do something!”
Amy stared in horror at the screen, watching the scene unfold. Hatcher bleeding from his throat, fighting off creatures straight out of a nightmare, creatures that seemed to move so fast she couldn't see the motion.
Calvin wagged his chin. “He has to do this himself.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I mean, the spell calls for... look, it would take a long time to go through it all. Suffice to say, if I were to try to help him, it would destroy the trust that has been built up.”
“Trust? Trust? You're going to talk to me about trust while he's about to be killed?”
“It looks like he has the situation in hand.”
The Angel of the Abyss Page 31
