“Call that fun? Let’s get after him.”
He bombed ahead of me—skipping over a festering mound of trash piled up outside the side door. I blundered through it, scattering more rodents. He made Providence first and stopped to look up and down the street. I joined him, already panting. Hundreds of people had gathered in the middle of the road at a respectable distance from the entrance to the casino—caught between prurient interest in the bloodshed and the desire to avoid being munched up.
“There he is,” Danny said, pointing past the casino to where, through a gap in the mob of rubberneckers, I saw our quarry climb into a worryingly rapid-looking fire-red Cadillac. The throaty roar of the engine was audible above the hubbub of the crowd as he powered away.
We dove into the crowd, shouldering people out of the way and ignoring their halfhearted curses and threats. The Penitents were out in force, waving their placards and working themselves up into a righteous lather. As we passed the entrance to the Lucky Deal, a fresh burst of gunfire broke out inside. A stray round blew a fine mist of blood from the head of one of the Penitents who’d climbed the stairs to achieve a better oratory platform. Laureen and the Ammit must have made the floor, drawing the few bullets that remained, but we couldn’t waste any time waiting for them to force their way out. Franklin was accelerating down Providence toward Route 666. From there, he had a straight shoot up to Arcadia Road, through Eleutherios, and past Desert Heights to the tower, where he would climb up and away in Laureen’s metaphorical elevator. Luckily, my car was still idling in the middle of the road, looking too crappy to steal. We leaped in.
“There are guns in the glove box,” I said. “I’ll get on his tail.”
Franklin was already at the end of Providence. I could tell that, even with its souped-up engine, my car was no match for the raw speed of his. I was going to have to take a lot of risks to catch him. I stomped on the accelerator and roared through the underpass. I pulled the parking brake and spun the wheel to slide on to the on-ramp, the tires screeching like scalded cats. In my eagerness to catch up, I’d taken the corner too fast. The car tipped onto two wheels, heading inexorably toward the tipping point. For a moment, it looked like the pursuit was over before it even began. Panic froze my muscles. A delivery van chugging up the ramp saved me. I scraped along its side as I overtook, shearing off my wing mirror; the rebound set me back on all four wheels.
“I see your driving hasn’t improved,” Danny said as I inhaled a deep breath through my nostrils to recover my composure.
“I meant to do that,” I replied as the car hit the end of the on-ramp. It rode the air for a split second before thumping back onto the asphalt and rear-ending a motorcyclist. His bike spun away. He wasn’t so lucky, disappearing under my front wheels. Danny clutched the dashboard as the car lurched.
“And that?”
“He’ll get over it,” I said, peering forward to seek out the taillights of the Cadillac. The car was a good hundred feet ahead, too far for a clear shot. Danny leaned out of the window anyway and held the gun he’d fished from the glove compartment as steady as he could, waiting for an opportunity.
“Get closer,” he shouted, squinting into the wind.
“I’m trying,” I said, swerving into the inside lane to undertake a truck, forcing Danny to duck back in briefly.
He leaned across and planted a sloppy kiss on the side of my lips. “You do realize this is the first time we’ve worked a case together? We should totally do it again.”
“If we get the chance.”
He leaned back out the window, closed his eyes, and let loose a loud whoop.
“Are you enjoying this?” I said.
“Hell, yes!” he shouted back. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I was in a car chase?”
Momentarily distracted, I cannoned into the side of a bulky Pontiac I hadn’t noticed cut in from the fast lane. For a moment, we were locked together, the drag of the other vehicle losing me precious seconds. I wrenched the wheel back to the right to free my car. The Pontiac veered off the other way. I winced as metal crunched but didn’t look back. Whatever destruction I left in my wake would be nothing compared to what Franklin had in mind.
I concentrated on the road ahead, tracking Franklin through the traffic. While he had a fast car, he wasn’t the most skilled driver. I had the feeling he’d never had cause to drive so urgently before. Every time he came up against a knot of traffic, he weaved uncertainly before choosing which way to pass. He also made the mistake of tapping on the brakes when rounding a bend, increasing his chances of going into a skid. I was hoping that somewhere along the line, his inexperience would send him into a tailspin, but every time it looked like he was about to wobble out of control, he managed to recover. I didn’t take my foot off the accelerator, bullying other cars out of the way and sliding through every gap that presented itself at full speed. The problem was that when Franklin hit a stretch of empty road, his superior speed allowed him to open up the distance again. I looked back to see if there was any sign of Laureen and the Ammit. I saw nothing. They could have taken another route. Maybe they’d summoned a few Torments to airlift them. Either way, I didn’t see how they could arrive in time to head Franklin off. Danny and I would stop him or nobody would.
A good few hundred feet ahead now, Franklin zoomed down the off-ramp to Arcadia Road. I followed, turning hard into the corner. A concrete pillar under the freeway claimed my other wing mirror. The wind had picked up, blowing clouds of sand across the road from the open desert on our right-hand side. Distorted faces welled up in the murk, disintegrating on impact with the windshield. Danny withdrew into the car, spitting out dust.
“Can’t see a damn thing,” he said.
I had the same problem. It was almost as if the dust devils were trying to shield Franklin from view, hoping that the oblivion he promised would somehow also free them from the last vestiges of their miserable existence. If so, they were out of luck. I had no intention of letting the insane little turd escape. I gritted my teeth, straddled the center line, and drove full tilt, flashing my lights to force oncoming traffic off the road. We left a trail of blaring horns, and at least one car folded into a lamppost, in our wake.
The dust cloud dissipated as we entered the more built-up area of Eleutherios, and I caught sight of Franklin up ahead. We were gaining on him. I just wasn’t sure we were gaining fast enough. The tower was growing ever closer and broader, jutting above the skyline. Still it gave up no features—it was an absence rather than a presence, a malign column of blackness that gouged a strip out of the sky, now a deep blue as dawn approached.
Franklin swerved around a queue of traffic and mounted the sidewalk without slowing. Tables, chairs, and a few people went flying as he ploughed through the crowds sitting outside to enjoy the relative cool of the early hours. I followed suit, speeding along the path he’d cleared, until the cause of the stationary traffic became clear. Two cars were snarled up in a fender bender, the drivers resolving the disagreement over who was to blame by punching lumps out of each other in the middle of the road. Sparks showered from Franklin’s bodywork as he shaved the rear bumper of one of the cars. He wobbled, losing more speed.
“Hold it steady,” Danny said.
He took a deep breath and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession as the Caddy swerved back onto the road. One bullet knocked out one of his taillights, and another cracked through the rear window, but his car didn’t falter.
“I see your shooting hasn’t improved,” I said.
Franklin belted past the first dilapidated buildings of Desert Heights, curving around the district toward the tower approach road. He was going to be a good minute ahead of us by the time we got there. We didn’t talk as the rotting tenements whizzed past. There wasn’t much to say. If we failed, the world we’d known would soon be gone. We would be trapped in Lost Angeles with our Torments—there could be no reincarnation if there was nowhere to go—until our final appointment with the Ammit. And
it would all be my fault. If I’d been smart enough to figure Franklin out sooner, this could have been avoided. Some detective I was. The body count on my tab was about to go from two to seven billion and two.
When we finally turned onto the short approach road, the red Caddy was parked sideways by the wall surrounding the moat, the door thrown open. Franklin stood beside the vehicle, one hand aloft like an Old Testament preacher. A section of the wall was sliding into the ground in apparent response. A glistening bridge rose from the moat. He glanced over his shoulder and leaped down before the bridge had fully reached his level.
Danny made to loose off a shot at Franklin’s head, the only part of him visible. I grabbed his arm. “Save your bullets until you get a clear shot.”
The bridge continued to ascend, bringing ever more of Franklin’s running form into view. He was well on his way to the tower, the box tucked under his arm. We wouldn’t catch him on foot, which left one option. The bridge clunked into place as I whizzed past Franklin’s car. We made it through the freshly opened passage with inches to spare, but the second my tires hit the bridge, I found out why Franklin had chosen to finish the journey at a run. Dank river water slicked the surface, and the car began to aquaplane. Either side of the road, which had no guardrail or barrier, was a twenty-foot drop into the waters of the Styx. If we slid too far, we would sink without trace, much like the world above. Danny barely seemed to notice our peril. He focused on our target, breathing loud and slow as he sought to steady his hand. I eased off on the gas, kept the tires pointed straight ahead, and hoped for the best.
Franklin had attained the base of the tower, a speck of an ant at the foot of a giant trouser leg. We were closing rapidly, but a queasy slide to the left accompanied our forward momentum. It was only a matter of whether we would reach the tower, where Franklin was pressing his hand to the wall, before the lateral motion took the car over the side. If God really did care, this would have been an ideal moment to intervene, but no divine hand split the skies to set us on a true course.
We were twenty feet away now, the front driver’s side tire kissing the edge of the bridge. The Black Tower filled the entire windscreen, making it feel like we were rushing into the void Franklin planned to unleash. Danny fired off two rounds as a door slid upward, revealing more blackness beyond. One shot pinged off the tower above Franklin’s head; the other caught him in the arm. He jerked but stayed on his feet. I could feel the vehicle begin to cant and knew we were seconds away from tipping over the edge. Franklin was still outside, the rising door as high as his waist now, his head half-turned toward the radiator grille bearing down on him. He ducked, aiming to roll under the gap.
I took one last gamble. I hauled the wheel to the left, trying to keep more tire on the road and buy us a few more seconds. The rear end of the car reacted to the sharp movement, slithering forward until we were sliding side-on, still moving at forty miles an hour. Danny grabbed the dashboard a split second before we hit with a bone-shuddering impact. I was vaguely aware of the bodywork thumping into Franklin’s body before we hit the rising door. With a sickening screech of warping metal, we came to an abrupt halt. I lurched to the right, Danny’s body absorbing the impact. Danny had nothing to cushion the blow. His body kept moving—at least until his head flew out the window and met the door pressed up against the side of the car. He rebounded and slumped forward, eyes rolling back into his head.
The engine ticked, smoke streaming from the hood, as I shakily patted myself down. I’d emerged unharmed, if jarred. Danny was out cold but still breathing. I had no choice but to leave him there and trust that the car would stay in place; the hood hung over the water, but the buckled tower door had firmly wedged into the trunk, providing an anchor point. I opened the door and scurried around the back of the vehicle, holding the second gun from the glove compartment. From inside the tower came a low, pain-filled groan.
I ducked under the door into darkness so complete, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Then there was light: white fluorescents embedded in the walls flickered to life to reveal a circular space hundreds of feet wide. The light quickly petered out into blackness above me. In its sphere of influence, I saw thousands of chambers carved into the walls, each one containing a Torment curled up like a diseased embryo. A million wings twitched in response to the stimulus, their whispers echoing and magnifying until it seemed like a single papery voice was emanating from the tower’s dark throat. Beyond the light, I sensed millions of blank faces swiveling to regard me with unseen eyes. A sense of immensity, of the interior rising into the inky blackness forever, assailed me. For a moment, it I felt as if I were looking down into a bottomless pit. I went down on one knee, slapping my palm on the ground to reassure myself that gravity was keeping me moored to it rather than sending me falling up.
When I felt secure enough to stand, I turned my attention to Franklin. He was dragging himself across the stone floor with one hand in the direction of an elevator door in the dead center of the tower, the other hand still clinging to the box. The steel doors sat in a low block of concrete, a call button affixed to one side. There was no shaft, no visible means of carrying passengers upward. I walked parallel to the trail of blood until I caught up with Franklin. One leg jutted out at an unnatural angle, dragging uselessly behind him. Bone stuck out of his left forearm, muscles bunching around the white protuberance as he tried to find enough purchase to drag his broken body closer to his distant goal. Thick blood oozed from his mouth, and his breath came in ragged whoops. He kept going, like a flattened cat looking for a quiet bush to die in. The man was determined, I had to give him that.
I kicked the box from his hand. He moaned and rolled onto his back. His plaid shirt clung wetly to a nasty indent in his chest. One eye was a blood-red globe; the other bulged and flickered as it tried to focus on my face.
“Why are you stopping me?” he said, every word choked with effort and accompanied by bloody spit bubbles. “You see humanity. The sin, the despair, the horror. Help me. We can make it stop.”
The madness came off him in waves now, as palpable as the stink of his broken insides. I was amazed that he’d been able to hide it so long. Now, with his goal so tantalizingly close, the bottle had come uncorked, and the rancid contents of his mind were foaming over. I felt a stab of pity for him and fought to suppress it. I’d come close to going nutty several times in Lost Angeles, but he was wrong about the world, wrong about people. Laureen had been spot-on: I’d spent so long making my living from strife, lying in the gutter and looking up into the city’s dark underbelly, that I’d forgotten there could still be good.
I thought of Danny, insensible in the car. Yes, he’d killed a man. Yes, he’d tortured Bruno. But there was love in him as well. Love for me. He’d punished himself for years, locked away in his chamber of solitude, as he tried to atone for his sin. He’d put his existence on the line to save billions of people he’d never met and would never meet. Enitan had done the same without question, regardless of the risk involved. There were bound to be others like them, others not beyond saving. Hell, maybe even I wasn’t as big an asshole as I’d thought. And we were the worst of the worst, the excrement of humanity. Yes, there was brutality and grief upstairs, and I’d seen more than my fair share while still alive. But there was also more beauty than one human could perceive in a thousand lifetimes. That far outweighed the evil people could do. It had to.
“You’ve got me all wrong,” I said. “Underneath this cynical exterior, I’m a big softy. At least, that’s what everybody keeps telling me. I think they’re giving me too much credit. But here’s the thing: there’s being world-weary, and there’s being a homicidal maniac. You’re sick of existence, I get it. But you don’t get to take everybody else with you.”
His chest heaved as though he were about to scream at me. Instead, he hacked up a thick clot of blood. The Torments rustled again in response. Franklin’s good eye snapped into focus, some of the intelligence returning. His gaze rove
d over my shoulder. I turned, half-expecting to see Jake thundering in through the door. The tower remained empty, yet Franklin smiled through scarlet teeth.
“Silly me,” he said. “I forgot. I don’t need your help.”
He screwed his eyes shut and arched his back. I thought he was about to expire, and I moved closer to make sure he couldn’t make a dash for the elevator when he resurrected. I’d shoot him as many times as I had to until Laureen and the Ammit arrived. Above me, something stirred—not a restless shift this time but the firm beat of wings on air. Too late I remembered that the Administrators could control the Torments too. He wasn’t dying at all. He was calling for help. My finger was tightening on the trigger to put a bullet in his skull when a dark blur thudded into my chest. I too became airborne, although briefly and without any aerodynamic grace. I landed on my back ten feet away, the impact reverberating along my spine. The gun fell from my hand and skittered away. As the Torment that had ambushed me hopped over to Franklin, I wheezed in a trickle of oxygen, rolled onto my belly, and began crawling the way I thought the gun had gone.
The Torment dug its talons deep into Franklin’s shoulders. He screamed as it lifted him. He was too heavy for the creature to bear him fully into the air—one foot dragged along the ground, the other flopped at the end of the shattered bone—but still they crept toward the elevator. Franklin wailed on, but it was a weird sound: rising and falling, shuddering and breaking. He was laughing at the same time, the crazy bastard. I scrambled faster, but I couldn’t see the gun. As I jerked my head around—looking for the weapon but too frantic to focus properly—another Torment swooped down and closed the claws on its feet around the globe. It hovered, as though listening to further instructions, and then flew toward the elevator. It dropped the box by the doors and began to circle overhead.
Franklin was now only ten feet from the elevator. I needed to put him down so the Torments would stop doing his bidding, but the gun was still nowhere to be seen, and I hadn’t recovered enough air to get to my feet and finish the job with my hands. It would have been nearly impossible anyway. I was at the dead center of the overhead Torment’s flight arc. I had no doubt it would come for me if I got too close to Franklin or the box. Franklin fell silent, and for a moment, I hoped he’d died of his injuries. But the Torment kept dragging him, its beating wings now so close that they brushed against the doors.
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