Marlow took hold of it again, ignoring the bad vibes that ebbed from it. He swung it to and fro, not the slightest noise coming from those old hinges. The door was heavier than it looked and it seemed to move in his grip, pulling like a dog on its leash.
“Holy crap,” said Pan. “That’s a Red Door.”
“An old one,” said Herc. “Think it still works?”
“I think it will now,” said Marlow, flexing his fingers. “I think this is exactly what Meridiana meant by stepping in between.”
Because that’s what the Red Doors did, wasn’t it? They were tunnels through space and time.
But only if you had the power to use them.
Marlow pulled the door shut and it closed with the sound of a muffled explosion.
Pan had walked to his side and she reached out, placing her fingers against the peeling wood. “Knock knock,” she said.
Marlow grabbed the handle and closed his eyes. He thought about the Red Door that led into the Nest. He thought about the corridor, the elevator. He could see it, in his mind’s eye, like he was standing right there. Pan pressed her shoulder against his and he could feel the heat of her, feel her fast, shallow breaths.
“Who’s there?” he said.
He turned the handle and opened the door.
IN THE BLOOD
The Red Door swung open into another world.
In front of Pan was the corridor she knew so well, but it was almost unrecognizable. The featureless concrete walls had been scorched black. Parts of the ceiling were now on the floor, and parts of the floor embedded in the ceiling.
None of the lights here worked but that didn’t matter because there had to have been a thousand sparks hanging in the air, glowing like frozen fireflies. Even though the damage was unbelievable, the sight of home after being in Meridiana’s cavern so long made her weak with nostalgia. She collapsed against the door frame, holding back the sobs that battered the inside of her throat.
“Holy crap,” said Herc, leaning past her. “It worked. Kind of.”
Had it? Pan couldn’t even remember asking for the power to pass behind or in between or whatever Meridiana had told her to do. It was all just a blur. But there was no denying that they had stopped time. Pan could see motes of dust suspended there in front of her, like she was staring into a photograph. Despite the devastation that Herc’s nuke had caused, it was utterly, utterly peaceful.
“That all the damage there is?” said Charlie, leaning past her. “From a nuke?”
“Yeah, but this is the Engine we’re talking about,” said Herc. “It’s clever. I don’t know for sure, but it might have channeled the force of the blast out into the Liminal.”
Out into the bone tunnels that ran for a thousand miles beneath the city, the foundations of Paris. No wonder it had done so much damage.
“It’s a bunker, right?” Herc went on. “They’re designed to cope with stuff like this. Besides, it would take more than a nuke to take out the Engine and the Red Door.”
“What about radiation?” Marlow asked, holding his hands in front of his crotch like it might make a difference. “That stuff is bad for you.”
At this, Herc just shrugged.
“Least of our—”
He was cut off by a roar from the cavern behind. It rode in on a shock wave powerful enough to shatter the windows of the shop, shards of glass raining down. Pan shook them from her hair, glancing back to make sure the slug thing wasn’t oozing its way after them. Herc hurried into the corridor of the Nest, grunting as he crossed the invisible boundary, that shortcut through the Liminal. He looked back at them from a few feet—and a few thousand miles—away.
“Anytime you like,” he said, scattering sparks with a wave of his hand. They still didn’t fall, just sailed through the air like they were in zero G.
Pan didn’t move. Something wasn’t right here. Marlow must have felt it, too, because he was chewing on his knuckles again, wearing a frown like a Klingon’s.
“What?” she said.
“How did you guys open the Red Door before?” he asked. “Like, back before Ostheim had the Engines?”
“We had to crack it from the inside,” said Pan. “Radioed in, got the okay from Ostheim. Why?”
“So he was the one who opened it? He programmed where it would take you?”
Pan nodded. It was another thing she’d never questioned, she realized—how was Ostheim able to program the door? And why could nobody else do it?
“But I opened it,” Marlow said. “Remember? Back when I ran away from the Nest. I just went up the elevator and grabbed the handle and opened it, right into Budapest.”
“So did I,” said Charlie. “When Mammon was there I opened it for him.”
They all looked at one another, the answer as clear as if it were etched into their foreheads.
“He opened it for us,” said Marlow, and she saw in his face that awful understanding that he’d been played. He looked at Charlie. “He needed me to find you and Patrick because he knew I’d get you into the Engine, and you’d let in Mammon.”
“And he knew that if he let Mammon inside, the Engines would be united and he’d be able to find them,” said Charlie, shaking his head. “Man, that guy…”
And Pan suddenly understood what was wrong, why she didn’t want to step through that door. Because what if that’s exactly what Ostheim wanted them to do? He’d been one step ahead of them all this time. Hell, he’d been a hundred steps ahead of them. Every single thing they’d done so far had been part of his plan—even now, bringing Claire with them into Meridiana’s hiding place. How stupid could they be? She’d been sitting right here, in this corridor, all the time they were fighting down in the Engine. She’d even admitted to seeing Ostheim. And they’d believed her when she’d said he walked right past her? He’d opened her up and put something rotten right in the heart of her, turned her into a weapon.
“Christ,” she said, pressing her fingers against her eyes until she saw fireworks.
They’d led Ostheim right to Meridiana the same way they’d led him to Mammon. Talk about serving him his enemies on a silver platter. What if this was what Ostheim wanted them to do next? What if by allowing them back into the Engine he was putting the last few pieces of his plan in place? She racked her brains trying to work out what he could be thinking, but there was nothing up there. She just wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.
Unless he was simply waiting down there for them, waiting to end them once and for all. Then there would be nothing at all left between him and the end of the world.
But this was Meridiana’s gift to them, wasn’t it? Going through the Red Door was her plan, not Ostheim’s.
Besides, what other options did they have?
Another howl from behind them, as if the slug thing was agreeing with her. The volume in the cavern was definitely quieting. Meridiana’s screams were growing weaker. How many of her clones had Ostheim’s obscene biological weapon already slaughtered?
Maybe it’s just easier to stay right here, she thought, the exhaustion solid lead in her veins. Just sit down and let it come for you. Better that than trying to fight Ostheim.
Better anything than trying to fight him.
“Come on,” said Herc. “If he’s down there, at least we’ll go out fighting.”
“Yeah,” said Marlow. “Because that’s way better than going out at a hundred years old on a private island while drinking piña coladas and getting jiggy with a supermodel.”
“Getting jiggy?” said Charlie, managing a weak smile. “Who are you, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?”
Marlow waved it away, taking a deep breath then stepping over the threshold. Charlie was next, actually taking a run and throwing himself through. Marlow caught him on the other side before he could trip on the rubble there.
Pan glanced back once more. Sorry, she said—to Meridiana, to Claire, to everyone else she’d dragged into this sorry mess—then she walked through the Red Door. She could feel
it unknitting her and then reassembling her on the other side. She pushed the door closed behind her, listening to the hammer fall of the bolts.
“Open it again,” said Marlow.
She did, too weary to ask why. The cold breeze nearly blew her off her feet, nothing out there but snow and a distant mountain. It was tempting to step out into it, to lose herself in the blizzard, to let the wind scatter her like so much snow. But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.
It was still a relief to know that the slug thing was now a long, long way away.
“Did you do that?” she asked Marlow. “The snow? Because I didn’t.”
“Not me,” he said.
She closed the door again, more confused than ever. Herc was already weaving his way past piles of debris and beneath sagging sections of ceiling toward the elevator. The Nest was quiet, like the whole place was cocooned in polystyrene chips. She could feel the Engine, though, calling to her the same way it always did.
“Well, we’re not hitching a ride for sure,” Herc said. She saw that the elevator shaft was a mess, the cable a hangman’s noose. Herc had already made his way to the access door, wrenching it open. The stairs beyond were damaged, but not so much that they couldn’t be used. Some of the lights still worked, thankfully. Herc started down them two at a time but she followed at a slower pace. She just didn’t have it in her to run.
“So,” said Marlow, out of breath by the first corner. “What did Meridiana say? That we can open a passage into a pocket of time?”
“Yeah,” said Charlie. “But she was also dismembering a cloned version of herself so she could use its intestines to build a machine to talk with the devil. I’d take her advice with a pinch of salt.”
There was something else here, Pan thought. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Just a feeling, an imperceptible juddering in the air. The only thing she could even remotely compare it to was being in a car when you needed to change down a gear, the sensation that everything is about to stall.
They twisted around another corner and she flexed her hands. Why hadn’t she asked Meridiana’s Engine for something else? For some proper powers? There was a good chance she was going into battle with Ostheim right now, armed with nothing more than the power to step between, and she still didn’t have a clue what that really meant.
She wasn’t sure how many flights they’d descended before they reached the first level—the bullpen. Herc was already there, opening the reinforced door. There was nothing beyond him, just a landscape of ruin that was end-of-the-world bad. There was no floor, only a pit that stretched down through the other levels, so dark it could have been bottomless. The ceiling, too, had been blown away, car-sized chunks of it frozen midfall. From here, in the dark, Pan could have been standing in the porthole of a spaceship staring out into the void.
“Jesus,” she said beneath her breath.
“You think it might have taken out the Engine, too?” said Charlie with a hopeful smile.
“More chance of Ostheim walking up here, giving us a box of chocolates, and apologizing for being such a pain in the ass,” said Herc. “Come on.”
They tramped down in silence, all of them waiting to see one of Ostheim’s serpent limbs curl around the stairwell, his grinning maw wide enough to swallow them all whole. Pan’s legs were just about ready to fall off by the time they dropped into the cold, damp tomb that marked the end of the line. Herc did the honors again, pulling open the access door into the vault. It looked just as she remembered it, untouched by the explosion.
The huge metal door was still open.
They crossed the room in a huddle—the others the only thing keeping Pan upright. They reached the door and Pan peered through it. The Engine sat there in perfect stillness, nothing like the last time she had been here. A section of it was still on fire—or at least it would have been, if time was moving—the smoke frozen into a wall that looked as solid as stone. Other parts had been crushed by building-sized pieces of the ceiling, stalactites rammed into the infernal mechanisms like javelins. The black pool was a wreck from the battle that had raged here, only half full.
There was no sign of Ostheim.
“Looks like it’s feeling pretty sorry for itself,” said Marlow, his words fluttering out into the vast space where they were swallowed whole.
“That’s good,” said Herc.
“It’s weak,” Pan added. She could feel the Engine’s call, but it swam quietly in her veins. She scratched at her arms, her nails catching on the scars and scrapes there, so many she could have been a patchwork doll. “It doesn’t roar.”
It doesn’t roar? Where had that come from, the words pinging out of some subconscious part of her.
“Where’s Ostheim?” asked Charlie.
Nobody had an answer, but again there were words in her head.
“He’s here, but not here,” she said, saying them out loud.
“He is caught outside of time,” Marlow added with a shrug. “He doesn’t know we’re inside the Engine.”
Herc was eyeing them both suspiciously. “You wanna tell me how you know that?”
“No,” said Pan, barging past him and walking down the steps. The Engine seemed to watch her, seemed to recoil from her. And it was right to be afraid, because it was weak. The damage that Charlie had done with his fire, plus the power of the nuke, had put a pretty big dent in its capabilities. And it couldn’t even repair itself because Ostheim had brought both of the Engines together.
A smile broke out across her face before she could stop it. This wasn’t part of Ostheim’s plan. No way. This broken moment of time, right here and right now, was where they pulled the machine to pieces. There was absolutely nothing that he could do about it.
“I’m going to kill you,” she told it as she stumbled onto the wreckage that had made up the platform. There were droplets of black water here, skewered by time as they tried to wriggle their way back into the pool. She stamped on them, seeing them explode into pieces that bobbed through the air. “I’m going to take you apart piece by piece,” she said to the ocean of parts that lay before her. “And I’m going to take my time, you asshole. Hear me? I’m going to make it hurt.”
Because that’s what Meridiana had given them, she understood. She’d given them time. Six hundred and sixty-six hours, nearly twenty-eight days before the demons came for her.
It was enough.
“Where do we even start?” said Marlow.
She saw it in her mind’s eye, a section of the Engine where something dark pulsed—something huge and knotted and grotesque. Marlow put a hand to his head as if he were a secret service agent listening to something through an earpiece. He turned to her, a ghost of a smile dancing on his lips.
“The middle,” they said together.
They were going to rip out the Engine’s cold, dead heart.
Something bubbled up inside her, something that seemed so alien, so weird, that it took her a moment to work out what it was.
Laughter.
She slapped a hand to her mouth hard enough to make her lips sting, but it still came. Marlow cocked his head, looking at her like she was suddenly wearing clown makeup.
“Pan’s finally lost it,” he said, and it just made her laugh harder, her stomach cramping with it. She doubled over, her tears flying. It didn’t seem possible that after all this time—all those years fighting and killing and running—they were finally on the last straight. The end was in sight. Not that her end would be a pleasant one, of course. But at least it would be over. At least they would have won.
She felt a hand on her back, straightened to find Marlow right next to her. He was laughing, too, like it was contagious. And it was, wasn’t it? Hope. It had to be the most contagious thing in the world. He pulled her close and she let him, pushing her head into his neck. She could feel the laughter in his chest, something good living there inside him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and he tightened his over her shoulders.
For an insta
nt—just one, over in a single, stuttering heartbeat—she wondered where she might have been now if she’d never left home that night, if she’d never gone to Christoph’s apartment. No cops, no Herc, no Engine. Where would she be now, and who with? Marlow? The two of them could have easily crossed paths somewhere in the city, and would they have looked twice at each other? Well, Marlow would have checked her out, no doubt, but would she seriously have considered him? He was immature, and too young, and annoying—like, really annoying. But he had a good heart. There was no doubt about that. He had a good heart, and right now it was pumping out choked, nasal guffaws that seemed utterly ridiculous in this place.
Pull yourself together, Pan, she told herself. But she still didn’t let go, and then Charlie was there, wrapping them both in his arms.
“Come on, Herc,” he said. “Don’t be a wallflower.”
Herc scooped them all up in a bear hug, his stubbled cheek scratching her face, his arms so strong she felt her back creak. It was painful, but when he finally let go she didn’t want him to, she felt too light, ready to just float away. Herc stood back, his eyes glistening.
“You really are a bunch of soppy losers,” he said, almost choking on the words. “Now come on, we gonna do this or what?”
She wasn’t even sure how she knew what to do, but she did. She vaulted down from the lopsided edge of the crumbling platform, the Engine a forest of metal parts before her. How many pieces were there? Billions upon billions of them. They, too, were stuck in time but she could feel their vibrations, a soft buzz as they struggled to pull free.
She walked into it, the parts on either side of her as big as trees. Branches tipped with blades and cogs and levers and springs and switches—each smaller than the one it was attached to until they were too tiny for her to see. She felt them against her skin as she pushed into the darkness, like insect bites.
“Know where you’re going?” said Marlow behind her.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”
She could see it in her mind’s eye as if she’d known it all her life. Out there, in the very heart of the Engine—an actual heart. She’d never seen it. She’d never even heard about it, but it was still there.
Hellfighters Page 25
