by Ben Zackheim
The lamps on the wall were never-ending. Their orange glow was welcoming, like beacons leading me to safety.
I also remember thinking it couldn’t be a hall. I was moving up and down hills. I was being carried. What hallway went on for miles? What hallway had hills?
My first step back to consciousness started with a single point of light. It peeked down at me from high above.
It was hard to make sense of it, until I dug out my flashlight and aimed it around the space.
I was in a silo. The walls were made of something colorful. I couldn’t make out what, though. Some kind of wall covering, maybe? I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was distracted by the way the walls rose in a perfect circle around me. I pointed my beam straight up. It didn’t reach the ceiling. Wherever I’d been taken, it must have been underground because there weren’t any structures this tall in the whole village.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a staircase. It wrapped around the perimeter, leading past a cluster of paintings. The works of art included portraits and landscapes. But in the middle of the idyllic gems, sat a scene of horror. It reminded me of the art I’d seen in Valhalla.
Screaming victims of random slaughter at the hands of demons.
Writhing pain.
Brooks of blood.
The painting hung right next to a golden-framed portrait of a pretty little girl holding a doll, smiling.
It takes a lot to give me chills. But the energy in that room was charged with something powerful — something evil.
And something else. Something peaceful. Something good, maybe.
Double doors opened with a cracking slam. White light flowed into the room and showed it for what it was.
A library.
It took a second for my eyes to adjust, but when they did I had a hard time keeping my attention on the doors. Whoever had just opened them wasn’t messing around. They’d practically cracked from the force of that entrance.
“Arkwright!” Ronin yelled at me.
I sighed and lowered my Glocks. “Hey, former-boss-whose-scary-voice-doesn’t-work-anymore. Where the hell are we?” The rounded walls were actually bookshelves. The winding staircase had about a dozen landing platforms where the paintings hung. Otherwise, I was surrounded by books.
“Where do you think?”
“Your house. You live in The Door?”
“No, the store is a front for our Hall of Protection.”
“A hallway of condoms, huh?”
“One, you’re not funny. Two, why didn’t you do what I told you to do?”
“One, because doing what you want me to do is usually a stupid idea. Two, what are you talking about?”
“I told you to follow me, Arkwright!”
“First, I didn’t hear you. I was kind of busy distracting thousands of demons from killing you. Two, I didn’t want to follow you. I don’t trust you. Three, you ran off with your arms flailing all over the place. It didn’t give me a ton of confidence in your chances.”
She crossed her arms and pouted. “Fine. You’re lucky I came back for you.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,” I said, examining the room.
“Follow me. We need to get the spear and get out of here.”
“Where’s Lucas?” I asked as I followed her up the spiral staircase.
“Who cares?”
“We need him, Ronin. He’s the only one who can read the scroll pieces.”
“In case you forgot, we’re trying to save my sister from Loki. Which brings me to a conversation that actually matters. Tell me about the dream you mentioned.”
“The spear dream? Why?”
“Humor me.”
I met her glare with one of my own and made a decision.
“Okay, I’ll make you a deal. I tell you the dream, and you promise me you’ll owe me an answer. Of my choosing.” Ronin clearly knew a crap-ton of things I needed to know. I’d use all the leverage I could get to extract every poisonous morsel from her head.
She nodded once. “Agreed. Speak.”
“It was Odin,” I said. I tried to remember the sequence of events, but dreams have a dodgy way of squirming free. “He was hanging from a cliff. I remember he was missing fingers. He was burned.”
“Burned by what?”
The images of the world in flames filled my mind’s eye. “It was the end of the world.”
“Been there. Done that.”
“Not this end. Another end. One from long ago. Or maybe one still coming. He held the spear in one of his hands. Instead of trying to crawl to safety, he threw it at me. Hit me too. Right in the stomach. The blood from my wound. It did something. I can’t remember what, though.” The dream started to escape my conscious mind. It was working against me, denying me the knowledge I needed to wrap up a piece of the puzzle.
What had the blood done that was so special?
But the more I grabbed for the memory, the fainter it became.
“Let it go,” Ronin said. She turned and walked up the steps, three-at-a-time. “It’ll come to you if you stop forcing it. Thanks for sharing. Interesting.”
I followed her. Her wise words surprised me. Sure, she always surprised me, but usually in predictable, unpleasant ways.
She leaned on a door at the top of the stairwell. It resisted her. She leaned harder and the searing sound of scraping wood filled the room with a piercing echo. I took in the view from the top and marveled at the size of the place.
I turned to find Ronin dusting off her jeans, standing by an open door. “Thanks for the help. You’re a real gentleman.”
“You had it under control. What is this room anyway?”
“It was my father’s man cave.”
“I like your father.”
“He would have hated you.”
“Is he dead?”
“I sure hope so.”
She walked into the dark room waiting for us. I followed. After pulling out my trusty 9mm sidekicks, of course.
Ronin wove around the couch, chairs and side tables, pointing her flashlight on the opposite side of the man den. She seemed focused on a specific door. The thing was about twelve feet high and only two feet wide. The gold colored ornamentation was faded and dusty, but it was bright enough to make an impression.
She stuck the flashlight in her mouth and used both hands to yank the doors open wide.
The den filled with dusty air from the massive dining hall.
I aimed my flashlight at the long, thin table running down the length of the room. Dust mites danced around the bright beam like revelers at the end of the world.
“Is this where you were tested by your parents every night?” I asked Ronin.
She stopped short. I didn’t mean for the question to upset her, but I could tell it had. “My sister told you about the family tests, did she?”
“She said your parents grilled you about your daily lessons at dinner. Doesn’t sound good for the digestion.”
She allowed a small laugh to escape into the apocalypse. A real laugh. One I’d never heard from her before. Then she put on the angry face again and turned away.
She stopped at the other end of the table and slid a few chairs out of the way. She reached underneath the table and felt around for something.
A loud click echoed through the room.
She’d found what she was looking for.
Ronin walked on the other side of the table from me. “Feel for a latch,” she said. “It should be on that side of the table somewhere.” Again, she bent over and patted her hands around. I felt a small rod of cold metal.
“Found it.”
“Do not pull on it yet,” Ronin said. “On the count of three pull it toward you and then step back. And make it a big step.”
“What’s going on, Ronin?”
“Three!” she yelled and stepped back. I pulled on the latch and did what I was told.
Good thing, too.
The entire table started to rise into the air.
It took me a moment to realize it was only one side of the table that was going up. The other side slid into a long hole in the floor, and out of sight.
The table was actually a trap door.
When the thirty foot piece of furniture came to a stop it loomed over us at a perfect vertical, revealing another stairwell that shot straight as an arrow down into darkness.
“Impressive,” I said to Ronin who looked at the vision in front of her like she’d just eaten a lemon.
“If it isn’t impressive, why do it? That was my family.”
She hopped down onto the stairs and turned her beams on the darkness looming below.
“Any more stairwells on this tour?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
I got the feeling she was not going to play ‘Banter-Time with Kane’ anytime soon.
Chapter 21
We’d taken the first dozen steps down when we heard a noise from the dining room we’d left behind.
Ronin shushed me at the same time I shushed her.
We aimed our weapons at the long hole above us. She focused on the north side, while I spotted the south.
Footsteps scraped closer. I stepped up two stairs and homed in on the noise as best I could.
I saw his nose stick over the edge first. Then Lucas’ beady eyes squinted into the light of my high beams.
“Welcome to the party, bookworm,” I said. “Where have you been?”
“Where have I been? Where have you been, Timmy?”
I smiled. “It’s the best I could do. I swapped to the street below.”
“How did you escape?”
“The sceptre,” Ronin answered for me. She noticed my surprise. “I saw the whole thing, Arkwright. What are you, the god of demons now?”
Lucas caught up with me on the stairwell. “What happened?”
“The sceptre has an effect on the demons.”
Ronin chuckled. “An effect. Is that what you call it when you turn a swarm of furious demons hungry for man meat into sniveling bootlickers?”
Lucas put brought his fingers to his chin. “Hm. The sceptre is a powerful relic. But controlling a demon army is news to me.”
“Can we get going now?” Ronin asked, hands on hips. “Everyone all caught up? You two want to hug or anything? I’ll wait.”
Lucas walked ahead of me. “Where are we going?”
I slowed my pace so I didn’t step on the demon. “Me and Ronin are taking a walk down Memory Lane.”
He sniffed the air and shook his head, disgusted. “Is that what you call these stairs to hell?”
“What do you smell, beagle nose?” Ronin asked.
Lucas ignored her and addressed me as he walked down the steps. “I advise you to get the sceptre out again, sir. I smell demons.”
Ronin’s light disappeared around a corner so I knew she’d reached the bottom.
“Ronin, don’t get too far ahead.”
“I’m not your child, Kane.”
“We’re stronger together.”
Lucas scoffed at that. “Are we?” he mumbled.
“I heard that!” Ronin yelled.
“You were meant to hear that!” the demon yelled back. “She’s unpredictable, sir. She’s dangerous. She shoots first and doesn’t even bother asking questions later. She’s out of order in every way possible.”
We caught up to Ronin, whose angry expression looked like an excitable floating specter in the jerky glow of flashlights.
“Unpredictable times call for… unpredictable people,” I said, not believing a word of what I’d just said. Keeping the peace was burning a lot of fucking calories.
“If you two are done, we’re here.” Ronin turned to a door and shook the handle. Her sigh meant she’d hoped we could just walk in. Since we couldn’t, she shot the doorknob.
“SEE?” Lucas yelled, gesturing to the door like it was Exhibit A.
It was my turn to yell. “Stop shooting things, Ronin!”
She offered up another frown and pushed the busted door wide open. Its long, loud creak was the best ‘Shut up’ she could have pulled off. She marched into the room and made a straight line for the other side of a small, low room.
Another gunshot rang from the darkness ahead.
I took a deep breath and tried to find some calm somewhere inside me. Lucas walked beside me, his long nose trembling with fury.
Ronin sat on a bench, and put her head in her hands.
Above her, bolted to the stone wall, was a long wooden box. The box once enjoyed an ornate cover — which now dangled from splintered oak and aged brass. The red velvet interior had an impression in it the shape of a spear.
But there was no spear.
It was gone.
“Where would he put it?” she mumbled to herself.
“Where would who put it?” I asked. “Your father?”
“He took a vow to keep it in the house,” she said to herself. “It has to be here somewhere. If he broke the vow… No, he’d never do that. He was a coward.”
My memory was filled with holes. Hell, I couldn’t remember if I had a middle name. But I remembered something Rebel had told me about her firecracker sister. Ronin always shot from the hip, and never bothered to dig deeper. Lucas had said exactly the same thing just moments before.
I had an idea. It was worth a try.
“What are you doing?” Ronin asked, as I reached for the velvet bedding in the box. I dug my fingers into one corner, got some traction, and tore the cloth from one end to the other.
The dusty fabric dropped to the floor. Lucas and Ronin said, “Holy shit,” at the same time.
There was another door hidden behind the velvet.
Ronin’s head dipped and she glanced up at me. She knew what the lesson of the moment was. “Because I never dig deeper,” she said, like a young girl learning a lesson from her father all over again.
She ran her hand over the steel frame of the second door. The silver surface had no handle. There were no visible hinges. It was just a flat, thick slab running across the wall. But one dimple on the right side, a concave impression about the size of a thimble, told us we were looking at a cover of some kind.
Once her finger touched the groove, she sighed. She pulled out a knife and sliced the tip of her thumb, and placed it on the steel. Small drops of blood dripped down the surface — but only for a moment. Then the dark liquid was sucked into the door. The steel plate fell off the wall, almost crushing Ronin’s feet under it.
A spear was placed snugly in a fabric crease. Its long shape made a perfect straight line. The black iron tip was sharp as one of Rebel’s fingernails.
Ronin stuck her thumb in her mouth. “Old family tradithin.”
“It’s a family tradition to bleed on closed doors?” I asked.
She removed the thumb from her mouth and wrapped it in her shirt, applying pressure. “That’s one way of looking at it. It’s a spell to keep our treasures in the family’s hands. I should have known the wood case was a front. But father was right about me. He was an asshole, but even assholes can be right sometimes.”
“I feel like cracking a joke right now,” I said.
“Not a good time,” she shot back as she reached for the spear.
“Don’t touch it!” Lucas said. He grabbed her wrist and hung from it to stop her from removing the relic.
“What are you doing, phallic face?”
“I’m trying to help you! Inspect it first, miss. Please.”
She rolled her eyes and leaned closer to the spear. I was already nose-to-spear. It wasn’t anything too special. Not at first glance. Its iron tip had seen better days. It was sharp, but heavily chipped. Probably from years of killing people and monsters and gods. That’ll wear anything down.
But after a moment of Ronin and I passing each other as we moved left and right, inspecting every detail, I noticed something.
“That wasn’t there a second ago,” I said. I pointed to a marking on the wood. It was near the bottom of
the spear.
“A rune,” Ronin said to herself. “Lucas?”
“Lift me up.” I brought him up to our eye level. He squinted.
“It’s not a rune I’ve ever seen. Do you smell that?”
“You demons love your smells,” Ronin said. She grabbed the spear. “No, I don’t…” She stopped talking at the exact moment my nose picked up a faint burning scent.
“No!” Ronin yelled as the spear burst into flames.
Chapter 22
I pulled off my jacket and tried to smother the blaze but the heat was too intense.
I had to back off and join the other two. All we could do was watch it burn. When the heat was bearable, I moved slowly toward the wall.
“It must have been some kind of spell,” Lucas said.
“Or it was treated with a pyrophoric compound,” I said. “Catches fire when exposed to oxygen.”
“That was not the real spear,” Ronin said. Her tone was strong, confident. I didn’t know if she was right or wrong, but I knew she thought she was right. “There’s no way my family would destroy the spear after our own blood frees the relic. No way.”
She moved her eyes away from the charred wall and down to the floor. She kicked the dust, gently at first. But soon she was kicking at the debris, almost desperately.
Lucas and I glanced at each other and let her do her thing.
Her frantic movement stopped suddenly. She leaned over and picked something out of the ashes.
She turned to us and held out her hand. Her fingers pinched a small tan object tightly. So tight that the flesh on her fingertips was white as a ghost. She held onto it as if she were afraid it would fly away, which was probably a justified fear, considering the current circumstances. Magic and spells and danger were everywhere in that house.
“What is this thing?” she asked us. The pleading in her voice exposed her vulnerability. She was asking for help. She saw her mission slipping away, and she was hoping this tiny artifact was somehow the path back to her bull run toward the prize at the end of the game.
I realized at that moment Ronin really did want to find her sister. And not for some sinister reason. At least, not only for a sinister reason.
Lucas and I stepped closer. I took one look at the object in her hand up close, and I knew she had, indeed, managed to get us back on track.