Detonation Boulevard

by Craig Schaefer

  * * *

  A pair of guards circled the nose of a delivery truck, making their rounds. They walked a spiderweb path through the encampment, following twists and turns drilled into them by endless routine. They had the easy gait and tired eyes of men who were trained for battle but expected boredom.

  A playing card whistled through the shadows like a razor blade. The guard on the left took it right between the eyes as it carved through flesh and bone, jutting from his forehead and drooling raspberry down the curve of his nose. He fell to his knees, then crashed face-first onto the sand. The other scrambled for his rifle, swinging it up, hunting for a target as he drew a breath to shout—and then Marie stepped up behind him and grabbed a fistful of his hair. Her sickle carved his throat from ear to ear and she kicked his legs out from under him, leaving him to choke on his own blood as he twitched and died at his partner’s side.

  * * *

  On the far side of the camp, near the translucent prison cell, another pair of guards walked with long, confident strides. One had a radio on his hip, silent save for the occasional burst of raw static. They rounded a bend, circling around one of the geodesic-dome tents, and stumbled to a surprised halt.

  Nessa and Hedy stood in the path before them, back to back, and the air around them shimmered like a heat mirage. They each extended one graceful arm, perfectly mirroring one another, and turned their open palms toward the canopy of desert stars.

  Then they both leaned in, as one, and blew a kiss.

  A gust of icy wind turned opaque, glittering, as it washed over the men. One froze where he stood, shuddering like he’d grabbed hold of a high-voltage cable. The other turned and tried to run. He made it three steps before he froze, too, his flesh and bones betraying him.

  When the wind dissolved and the glitter faded to starlight, two green-glass statues in the shape of men stood upon the sandy path.

  * * *

  The remnants of a bologna sandwich dangled limp from Carolyn’s mouth as she stared in looming surprise. She rose from her cot and walked to the front of her cell.

  Nessa, Marie, Hedy, and Daniel converged on the doorway as one.

  “About time you people got off your asses,” she said, wolfing down the last of her sandwich. She abandoned the apple on the cot behind her, untouched.

  Daniel leaned in, studying the electronic keypad next to the cell door. “Nice to see you too, Carolyn. And you’re welcome. One second, let me figure out how to crack this thing.”

  “The code is three-nine-two-six. Dumbasses punched it in right in front of me. You’re welcome.” Carolyn looked to the others. “Okay, so. The Witch, the Knight, and…a plus-one?”

  Nessa put a proud arm around Hedy’s shoulders.

  “My daughter,” she said.

  The keypad bleeped as Daniel typed in the code. The door whirred like an airlock, pneumatic seals hissing.

  “Where is everyone?” Marie asked. She gestured to the silent camp at her back. The translucent door slid open and Carolyn stepped out, stretched, and took a deep breath of fresh air.

  “Possibly hunting for you. Ezra pulled everybody out except for a skeleton crew about an hour ago. He knows you’re coming, by the way, so we need to move fast.”

  “He might reasonably assume it,” Nessa said, “but he can’t know for certain. We parted ways in the middle of a raging inferno; he doesn’t even know if we’re dead or alive.”

  “Oh, he knows. I’ve narced you out twice now. By accident.”

  Nessa’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”

  “I go into a fugue state on a regular basis, and while I’m under, I write about the other characters in the first story, sometimes their past lives, sometimes what they’re up to right now.” Carolyn pointed to the laptop in her cell, the screen flooded with black text on eggshell white. “It’s kind of my thing, as the Scribe. Can’t help it. Not that I usually mind. I mean, that’s where ninety percent of my book ideas come from. Anyway, Ezra had me cooped up and writing so he could keep tabs on all of us.”

  “What does he know?” Nessa asked. “Exactly what does he know?”

  “Only that you and your girlfriend are coming to bust me out. Some of my fugue dumps are more detailed than others. He doesn’t know you brought company. We need to hurry, but we can’t leave just yet. Did he tell you about Deep Six? And the cathedral down on the ocean bed?”

  “He showed us,” Marie said.

  “Then you know we need to get that door jimmied open.”

  “What’s inside?”

  “No clue,” Carolyn said. “Tell you what I do know: it’s something very big, very old, and I very much don’t want that asshole Ezra to get his hands on it.”

  “Whose side is he on?” Nessa asked.

  “He’s on Ezra’s side. He’s scared out of his mind—I mean, to be fair, finding out that you’re destined by fate to be tortured, mutilated, and rot in a prison cell would do that to most men. He’s grabbing at straws, making deals with anyone who might offer him a way out, and loyalty is not one of his defining qualities. Did you see that bodyguard of his?”

  “Rosales?” Nessa pointed to her face. “With the turquoise eyes?”

  “That’s the one. I only know one way to get a set of peepers like those, and it’s not from winning a good citizenship award. She acts like she works for him, but I’m not entirely sure that’s the right way around.”

  Marie watched the camp. Her line of sight jumped from dome to dome, the motionless flaps. Silence, beyond the rustling of the night wind and the distant chug of an electrical generator.

  “This is a trap,” she said.

  All eyes were on her. She turned to the shore and pointed to the glass walkway and the disk that stood on steel struts over the water.

  “Why leave to look for us, when he knows we’re on our way? Carolyn is the perfect bait and he left her dangling right here. It’s a big, open desert, and no matter how many men Ezra has with him, there’s no chance he could watch every angle of approach. For that matter, we drove right in on the access road. The most obvious route, but no guards. Didn’t see Ezra’s people coming or going. Then there’s the portal. Why leave it open? We know those things draw a ton of electrical power, not to mention they’re ridiculously dangerous. There isn’t even a single technician keeping an eye on it.”

  Nessa rubbed her chin, nodding slowly. “Let’s look at it from Ezra’s perspective. What does he want most?”

  “Whatever is inside that cathedral,” Marie said.

  “And he told us that he thinks the door is keyed to…us, collectively, as the characters of the first story. And considering what we glimpsed out in those ocean depths, there’s no guarantee that what waits within the cathedral walls is friendly. Or sane.”

  “Safer to have us do all the work,” Marie said. “So he pulls back, leaving a few token guards to put up a fight. We save Carolyn, we go down to open the doors for him—”

  “And he swoops in to pluck the prize from our hands. Clever. But he doesn’t know we brought our own army.” Nessa put her hand on Hedy’s shoulder. “Go back up the bluff, rally the others, and spread a net. Keep to the shadows. When Ezra and his friends arrive, we’ll draw their attention. When we do, hit them from behind with everything you’ve got.”

  Hedy’s lips pursed, tight. “I should be with you.”

  “You should be leading your coven, Hedy. I didn’t come to steal your title or your responsibilities. They need your direction. Keep watch, hold the line, and if anyone tries to stop us, rain down hell on their foolish little heads. We won’t be long.”

  Hedy put her hand over Nessa’s and squeezed. Then she darted off. She skirted around a dome and slipped away into the dark. Nessa looked to Marie.

  “Ezra thinks that God has a secret. And it’s been locked away, down in that ocean cathedral, for a very long time.”

  “Do you think it’s Wisdom’s Grave?” Marie asked.

  “Perhaps. Whatever it is, it belongs in our hands, not E
zra’s. I have a philosophy when it comes to secrets. They belong to me. All of them.”

  Nessa flashed a cold and eager smile.

  “So. Shall we blaspheme?”

  Forty-Nine

  The glass dock rattled under their footsteps as they left the beach and walked out onto the lake. The midnight waters roiled below, as if offering a glimpse of terrors to come.

  Then they stepped through the portal, one by one, and emerged into the depths of an alien ocean.

  Beyond the towering curve of the glass wall, out in the dark, beacons strobed and cast a baleful yellow glow. And just past the beacons, caught in freeze-frame flickers of light, a vast and slithering titan hungered for prey it couldn’t reach.

  Carolyn led the way through an open bulkhead and down twisting metallic corridors painted Halloween orange and nightingale blue. Stenciled signs pointed the way in a forgotten language, with letters drawn in barbed lines and spirals. More bulkheads, these sealed shut and barred with lengths of reddish, coppery chain, lined a tunnel that ended at a circular platform.

  “Our next stop is the bottom of the ocean,” Carolyn said. “Ezra thought that if he got enough of us together in one place, the cathedral doors would just pop open. So, we’ll see.”

  “Has he been able to find any of the others?” Nessa asked.

  “A few. The Drifter died a couple of years ago in Nova Scotia, best as I can tell. The Psychopomp is working as an actress in LA. Just did her first sitcom pilot. Little too high-profile to snatch right now. The Killer is out in Baton Rouge, carving up newlyweds; Ezra wasn’t keen on trying to collect that one. Nobody has any idea who or where the Paladin is, and the Enemy—”

  “Isn’t going to help,” Daniel said.

  Carolyn hauled on a lever. A klaxon sounded as a wire-frame door rattled down, sealing them in a circular cage. The lift groaned. Rust fell in tiny flakes, a scarlet rain, as the platform began to descend.

  “Got that right,” she said.

  Marie had been silent for a while. Flicking glances at Carolyn, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Finally, she found her voice again.

  “Ms. Saunders—”

  “Carolyn.”

  “Carolyn.” Marie squeezed her hands together. “I’m a really big fan. Your books changed my life.”

  Carolyn stared at the wire cage door and the slow procession of bulkhead-lined corridors on the other side as the lift grumbled its way downward.

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “Swords Against Madness is my favorite book. Like, not just out of yours, it’s my favorite book of all time.”

  “Really?”

  Marie nodded, fast. “It’s amazing. It made me want to be a knight. It showed me that I could be one. I guess it really set me on the path to becoming who I am today.”

  “Damn.” Carolyn turned, glancing back over her shoulder. “Narcissist much?”

  Marie blinked at her.

  “Remember what I said? I go into fugues. See shit that happened in other worlds.” Carolyn turned away again. “That book is about you. Your girlfriend over there was the witch-queen of the Invalsi. I mean, I made some of it up, like the parts that made you look cool, but come on. I thought I had an ego.”

  “Hey, Carolyn?” Daniel leaned back against the cage and crossed his arms. “Could you try not to be an asshole?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I just spent three days peeing in a prison cell with see-through walls. They fed me nothing but bologna sandwiches and milk. I might not be in the best of moods right now.” She held out one frail arm. Her hand trembled until she dropped it to her side. “Also, I’m going through alcohol withdrawal at the moment. My head is pounding like a five-tequila hangover, and I didn’t get any goddamn tequila. Detox sucks.”

  “Probably long overdue.”

  “Let’s see you try it,” she snapped.

  Nessa put her hand on the small of Marie’s back and leaned in close.

  “Never meet your heroes,” she said.

  The lift slowed, coasting down—then jolted to a bone-rattling stop. The wire cage rolled open.

  The chamber beyond the lift was vast, Times Square vast, with a rough stone floor the color of yellowed fossil. The engineers of Deep Six had built their base upon the floor of the endless ocean, forging a cage of steely walls around the ancient cathedral and pumping out the water until nothing but damp rock and twists of bleached, skeletal coral remained. The clammy air smelled of salt and old, wet rope.

  Six geodesic tents formed a corridor beyond the lift gate, three on each side. Marie lifted an olive plastic flap and peeked inside. Scientific equipment—microscopes, seismographs, devices whose purpose she couldn’t begin to guess at—lined folding tables, near a jumble of tripods and open cases stuffed with with video cameras and battery packs. A second tent housed more of the same.

  The third stole her breath.

  Carlo Sosa’s “space suit” stood upon a raised circle of steel, hoisted upright by a makeshift derrick. At first, she could see how the people who found it assumed he was some kind of rogue astronaut. The suit was dirty-white, puffy, bulked up with pads and hoses that snaked in and out of the fabric like textured eel skin. The helmet, built into the suit, sported a faceplate of cold onyx. Fat curving tubes bristled from the shoulders like the exhaust pipes on a muscle car. A machine built for power and speed.

  Hypnotized, her fingers brushed the padded arm. The suit stood peeled open and unbuckled, ready for a pilot. She felt the unyielding metal beneath, the hard and brutal angles. In her mind’s eye she strode down a burning city street, a neon-green display on the visor painting threats and targets.

  “I know this suit,” she murmured. She looked back at Carolyn. “Where did Carlo get this?”

  “Stole it. Near as I can tell, he was working for another world’s incarnation of Ezra Talon. Probably the same one who sent our Ezra that little care package full of blueprints, back in the seventies. Carlo found out that Talon’s eggheads were working on dimension-jump technology, so he posed as a mechanic, got a job, and took the prototype for a joyride. Dumbass. Us Scribes are supposed to write about adventures, not go on them. Always ends badly.”

  “But who was that world’s Ezra building it for?”

  Carolyn shrugged. “Probably himself, considering how obsessive his incarnations are about escaping their fate. Don’t know. Can we keep moving? I’d like to get out of here before anything kills me.”

  Standing lights, spread throughout the seabed cavern on tripods, cast harsh spotlights upon the towering cathedral. The four stood there, side by side, consumed by its shadow. Glimpsing it on the grainy security monitors, up above, was nothing compared to seeing the real thing. It hadn’t been built so much as grown, one organic monument of gnarled jade stone. Statues of faceless angels perched in the eaves, leaning out to blow horns with twisted tubes and valves no human hands could command. And down below, upon the doors, hundreds of carved eyes bristled upon a relief of unfurled wings. The creature sculpted into the door, split down the middle by an almost invisible seam, was a nightmare of paradise. Graceful, majestic, and cold, its face bore vestigial slits for eyes and a nose as if its creator had only carved them as an afterthought. One hand gripped a sword ridged with sculpted flames. The other, an empty chalice.

  The angel quivered, and for a moment Marie thought it might come to life, peeling itself from the door as green stone turned to terrible flesh. She realized it was just the door itself, trembling on concealed hinges in response to their approach. Then it fell still once more.

  “So much for the ‘it’ll just open’ theory,” Carolyn said. “Any suggestions?”

  Behind them, the lift hummed down. They turned as the wire cage rattled open. The tip of Ezra’s cane rapped light upon the damp rock as he approached, Rosales at his side. A heavy revolver rode in her shoulder holster, barely concealed by a linen blazer, but she didn’t reach for it. Yet. Marie’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her sickle.

  “Knife,
” Nessa murmured. Marie slipped her free hand into the mirror bag, dangling invisible at her side, and palmed Nessa’s quill knife. She passed it over without a word.

  Ezra and Rosales came to a stop, side by side, facing them. Two lines of battle, drawn across the cavern floor.

  “My apologies for deceiving you,” Ezra said. “I really did mean well. I really do.”

  “Fuck your apology,” Carolyn said.

  “You of all people should understand what I’m doing here, Carolyn. You’re the chronicler of all our shared misfortunes. How many times have you written the story of our downfalls and miseries?”

  “You aren’t helping,” she said.

  “I’m trying to break this damned cycle. To end it. Isn’t that what you all want? Isn’t any sacrifice worth it, if it means freeing us once and for all?”

  “From what we’re told,” Nessa said, “it can’t be ended. The story is what we are. Unravel that, you unravel us.”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do. No. We’ve got a common foe, you and me. Someone who gets off on making us dance like puppets. A foe with a name, and a face, and a beating heart. If you didn’t believe that, you would have given up by now. We can be free.” Ezra lifted his cane, pointing to the cathedral doors. “There’s a secret beyond those doors. A weapon, just for me. And I’ve come too far to give up now.”

  “I’m disinclined to share,” Nessa said. “But it’s a moot point, considering we can’t get inside.”

  “Again, apologies for the deception. I do know how they open. A little experimentation and guesswork showed me the way.”

  The silver cap of Ezra’s cane swung to the right and pointed at the empty chalice.

  “The angel demands a sacrifice.”

  Marie drew the connection. “Blood,” she said. “The doors react to people from the first story. And they want blood.”

  “We measured. That chalice can hold about two gallons. In other words…a little less than two bodies’ worth. Early on I thought Carlo’s veins might hold the answer, which is why I had Cross and Bloch working on synthesizing his blood before they took off on me. No dice. Tried drawing Carolyn’s blood and bagging it up—”