Natasha nodded, then touched his face. “Be careful.”
“I’m going to end this thing. Tonight.”
Dark pushed his way through the crowds, flashing his cell phone badge when necessary, and pushing people out of the way when that didn’t work. Once he finally made it outside the Scottish Parliament Building, Dark ran across the street to the Global Alliance van and Hans Roeding, who saw him coming and rolled down his power window.
“Where are we headed?” the burly ex-soldier asked.
Dark didn’t want the extra weight. He needed to be able to move quickly, nimbly. Which is why he didn’t want Natasha to tag along either.
“I’m just following a hunch. Stay here in case I’m wrong.”
“I can help.”
“I know. By staying here.”
Roeding didn’t say much. He merely broke eye contact and grunted. The soldier had been trained to follow orders, even if he hated the guts of the person giving said orders. And Blair had made it clear: Dark was in charge of this op.
“I need a gun.”
Roeding frowned, then plucked a Glock 19 from a console inside the van. He knew that the so-called plastic semiautomatic was Dark’s weapon of choice. As Dark tucked it into his waistband, he saw Roeding pull another gun from the console—a silver Derringer. Without saying a word, he handed it over to Dark.
“What’s that for?”
“I carry a backup. You should, too.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Dark tucked the extra piece in the small of his back.
Evening Mail
Breaking: U.S. senator stable, but doctors fear the dye will leave him blind; skin permanently stained.
Guardian
Breaking: MEP Alain Pantin says that Labyrinth attacks may not stop until “real conversations” start to happen; urges for a new forum.
A few moments later, on his brand-new Ducati, Dark was racing up Canongate, the oldest street in Edinburgh. If Dark followed it all the way he’d end up at the foot of the castle. The ground was wet and the air was misty. Dark could feel the tires almost slipping on the granite sets. But being in charge of his own vehicle was a refreshing change after days of planes and cabs and vans. Nothing worse than relying on someone else for travel.
Just like you, Labyrinth.
You’re a man who travels by his own steam, aren’t you? Untraceable. Able to slip borders with ease. You’re someone practiced at the art of travel. Otherwise, you wouldn’t spread your attacks all over the world. You’re at ease anywhere. Maybe that’s how you were trained. Maybe you’re former military or part of a diplomatic security detail. Someone who was always on the move.
O’Brian’s voice was in his ear: “Are you there, Dark?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I see you. Looks like the signal’s coming from further up the road, almost near the castle.”
Dark’s motorcycle raced up the main street. There were people everywhere—on the sidewalks, in the street, not to mention other vehicles. WoMU had sparked impromptu gatherings and parties. Scotland was the focus of the world right now; the Scots were enjoying the chance to preen. The attack on the American senator, of course, had cast a sudden pall on the festivities.
“Stop. You’re close.”
Pulling to the side, Dark parked the Ducati and checked his Glock. “Tell me where to go.”
There was a row of three-story buildings along this side of the street, most of them dating back centuries. Edinburgh’s early days were all about building vertically—up a few stories, which was as high as architecture would allow back then. And when the city ran out of room, they’d dig more stories below, a dizzying complex of subterranean levels. The similarities to Paris, and Global Alliance, couldn’t be ignored. Dark had never encountered so many labyrinths before.
All at once Dark realized that of course this was it—if Labyrinth were going to hide anywhere, he’d do it in some kind of underground maze.
“Okay, I’m using your phone to lock on your position, and I’m following the signal from the camera.”
Dark said, “Just tell me where to go.”
“Is there a gate to your right?”
There was. An arched stone doorway with a sign marked BUCHAN’S CLOSE. A gate blocked the entrance almost all the way to the top.
“Go through there.”
“It’s locked.”
“Figure out a way to go through it anyway. There’s no other way in, except the long way, on the other side of the block. Which would involve scaling a fifty-foot wall.”
Dark pulled his Glock, aimed it at the padlock and chain . . . then hesitated. No. A gunshot might spook Labyrinth if he was still inside. He put the gun away, looked at the drainpipe running alongside the stone building. Dark gave it a tug to test its stability. Seemed okay. Able to hold his weight. Quickly, he ascended the pipe, hand over hand, boots guiding him up the side of the building, until he reached the top of the gate. Right hand, then left—and then he was over, jumping down into the darkness, landing, drawing his Glock.
“I’ve got a better fix on the signal,” O’Brian said in his ear. “It’s coming from the roof.”
“Check,” Dark said, but he knew Labyrinth wouldn’t be on the roof, or even the top floors. He’d be down below. Inside the maze of rooms below street level. Somewhere along the narrow streets with modest subterranean tenements on either side.
Gun leading the way in a two-handed grip, Dark descended the stairs, listening for his quarry.
Monsters liked to hide in basements.
chapter 53
LABYRINTH
They’d mark you in the old days.
If you were a criminal.
Anglo-Saxon law had it so vagrants and Gypsies were branded with a large V, permanently seared into your chest with a hot iron. Brawlers and fighters were given an F; slaves an S. Thieves would receive burns on their cheeks so that all may know not to trust them around their personal property.
Even as recently as two centuries ago, disloyal soldiers were tattooed or branded with the letters BC—bad character.
Senator Ayres deserves his branding.
I could have burned his face. But this is the twenty-first century, after all. Such tortures are best left in the Dark Ages.
People may think the act was cruel.
That will change when I upload the good senator’s real biography, the one they don’t hand out in his public affairs office, the one I’ve been compiling for ten years, the one that talks about his supposed humanitarian efforts to fight disease and hunger around the world, and how these efforts resulted in millions of dollars in contributions....
And how many of these millions went to the good senator’s spacious manse in the O’Fallon suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.
And a vacation home near Myrtle Beach.
And lavish buffets of fat-laden foods for your family and mistresses and their families, in and out on a rotating basis?
Did you go to the beach to sun, my dear senator?
Well, I’ve saved you the effort, haven’t I? Your face will appear nice and sunburned for the rest of your life.
I follow the social media hive mind for a while, pleased that the message is getting out.
Then there is a sound.
In the hallway.
Slight.
But I hear it.
I turn—
[To enter the Labyrinth, please go to Level26.com and enter the code: enter the maze]
chapter 54
DARK
No.
Impossible.
Not him.
Not here . . .
Everything had happened in a frenzied blur—the chase, Dark’s shots missing Labyrinth....
Not only missed, but seemed to pass right through him.
The fuck?
Dark had never seen a suspect move so fast, not ever. And he almost didn’t see the figure in the robe charging at him, slamming into Dark’s sternum
with the strength and speed of a sledgehammer.
And in that moment he saw Labyrinth’s mask—
A crow-featured plague doctor mask.
Beaked, black, grotesquely inhuman features—but with all-too-human eyes staring at him from cutout holes in the mask.
A glimpse was all Dark had before the fight resumed. Dark nearly fell to his knees but focused on breathing. Just the oxygen and blood flowing. The adrenaline in the blood will keep you moving. Hurt later. Move now. The monster is getting away....
Dark charged forward with punches to his attacker’s face, his right arm partially numb—but that was okay, because it wasn’t really attached to Dark’s body anymore. It felt like its own living organism, a slab of bone and muscle designed for one thing: beating the living fuck out of Labyrinth with a series of supercharged blows.
But the man in the mask absorbed every punch without it seeming to affect him at all. And during a brief pause between blows, Labyrinth returned a jab of his own that pained Dark down to the marrow of his bones. Dark wasn’t even sure where he’d been struck—only that it hurt far worse than it should have.
Labyrinth took a step back, put a hand to his face, then removed the crow mask.
Revealing another mask beneath.
The last mask Steve Dark thought he’d ever see again.
The Sqweegel mask.
The man behind the mask let out something that sounded like a chortle, or a snort, or perhaps even a choked laugh before turning and disappearing into the gloom.
Again: Dark knew it was impossible. It wasn’t him. Not here. Not anywhere. He’d watched the bloodied chunks of his body burn in a furnace. There was no coming back from where he’d sent Sqweegel.
So Dark swallowed hard and pursued his suspect. He could hear frenzied slaps of boot heels on stone stairs, so Dark followed him up into the top stories of the ancient building, even though his guts felt like they were lined with razor blades. Dark ascended the central staircase, floor by floor by agonizing floor, until he was almost at the roof level....
chapter 55
LABYRINTH
Oh, Steve Dark.
Ever since seeing you in New York City I had a feeling we’d be meeting up.
And you don’t meet someone new without giving them a present.
So I did a little digging into your world . . .
And oh, you won’t believe what I found.
It’s been difficult to contain myself.
Almost sent it to you directly.
But I thought . . . better to wait.
I knew you’d come along eventually.
And you did.
You found me.
You can be proud of that, at least.
No one’s ever looked me in the eye and saw me for my true self.
No one’s ever come close.
You climbed up and skittered across the top of the maze just like a brave little dark mouse, didn’t you?
More than Damien Blair’s ever done.
It took me a little while to find just the right one as described by Tom Riggins, but it was worth the effort and shipping.
The mask:
White latex with metal zippers along the mouth and the top of the head.
Eye holes so its wearer can see perfectly, clearly, no obstructions whatsoever.
You had to keep it greased inside, and that was going to wreak havoc with my hair later.
But it was worth it.
Oh, the look on your face, Steve Dark.
To smash away the visage of your latest enemy, only to reveal your ultimate nemesis beneath.
“Sqweegel.”
I don’t even have to say anything.
The shock temporarily paralyzes you. This is the face you see in your nightmares, isn’t it, Steve Dark? Tom Riggins sees it, too. All the time. He doesn’t tell you, but this face is his greatest fear. That someday he’s going to wake up in the middle of the night to discover this face looking down at him, only he’s afraid he’s going to see your eyes through the cutout holes, and your mouth, curled into a defiant, sickly smile, the open zipper teeth only increasing the effect.
Tom Riggins is afraid of this because he knows the truth about you, Steve Dark. About the blood that runs through your veins.
I know it, too.
Do you?
No.
I don’t think you do.
That beautiful moment of Steve Dark’s paralysis is all I need. I chose this specific spot. I led him to this point in the maze because I knew it would work to my advantage. Even down below in the gloom of the close I saw it perfectly and knew how it would play out. And Steve Dark followed me right into it, just like everyone else.
Everyone has a secret that can be pulled from deep beneath the flesh, then held up, dripping with blood and viscera, to be examined in the naked light.
Dark’s secret is bigger and uglier than most.
I chose this spot because of the window behind Steve Dark. Now I rush forward.
The face of Sqweegel temporarily fries his internal circuits—
So it is relatively easy to push him OUT of the window.
Not all the way.
I hang on to Steve Dark’s bleeding arms, watch him twist and turn, trying to break free from my grip, legs kicking, boots seeking purchase.
But he is in my control now.
And I have his next present.
Holding on to him with one hand, I reach up.
Unzip the mouth.
And I say,
Seven out of eleven alleles.
chapter 56
DARK
“Seven out of eleven alleles.”
The words made no sense.Noneof this made sensetoto
Dark. Why was Labyrinth leaving him to dangle out of this window, the hard granite of Edinburgh’s High Street four stories below? Why hadn’t he just killed him? Dark reached out with his boots to find some kind of foothold, something to lean against so he could use the leverage and pull this fucker out of the window, too.
The man above him, wearing the Sqweegel mask, kept at it.
“Seven out of eleven alleles, Steve Dark. Do you know what that means?”
“Fuck you.”
“That means there’s enough for a genetic match, Steve Dark.”
Dark knew that. He was trained in forensic science. But what was this son of a bitch trying to say? This was a hell of a time for a basic lecture on DNA comparisons.
Then he remembered the second gun—the Derringer Hans Roeding had given him. Tucked in his waistband, at the small of his back. He could feel its weight.
Labyrinth continued,
“Tom Riggins ran the test. He told me so. Scraped the sample from under your dead wife’s fingernails and ran it through.”
Don’t listen to him. Just pull an arm free. Yank it free and reach around and wrap your hand around the grip of the gun and bring it up and blow his fucking head apart inside that latex mask....
“Tom Riggins told you there was no match. That Sqweegel was a mystery man. But you know what? Tom Riggins told a little white lie there. He found a match. Seven out of eleven alleles.”
Dark ripped his right hand free and felt a jagged piece of glass run up the inside of his forearm. The cut was deep and burned immediately. Didn’t matter. Don’t focus on the pain. Focus on the gun.
“Where are you going?” Labyrinth asked, his face twisting beneath the mask in an expression of mock hurt. “Don’t you want to hear who was the match, Steve Dark? Seven out of eleven alleles?”
Don’t listen.
Dark plucked the gun from his waistband.
“It was you, Steve Dark.”
Dark pointed the gun at Labyrinth’s face and said, “Fuck you,” before pulling the trigger. At the same moment Labyrinth released his grip on his left arm and Dark began to plunge toward the ground, still pointing the gun, wondering why the shot hadn’t whipped the motherfucker’s head back, so Dark fell and fired again, and again—were the bullets just passing
through him like a ghost?!—and then the earth rushed up to meet him.
chapter 57
DARK
Hans Roeding was first on the scene, and found Dark’s unconscious body on the sidewalk outside Buchan’s Close. He checked Dark’s vitals. Still a pulse, still strong, but unconscious. He took the warm Derringer from his hand. The Glock was nowhere in sight. Must have dropped it inside, he thought.
When O’Brian and Natasha arrived a minute later, Roeding had already smashed his way into the close and was reporting that Labyrinth—if the person who attacked Dark was Labyrinth—was nowhere to be found. Blair coordinated with local police to organize a manhunt throughout Edinburgh, as well as teams checking rails, airports, and all major roadways, but Global Alliance realized such a plan was futile. Labyrinth was a master planner. There was no doubt he had multiple exit scenarios all gamed out, and had simply chosen one of them. They had no description. Even if they did, there was a good chance that Labyrinth had already altered his appearance.
Natasha volunteered to accompany Dark to a secure wing of the world-renowned Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris. Blair arranged for a private room, which had the advantage of being inside a high-security wing with security supplied by Global Alliance itself. If Dark resumed consciousness, there was a chance he could give some kind of description of Labyrinth.
She sat on the stiff bench in the back of the chopper, staring at Dark’s face. His eyes darted back and forth under his lids at a frighteningly rapid pace, so much so that Natasha was at times convinced he was going to have a seizure. His face was bloody and bruised, too. Dark didn’t just fall from four stories up—he’d fought with Labyrinth. Maybe he was lucky enough to have gotten a few shots in....
Dark Revelations Page 16