Surely, Karen told herself, there was nobody left inside. Spaulding, Gertie, and the others should have seen the terrified children run off the bus. They ought to have at least some vague understanding that the police now posed a danger. By now they must be fleeing out the back door.
But she didn't believe it. Nothing else was going right. And she'd told Spaulding to keep people away from the windows. If they'd obeyed, they hadn't witnessed the events of the last two minutes. In which case someone probably was still inside, and the devil was about to get another chance to kill.
She had to stop the carnage. But she felt even less able to hinder the demon than she had previously. Her flesh felt even number than before, the link between her will and muscles even weaker. She wasn't certain that she could wrest control away from the spirit again at all, and even if she could, she was sure it would only be for a moment.
But, she suddenly realized, a moment might be enough, provided she picked the right moment. She prayed luck would send her the opportunity she needed.
The demon pushed the door and it opened without resistance. Karen winced. She should have told Spaulding to lock it, even though it would probably only have slowed the spirit down for a second.
Her body stepped into the fragrant, air-conditioned interior of the building.
Spaulding, Gertie, a pudgy teenaged employee dressed in a white apron, and a gaunt old farmer in faded bib overalls, his sun-damaged skin like brown, cracked leather, stood in front of the counter at the rear of the store.
"What happened out there?" Spaulding asked. Judging from his tone, he dreaded knowing the answer. "We heard a lot of shooting."
Karen felt her lips stretch into a smile. "You're going to hear some more," the demon said. Using both pistols at once, shooting from the hip, it opened fire. Karen wanted to interfere more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life, but she was all but certain it wouldn't do any good. She forced herself to wait, to stick to her pitiful excuse for a plan.
Gertie fell down. The others scrambled out of the central aisle, using the freestanding shelves for cover. The devil laughed and dashed after them.
For the next minute, the monster and its prey played hide and seek. Karen's body skulked down the aisles, looking, listening, doing its best to keep a watchful eye on the exits. At one point she heard the rubber sole of a sneaker squeak. The devil turned, and she saw that the boy had sneaked to within six feet of the front door. The spirit fired, hitting him in the small of the back, and he went down. It studied him for a moment, making sure he wasn't going to start moving again, then resumed its hunt for the others.
Karen heard stealthy movement in the next aisle over. Her body flung itself around the end of a shelf of grooming brushes. His eyes wide with alarm, the farmer scuttled away from her. The devil aimed the Magnum at his chest, and then its unwilling host heard rapid footsteps pounding toward her back.
The demon whirled. Ben Spaulding was rushing Karen, his plump, pleasant face contorted in a snarl, an ax upraised in his hands. The edge gleamed in the fluorescent light. A yellow price sticker adhered to the smooth oak handle.
It was the moment Karen had been waiting for. For a split second she quailed at the sight of Spaulding's makeshift weapon, then thrust her fear aside.
Don't think. Don't flinch. Just do it.
With one sudden, convulsive exertion of her will, she strove to regain control of her limbs. Perhaps she'd been passive long enough that the devil had assumed she'd given up. Perhaps she'd caught it by surprise. At any rate, pain and heat sizzled along her nerves, searing the deadness away. She felt connected to her flesh again.
She hurled herself forward. Spaulding squealed and swung the ax.
The moment seemed to stretch out for an eternity, the blade looming closer until it was all she could see. She imagined her eyes crossing in an effort to keep it in focus. Then the edged steel slammed into the center of her face.
To her surprise, there was no pain, not yet, but no instant oblivion either. She could feel the heavy, edged steel split her nose and skull and plunge into the tissue inside it. The simple awareness of her mutilation was as excruciating as any physical agony could have been. She yearned to escape it. To have the world go black.
As she dropped to her knees, she heard the demon's silent bellow of rage. The numbness began to flow back into her flesh. Her shaking arms lifted, trying to aim the pistols at Spaulding.
Karen sobbed. She shouldn't have to fight anymore, shouldn't have to exist inside this maimed, violated husk an instant longer. But she couldn't let the devil win, either. She struggled frantically to push her arms to the sides, drawing the guns out of line.
Meanwhile Spaulding tried to pull the ax out of her head. It was stuck, and his frenzied tugging hoisted her knees oft the floor. Finally the tool flew free in a shower of gore. Still squealing, he chopped at her again and again, sometimes striking her skull, sometimes her shoulders, shearing off an ear, half severing her arms. Her spurting blood painted his garments red.
The demon screamed in frustration and then she felt it depart. Her shattered body was of no use to it anymore. Perhaps, had it remained, it might even have died with her. She tried to laugh at it, but by that time her jaw was nearly detached from her skull.
She sprawled face down on the wet, red concrete floor. Somewhere, someone else was shooting, a reminder that she hadn't really solved Mayersville's problem, just her own. There were other poor puppets still on the rampage. For a moment she regretted she hadn't been able to do more, wished she knew what the hell this madness was actually all about, and then darkness washed over her and carried her away.
SEVEN
Divested not merely of his insignia of rank but of every stitch of clothing, Montrose felt the unnatural chill of the Soulforges long before the glow of the fires themselves came into view. He did his best not to falter or change expression. He'd never lost his composure during his captivity and execution three hundred and fifty years ago— at least not according to Sir Walter Scott, John Buchan, and the other writers who'd romanticized his mortal career—and he saw nothing to be gained by losing it now. Pride was the only source of satisfaction left to him.
Reinhardt, walking at his side, gestured toward a narrow lane, scarcely more than an alley, that snaked away between massive stone buildings. "This way," he said.
The prisoner glanced over his shoulder, taking a last look at Stygia proper, ponderous, dark, and majestic, rising level on level across the channel. Then he walked deeper into the sprawling complex of warehouses, factories, barracoons, rail yards, and fortifications which, over the last century, the Hierarchy had constructed here on the mainland. The Artificers currently conducted the majority of their operations on this side of the water, an arrangement which suited everyone. It made it easier for the forgers to guard their secrets, and it allowed the squeamish to avoid contemplating the gruesome foundation of their realm's prosperity.
The uneven cobblestones cut Montrose's feet. His shackles clinked, and the boots of his guards creaked as they tramped along behind him. The Legionnaires seemed in high spirits. He wasn't surprised. He could remember a time when, gnawed by envy and ambition, he would have enjoyed participating in the downfall of a high- and-mighty Anacreon himself. He suspected he was lucky that Reinhardt had seen fit to escort him to the Artificers personally. Otherwise the soldiers might well have abused him.
The chill in the air grew even more intense. Montrose tried not to shiver or let his teeth chatter. He heard the hiss and crackle of flames, the rhythmic clank of hammering, and, once, a wail of anguish and despair. Then Reinhardt led him around another bend. A few paces farther on, the street ended at a tall, narrow iron door. Reinhardt pulled a chain dangling beside the frame. Montrose surmised it was a bellpull, though he didn't hear anything ring. After a few moments, a narrow panel slid open. Pale eyes, surrounded by skin burned sooty black, peered from the opening.
"I bring the Artificers greetings and instructions from th
e Smiling Lord," said Reinhardt, producing a scroll with a black wax seal from the folds of his inquisitor's mantle, "How may we serve the Dread Lord?" the doorman asked. Judging from his tone, he wasn't inordinately impressed.
"This"---Reinhardt nodded at his prisoner—"is James Graham, Marquess of Montrose. An Anacreon of my order until he was found guilty of treason. Our master has condemned him to be forged."
The Artificer lifted an eyebrow. "Generally the Deathlords condemn traitors to more lingering deaths than that."
"He was a good Legionnaire once," Reinhardt said, "before his Shadow, or sheer ambition, led him astray."
"Well, we'll take care of him," said the Artificer, opening the door. Montrose observed that, contrary to his first impression, the craftsman hadn't dispensed with the Stygian custom of wearing a mask. A molded piece of some glass-like green material clung to the bottom half of his face, while a coin, the symbol of his guild, dangled from the chain around his neck. He wore a pistol on his wide black belt.
Reinhardt's eyes narrowed inside his riveted crimson visor. Montrose suspected that the doorman's casual attitude had irked him. "This isn't some mindless Drone," the Anacreon said. "You have to be careful with him. He's likely to try to escape."
The craftsman snorted. "Trust me, Anacreon, none of them escape. This place is better for that than a roach motel."
"Whatever that means," Reinhardt said sourly. Montrose hadn't understood the reference either. "I'd still recommend you carry out the Smiling Lord's command without delay."
"Sure," said the Artificer. "Whatever." He held out his hand and Reinhardt gave him the scroll.
Montrose favored his fellow Anacreon with a sardonic smile. "Was that last piece of advice absolutely necessary?" he murmured.
"In part, I was trying to do you a kindness," Reinhardt replied, his voice just as low. "It's better to get it over quickly. Apparently conditions in the holding pens— or wherever they keep you—are less than congenial. Good-bye, James."
The Scot gathered that he was about to be conducted into the forge. It was the moment he'd been waiting for. Perhaps now that he was leaving their custody, the Legionnaires would remove the leg irons, thus restoring his Harbinger abilities.
Unfortunately, they didn't. Evidently it wasn't the procedure, or perhaps Reinhardt was too wary. At any rate, he simply motioned the prisoner forward. The Artificer drew his gun—a Luger, Montrose observed—and stepped backward into the shadows, giving the condemned man room to slip through the entry.
Composure, Montrose reminded himself. He mustn't let his disappointment show in his expression. Head held high, he advanced into the building.
Beyond the door lay a small room, bare except for a stool, with a shadowy corridor leading away from it. The thump of the hammers and the whisper of the fires were louder and the air even colder than they had been outside.
The heavy door boomed shut behind him.
Montrose turned. The Artificer was pointing the Luger at his prisoner's chest. By all appearances, he knew how to handle it. "On down the hall," he said. "I'll tell you where to turn."
Montrose saw little choice but to obey. As he walked, he used his preternaturally keen hearing to gauge the Artificer's precise position. The craftsman stayed too far back. There was never a moment when Montrose could have whirled and landed a telling blow before his captor shot him.
The way led back and forth, past scores of branching passages, until it became clear the two wraiths were traversing a genuine maze. Finally multicolored light bloomed in the darkness ahead, wavering along the stonework, growing gradually brighter. Before long, Montrose was squinting. When he reached the end of the passage, he lifted his hand to shield his eyes.
Having done so, he found himself on the threshold of a huge, high-ceilinged chamber, where masses of barrow-flame blazed upward from wells and pits in the floor. Many of the fires were comparable to those employed by mortal blacksmiths. But some were considerably larger, while one, in the exact center of the room, blazed upward like some primordial tree. Noxious vapors hung in the air, stinging his eyes and throat.
Big or small, every blaze had at least one Artificer working beside it. Many of the smiths had skin seared the same sooty black as Montrose's escort. Some toiled bare to the waist or nude altogether, as if they no longer minded the bitter cold, or wanted to convince one another that they didn't.
Their labor, of course, was the grisly business that other Hierarchs preferred not to discuss, the practice that had outraged Heretics and Renegades for centuries, though their qualms seldom prevented them from availing themselves of the fruits of the guildsmen's labors. Beside each fire stood at least one jointed, counterbalanced metal rack, a contraption designed to immobilize a human body and position it at any desired attitude in the flames. Many of the victims hung limply in their bonds, their faces slack, or squirmed sluggishly. But a few thrashed and bucked, their eyes rolling wildly. No doubt, had it not been for the gray iron muzzles, they would have screamed.
When their substance grew glowing hot and malleable, the Artificers placed them on their anvils and began to shape them, pounding them with mallets, chanting incantations, drawing luminous strands of plasm with their forceps, and sometimes slicing a captive wraith into sections. Looking about, Montrose saw some prisoners who looked battered and crushed, but still essentially human, and others all but completely transformed into a selection of the necessities and amenities of Stygian existence: guns, chains, heaps of coins, silverware, artificial flowers. In the latter cases, there was only an occasional sign—a finger oozing from the side of a grandfather clock, a face forming and dissolving inside a propeller intended for some ship—that the article in question had once been an animate soul.
Were the rumors true? Were the transformed ghosts still sentient? Still suffering?
Montrose had no intention of finding out. Ever since his arrest, he'd been waiting for a chance to escape. Thanks to Reinhardt's vigilance, it had never come, and now he was out of time. But with a modicum of luck, he could provoke his captor into shooting him and dispatching him to the Void.
M>- last battle, he thought. He wished he could fight it with a rapier in his hand, and with one of his true enemies—Argyll, VanLengen, Gayoso, or Demetrius—on the other end of the blade. He drew a deep breath, steadying himself—a mortal tic he'd never quite managed to shake—and poised himself to spin around.
"That way," said the Artificer. "Through the doorway in the right-hand corner."
Surprised, Montrose looked in the indicated direction. The exit was a basket arch, the keystone carved in the semblance of Charon's mask. No fires shone in the darkness on the other side.
The Artificer chuckled. "Thought we were going to roast you right away, didn't you?"
"That was my understanding," Montrose said, turning to face his captor.
"Because the inquisitor said to?" The Artificer made a spitting sound. "You're on the guild's turf now, Red. Nobody tells us what to do inside these walls, nobody but our masters in the craft. Although to tell you the truth, I'm a cooperative guy. Ordinarily I would have chucked your ass on a fire by now. But I don't see a rack available, and we try not to interrupt a job in progress. It usually winds up wasting material."
"Thank goodness for a busy schedule," Montrose said.
The guildsman chuckled, "We'll see if you feel grateful in an hour. Now move it."
The Scot marched forward. Beyond the doorway he found another labyrinth, this one three-dimensional, incorporating a series of staircases and sloping passages. Though the two wraiths climbed upward fairly frequently, Montrose judged that, overall, they were heading down. Finally the way terminated in a natural ledge dimly illuminated by the bluish sheen of tiny phosphorescent crystals in the rock. A colossal, cantilevered machine with toothed jaws perched at the edge of the sheer drop. A crane for hoisting things up from the depths.
In the gloom, even a wraith's eyes could only make out a few individuals among the mass of spirits
crowding the pit below. The ones nearest the cliff face appeared to be Drones, slumped motionless or shuffling pointlessly back and forth. But some of the noises echoing up from the cavern—whimpering, curses, mad laughter, the smack of fists battering flesh—attested to the fact that at least a few of the prisoners were still conscious and active, if not necessarily sane.
"Jump," the Artificer said.
Montrose blinked. He'd been expecting the guildsman to lower him with the crane, although on closer inspection, it did look as if it would be difficult for one man to operate the cumbersome apparatus and maintain control of a prisoner simultaneously. "How long a drop is it?" he asked conversationally. "Thirty feet? Don't you lose the occasional captive this way?"
"Only a few," said the Artificer, the blue light glinting on the muzzle of his Luger. "It's more efficient to dump you in this way than to waste the time of several workers doing it gently. You've got to understand, each prisoner is just a little chunk of raw ore. No one of them is important enough to worry about." He grinned through his transparent mask. "Not even you, O royal...marquis, was it?"
"Close enough," Montrose said. He peered over the ledge, looking for a clear piece of rocky ground to fall on. As soOn as he spotted one, he leaped, before the random motion of the Drones could cover it over again.
When he hit bottom, he tumbled forward into a shoulder roll, the way his savate teacher had taught him. After he came to rest, the shock of the impact still singing through his body, he cautiously tried to move the various parts of his body. His limbs all performed as required. He was scraped and sore, but nothing seemed to be broken.
Fingers fumbled at his tangled tresses. Startled, he wrenched himself away from the touch and scrambled to his feet. The wraith who'd pawed him stumbled after him, hands outsttetched. Lean and sun-bronzed, he had the face and form of a man in his twenties, and a bullet hole—probably a simulacrum of the wound that had killed him—in the center of his chest. "Mama, Mama," he moaned.
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