She held up her right hand—and that, too, was left with nothing but the stumps of all five fingers, and all of them squirting blood. Christ almighty—now Decker knew what Major Shroud was doing. He was attacking Queen Aché with the Nine Deaths that Saint James Intercisus had suffered, just to show Decker what he could expect.
He groped his left shoulder blade and found that his coat was soaked with blood. Major Shroud had chopped right through Queen Aché’s fingers, right through his coat and shirt, and into his trapezius muscle.
“Get up!” he yelled at Queen Aché. He thrust his arms under her armpits and hoisted her onto her feet. She was a good three inches taller than he was, and at least as heavy, and he almost dropped her back onto the floor. But he managed to wind her bloody left arm around his neck and grip her wrist to stop her from falling, and together they managed to stagger back along the passageway, tilting from side to side as they went.
At last they reached the forward hold. Decker was momentarily dazzled by a beam of light, but then he looked up and saw Hicks kneeling on the deck above them.
“Hicks! For Christ’s sake, Hicks, give me a fucking hand here, will you?”
“Lieutenant? What’s happening? You look like you’re hurt.”
“Just shine your flashlight on the steps, will you?”
Decker guided Queen Aché to the foot of the companionway. She was keening under her breath like a mourner at a funeral, and her knees kept giving way. “You’re going to have to climb,” Decker told her.
“How can I climb with these?” she demanded, raising her mutilated hands like a pair of scarlet mittens.
“Listen to me,” he told her, pointing the flashlight in his own face so that she could see him clearly. “There’s no other way to escape. I can’t carry you up.”
Queen Aché looked up at the companionway. Decker heard a scuffling noise close by, and turned around and fired two shots at nothing at all. “You have to climb, Your Majesty, otherwise you’re going to die here.”
Queen Aché miserably approached the rusty steps and tried to curl her right wrist around them.
“That’s it. Now your foot. Now pull yourself up.”
She managed to climb up one step, and then another, but then she had to stop. “My hands,” she wept. “They hurt so much! Yemayá, please stop them from hurting!”
“Climb,” Decker urged her.
“Oh, Yemayá, please take this pain away from me, please!”
“Fucking climb, will you!”
Queen Aché hooked her left wrist around the railing and pulled herself up a little farther. At last she was close enough to the top for Hicks to be able to lean over and take hold of her forearms and help her negotiate the last few steps. Decker scrambled up right behind her.
“Major Shroud?” Hicks asked, wiping his bloody hands on his pants.
“Oh, you bet your ass. He’s here and he wants his pound of flesh and he’s not listening to any apologies or any deals. We have to get Queen Aché out of here double quick. The Nine Deaths, remember? Fingers, toes, hands, feet.”
Between them, they lifted Queen Aché up from the deck, and helped her over to the slope of rubble that led to the crawl space up above them. “How the hell we going to get her up here?” Hicks asked.
“Have you tried calling for backup?”
“No signal. Not down here.”
“Shit. Okay, here’s what we do. We climb up backward sitting on our butts, and we heave her up after us.”
Decker guided Queen Aché to the fallen girder and made her stand with her back to it. Her face was pale gray, and her eyes were filmed over. “Queen Aché? Listen … stay there, just like that. Hicks and me, we’re going to pull you up the slope. You got it? If you can, dig your heels in to stop yourself from sliding back down again, that’ll help.”
“Justice and blood,” Queen Aché mumbled. “Oggunda ofun—justice and blood through a curse.”
“Forget about the sayings, we have to get you out of here, and you’re a big tall lady, and we need you to help us to do it.”
“Yemayá, I pray to you, save me.”
“Absolutely. And while you’re at it, you can say three Hail Yemayás for me and Hicks, too.”
Puffing with effort, Decker climbed up onto the girder, and then sat down on the slope of rubble, kicking a few bricks away to give himself a better foothold. Hicks climbed up beside him, and then the two of them leaned forward and lifted Queen Aché up so that she was sitting on the rubble, too.
“Leave me,” she said, her bloodied hands hanging loose. “I can’t take any more. Leave me. Yemayá will take care of me. Changó would never hurt Yemayá.”
“It’s not Changó I’m worried about, Your Majesty. It’s Major Shroud. Changó has all of the elemental power, that’s for sure. He’s got all of the thunder, and all of the lightning, and he’s truly frightening. But Major Shroud is the one who’s in charge here.”
Hicks frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, sport, that this is a case of a possessed person taking control of the spirit that possesses him—because he’s meaner, and more determined, and much more focused. Sure—the great god Changó had the power to set fire to those woods in the Wilderness, and to turn those Yankee soldiers inside out, but who was the one who was really salivating to do it?
“Changó isn’t fundamentally evil. Changó takes revenge on people who do him wrong, but Changó doesn’t murder innocent people for the sake of it. It’s Major Shroud. Now, let’s get this lady out of here before he comes after her again. One—two—three—heave!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In showers of sliding sand and broken bricks, they managed to manhandle Queen Aché up to the top of the slope and lay her down on the mud in the crawl space. Hicks prodded at his cell phone again but there was still no signal.
“Come on,” Decker panted. “There’s nothing else for it, we’ll just have to pull her along behind us.”
He hunkered down beside Queen Aché and said, “How are you feeling? Think you can stand being dragged a bit farther?”
She stared up at him and her face was expressionless, although he still had the feeling that he could see another face, a far older face, looking through her eyes. “I can’t feel my hands anymore.”
“Believe me, that’s probably a blessing.”
“Why didn’t you leave me behind?”
“Are you kidding me? Shroud would have diced you and sliced you.”
“But I killed the only woman you ever loved. If I had been in your place, I would have left me behind.”
“You know what? That’s because King Special never taught you the difference between justice and revenge.”
“He took me to a santero once, when I was thirteen, to have my fortune told. The santero told me that I was going to be strong and tall and beautiful. But then he said, ‘Remember one thing … even the saints in all their glory cannot save you from the living dead.’ I never understood what he meant, not for years, but now I do.”
“Let’s just get you out of here. We can worry about the hocus-pocus later.”
Decker took hold of one of Queen Aché’s arms and Hicks took hold of the other, and together they dragged her across the crawl space, leaving a snakelike trail in the black, slimy mud. They were less than halfway toward the broken-brick staircase, however, when the beam of Decker’s flashlight was suddenly refracted at an angle, bent sideways. He lifted it higher and pointed it back toward the cavity in the floor, and he was sure that he could see a distortion in the air, so that the brickwork shifted and rippled.
“Shit, he’s following us! There, look! You see that?”
“What? Where? I don’t see nothing.”
“Over there, just left of that pillar. Like the air’s dancing around.”
“I still don’t see nothing.”
They started to drag Queen Aché farther, but they had only shifted her four or five feet when they heard a whipping sound, and Queen Aché le
t out a cry like a run-over dog. The toecap of her left boot had been sheared clean off, taking her toes with it.
Decker pulled out his gun and fired off a single shot, even though he knew that there wasn’t even a cat-in-hell’s chance of hitting anything. “Shroud! You fuck!” he shouted. “You cut her again, I swear to God, Shroud, I’ll do the same to you!”
“He’s there!” screamed Queen Aché. “He’s there! I can see him! He’s there!”
“Point!” Decker shouted, and she pointed wildly to her left. Decker fired again, and again. Chips of brick sprayed from one of the buttresses, and a ricochet sang from the opposite wall.
“Did I hit him? Is he hit? Where’s he gone now?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Queen Aché moaned. “I can’t see him anymore.”
Decker seized her arm again. “Come on, Hicks, let’s just get the two-toned hell out of here.”
Crouching under the overbearing arches, they pulled Queen Aché out of the crawl space. All they had to do now was carry her up the rubble slope to the station’s lower level. Decker lifted her up under her arms, while Hicks took her legs, and together they struggled upward, one bent-legged step at a time, sweating and grunting, while Queen Aché lolled lifelessly between them.
At last they reached the top, and managed to maneuver her through the narrow hole in the back of the alcove, into the basement. They laid her down gently on the floor, and Hicks sat down beside her, while Decker leaned against the wall, trying to get his breath back. His arms and legs were quivering from the effort.
“What’s the plan, Lieutenant?” Hicks asked.
“First of all, we’re going to take Queen Aché to the hospital. Then we’re going to work out how we’re going to deal with Major Shroud.”
“How about a SWAT team? If they laid down, like, wall-to-wall machine-gun fire, somebody’s bound to hit him.”
“Oh, really? And how do you think he’s going to retaliate? The same way he did in the Wilderness. He’s going to incinerate the whole place and turn our guys inside out.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to think. I’m going to use my head, while I still have it.”
He bent over Queen Aché. She had been unconscious while they carried her up the rubble staircase, but now her eyelids flickered open. “Am I really here?” she asked him. Her scarf had slipped off and one side of her tightly braided hair was caked in mud.
“You’re here, yes. But not for much longer.” He looked up. Hicks was already splashing across the flooded cellar floor, to call for an ambulance and backup.
Decker took off his coat, bundled it up, and propped up Queen Aché’s head. “My rings,” she said, with a small, regretful smile. “When he cut off my fingers, I lost all of my precious rings. My daddy gave me such a pretty gold ring when I went through my ebbó de tres meses.”
“We’ll find them for you,” Decker reassured her.
“What good will they be, if I have no fingers to put them on?” She was so matter-of-fact that Decker knew that she was deeply in shock. He remembered a man in a serious car smash on the Midlothian Turnpike who had smiled and winked at him and said, “See that leg, my friend—over there—on the median strip—that’s my leg.”
Hicks came back. “Ambulance in five minutes, backup in three.”
“Okay,” Decker said, standing up straight. But at that moment, hell arrived. There was another whippp! and the toe of Queen Aché’s right boot was whacked off at a sharp diagonal, and a fine spray of blood flew up Decker’s cheek. Hicks said, “Jesus Christ!”
“Where is he?” Decker yelled at Queen Aché. “Tell me where he is!”
But Queen Aché was too stunned to answer him, and the next second her right arm was pulled straight up into the air, as if she were giving him a defiant salute. Decker seized her wrist and tried to pull it back down, but he was shoved in the chest so hard that he was thrown back against one of the hunchback stalagmites, jarring his spine. He was still struggling to get his balance when Queen Aché’s fingerless hand was chopped from her wrist and sent flying across the basement floor.
“Hicks—grab him!” Decker shouted. Hicks came forward, crouching and feinting like a wrestler, but as soon as he tried to grapple with their invisible opponent, his legs were kicked out from under him and he fell heavily backward, knocking his head.
Queen Aché’s left arm was yanked up in the same way as her right, and with a crunch of bone, a V-shaped cut half severed her hand, so that it flopped sideways on a skein of skin and tendons. Seconds later, another cut lopped it off completely.
“Shroud!” Decker roared at him. “Show yourself, you bastard!” He fired another two shots but he knew that he must have missed. He ejected his cartridge cases, but as he tried to reload he was violently slammed in the shoulder and sent flying against the stalagmites again.
He rolled over, winded. He was still on his hands and knees when Queen Aché’s feet were chopped off at the ankles and thrown in different directions, with blood spinning out of them like Catherine wheels. Then her hair was suddenly tugged up, so that her head was lifted from the floor. Her left ear was sliced off, upward, and then her right. Then—with no hesitation, and with a gristly crunch—her nose was cut away, so that she had nothing left in the middle of her face but two triangular holes, bubbling with blood. Decker fired again, twice, as close to Queen Aché as he dared.
He waited, panting, straining his eyes to see the slightest deflection in the air.
“Shroud … I swear to God, I’m going to kill you for this.”
“Changó protects me,” Major Shroud said. His voice sounded so close to Decker’s ear that he twisted around in alarm, his gun raised two-handed in front of his face.
“He has punished this santera. Tomorrow it will be my turn to take my revenge on you.”
Decker could hear police and ambulance sirens, although he didn’t know what possible use any backup could be. He tried to stand up, but the air suddenly warped in front of his eyes, and Major Shroud pushed him roughly back onto his side. “Why do you struggle, Martin? You might just as well fight against the wind.”
He tried to get up yet again, but again Major Shroud thrust him back down. “If you defy me anymore, I will give you a Tenth Death tomorrow. I will cut off your manhood and push it down your throat.”
“I bet you will, too. You did the same thing to those poor young kids after Manassas, didn’t you? You’re a fucking out-and-out sadist, Shroud.”
“Sadist?” Shroud said, puzzled.
“Somebody who gets their kicks out of hurting people, asshole. This is nothing to do with Changó, is it? You’re using Changó’s power, for sure. But this is nothing to do with Santería, it’s all about you. Eleven good men found out what a psycho you were, and sealed you up where you belonged, and that’s the only reason you want your revenge. Believe me, you’re not going to get it.”
“You really think so? Believe me, Martin, I’ve waited far too long for this day.”
Decker heard car doors slamming outside, and running feet. Hicks shouted, “This way! This way!”
The distortion in the air flickered away from Decker and moved around Queen Aché, who was lying on her back with a shiny balloon of blood where her nose had been.
“Don’t,” Decker said. But at the same time, he asked himself if Queen Aché would even want to go on living, without hands, without feet, grotesquely disfigured as she was.
Queen Aché was slowly lifted up. She rose like a puppet, her arms hanging loose, her knees half bent. Her head hung to one side with long strings of blood sliding from her nose. As she stood erect, on her chopped-off ankles, half a dozen uniforms came running into the basement with their guns drawn.
“Lieutenant! What’s happening here? Lieutenant!”
Decker climbed to his feet and raised his hand. “Take it easy, guys. This is kind of a hostage situation.”
The rest of the men sta
yed back but Sergeant Buchholz came waddling right up to him. He was a big-bellied man, with a moustache like a sweeping brush. “What’s the story, Lieutenant?” He jerked his thumb toward Queen Aché. “What the hell happened to her?” She appeared to be standing on her own, but she was smothered in blood and she swayed improbably from side to side.
“You don’t recognize her? Well, I can’t blame you. That’s Queen Aché.”
“Queen Aché? Holy shit.”
“She’s being held hostage.”
“Hostage? What do you mean? Who by?”
“He’s right here, Buchholz, but he’s not exactly one hundred percent visible.”
“Excuse me?”
Decker laid a hand on his shoulder, more for support than anything else. “The hostage taker is holding her up. Look at her. She can’t stand up on her own, because he cut her feet off.”
Sergeant Buchholz was even more baffled. “He’s holding her up? I don’t understand what you mean, Lieutenant. There’s nobody there.”
“Tomorrow, Martin!” Major Shroud called. “This is what will happen to you!”
Sergeant Buchholz turned wildly around, first to the left and then to the right. “Who said that? Who the fuck said that?”
“Shroud,” Decker said. “I’m begging you.”
“Shroud? Who’s Shroud? Come on, Lieutenant, for Christ’s sake!”
“Shroud!” Decker repeated, but he knew that it was no use. He caught the faintest shine of a saber blade, and Queen Aché’s head was struck from her shoulders and tumbled onto the floor. It rolled over and over and ended up close to his feet, noseless, earless, and staring at him. Her headless body stood upright for three countable seconds, one, two, three, with arterial blood jetting out of her severed neck like spray after spray of scarlet flowers, and then she twisted around and collapsed.
His eyes bulging, Sergeant Buchholz jabbed his revolver in every possible direction. “Who the hell did that? Who the hell did that?”
Decker lowered his Anaconda. “You witnessed that, right?”
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