by Daniel Marks
Purgatory under attack.
The cracks were impossible to defend against escaping revolutionaries.
Velvet shuddered to think of what the departure could really mean for them. What would happen as other districts got word of what was going on in the Latin Quarter? Would the revolution spread across purgatory, filling the daylight with escaped souls? Velvet tried to imagine a world populated by possessed human beings living as hosts to parasitic souls. It was too much.
Too horrible a sentence.
But the other question was more niggling: Who wouldn’t leave? That seemed to be the bigger question. Given the choice of waiting in the gray doldrums of the City of the Dead for some ultimate thumbs-up or thumbs-down on their fates, would anyone choose to stay? Would the souls take the righteous path and leave the living to their limited existences? Velvet suspected the worst.
The departure could become a global invasion of the daylight.
Rancho Cucamonga met them at the bottom of the stairs. The hissing nearly drowned their speech in its earsplitting constant wail. The sound coursed around them in waves, striating the inky clouds of shadow gas and tingeing them a pus-colored yellow.
“It’s been going on for well over an hour now!” Rancho shouted.
“Since the shadowquake began?” Velvet asked, leaning in close.
The burly guy nodded, head twisting toward the black cast-iron gates. Velvet’s eyes homed in on the lock. She reached for the key around her neck and realized that it didn’t hang there. And of course it didn’t. It’d been days since she’d worn the Cellar key.
“Dammit!” she yelled.
Manny twisted toward her, a question on her face.
“The key!”
“You’ll have to go, Velvet. Run. Run to my office.” The woman pointed back up the stairs, now bucking wildly from the machinations of moving rock underneath them.
Whatever the revolution had planned utilized the most horrible of magic, an evil so fierce and destructive that Velvet, for the first time staring at the task at hand, doubted her ability to stop it.
“Go, girl,” Rancho begged. “Quick!”
Velvet launched herself up the stairs, clambering over them on all fours, falling back and then thrusting forward. She reached for the rail, only to have it give way in her hand. The entire chunk of black metal tortured itself from the bolts in the wall and clattered against the undulations of the stone risers. It swung toward her, and she dove over it, coming down hard on her knee. The phantom of her bone felt as though it splintered; strands of nerves sparked and slithered from a gash in the side of her leg. The final few steps were torturous, and her knee cried out in wave after wave of radiating pain.
At the top, she rolled across the cobbles and gained her footing, limping through the thinning crowds.
People gathered together and held each other to stay on their feet as the ground beneath them rocked and forced pavers to pop up and down. Velvet was nearly to the circular stair leading to Manny’s office when she heard the glass dome begin to crack. The sound echoed across the space before the first shards fell free of their leaden bonds. Fresh screams filled the station below as hoards of people panicked and bolted en masse for the arches to the tunnels.
Would this night ever end?
Velvet made for the stairs while they still managed to cleave to the wall. The thought of the floor falling from underneath her feet fueled her, forced her to pound the steps through the pain, to run the last yards and barrel through the doors. The doors banged against the office walls, but the sound was muffled by the clatter of stone cracking.
Manny’s writing desk lay on its side, its contents spilled into a pile beside it like the insides of a stabbing victim. Velvet dropped down next to it, wincing in agony as her knee hit stone, and started to dig through the different keys. She knew exactly the one, but there were so many. So many.
The little spirit charm dangling from the loops of the skeleton key glinted in the flames of a nearby gaslight, and Velvet snatched it, and then she saw the other one. The small crimson key—the same as Miss Antonia’s—and pocketed it as well, reminding herself that she’d need to retrieve the one she’d pulled from the Salvage mother’s ashes from her shredded clothes in the alley. She retraced her steps and dodged even more destruction on her return to the Cellar.
The moments after the key turned in the lock and the gates flung open and off their hinges were a blur in Velvet’s mind. Rancho Cucamonga rushed forward into the dark cave of the stairwell. The steps had devolved into a gravelly hill because of the rolling in the earth. Manny followed Rancho, and the two were swallowed in the inky black depths of the Cellar.
The hissing turned into a roar and then into screams.
Velvet tumbled forward, skidding down the slope on her hands and aching knee, pebbles popping up at her face and into her mouth. She jerked her head to the side and pivoted, trying desperately to gain her footing, or at the very least to dig her heels into the softening stone to slow her descent. What finally did it was a jarring bash into the rock wall, its surface still very much solid and hard enough to dizzy Velvet’s senses.
It took a few seconds for her to realize she was in the Cellar. A lit torch lay in the center of the dirty floor, and she stumbled over and snatched it.
“Rancho! Manny!” she screamed.
“Rancho!” one of the prisoner’s mocked in response.
“Manny!” another chimed in, their tone much whinier than hers, she noted.
“I see you cons have taken time out from your busy hissing schedule,” Velvet said, zipping past their cages, and speeding up as she noticed the bars were decomposing into chilling bends and curves. She thought back to the gate above. Nothing was going to hold these monsters in place if they couldn’t find Clay and the stolen souls in time. Banshees and other criminals would flood out into purgatory.
Velvet quickened her pace, limping toward the interrogation cell. The hissing rose up anew from the cages on either side of her, and she swung her torch left and right, not caring whether she set the prisoners’ reaching hands afire.
One hand caught and blazed briefly before the prisoner jerked it back into his cage, pouting and rocking it in the crook of his other arm like a baby.
“Serves you right,” Velvet said.
Another light glowed in the near distance, and Velvet broke toward it, hoping desperately to find Rancho or Manny nearby. Surely they’d had time to reach the interrogation cell. But as she neared the cell, she ran straight into the bars. At her feet, Manny lay unconscious. Inside, the banshee sat calmly on the dirt floor, the torch lapping in front of him like a campfire. The monster’s face was so serene, Velvet thought, that he could have been toasting marshmallows over the thing.
She knelt and gently took Manny’s face between her palms. “Are you all right?” And then she screamed into the darkness, “Rancho! Where are you? Come to the center cell! Rancho!”
The only response was more hissing.
“You!” she screamed at the banshee. “What are you doing? Answer me!”
His face remained placid; his arms hung limply at his sides. It was like he was in a coma. Velvet narrowed her eyes, crouched, scraped a handful of dirt and gravel from the ground, and threw it between the bars. The debris hit its mark, but the banshee still didn’t move. She turned the key in the lock and swung open the door, rushing toward the prone figure. A second later she realized her mistake.
An effigy.
She ran her fingers over the tightly folded paper that made up the thing’s form, the perfection of the work, and rolled it over. Behind her, Manny gasped.
“He’s gone. Disappeared. Just like Clay.” Velvet’s voice quivered on the brink of insanity. “One day he’s locked up, and the next he’s gone.”
“Uh.” Manny clutched the crown of her head and glowered in stupefied horror at the masterwork of origami before them. “Well, at the very least, Kipper’s idea to investigate the Latin Quarter’s origamists wasn’t a
dead end.”
Velvet’s eyes shot toward the station agent. “What did you say?”
“Yes. Kipper is searching for Clay among the few master origamists in our district. Including, I believe, your friend. What was his name?”
“Mr. Fassbinder?”
“Yes, that’s it. He’s been helpful so far, right?”
“Certainly,” Velvet said. But as she said it, she wondered what exactly Mr. Fassbinder had helped with. The rumors he’d spoken of, about Clay residing in Vermillion, had been a wild-goose chase for Kipper. And he really ought to have known something, oughtn’t he? The level of skill involved in the origami effigies was unparalleled. Velvet hadn’t seen such artistry outside of the Paper Aviary.
If Mr. Fassbinder is involved …
Velvet pushed the thought aside. It wasn’t a possibility. He was her friend, and if she was nothing else, she was loyal.
Without waiting for a response, Velvet ran, the key bouncing against her hip, the torch crackling and leaving a blazing red wake in the murky dark. She heard the pounding of feet in the dirt as Manny gave chase, Rancho shouting his presence in the distance.
Velvet wished she could send a message to Nick, to tell him to come back from the strip mall. They had to fight something worse than the murder and capture of souls.
The departure.
It could still be stopped, couldn’t it? Or reversed?
Aloysius Clay couldn’t be allowed to get his way and release all of his followers into the daylight.
Hell, it might happen anyway, she thought.
All. These. Cracks.
She scrambled over the fallen gates and out into the main hall. Souls were busy mending those injured by the falling dome, pressing stolen cloth into the gashes. Velvet passed one woman with a cut on her head so deep, white tentacles writhed from inside. A little boy in a football jersey and a newsboy cap used his tiny fingers to quickly shove the tentacles back in. He jerked away from each spark that jumped from the end of the dendrites and crackled down the front of the woman’s robes.
An unusual wind whipped through the hall, twisting the inky blue shadows into cyclones of dark trouble. The ground beneath them churned, and the crumbled stone caught in the swirling air and showered the cowering masses of souls.
Velvet flanked the curved wall of the atrium and raced toward the Shattered Hall near the entrance to the funicular and ducked inside. She traced her delicate finger against their crack, itself shattered into a web and barely recognizable as the port to the strip mall. Then she disrobed quietly and slipped through into the light.
It was good to have her feet on solid ground once more. She’d almost gotten used to the constant shaking, but the absence of it made a profound impact and she took a moment to let the stillness calm her fragile nerves before heading toward the Quickie Teriyaki. Inside, Nick stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the loading dock behind the strip mall, watching Logan and Luisa and the bodies in turn. When he turned toward her and smiled, it was as though a light went on inside her. Velvet was filled with a warmth and happiness that she’d not felt since she was alive, and much, much younger.
“Nick!” she cried, and raced across the room to fall into his arms for a quick hug. He held her tight, and Velvet felt a stitch of regret as his face wilted when she pulled away.
Velvet leaned out the back door. Luisa poked her head out of the side of the truck, and Velvet waved for the girl to join them.
“Did you find anything?” Velvet asked, knowing perfectly well they hadn’t—they wouldn’t. Those souls were long gone.
Luisa shook her head. “You look funny. What’s going on?”
She searched for the words to tell her team what was happening back at their home. Finding no easy way to put it, she said it the only way she knew how. “Purgatory is falling apart. Whatever happened here”—she pointed to the prone figures on the floor—“is destroying the City of the Dead.”
Logan’s mouth dropped open, and Luisa slouched into a discouraged curl. Nick reached out and drew them both close to his sides.
“It’ll be okay. Won’t it?” The look in Nick’s eyes is what directed her to answer the question the way she did.
“Of course,” she said. “We just have work to do to make sure of it. And we have to leave now. Manny is waiting for us.”
Chapter 24
Manny was waiting for them to return when they spilled back into the Shattered Hall, her arms crossed and her hair uncharacteristically frizzy. The station agent had been busy. Clothes had been laid out for them on the out-of-place settee from her office. One of the sofa’s legs had fallen into another crack, adding to the general imbalance of the hall.
“Hurry up, then,” Manny urged, tapping her foot.
Velvet rushed forward and snatched up some of the mismatched garments, dressing amid a flurry of flapping fabric and elbows. They followed the woman out into the station, and Velvet fell into a jogging gait beside her as they drove straight through the throngs of refugees huddled inside. Though “inside” was more of a relative term, considering that the shattered dome of the station above them had turned the room into something resembling a courtyard.
Manny headed toward the staircase rather than the arched entrances to the platforms. Velvet glanced at Nick and shrugged.
“Where are we going?” she yelled ahead.
Manny looked back over her shoulder and held her finger to her lips. “Secret,” she said.
“Because this is a good time for secrets,” Velvet snipped. “You know, this is something my team and I can handle.”
Manny ignored the comment and kept on. The last thing Velvet needed was the station agent’s tagging along to the Paper Aviary. It was too close to the alley. Too close to her lie.
Velvet winced at the smattering of people they passed, each face a study in exhaustion. Heads hung between knees and swayed with the sporadic shimmy of the floor. The rows of refugees could have been on a train, bound for anywhere, covered in the dust and ash from the building’s slow and shuddering collapse.
Eventually it would fall. That was very possible. But please not now, she thought. Let the station stay up a few more hours. An hour. Something.
They followed Manny up the stairs to her office on hands and knees, scrabbling over mounds that looked more like rock piles than risers. Once inside the office, they watched as Manny pulled back the pale blue curtains draped behind the empty space where the settee normally stood and led them into a dark cavernous space that Velvet hadn’t been aware existed.
She gawped in amazement. Manny, it turned out, was keeping a lot of secrets.
The walls here were made of brick, and small orbs of gaslight cast a dusty glow onto a raised wooden beam, rounded at the top like a spectacularly elongated horse’s back. Between the lamps, thick swatches of leather hung from hooks, belts and carabiners attached to them. Velvet peered into the distance, where the hall-like room seemed to descend rapidly into darkness. A cliff of some kind.
“What is this?” she asked. “Some kind of slide?”
“Exactly.” Manny snatched one of the leather pieces from the wall and laid it across the wooden rail.
She strode across the room into the shadows and returned pushing a rolling cart. Atop it were metal teardrops, each affixed with a loop at the pointy end. With some effort she attached one to each of the four corners of the leather.
“So that’s like a sled?” Nick asked, and grimaced.
He shuffled out to the edge of the precipice, where the slide began its downturn. When he turned back toward them, he wore a look of terror. “It sure is steep.”
Manny straightened and looked them in the eye, one after the other. “The slides are built into the walls of every station in purgatory, as a means of escape should something happen. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s important to keep the Council of Station Agents safe, particularly in times of disaster and political unrest.”
They nodded.
She ran a hand
across the smooth, oiled leather. “This slide will take us to the foot of the mountain, depositing us less than a mile from the Latin Quarter’s main square. We’ll be within a stone’s throw of the dorms and, if I’ve done my homework correctly, very close to the Paper Aviary, the shop of Velvet’s friend, Mr. Fassbinder.” She winked at Velvet, but the sentiment seemed oddly forced.
Velvet wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Surely Manny wanted to stop the destruction. What would she gain from any of this? If anything, Velvet was the one being fake—going along with the station agent’s presence, when she didn’t want the woman anywhere near the epicenter of her lies. The closer they got to the alley, the closer Velvet would come to having her coil of secrets unravel. It was only a matter of someone mentioning that they’d used the secret crack to get to the station, before the station agent’s questions would start.
“How did you know it was there, Velvet?” Manny would ask.
“How did you know it was viable, Velvet?”
“How many times did you cross into the daylight without permission?”
And worse …
“What were you doing?”
Ugh. The answers would spell disaster for her future, she was sure of it.
Manny continued, “I have a good feeling about this. We’ll learn more from this origamist. We’ll learn enough to point us in the direction of an end.”
Velvet wasn’t so certain. She felt a familiar hopelessness begin to settle in. But she had to be hopeful for her team, or at least appear that way, so she nodded firmly for all of them to see.
It was Luisa who lifted her brow suspiciously, and Velvet wondered if her carefully constructed lie was beginning to crumble.
Manny continued, “Each of you grab a swath of leather and fit it as I have. The weights will keep the leather snug against the wood slide.” She loosened the belts atop it. “These strap around the rider. Make them tight; it’s going to be a very quick ride.”
Velvet pulled another of the leather sleds from the wall and draped it over the slide.
Manny straddled the piece of leather, belting herself to it, and bucked herself backward toward the edge of the drop-off. She paused just before the slope. “Before you get on, slide the leather close to the drop-off. You don’t want to have to shift it as much as I did. Good luck!”