My head whirled when he mentioned factory. That and the lingering odor of ozone.
“Are you saying,” I said, “that Satan makes gold down there?”
“Made gold. The place has been abandoned for a thousand years, probably.”
Sneaker sat beside her mentor.
“I don't understand,” she said. “Satan can make gold?”
“Where do you think gold came from?” he said. “Satan invented gold.”
“What? Des, you're weirding me out here.”
“Think about it. More sin has been committed, more misery suffered, over gold than anything in human history, except maybe love and religion. It's one of Satan's best strategies. It was brilliant.”
“You've been down there,” I said. “Do you know how to make it?”
He laughed.
“The old alchemist's trick, turning lead or mercury into gold? No, I don't know how. I don't need to, there's tons for the taking. If you can get out.”
Sneaker looked like she wanted to say something so I kept quiet, though there were plenty of questions I wanted to ask.
“Destiny, did you know about the mine when you were training me?”
“Yes, I did,” he said.
“Why didn't you tell me about it?”
“Because you had much more serious things to think about then. Like learning to survive. There's a lot more to becoming a Hell Cop than learning a few rules and how to work a Find. Hell Cops are unique in that they have a very high survival instinct. That instinct needs to be trained and focused for the singular dangers in Hell. You have it, though it needs to be more focused. Getter has it, perhaps stronger and deeper than any I've seen.”
I barely heard what he said because that instinct he was talking about was telling me something was coming. I stepped to the door and checked out the main chamber—empty. Then I heard a soft rustle behind me. I had my gun out before I completed my turn. The sights rested on two Fliers folding their wings on the ledge outside the window. Their big eyes kept watch of the gun. Otherwise they seemed calm.
The smallest one, about six feet from beak to tail, waddled forward. Though the only Fliers I'd seen before were trying to kill me and I hadn't had the time to scrutinize them closely, I could tell this one was old, even ancient. The nicks and scars on his wings took a long lifetime to acquire. A ragged scar ran diagonally across his ten-inch beak, and his long tail had a crook in it near the end. He even waddled old, slowly, rocking from one foot to the other.
Yet, there was great dignity and power about him. His eyes held an intelligence born of long experience. They studied each of us in turn, and when he finished with me, I felt that he knew everything about me worth knowing. He radiated no particular menace, but still ...
Destiny went to meet the old Flier.
“Put that gun away, Getter,” he said.
I did, though I kept my hand on it.
The Flier greeted Destiny with a nod and then spoke with a lot of acks and caws and gnashing of beak. Destiny surprised me by replying in kind. In a couple of minutes he turned to us.
“Reech says other Fliers told Molas's demons where we are. But Reech told them the first group was lying and then sent them up the trail. We've got five or six hours before they make it here.”
He spoke to them again, then pointed to Sneaker and said her name. Then he pointed at me and said my name. Reech waddled to the inside edge of the opening. Destiny motioned me forward.
“Getter,” the Flier said in a high pitched, guttural voice that nevertheless was easily understandable. “We know of you. You killed Mephisto's relative. You and Sneaker killed a Hound. Mephisto is angry. Do not let him catch you. You may hide here if you must.”
“Thank you,” I said hesitantly, not quite trusting kind words from a demon. “Mephisto doesn't know of this cavern?”
“He knows but does not believe.”
“How have you heard of me?”
“We hear of many things here.”
“Have you heard of war?”
Reech's stare penetrated my brain. I felt as if I'd said, “Fuck you,” to my mother. But his words carried no special admonishment.
“Yes, there is talk of war. Another reason for you to avoid Mephisto. He would make an example and an excuse of you. That is to be avoided at all costs.”
“Well, I certainly intend to avoid him. I only want to find the soul I came for and go home.”
“That is what you want, Getter, but it will be a longer flight than you think before you truly return to your home.” Slowly he unfurled his wings and laid them on my shoulders. His gaze held me as if I was encased in concrete. “Strange,” he said, “how Fate offers greatness to the one who wants it least.”
“I don't understand,” I said, or thought. I wasn't sure which. “Greatness? Me?”
“Be yourself, Getter. Greatness is in you. The future of Hell is in your hands.” With a final blast of his eyes he removed his wings. He turned to Destiny. “I must go.”
They spoke formally in the Flier language, and then Reech turned and waddled slowly on bent legs to the edge of the rock. His age showed in every laborious step. The other, younger Flier stepped back, his respect for the elder obvious in his stiff, watchful stance. Reech spread his wrinkled wings and fell out of sight.
The younger Flier stepped forward. “I am Orbuck,” he said. He raked us with his glare. Our eyes met and held. My survival instincts tried to read him. His expression was unfathomable. I got a sense of danger and respect from him, without a clue as to how they pertained to me. He raised his wings, gave a powerful downward thrust, did a fancy spin in the air, and was gone.
I turned to Destiny.
“You're full of surprises, aren't you?” I said.
“Don't take Reech's words lightly, Getter,” he admonished.
“I don't,” I assured him. I didn't know what in Hell the old Flier was talking about.
“There seems to be an awful lot you didn't tell me about,” Sneaker said to her mentor.
He rested an affectionate hand on her shoulder.
“I taught you what you needed to know,” he said. “Besides, you can't expect to learn forty years worth of stuff in three years, can you?” He took our arms and guided us into the main chamber. “I need a drink, and then we should rest for four hours.”
“Are you going to tell us about Reech?” I asked, sitting down.
“He's ancient,” Sneaker said. “I've never seen anybody radiate such age, and wisdom.”
Destiny poured sparingly from two bottles into three cut diamond cups. One bottle contained a rich, dark, almost black liquid, the other a pure sky blue fluid. The solution had a smokey look to it as the two liquids mingled and fought together. Black and Blue Wine; Destiny was definitely living large in Hell. The wine was extremely rare. The Dandelion like weeds only grew in one place, the black and blue flowers intermingled in vast fields. Each color liquid was poison by itself; mixed in proper proportion they were pure ambrosia. When the Wine reached its proper blood color, Sneaker and I clinked crystal and sipped. My stomach was beginning to glow when Destiny spoke.
“Reech came here with Satan.”
It took a few seconds for that to sink in.
“That would make him three thousand years old,” I said.
“Depending on who you talk to,” Sneaker added.
“You're much too low in your estimate,” Destiny informed us. “Suffice it to say he's ageless, timeless. The Fliers were the original demons. There's few of the original bloodline left, but they seem to know everything that happens in Hell.” He raised his eyes to me and smiled seriously. “When I first met Reech, he looked at me the way he looked at you.”
“What's that mean?” I asked.
“Not for me to say,” he said with an inscrutable smile that had my instincts singing, DANGER, DANGER.
He turned to Sneaker but pointed at me.
“Take care of this man, Sneaker. He is bound to do great things, if he survives
.”
“Now what does that mean?” I said, getting a little testy at all the enigmatic “looked at you” and “great things” stuff. The only great things I wanted to do were get Brittany Hightower out and survive the process. “Is that what Reech said?”
Destiny stood up. He drained his glass of Black and Blue Wine and took thirty seconds to savor the ecstasy of it.
“All in good time, Getter,” he said. “We should rest. There's some climbing to do. Four hours.”
Sneaker looked positively angelic as she sat with eyes closed and gave herself up to the wine. When she came back, she hugged Destiny and asked if I was coming to bed.
“In a minute,” I said, staring into the priceless diamond glass with its priceless blood red wine.
Alone, I went to the open end of the chamber and looked out on the lava river. In the distance Fairy Falls raged on. Its subdued roar filled the great cavern, its effect as good as silence.
I didn't care for mystic foretellings like Reech gave me. Some Hell Cops believed in that stuff, consulting fortune tellers of various types before accepting a retrieval commission. I didn't listen to that sort of thing. In Hell, dire prognostications were too easily turned into self-fulfilling prophecies, and trust in predictions of success could too easily lead to inattention and failure.
But, I couldn't help thinking that already I'd had more trouble in a shorter time than on any other trip. I wanted to get the girl, who could have been my daughter—man, I had to stop thinking like that—and get out. Not only to avoid Reech's pronouncement, but because souls, especially young ones, have been corrupted and missed their chance at Heaven, to their everlasting regret.
Fed and rested, I was getting antsy. Destiny, with his luxury hideaway, gold, and ancient friends, was interesting, but time consuming. I wanted to get back to the familiar unfamiliarity of Hell proper and do my job. I considered leaving right then; Destiny and Sneaker could take care of themselves. Common sense prevailed, though; I had no idea how to get out of the cavern. And, as I took in the debris littered floor below me, the soaring walls, the shifting shadows of the roof, and the fuzzy glimpses of watchful Fliers, I realized there was much in Hell that I didn't know anything about. Though the loss of independence rankled a bit, I decided to wait for the others.
My thoughts wandered as I contemplated the splendors of the place and sipped the wine. After awhile I lay beside Sneaker, already asleep. The questions and doubts continued to present themselves like a bill collector who loves his work. I slept badly.
Chapter Seventeen
It figured that the trail couldn't stay on the floor of the cavern. At first Destiny led us along a path that meandered around and through the debris of millennia. After about a mile at a quick-march pace we encountered wide, unfathomably deep fissures, and the trail took to the walls. Progress toward Fairy Falls, where Destiny assured us we had to go to get out, was slow. Not because the trail was steep, but because the trail sometimes took a hundred yards to advance fifty feet. The rock walls undulated like heavy drapes.
The openings to some of the deep folds were only a few feet wide and could be jumped. I dreaded those jumps. My heart hammered in my chest, and I knew I was going to fall. My feet stuck to the ground, my fingers dug into the rock, and I didn't give a damn what Sneaker or Destiny thought.
Sneaker talked me through the jumps. I'm sure future clients would have a lot of confidence if they saw me fighting panic a few feet off the ground. The jumps didn't get any easier with practice, whether the drop was fifty or five hundred feet.
We'd made it halfway to the Falls when we spotted six of Major Molas's demons. They emerged from the floor debris and mounted the wall trail at a run. Their cries carried clearly as they saw us, too.
“Getter,” Destiny said. “We must move quickly now. We do not want to fight them on the trail.”
What he meant was that I'd better jump quick when I had to and enough with that fear of falling a thousand feet to my death crap.
We ran when we could, walked fast when we had to, and jumped without hesitation. I just closed my eyes, accepted death, and leaped, hoping my heart would start again when I landed safely.
Coming out of a fold with, thankfully, an opening too wide to jump, I had a sudden feeling that a bull's eye had appeared on my back and something had taken aim at it. I glanced over my shoulder. The demons were out of sight. I jogged on and caught up with Sneaker. The feeling intensified. I looked back again. Movement high up caught my attention.
A Flier swooped down at speed, hugging the wall, outstretched wing tips brushing the rock face.
“Duck,” I yelled and dropped to my knees.
The others had no time to react. The Flier missed me, but one claw hooked Sneaker and yanked her off balance toward the void.
Destiny was quick for an old guy. Before Sneaker went over the edge, he had his gun out and had fired. The force of the blast blew the Flier into two pieces and stopped it dead in midair. That saved Sneaker's life. It gave me that fraction of a second I needed to reach out and snatch Sneaker's wrist as she began the long drop. Her falling weight slammed my face to the rock and began to drag me over the edge.
Her scream mingled with mine. As my left shoulder and leg slid into nothingness, my right-hand fingers snagged a tiny ridge. I squeezed my eyes shut so I didn't have to look down. Still, the image of Sneaker dangling beneath me with half a Flier hanging from her pack was perfectly clear in my mind's eye.
Sweat trickled down my face and I tasted blood. My fingers began to cramp.
“Getter,” Sneaker said, her voice small and far away. “Don't drop me, okay?”
“I won't, Sneak,” I managed to say, afraid to move. Her face below me was filled with trust. I would fall with her before I let her go.
She swung as she tried to unhook the dead Flier from her pack.
“Easy, Sneak!” I croaked. “Can you climb up my arm?”
She slipped a half inch through my sweaty grip.
“Hang in there, Getter,” Destiny said, over the sound of his pack opening. I swear he chuckled after he said it. Using my Tai Chi training I concentrated all my chi to my hands. Getting rid of the Flier body helped.
Then Destiny said something that broke my concentration.
“Oh, shit.”
Then I heard the Flier cries, and Destiny started shooting. Warm liquid sprayed my face. Something brushed my leg. I snuck a peek. Ten or more Fliers wheeled around us. Destiny kept them at bay with an economy of shots. But it was only a matter of time till one knocked him off the ledge or Molas's demons reached us.
Sneaker grasped my wrist with her free hand.
“Let go,” she said. “I can climb up.”
Looking her in the eye, I relaxed my grip. My heart skipped as she took all the weight. Quickly, uttering a loud grunt of effort, she lunged and grabbed me just below my elbow. I bent my arm to give her a better grip. She rested a few seconds with her eyes closed.
When they opened, they opened wide, and she let go with one hand. She reached for her gun, swung it up till it was by my head, and fired. The compression felt like a spike in my ear. The Flier she shot crashed into Destiny, knocked him over. He tumbled on top of me. I lost my grip on the rock. His weight pressed my body against the gritty ledge. I didn't feel any pain. I did feel Sneaker's hands slide off my arm. For an instant she seemed to float, her hands reaching out, inches from my bent arm.
NO! I screamed in my head. I lunged after her, disregarding my tenuous attachment to the rock. Our fingertips caressed. Then she fell. Her receding eyes told me she didn't blame me. The sudden emptiness in my chest told me that I always would. I barely felt Destiny pull me back to the relative safety of the wall trail. My eyes never left her.
“Look!” Destiny cried out, pointing down to the left.
“What?” I said, desperate not to lose sight of Sneaker.
Destiny forced me to look. Two Fliers dove at top speed toward Sneaker.
“Those bastards,
” I said between clenched teeth, ready to declare war on all Fliers.
“No,” Destiny said. His fingers dug into my arm. “It's Orbuck!”
My heart gave one great beat, filling my emptiness, then along with my breathing, stopped, waiting. Destiny produced a small pair of binoculars. I'd lost sight of Sneaker in the gloom of the cavern. The Fliers were bigger, but they too disappeared from sight. Dying a little with every passing second, I stared at the cavern floor thousands of feet below—and waited.
The attacking Fliers had vanished into the upper dimness. Within seconds the cavern had taken on an air of expectancy as if the cavern's fate was linked to Sneaker's. As the long seconds ticked past, I knew that my fate had become inextricably bonded with hers. A frightening, yet somehow comforting, thought.
We were within five hundred feet of Fairy Falls. The sheer immensity of it was stunning. Pure lava two hundred feet wide and twenty-feet thick flowed with a deafening roar over the edge of a flat stone plain. At our height, a hundred and fifty feet vertically from the top, the lava glowed orange, the intensity made fuzzy by waves of heat that rose like ocean waves, bringing swirls of sparks and ash with it. Where the trail met the Fall's face it zig-zagged up to the top, at one point disappearing behind the lava. I assumed that was where we were going.
“He's got her,” Destiny said with a relieved sigh. “I think she's too heavy for one, though.”
“Let me see.” I grabbed the binoculars.
I located them as the second Flier glided over Orbuck and grasped him where the wings joined his body. They quickly synchronized their wing motions and began to rise. I worried at first because they headed straight for the Falls. Then they rose rapidly in a tight spiral and I realized they were riding the rising heat like a sailplane.
“Can you walk?” Destiny asked.
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