The Maestro sensed Id moving toward him before he could see her, her electrical field of painful desire and powerful demand enveloping him. And then her hair shackled his skin like red velvet, whirling itself around his right arm and the axe it held.
“Maestro,” she whispered. Her moist breath warmed his ear. Its touch sent a larger worm wiggling down his spine, kissing his bones as it interlaced itself in and out of his vertebrae. “You are the strongest of my generals,” she said softly. Marsten closed the eye that could still be controlled. “You are the conductor of my chaos. You are the arm that wields my Black Hand. And I need you still. For a job only you can do.”
Marsten’s mind calmed. Like the worms had been slathered in Novocain. Marsten wondered if, perhaps, she’d killed them altogether. No, he could feel them still, but distantly. But truth be told, he no longer cared. The stroke of a goddess, pressing her naked flesh against his and breathing humid lust into his ear, tended to put things in perspective. Slowly, encouraged but not dragged by the amber creepers wrapping around it, his right arm lowered the axe to his side.
“She is here,” Id said. Her voice carried to the entire room, though its suppleness seemed spoken only for him.
“Who?” he asked. Let her give him an answer. Let her touch his ears again with her wet words.
“The missing piece of the puzzle, my dear Maestro. The last tooth of the key that will deliver He Who Is to Come into this world. Through her actions, we will spread the legs of this reality and birth his reign over it in blood.”
Maggie made more mewling sounds.
Simpson remained silent and still, an immovable oak.
“What about the soldiers?” Marsten whispered. His thinking was remarkably clear, he realized, given the circumstances. Had the worms focused him before or distracted him? Any answer seemed irrelevant as Id pressed her flesh into him.
“They are merely a distraction I have indulged. But now, you are right—they are tiresome. You have but one mission now. Bring her to me.”
“Where … where is this woman? How will I know her?”
The Lady laughed softly, triumphant and amused. Marsten’s right eye fixed on the woman he’d dragged from the bathroom stall. She seemed to be drooling, enraptured by Id, as they all were.
“Not the woman,” the Queen said. “She will come of her own accord. Secure the girl for me. The one you let go before. You held her in your grasp, no? I have since come to realize—she is the key. Bring me the child and the mother will follow. And she will be the instrument of his assimilation of this world. Of all worlds.”
“But where?” All he wanted was to do this thing. To bring this key back, to make up for his failure on the roof. To please his Queen and pleasure himself in doing so.
The Lady’s hair turned the Maestro around like a marionette guided by strings. Her toned arm extended lazily, pointing upward. Marsten followed its long reach to the second floor behind them.
“There.”
The spell holding him released. Marsten felt the worms begin to waken. He settled back into himself and felt the comforting weight of the axe in his hand once again. Though he couldn’t see his target, he knew she was there in the dark behind that glass window, looking down on them.
He took a deep breath and let it go, and as the air coursed in and out of him, Marsten replaced the marionette with the Maestro once again. “Cackler, round up whatever crows you can and come with me,” he said. Turning to Simpson, he made sure there was no room for doubt as to who was in charge. “You stay here and help the Lady with those potbellies playing dress-up outside,” he said, jerking his thumb at the screens.
Simpson nodded once, then looked away.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the proper pecking order, thought Marsten.
“What about me?”
The Maestro ignored Maggie’s pathetic plea, instead passing only his sour left eye over her until it fixed on the dark glass above. Then he pointed his axe like Babe Ruth calling his shot. Then he smiled.
“I’m coming for you, Red Riding Hood. I’m coming for you old school.”
* * *
“Who? Who’s here?” Lauryn wiped the tear from Megan’s cheek with her thumb. “Baby?”
“The woman from my dream. The woman you … the woman you fight in my dream.”
Colt said, “Something’s happening.”
Lauryn gripped Megan’s hand fiercely for a moment to reassure her, then followed Colt’s finger pointing below. Two men were squaring off, and she recognized them both from the state prison: Marsten and Simpson. That’s one cage match she never thought she’d see. Simpson didn’t have the guts. Or, at least, he didn’t used to.
They all watched, fascinated as each man postured, daring the other to pounce. The sounds of the battle outside faded into the background. The fog carpeting the floor billowed around the men’s feet like a living thing.
“Maybe the one with the gun will deliver Peter’s head on a platter for us,” murmured Eamon.
“Simpson’ll never do it,” whispered Lauryn. “He doesn’t have what it takes. Marsten will have him for dinner.” But something in her voice suggested she wasn’t so sure. That nothing could be relied upon to be as it might’ve been, only a week ago.
They all froze as Id stepped lightly into view. She appeared to be walking on top of the fog before her feet descended into it, touching the floor. Her hair reached out and encircled Marsten’s raised arm. Her body mesmerized them, its faultless curves flowing like poetry written in flesh.
Eamon gasped.
Colt might’ve moaned.
Even Lauryn couldn’t keep from roaming over the woman’s body with her eyes. An insatiable curiosity to see every aspect of Id’s perfection possessed her, overriding propriety’s demand to look away. Jasper turned his worried stare from one human to the other. Their beguiled stillness disturbed him.
“Unnatural,” said the scientist. In that moment, he knew something was different about the woman striding through the fog. She pressed herself against Marsten, whispering in his ear, and Eamon hated Peter then more than ever because Marsten’s skin was touching hers. My God, I’m jealous, he realized. His brain began to click as it always did, trying to make sense of the feeling overwhelming him.
He watched the way she moved—with total confidence and a grace that appeared to define itself as the archetype, the essence of what female sensuality should be. Images came to his mind from half-remembered folklore.
Images of Lilith, the prototypical feminine, the Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of a thousand centuries of history.
The patron saint of temptation.
He hadn’t thought of a woman in this way in a long time, not since before his work had become his only mistress. Eamon felt himself responding physically to her presence and unashamedly so, despite the others standing around him. Then he smiled as she seemed to look right at him, through the glass and past the darkness that supposedly hid them from view. Right now, all he wanted was for her to see him, to grace his face with her eyes. She even gestured at him, and it felt for a moment like she’d actually blessed him.
Then the spell lifted. Eamon breathed again. He felt the others around him doing the same, as if they’d all been holding their breath for a long time.
Then he saw Peter point his axe and smile. Also, right at him.
“This is not good,” said Colt.
Eamon pulled his gaze away from the scene below with great effort. The boy had a stricken look and was taking great pains to face away from the women. Apparently, he took the shame of public erections more seriously than Eamon did.
“We need to get out of here,” Megan said. “It won’t matter, but we need to try. We can’t just sit here!”
“What?” Lauryn shook herself out of the trance, still remembering how to breathe, taking in her daughter’s terrified face. “What do you mean it won’t matter?”
“This could be our chance,” said Eamon, thinking out loud. “Peter’s c
oming! This could be our chance to collect—”
Megan was already moving for the door, dragging Jasper with her. “We have to get out of here!”
“Megan, wait!”
Jasper barked. He was on Megan’s side.
“All of you wait!” yelled Eamon. “This is our chance, goddamnit!”
“You stay,” Colt said as he brushed past him. “We’re sitting ducks in here. I’d rather choose my own ground.”
As the others moved, Eamon again cast his eyes to the ground floor. Marsten was moving, followed by a thin scarecrow of a man and all the prisoners that’d been in the control center.
The scientist hesitated a moment longer, then seeing he was alone in the room, ran after the others, cursing under his breath.
* * *
“Down, down, down!” Megan urged Jasper.
Their feet slapped the narrow stairs as they fled the observation room. Colt was nimble and hopped from one flight to the next over the railing, but Eamon stumbled once, then twice. Lauryn raced to get ahead of Megan, drawing her pistol.
They’d just reached the landing to the basement when they heard the door above them open.
“Caw, caw, caw!”
Lauryn paused and looked up to see Marsten’s ever-staring orb glaring down at her.
“They’re down there!” he yelled in his rattling baritone. “Trap ’em in the basement! They ain’t got nowhere to go!”
“Hurry up!” Lauryn said, holding the door to the corridor open and waving the others through. “Get Megan out of here!” she shouted at Eamon when he passed by.
Colt stopped next to her as the thundering feet of the Weisshemden assaulted the stairs two flights above.
“Caw, caw, caw!”
“What are you doing?” she asked, pointing the pistol. She fired, and the cawing of the crows skipped a beat. She fired again, hoping for Marsten to cast his all-seeing eye over the railing again and give her a target.
Colt held one of the Mason jars in one hand, his butane lighter in the other.
“I hope this one works!” he said, flicking the lighter’s trigger. A flame appeared and he touched it to the fuse in the top of the jar. “You might want to duck.”
Lauryn gave him a look that said, I hope you know what you’re doing, and followed the others into the corridor. Colt threw the homemade frag grenade toward the landing above them and dived after her.
As the first of the whiteshirts stepped onto the landing, the Mason jar shattered, its ammonium nitrate and kerosene mixture exploding, its payload of carpet tacks and carpenter’s nails spraying outward. Two prisoners went down, holding their legs, and before they knew it, their jumpsuits were soaked in flaming kerosene.
The screams of immolated men followed them into the basement, flashing and humming with its wall-to-wall lights. Slamming the hallway door shut behind him, Colt moved to Megan, who was urging Jasper to jump into the manhole. Eamon was nowhere to be seen.
“Go, Jasper!” yelled Lauryn, her pistol aiming at the door. “Megan, push him!”
“Mom, I can’t!”
“Megan, goddamnit, you promised, now do what I tell you or we’ll all die on account of that dog!”
“Come on, Jasper!” urged Eamon from the sewer below. “Jump!”
Colt rushed up behind the dog and pushed him through the hole.
“No!” screamed Megan.
Jasper’s yelping cry ended abruptly when Eamon grunted.
“Got him!”
“Caw, caw, caw!”
The screeching crows were past the flaming stairwell.
“Through there!” Marsten’s voice shouted, just outside the door.
“Go!” said Lauryn, but Megan was already halfway down the ladder. Colt withdrew another Mason jar, snapped the lighter, and lit the fuse.
“You go,” he said.
Lauryn hesitated.
“Do I have to push you, too? Fuse is burning!”
Lauryn thrust her pistol into her waistband and started down when the door crashed open. Colt lobbed the jar as a prisoner sprang through, and the resulting explosion sent shrapnel flying in all directions. Colt threw himself backward against a row of servers, then redirected, diving into the hole after Lauryn as men shrieked in pain behind him.
At the bottom of the manhole, Megan was checking Jasper over.
“If we can isolate him, we can take him,” Eamon was saying. “We can’t give up on this!”
Lauryn stepped off the ladder and rounded on him. “Not now, Stavros! Jasper’s fine, Megan. Now hurry up, drag him if you have to, and follow me!” She made her way down the tunnel as fast as the slippery muck would let her. Eamon ran after, making his argument with gasping, out-of-shape breaths.
Colt halted at the bottom of the ladder and looked up to see the reedy man who’d led the search for him in the bus barn. He was gawking down, a smile stretching ear to ear.
“Caw, caw, caw, my pretty,” said Goony, licking his lips.
Colt took out his last Mason jar and mirrored the thin man’s grin of triumph. When he lit the fuse, Goony’s smile soured.
“Back up! Back up!” Cackler screamed in a shrill voice, fighting past the Black Hand pressing around the hole. “Maestro, get back!”
Colt hurled the jar in a line drive straight through the hole above, then turned and bolted after the others. The jar popped through the space opened by retreating prisoners, then burst open in mid-air.
More screams like before, and Colt knew he’d bought them a few more seconds. He pumped his legs, fighting the half-solid sewage to make headway. Flipping on his flashlight, he found the stumbling shadows of the others as they fled back the way they’d come. Or, rather, he saw their silhouettes in hazy reflections.
The orange fog was back. And it was getting thicker.
Chapter 19: Wednesday, morning.
“Get down there, you useless piece of shit,” the Maestro shouted. Cackler simply stared at Marsten. The cries of a nameless whiteshirt, his skin on fire, had drowned out the order. So Marsten turned and swung his axe, cleaving the screaming man’s skull. “There, that’s better.”
Hobbled by the bullet in his thigh, Marsten had entered the server room last. His injury had protected him from the grenade’s blast, from having nails embedded in his flesh. He raised his axe again, its head still dripping with the dead prisoner’s blood, and pointed toward the hole. Cackler got the message.
The thin man swung onto the ladder and quickly descended. Marsten went next, relying on the heavy muscles of his arms, not his legs, to climb down. One at a time, the Black Hand followed.
As they filled the tight space around him, the Maestro watched the bobbing flashlights moving down the tunnel. He could feel the Lady’s fog leading them to their quarry. The dark closeness of the sweating stonework tickled the hairs on his arms. The acidic fog filled his nostrils when he breathed.
The Black Hand’s enthusiasm ramped up as the last of them half-jumped off the ladder.
“Caw, caw, caw! Caw, caw, caw!”
Their war cry raced up and down the tomb-like tunnel’s length, carried on the back of the Lady’s fog. Cackler stalked the small space in front of the Weisshemden, whipping his hands up and down in the air.
“Come on!” Marsten called, leading the chase. He was better able to keep up down here. The muck sucked at their feet, but his left-drag lope kept it from taking hold, and he was determined to lead from the front now.
Cackler aimed a flashlight he’d found stuck in the muck at the bottom of the ladder, but it really wasn’t necessary. The Maestro sneered at their targets’ stupidity. All they needed do was follow their own bobbing flashlights till the sewage and the fear weighed down the legs of their prey, leached the energy from their muscles. The worms twisted in his head, and Marsten wasn’t sure if he could stop himself from going nuts when he caught them, from simply murdering them all instead of returning them for the Lady’s pleasure.
Going nuts. That’s the old school way.
Now there’s a thought made of pure irony, thought Marsten. Me seeking justice.
A Biblical kind of justice. A fundamental reckoning for the sins of transgressors.
Old school comeuppance.
“Caw, caw, caw!”
The Black Hand’s signature shout didn’t grate on the Maestro’s nerves, for once. They seemed to be cheering him on as his thoughts unspooled from a wormy spindle. The little wigglers picked up the rhythm of the “Caw, caw, caw!” as they consumed the gray matter inside his skull, twisting in time with the screaming crows. Tiny dynamos pumping adrenalin into his veins to dull the pain of his leg wound, give him more speed. And in the Maestro’s brain, as the worms turned, the chug-chug-chug of a single thought was the steam cast off by their labors.
An eye for an eye.
An eye for an eye.
An eye for an eye.
* * *
Lauryn winced at the noise bouncing off the tunnel’s stony walls. It really did sound like a flock of giant predatory birds, pterodactyls maybe, hunting their way through the close quarters of the sewer. A murder of crows homing in on their next meal.
“Jasper!”
Megan’s voice carried through the fog, barely audible over the strident sound of the prisoners pursuing them. Lauryn saw the dog’s hazy form angle off down a side tunnel to the left and watched her daughter follow.
“Megan! Not that way!”
The fog around them was rising, thicker at the bottom but crawling up the cold, limestone sewer walls. Maybe it’d confused the dog, and Jasper lost his way. But Lauryn knew better than to think Megan had lost hers. She’d followed Jasper.
Ironheart (The Serenity Strain Book 2) Page 16