And that thought made Trent think of Susan.
He had tried so hard for hours to avoid thinking of his wife, to avoid thinking of her fate, to simply continue with his stated goals. He had found the task easy at first, a numb sort of disinterest in himself and everything around him that made it easy to not care. But another part of him knew that it was just a sham, a distraction from reality.
Looking at Celia had made him think of Susan. Talking to Mary had made him think of Susan. Walking in the black made her smile inescapable. She had held his hand in the hospital. She had encouraged him even when she disagreed with his path. She had been the one to lead him out of the dark places after the crash and again after his second fall from grace. Susan was Trent’s light in a world of shadow, and he had lost her.
His boots suddenly pulled free of the muck and started squelching against the damp, icy, but sewage-free, concrete of a normal drainage tunnel. Up ahead, from the light of an air vent overhead, he could make out a crude brick wall. In the wall, was a nondescript, gray steel door with a handle. Trent reached it, and stopped.
He put his hands on his knees and exhaled slowly, desperately trying to banish Susan’s image from his mind, the picture of her on their wedding day, standing against the storm-dappled dusk sky beneath rays of new sunlight, grinning ear-to-ear, overjoyed at the site of colored ribbons friends had strung through the trees in the glade where they were to be wed. The image wouldn’t go. Trent’s heart collapsed. He fell against the brick wall and then slid down it until he was sitting upon the cold, concrete floor. He put his head between his knees and quietly cried.
26
IT TOOK FIFTEEN MINUTES FOR Trent to compose himself. Fifteen minutes to wrestle with guilt and shame and anger, and he finally settled on the latter and let it pull him up from the floor. A permanent scowl settled on his face, a realization that the foul stench in his nostrils was not the sewer at all, but the entire world. His eyelids lowered. His brow furrowed. He turned and faced the steel door and knocked on it a few times.
He thought about the trick that he had pulled before, at the entrance to the abandoned office; but without a peephole to look through, he didn’t think he could pull it off. And more than that, he simply wanted to face someone, to vent the anger that he had molded from his sorrow.
There was a noise and then a catch unlocking and then the door opened. An ordinary-looking man peered out in the tunnel, eyebrow raised, until he saw Trent.
“Who the fu–?”
Before he could finish, Trent was through the door, arm raised. His fingers closed around the man’s neck in a choking grasp and he pushed him back through the door and into the basement hallway beyond and slammed him up against the wall, feet dangling. The man’s eyes bulged and his skin had already begun to turn shades of purple.
Trent brought his face within inches of his victim’s. “Where is Zamagiel?” he growled, quietly. He glanced down the hallway to see if there were any other guards here, but saw none.
The man only let out rasping cough and clawed at Trent’s fingers.
“Salvatore!” Trent hissed. “Zamagiel! Where is he?”
The guard feebly lifted an arm and pointed up. “Penthouse,” he croaked. “Under the beam.”
“Elevators?”
The guard pointed down the hallway to a point where it took a ninety-degree turn to the left.
Trent nodded, then slammed the man’s head against the wall. He went limp and Trent let the unconscious guard slump to the floor in a heap.
He headed for the elevators, boots clomping in a steady rhythm against the concrete. As he rounded the corner, he passed a doorway that led into a security room, presumably where the guard had come from. Trent peered inside and surveyed the bank of flat-panel monitors showcasing scenes from throughout the Luxor Hotel. One in particular caught his eye: the casino floor seemed to be the only place occupied by people, and all of them were on the ground, hands on the backs of their hands.
Hostages? Trent thought, and then saw a blond man in a gray suit walk into the frame, rifle in his hands. Damned angels have taken hostages. He realized then that the lights he had seen up on the street had been police, not cherubim. The Metro had the Luxor surrounded. The angels had barricaded themselves inside.
“You’ve made a big mistake, Zamagiel,” he mumbled to himself as he turned and left the security room. “Big fucking mistake.”
The elevator doors stood mute before him. Trent stopped and pushed the silver button on the wall. After a few moments of motor noise, the bell rang out in the empty hall. He shook his head as he waited for the doors to open. “You picked on the wrong goddamn guy.”
The doors slid open and Trent was surprised to see the diminutive figure of Salvatore, flanked by four angels in suits holding rifles. “No,” said the old man. “You’ve made the mistake here, Mister Hawkins.”
And before Trent could do anything, before he could even summon the fell energies inside him to darken the angels’ fate, one of them raised a rifle and fired, blasting a hole in Trent’s upper thigh. The bullet shredded through muscle and tissue and Trent saw a flash of red, then white, and then the leg collapsed and his view of the five men before him went sideways and he hit the ground hard, temple first. The sound of his skull cracking against the concrete ushered him into unconsciousness.
27
CELIA AWOKE, CHOKING AND COUGHING, in the ephemeral blackness of the dream world. Her throat felt tight, her lungs heavy, and her stomach burned with icy pangs of fear. She knew immediately that she resided in a dream, but the realization did not lessen the terror any. She could sense the things that haunted the shadows of her mind, and she knew that they had free reign over her current reality.
She glanced around her, confused amidst the furniture of her own bedroom. The single bed, with a blue comforter she had never seen, but nevertheless recognized. Her desk, strewn with school papers, pencils, and a set of plastic horses with nylon manes. She knew that one of the horses had a cowboy with a gray hat, but she could not find him. She looked beneath the desk and picked up the fallen figure. His hat had come off and his leg had broken in two. She stared at it for a long moment, trying to think of how she might repair it, and a sense of panic rose in her chest.
An eerie quiet lingered in the room.
Dusk broke on the horizon then, its arrival announced by a high-pitched squeal and the unending cries of emergency sirens. Celia moved to the window to look at it. The line where sky met ground burned a fiery orange, and the skyline of Las Vegas was silhouetted only in black. A low, thumping sound began to echo through the walls of her room, overtaking the pealing whines.
Just a dream, she thought. I’m in a dream.
A pair of eyes appeared in the window. Celia shrieked and took a step backwards. The eyes resolved as part of a gray, sickly face, lined with creases and crevices, the skin folded in on itself in various places. The eyes were sunken into a hideous, sagging face, and the mouth was little more than a black, bottomless well of howling. The creature’s claws came up against the glass and began to scrape. Celia covered her ears with her hands and took a few more steps backwards. The thumping on the walls grew louder, as though something might burst through them at any moment.
The creature’s claws began to melt through the glass like a blade through flesh. Celia screamed as it finally burst through, hit the floor on four withered limbs, and scuttled toward her, its face a mask of pure, unbridled glee. Instinct took over her actions. She thrust out a hand and the creature turned to an icy statue that lingered only a moment before exploding into a million shimmering shards.
The use of magic took Celia’s breath away and she doubled over in unexpected pain. It felt as though something had reached into her chest, grabbed hold of her soul, and pulled. A fear of impending heart attack raced through her nervous system, but before she could steady herself, another creature appeared at the glass. And then another.
Both melted their way through the windowpane and
dropped onto the floor. They howled in unison. Instinct again took over and Celia froze them in place. The draining sensation hit her again, twice, each time feeling successively worse than the last. She felt as though she might vomit up her own lungs and her exhalations came out in raspy, throaty gasps and she felt rivulets of water trickling out of the corners of her mouth.
She turned to run.
The bedroom door, her only visible exit, moved backwards as she approached it. Her room narrowed, lengthened, twisted like an image in a funhouse mirror. Behind her, she could hear the deafening pounding behind the walls, and the ripping sound of claws against carpeted floor. In the distance, from outside the window, the sound of police sirens mixed together in endless, cacophonous loops.
She reached out an arm for the bedroom door, but still it evaded her. She had run yards, maybe miles. Her legs began to strain, her muscles grew weak. She faltered, stumbled, clawed again at the doorknob. She fell to the floor, only a few feet from her target. She gripped the plush fibers of the carpet and dragged herself forward, willing her body to move, despite the pain, despite the noise, despite the overwhelming terror.
Claws grabbed her ankles and pulled. She sobbed, clawed her way toward the door, a handful of carpet at a time. The door refused to come any closer and, in fact, seemed to be taking the opportunity to move even further away.
She could feel the creatures’ claws on her thighs, her buttocks, moving up along her back. She could see them squatting around her, picking, tearing, eating from her sundered flesh. The pain was unbearable. She fought back the instinct to use more magic. She knew that if she did, it would likely kill her. Even in the dream world, she feared death.
And then, as sudden as they had come, the creatures stopped.
They stopped picking. They stopped tearing. Even their howls descended in pitch, becoming little more than low rumbles of dissatisfaction. The unending loops of police sirens dropped to a lower volume too. She could even hear the sounds of blizzard winds, and knew it was noise from the real world, not the dream one.
A voice, a soft woman’s voice, broke the quiet. “Celia?”
Still sobbing, she tried to turn her face, tried to search out the source of the voice, but couldn’t find it.
“Please, help me,” she sobbed.
“Celia, you have to get out. You’ll forget yourself here.”
“Who are you?” Celia insisted. “Please, help...”
“I– I don’t know. I’ve lost my name. But I know yours. And I know– I knew you, I think.”
Celia suddenly recognized the voice. “Susan?”
Celia heard a door creak open and she looked up at the entrance to her bedroom. She saw Susan and recoiled at the hideous, deformed creature that she had become.
“Susan? My name was Susan?” Susan crept inside. The gray creatures backed away at her approach. Their growls changed pitch, higher now, an irritated, whining sound. She bent down and helped Celia to her feet. Celia noticed that she hands she reached down with were fading from a hideous, sore-infested gray skin to a more natural, pale and smooth flesh. She looked up and saw that the face that had horrified her had grown more normal too, more beautiful, like Celia remembered her.
“We have to get you out of here,” said Susan, a fearful expression on her face. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Where am I?” Celia begged. “How do I get out?”
“You’re in the Realms of Shadow. The Prince doesn’t know yet. I’ve been hiding you from him.” Susan grabbed Celia by the shoulders and began leading her backwards, away from the grumbling horde of monstrosities, toward the still-open bedroom door.
“Come with me!” Celia grew excited. “We can both escape!”
“No,” Susan hissed. “I can’t leave. But you can get out. Quickly!”
She took Celia’s hand and led her through the bedroom door. Instead of the familiar hallway, Celia saw a long, empty corridor, lined with framed pictures. Each picture struck in her a chord of regret, a chord of happiness, or a chord of anger. Each picture a memory, or a nightmare, a discordant symphony of jumbled emotions. The images compelled her to stop, to analyze each and every one, to reflect on the events of her life, but Susan would not let her dally. She pulled the teenager along, yanking her hard by the wrist.
The gray creatures scuttled out of the bedroom behind them like rats.
“Close your eyes,” Susan whispered.
Their movements seemed to go on forever in the darkness. Celia could hear the creatures behind her. She could smell the musty odor of dust, then mildew, then the foul stench of rotting flesh, then dust again. Susan squeezed her hand. She opened her eyes.
They stood before a massive wall that stretched an unidentifiable distance into the dark, starless sky. All around them were dusty spires of gleaming black rock and whirling vortices that meandered across the horizon. The wall was composed entirely of mirror materials, some silvery chrome, some polished panels of wood, a watery, vertical pool, a chunk of gleaming marble, a crystalline shard. Inset into the wall at its base was a small, person-sized door, made of uninteresting, gray-painted metal, without ornamentation or even a handle.
“Look at the door,” Susan insisted. “Ignore the mirrors. Quickly. You must go.”
Celia fought back a terrible urge to view her own myriad reflections. She leveled her gaze on the solid, uninteresting door. All around her, she could hear screaming, crying, the undying sounds of mad and imprisoned souls, left to fester in the unending, lightless realms of shadow. She wanted to stay, to help, to explore the shifting geometry around her, to revisit her own memories, to visit the memories of others...
Susan grabbed her wrist hard and dug fingernails into her flesh. The pain made her jump and snapped her out of the meandering thoughts.
“The door,” Susan hissed. “Open it. Please! Go, Celia.”
Her own name echoed in Celia’s mind. She had nearly forgotten it for a moment as she gazed upon the mirrors. A wave of fear rushed over her and she sprinted for the door. Her fingers pressed against the cold steel surface and she pushed with all her strength. Finally, it budged, digging into the ashen dirt as it opened, clearly for the first time in ages. She paused and looked behind her.
Susan stood motionless, her face locked in a permanent expression of fear and sadness. In it, Celia noticed a glimmer of hope. But behind the woman, she could see the gray creatures advancing, their gleeful smiles reformed and howling voices merging into a menacing cry. They were rushing, moving fast, parting to avoid Susan, but hell-bent on capturing the fleeing teenager. Though she couldn’t hear them, Celia read Susan’s last words on her lips.
Don’t tell Trent.
The gray creatures burst around the motionless woman like a flood around a crumbling dam. The leader of the pack leapt into the air and hurled its body at Celia, who panicked, screamed, and dove through the open door. The world around her twisted and distorted. Colors bled into each other. Shapes became warped, curved things that changed with every passing second.
Celia took a deep breath and found herself unable to draw in air. She panicked and pulled as hard as she could with her lungs, willing her body to draw in precious oxygen. The pain of inhalation burned through her chest and her vision began to swim. She tasted blood.
Susan dropped to her knees before the mirror wall. The gray monstrosities snorted and howled around her. She sobbed into her hands, alternately whispering her own name and Trent’s.
“Susan,” she said quietly. Then a little louder, “Susan.”
Knowing her name gave her a new measure of confidence, a slight tinge of power. When Trent had last fought the Render, she had seen his face through the monster’s eyes, as had all the souls imprisoned in the Realms of Shadow. It was the Prince’s eternal punishment upon them, that they might witness the real world, the world they had loved, punished and tortured by the vile shades. For every other soul, viewing the world through the Render’s eyes had been torture, a punishment just li
ke every other. But for Susan, it had brought a memory, a name, and with it, influence.
She could feel the mirror-wall dragging her back, calling her, not by her name, but by her soul. She said her name aloud again to silence its cries, and then “Trent” and “Celia.”
Memories of Trent came flooding back. The time they went to the state fair and won seven bags of individual goldfish at various booths. The seemingly endless hospital stays, with Trent grasping her cold, thin hand while machines cycled adrenaline and antihistamines through her blood. Their worst fight, where he threw a dinner plate against the television, breaking the screen but not the plate. They had laughed for a full hour, drained of the will to fight. The silent journeys home from various reproductive counselors. Trent’s smile when she climbed into bed with him after a late night shift as a waitress.
She felt the slightest wisps of power weaving a skein within her incorporeal being, and knew that she might soon have the power to make changes to this place, changes that would surely be discovered by the ruler of this black domain.
But how much had his plans for war consumed the Prince’s attention? How long might her changes remain untouched before he became aware?
Even here, amidst the howls of vile, gray monstrosities and soul ending, screaming vortexes of the purest black, Susan ventured a smile. She had remembered what it meant to have hope.
Celia sat up, gasping for air. Tears streamed down her face and the sound of the creatures’ howls ringing in her ears became the real noise of the blizzard outside. She was in the real world. She knew that for certain. She glanced at her surroundings.
She sat in an exquisite lounge or study of some sort, filled on three walls with bookshelves fashioned from expensive wood, bearing all manner of books and curiosities, all with an Egyptian theme. The fourth wall was mostly glass, and the shades were only partially opened, letting in a scant amount of dim gray light from the blizzard-ravaged world beyond. Las Vegas was mostly dark now, sputtering and gasping for life. The spires of the Excalibur next door shone only from the searing white light of the Luxor’s generator-powered beam, the brightest commercial light beam in North America. Without the rest of the neon and spotlights, the city looked strange, eerie, dead.
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