by Tad Williams
Not that it did me any good to know that. It took everything I had to ease my crazy, dying sprint, because every second that passed meant I could feel the skin and muscles blackening right on my bones. But running wasn’t going to do it—I had to find my way out. Physically, I felt pretty sure I was still in the corridor on the forty-fourth floor.
I slowed to a walk. It really was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do—it went against the desperate, dying alarms of every nerve ending I had, against pain like nothing you could understand unless you’ve been through it. But I had to do it that way. I reached out my hands, putting them right into the jets of flame as I groped along. I was feeling actual walls beneath my touch while simultaneously feeling the bones of my fingers char and turn into ash and flake away. I don’t know why I wasn’t screaming like a madman. Maybe I was.
At last I felt a bump as I trailed my fingers over a doorframe—fingers that my howling senses told me had already been burned away. It felt like my actual brain was exposed in a scorched skull, and that everything they always said about no nerves in the brain was a horrible fucking lie. I found the doorknob then and turned it before I had time to think about what I was going to do if it wouldn’t open.
It opened. Into nothing. Then I was falling through blackness—tumbling, waving my arms and kicking my legs as I plummeted down into depths I couldn’t see, couldn’t even imagine. For half a second the air sawing across my exposed bones and meat actually felt like a cooling relief, but then it began to feel like all that raw Bobby-area was being sandblasted. This wasn’t lost-in-emptiness blackness, this wasn’t floating-in-nothing blackness, this was a hole that went down so far that I was plummeting like a meteor out of space. I’d plunge forever, burn up, or hit the bottom and burst into a million pieces.
I opened my mouth against the shrieking winds of my fall, but almost couldn’t make a noise because the breath had been blasted out of me. When I did, it was little more than a squeak, the noise of a mouse dropped out of the space shuttle.
“Cute,” I said, the words suck-snatched by the uprushing air as they came out of my mouth. “This is cute, Horseman. And so mature.”
I hit bottom. It wasn’t like hitting bottom from high orbit, though, it was more like I did an ordinary pratfall thump onto an expensive office carpet, then lay there gasping. I had fallen out of darkness into cool fluorescent light. Kenneth Vald, six feet and something of handsome, tanned, blond billionaire, watched me from his office chair. He held up a small object I couldn’t quite make out, because my brain was still rattling in my skull.
“Want a Pez?” he asked.
I struggled up onto my knees. The little plastic tower in his hand had the face of Jesus in his death agonies. Eligor thumbed the head back and a red lozenge of hard candy slid out of the neck like Christ’s throat had been slit.
I shook my head.
The grand duke took out the little candy and waved it at me. “You sure?” When I didn’t reply, he flicked it with his fingers. It shot at me like a bullet, hissed past so close I could feel the wind, then ricocheted off four walls (there may have been a ceiling-bounce in there somewhere) and back toward him. Eligor didn’t move, just opened his mouth a tiny bit and the Pez flew in. He crunched it up with gusto.
“Yum,” he said, “Tastes like Daddy Issues.”
I staggered erect, found a chair and sat down. I didn’t speak because I didn’t trust myself not to squeal like a wounded pig or simply burst into tears. Eligor hadn’t needed to remind me that he could fold me up like human origami and throw me away if he wanted to, but that’s the thing about Hell’s high rollers: they really enjoy their job.
“So, what brings you here, Doloriel? I can’t say I’m pleased to see you. You weren’t thinking of revenge, were you?” The Kenneth Vald face, famous from many newspapers, magazines, and websites about What Rich People Do, looked almost ordinary. Only the spark of scarlet gleaming deep in his eyes, a tiny reflection of the fiery passage I’d just escaped, made it clear that what was looking out from in there was a lot uglier than the shape it was wearing.
I sat slumped in my chair. You probably think I was acting beaten to disarm him, but I wasn’t acting. I’d been beaten by Eligor a long time ago. “I’ve got an offer for you,” I said at last. “Are you a gambling man?”
He laughed. I mean, he sounded genuinely tickled. “Oh, dearie me. A ‘gambling man’? Do you really think the house is going to stake you for another try, Doloriel? What’s your idea? Double or nothing to get the Countess back? I thought you’d learned your lesson by now. Since I have everything I wanted from you, I was actually going to leave you alone—at least for a while.”
“But you don’t have everything you need,” I said. “Anaita’s got your horn. She can still blow the whistle on you any time.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, but the embers in his eyes flared. “Why would you annoy me by reminding me?”
“Because I want to make a bargain with you—or rather, kind of a wager. Demons love to bet, right?”
“Not interested, little angel,” he said. “And getting bored now, too. Would you like another swim in the eternal fires?”
I took a breath. I couldn’t let him hurry me. I had nothing on my side but whatever calm I could muster, as well as a smidge of stubbornness. And I thought I might know one thing he didn’t. “No thanks,” I told him. “Not that it wasn’t interesting. It reminded me of when I visited you at Flesh Horse.”
“Ah,” he said with a faux-wistful smile. “Yes. Good times, good times.” His face went flat again. “But I just really enjoy burning the shit out of you. So why shouldn’t I start again?”
“Because you haven’t even found out what my bargain is. And that you’re not the only person interested in getting hold of that horn.”
Now his eyes narrowed. I felt myself falling toward him, falling into those fires that blazed at the center of each pupil. The falling wasn’t real, I told myself, but it was still very, very dangerous. I forced myself back into the present reality.
“What do you mean?” he asked at last.
“Sitri,” I said. “Remember him? Fat guy, prince of Hell, hates you as much as a ham hates Christmas? He’s looking for the horn. In fact, he’s gone to some impressive lengths to try to obtain it.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Sitri? That crude, miserable slug wouldn’t dare—”
“I suggest you watch this,” I said as I took my phone out of my pocket. I clicked on the video of the Black Sun’s little séance and set it in front of him.
He watched it through to the end, his face getting stonier and stonier. When it was finished, he didn’t say a word as I picked up the phone and pocketed it again.
“Well?” I said at last. “You going to put me back in the oven? Or do we talk?”
Now the handsome Ken Vald face looked like something stretched over a rack, an uncomfortable fit and a poor disguise for the beast beneath. “You have five minutes to pitch your so-called bargain, Doloriel,” the grand duke said. “Five minutes to arouse my interest, or you’ll never see sunlight again.”
forty-one
straight on ’til morning
BY THE time I got out of Five Page Mill, a wet afternoon had become a wet early evening. I didn’t really have much left to do now. Unless Oxana had squeezed out of the boarding ramp and made a run for it, she was on her way back to the land of Scythian warriors. I’d had my last knees-up at the Compasses, and I’d spent pretty much all my money. I’d even put a final check in the mail to George, a bonus, with a note telling him to use it to hire himself a part-time back scratcher (because I was pretty sure it must be itchy living in a pig sty). And I couldn’t take anything where I was going, either, so I gathered up all my stuff and stowed it in one of Caz’s closets, then gave the apartment a cleaning, just in case she came back one day. The Amazons, bless them, had left candy
bar wrappers and potato chips bags in some very unexpected places, along with chocolaty fingerprints on several of the expensive draperies, so it took a while before I was satisfied. I don’t like tidying up much, but once I start, I can’t stop until everything is damn well clean.
I also sent a letter to Clarence care of Chico at the bar, thanking him and Wendell for the risks they’d taken on my behalf. I didn’t want to tip the kid off too early.
I took a last look around Caz’s windowless, Arabian Nights apartment. It was so full of memories now that it was harder to leave than anywhere else I’d ever been. I don’t get too attached to places, usually, at least not the places I sleep in. But Caz and I had fallen in love here, and for a few crazy days during the last weeks, with the Amazons and Harrison/Clarence/Junior around, it had begun to feel like a home. I’d never really had one of those, at least not during my afterlife. As to what my earlier, non-angel life had been like . . . well, if I hadn’t been sure I had no future, I would have spent some of it finding out who I used to be. The visions I’d experienced under Anaita’s influence in the museum had seemed more than simply real, they had seemed profound, even crucial in some larger way. I couldn’t ignore the possibility that she’d manufactured them somehow, but in my gut they’d felt genuine. Normally I’d have been fired up to learn more, but I had simply run out of time: Judgement Day was here, and I had pretty much reconciled myself to exiting this afterlife with unanswered questions.
As I took a last turn in the courtyard garden, I heard something fluttering. A moment later a tiny, crooked shadow dropped to the ground in front of me, extended its four wings, then folded them back up. I kneeled beside it.
It was a new nizzic, smaller than the last, kind of a cross between a bald hamster and a dragonfly. What it said was quiet and the message was short—by the time I picked out a few words, it had finished. I had to hold the creepy little thing close to my ear to hear properly when it started again. The voice was Caz’s, but weaker and more distant than before, as if she broadcast from a distant galaxy.
• • •
“This nizzic can’t be reset. This will be the last message, Bobby. I can’t stand it. It’s too hard, waiting to hear from you. These little sips of foolish hope only delay the inevitable. I’m sorry, my love, it’s my fault. If anyone should have known better, it’s me.”
• • •
I left the miserable little thing in the courtyard, locked up the apartment carefully, then climbed into my ugly yellow chariot.
I’d discovered something interesting about the cab while running my errands, another odd-shaped piece in the small puzzle that had been my relationship with Temuel. See, Heaven was definitely trying to keep an eye on me, and they had to know about the taxi, but they didn’t seem to be able to keep a direct trace on it. I knew this because in the few days since my trial, I’d already managed to lose several tail cars. Also: Heaven’s spies didn’t seem to know where the apartment was, either. I’d clocked several suspicious vehicles in the general vicinity of Caz’s place, but they seemed to be unable to narrow down my whereabouts past a good-sized sanctuary. Heaven’s Finest didn’t even seem sure which side of the freeway the place was on. How could that be? I had to admit that it seemed like it might have something to do with Temuel getting me to come all the way across town before he handed me over to Counterstrike.
Heaven may not have known exactly where I started my trip, but they latched onto me within a few minutes after I left the apartment. I was on the Bayshore, a mile or so south of the University Avenue exit, when I spotted the tail car, a nondescript Ford minivan. Actually, it was almost too nondescript, without bumper stickers or even dealer plate-frames. Female driver and male passenger were also wearing sunglasses, although it was now after six at night and the sky was getting dark. I was almost insulted until I decided they were just the obvious tail, the ones who I was meant to concentrate on and maybe even lose while the real tail followed me at a distance.
I took a circuitous route, pretending to try to lose the minivan, but I didn’t really want to lose them, so I didn’t give it my best shot. I took them on a long, irritating ride through the south end of town, up San Antonio Expressway and through a dozen cross-streets, then down Shoreline toward Stone Fruit Mall. It was interesting to see how much more modern the buildings were at this end of the city. The center of San Judas was moving, at least the economic center, leaving the dear old downtown behind. Out here, Silicon Valley’s current wave of well-to-do immigrants were building a big toddler town for themselves, full of zippy restaurants and coffee shops with sidewalk tables and awnings, and office buildings with the fancy, brushed-metal look of expensive bathroom fittings.
How did I get to be such an old man when I’ve only been alive twenty years or so? I must have been a real curmudgeon in my previous existence. But you probably already guessed that.
I pulled into the new parking structure at the Stone Fruit Mall. If you ask an old local, they’ll be happy to tell you that much of this part of San Judas (and the rest of the lower peninsula, too) was once the world’s fruit basket. I’m not sure I’d want that nickname myself, but I guess large rural areas can’t be choosy. Anyway, the massive four-story shopping center was built on the site of what had been one of the biggest apricot orchards in the state, which only survived now in the name, the blossoming branches on the mall logo, and probably expensive dried fruit packages in the mall’s many gift shops.
Now came the tricky bit. I parked in one of the outermost stalls on the second level, left my phone in the taxi (because let’s face it, we all know it had to have been bugged as hell after the trial) along with my car keys, stashing both under the seat, then made my way into the mall’s vast front atrium. You could look up several stories once you got inside, and the storefronts were nearly all glass—a huge faceted jewel of commerce. People wandered through the place like they were in Oz, some even bobbing their heads to the piped-in music.
Never listen to mall music. It will put you in an apocalyptic mood. But maybe the mood was only mine. The customers seemed happy—modern shopping malls are like a small (and somewhat brainless) world of their own. A guy I know who used to work in the Stone Fruit said that in the summertime, lots of parents just dropped their kids off in the morning with money for food and a movie at the theater, then came back and got them at closing time.
I figured that however many people were tailing me, some would stay outside to keep an eye on the cab while others followed me in. That meant I had to make my move quickly, before the inside tail found me, so I grabbed an elevator and shot up to the third floor, in and out of The Gap, then immediately shuttled back down to the second floor boutiques, up to the fourth, then down to the food court and across the mezzanine to the elevator on the opposite side, which I took down to the underground parking lot, where I was greeted in the elevator lobby with a large “Coming Soon: Target” sign. Dodging up and down that way was how I’d used the lifters in Hell to confuse the demons hunting me, and it had worked pretty well. I was pleased to see it seemed to work on angels, too.
I didn’t go near my own vehicle, of course. The elevators ferried shoppers back and forth to the main building, but at the far end of the garage was a set of stairs that led up to a bus stop and taxi stand next to the parking garage. I climbed the stairs, walked as fast as I could to the main doors, and then hailed the first passing taxi.
Yes, that was my plan in miniature. Leave one cab behind, get another. Everything else was just hand-waving for distraction. It was a lot simpler than trying to lose my surveillance on some breakneck, movie-influenced car chase. In fact, the best plans are usually always simple. Why don’t I remember that more often?
• • •
The driver let me out about a quarter of a mile from the Shoreline Park footbridge. After I paid him I had about twenty dollars left, so I gave it to him for a tip. In return, he warned me not to hang around too long after
dark—because, he said, some real weirdos were out in the baylands at night. He clearly didn’t know he was talking to one of them. As he drove off, I pulled up my collar against the stiff bay breeze and started walking.
I thought I’d handled it all very neatly, so I was embarrassed as well as disturbed to see a solitary figure standing beside the beginning of the footbridge across the bay. The only thing I hadn’t got rid of was my gun, so I kept my hand on it as I got closer. The guy didn’t look like he was going to move, so I slowed to check him out.
“Come on, hurry up, would you?” he shouted at me. “It’s freezing out here.”
“Clarence? What are you doing here?” The kid was wearing a long overcoat—playing James Bond in his imagination was my guess—and looked every inch the mysterious contact in a dangerous foreign spot.
“Waiting for you, obviously. And you seem to have forgotten my name again.”
“Yeah, sue me. Why are you here? You couldn’t have got my message yet.”
“What message?”
“Shit.” I stood in front of him for a few seconds, staring. I hate surprises. “It’s been a long month, kid. Why are you here?”
“Because I’m going with you.”
I don’t feel good about this, but I confess that my first thought was to smack him unconscious again like I had last time we’d been out at Shoreline, because I just didn’t need this shit. I knew it was wrong, though, and I also had a suspicion I might not get away with it as easily as I had on the first occasion. The kid had been running and working out, things I should have been doing myself if I hadn’t been so busy trying not to get killed by demons and Nazis, and he was looking pretty fit. “No, seriously, why are you here?”