Page 158 of Dead Beat

Two hundred and thirty.

Two hundred and forty.

No sound now but the ringing of the bell. The hatch above her would lead to the roof. She shoved it open and climbed through.

58

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see: the great mechanical workings of the chimes, the doors to Sterling Library, Golgarot upon his throne. Instead, she was standing in clear gray daylight at the end of a football field.

Alex had been to the Yale Bowl only once, during fall of her freshman year, before Darlington had disappeared, before their lives had spun off course. Mercy had wanted to go to the Game—Yale vs. Harvard, a Thanksgiving tradition. So they’d all gone—Mercy, Lauren, and Alex, and a whole slew of students from JE. They’d ridden in buses out to the field, flasks and thermoses in hand, and passed beneath a grand columned gate. The old stadium had been dug into the earth, its entrances crowned with steepled porticos like mausoleums. Alex stood in the muddy parking lot and tailgated. She ate three hot dogs and marveled at the ancient alumni in their long fur coats and boater hats, at the moms and dads with their kids in Bulldog onesies. She hadn’t understood the rules, but she cheered along with Lauren and Mercy, and the marching band played “Bohemian Rhapsody.” They were playing again now. She knew the tune. She even knew the words though no one was singing. Come on along, come on along, let me take you by the hand, up to the man who’s the leader of the band.

The stands were full of men and women in coats and scarves and hats—all of them wore hats, the women in tilted brims, jaunty feathers, bright ribbons. This was Hector’s arena. The Yale Bowl in 1933, a joke that Golgarot had never gotten to play on the soldier who had vowed to face him and failed. None of it looked quite right. The gray concrete walls seemed ordinary one moment then gleamed obsidian the next. The faces in the stands distended into screams; then she blinked and they were laughing and smiling again.

At the far end of the field, where the opposing team would enter, she saw two tall black columns, a plinth spread between them emblazoned with gold script. She could not read demon, but she recognized the phrase that Dawes had once translated for her: None go free.

This was the gate and she understood that if Golgarot managed to drag her through it, all of this would be over. He would have her blood. He would have his victory.

When she looked back at the field, Golgarot stood at the fifty-yard line. He wore an old-fashioned football uniform: canvas pants that ended below the knee, socks and cleats, a thick jersey that bore the letter Y, more royal blue than the navy Alex was used to seeing around campus. He was young, handsome, his skin ruddy and his blond hair shining beneath the winter sun. He looked like a Norman Rockwell illustration of a football hero.

He recoiled when he saw her. Had he not expected her to make it?

But then he smiled.

“Soldier,” he said, big white teeth gleaming. “Your hour has come.”

Before Alex could get her bearings, someone slammed into her. She tried to keep her footing, but another body crashed against her. She hit the ground hard, the breath rushing out of her lungs. Feet stampeded over her. She curled in on herself, trying to protect her head and neck. She was in the middle of some kind of scrum. There was no air, no daylight, just bodies and shouts. Her side throbbed where she’d once broken her ribs.

I’m going to die on the ground, here in the mud. I’m never even going to get to fight.

A whistle blew and the bodies parted. Someone was standing over her.

“Can you get up, son?”

Alex wanted to say no. She wanted to call out to Darlington. She was tired and bruised and she wanted this all to be over. But she was here. She had survived the climb. She was not going to die lying down.

“Yeah,” she said.

The man above her offered her his hand and she took it, rising to her feet, the pain in her side hard and sharp, like a hook lodged beneath her rib cage. It was Elliot Sandow in a referee’s uniform. She’d last seen him dead behind a desk at the university president’s house.

He blew on his whistle and shouted, “Resume play!”

“No!” Alex cried, flinching backward, preparing to be struck again. But no blow came.

She opened her eyes. Sandow and the stadium were gone. She was standing near a muddy picnic area, surrounded by a grove of eucalyptus trees. Two orange butterflies fluttered up into the leaves, making crooked spirals. Alex could see school buses parked in the lot, and she knew what she would see if she turned: the concrete slab of a public bathroom, men’s on one side, women’s on the other.

She didn’t want to turn.

“You motherfucker,” she muttered. Of course Golgarot had brought her here, to the worst moment, to the break that had never healed. Maybe some part of her had known it would have to end here. “You’re really predictable, you know that, right?”

Golgarot stood behind her. His football uniform was gone and now he was in a white suit like Reiter’s. He was smiling, but up close she could see he looked weary, a little bruised himself.

She remembered. “You had to make the climb too.”

Golgarot’s eyes skittered left and right, as if he didn’t want to answer, but then he shrugged. “None go free.”

Words written above the scholar’s door in the Gauntlet. The only law that seemed to carry weight among demons. What had he seen when he’d made the ascent? What memories had he been forced to endure? “Rough, huh?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the demon, though his haunted eyes told a different story. “This is our fight now. You will honor the bargain made by the first pilgrims.”