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“One of the Gray men told me about a door nearby. That must be it,” he says.
“Saddle up, everyone. The sooner we get downstairs, the sooner we’re out of Tombstone,” I say. Big talker. I try to stand up and it feels like my head is spinning around like Linda Blair’s. Candy comes over and helps me to my feet.
Everyone gathers up their gear and heads out. Traven takes a minute to change the batteries in his flashlight, then starts up the stairs with the rest of us. Good-bye, Shoggot country. Good riddance. If Hattie doesn’t poison your water supply, I’ll be very surprised.
The floor at the end of the hall is buckled like someone squeezed it from both ends like an accordion. Delon is back in the lead. Vidocq follows with Brigitte and Candy right behind. I’m at the back with Traven, stumbling along like a toddler just learning to walk.
“Are you in much pain?” he says.
“Just enough, thanks. Sorry I dragged you into this mess, Father.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been more use along the way. Maybe I should have learned to use a gun.”
I have to lean my arm against the wall to get over the places where the folds in the floor rise above my knees.
“You might have noticed that we have a lot of shooters and it hasn’t kept us out of trouble. You’ll get to show your stuff when we find the Qomrama. You know anything more about it? Where it came from? Who made it?”
Staying back with me, Father Traven has fallen behind the others. I don’t like being the gimp in the group.
“Who made it is an interesting question. Most texts say it was the Angra, as a way to destroy our God. But there was speculation among a group of Byzantine scholars that God himself made it. That it’s not a weapon against the Angra but against himself.”
“God was going to take a bullet for the team?”
“Even that’s disputed. Maybe God intended to sacrifice himself in hopes that it would appease the Angra.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If our God made it, and Ruach let Aelita have it, she’d know how to use it, only she doesn’t. She got lucky killing Neshamah, but she can’t count on getting all the brothers on luck.”
“There’s one more theory. A minority theory, but an interesting one. It says that a high priestess is the only one that can bring the Qomrama into this universe from where the Angra are exiled.”
“How?”
“No one knows, but the theory continues that the reason the Qomrama is hard to control is that it’s not just an inanimate weapon. That it’s a kind of Qliphoth.”
“A demon? Then it’s a piece of one of the old gods. That means it’s alive.”
Traven shrugs. I can breathe again, so we start walking.
“As I said, it’s a minority opinion, but with the Qomrama, I wouldn’t put anything out of the realm of possibility.”
“Neither would I. Ever notice that we live in a very strange universe?”
Traven brushes dust out of his eyes and off his deeply lined face.
“What’s left to believe in? The God in Heaven isn’t to be trusted, and a piece of that very same God is also Lucifer in Hell? How are we supposed to go on knowing these things?”
“Cheer up, Father. It could have been ten.”
He gives me a look.
I say, “It’s a Hellion joke. When God threw the rebel angels out of Heaven, they fell for nine days.”
Traven nods and says, “I get it. Things could always be worse. I suppose that’s true.”
“I won’t tell you any other Hellion jokes. Most sound like the Three Stooges riffing on farts and vivisection.”
“I appreciate that.”
This part of the corridor is all raw drywall with Spackle smeared along the edges where the panels join. I feel woozy. I stop to lean against a section. And I’m falling. Not onto the floor but right through the wall.
