AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thanks,” I say, and try to stand. It almost works. I get up on the second try.
“Too bad you didn’t take me up on my business offer. You could find my hoarder and say hi to the father on the way back.”
“I’m going to do better than that.”
“FedEx him some mittens?”
“I’m going to get him out of there.”
Kasabian picks some fried shrimp off a plate someone abandoned on the coffee table. The sight of food almost makes me heave up my crab cocktail.
“I think certain people might be resistant to that idea,” he says.
“I’ll persuade them. Can you see Helheim? How many guards are there?”
“Not many,” he says through a full mouth. “Not many. Eight maybe? The prison is in the middle of nowhere. Not many places to escape to.”
I touch my stomach. Ferox’s incision is closed and almost healed. Allegra did some good work on me. I’ll have to thank her. And check on her ex-boyfriend she told me about. But after this. Everything can wait for this.
“What are you two talking about?”
It’s Candy. She took my advice and cleaned up from her tree climb. She’s beautiful. But I don’t want to have to say what I’m going to say.
“You’re going to love this,” says Kasabian.
She sits on the end of the sofa.
“I’m going to get Traven.”>“Do something. Some magic.”
I try to remember any healing spells I used to know. I was never very good with them. I put my hand on Traven’s chest and say the words. I don’t feel anything. There’s nothing left inside me. I’m too weak and too fucked up. My hoodoo won’t work.
Brigitte shoves Vidocq aside and leans over Traven, doing CPR. She counts in Czech each time she pumps the father’s chest. She pinches his nose and blows into his lungs, her mouth smearing with his blood. Traven doesn’t move. I can’t hear his heart or his breathing anymore. Sweat drips from Brigitte’s face onto Traven’s chest. No one moves. No one stops her. Let her do what she has to do even if there’s nothing left of Traven to bring back. Finally, she collapses on top of him, crying. Candy puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her up. When Brigitte sees me, she slaps me as hard as she can across the face.
“Great magician. Why can’t you do anything when it matters?”
“I’m sorry. I . . . I’m sorry.”
Brigitte puts her hands on Traven’s bloody, red cheek and leans her forehead on his, whispering good-byes to his corpse.
I’m not even mad. I’m numb. Of course, they used the possession key on Traven. He’s hardly had a glimpse of this kind of apocalyptic insanity. He’s the closest thing to an innocent any of us knows. And I brought him into this shit asylum and got him tangled up in my old battles. I look at Medea’s dead body. She was powerful. It must have taken every ounce of strength, every sin Traven had ever swallowed, to bring her down. Which is the real joke in all this, because for any other sin eater, it would mean they were empty of sin and they’d get a first-class ticket to Heaven. But not Traven. He was already booked on a coal cart to Hell before any of this. Candy asked if either of us has souls. Right now I hope I don’t because I can’t imagine a bigger, more damning sin on my record than bringing a guy like Father Traven into Kill City.
The building rumbles from below. It builds until it feels and sounds like a freight train under our feet. The whole mall slides sickly to the left. The Christmas tree sways. The trunk cracks. I pull Brigitte from Traven’s body and everyone runs to the wall as the tree crashes to the floor. For a minute we’re blind from the dust and fungus spores. I can hear sections of the ceiling coming down around us. The floor stops shaking, but the rumble remains, a steady background hum.
The rumbling rises and Kill City starts shimmying again. The glass around the elevator shafts shatters to the ground. I see faint light across the lobby.
“Follow me. Keep your heads down.”
I grab Candy’s hand and feel the weight of her grabbing someone else’s. Crouching, running, feeling stitches popping in my belly wound, I head us down the stairs we just came up. Then down the dead escalator.
The windows over the Roman baths have collapsed into the main pool, flooding the whole floor in pale dawn light. I look around for a hole in the wall.
“This way. Through the chapel.”
The building shifts in one direction and then the other. It’s worse now. Before it felt like a solid movement from side to side. Now the motion feels soft and liquid, like we’re off the foundation and floating free.
Inside, there isn’t much left. A chasm has opened in the floor in front of the altar, swallowing the pews and part of the wall, destroying the regular chapel and revealing the secret Angra altar. Those fuckers are everywhere. Whatever the plan is to bring them back, it was set in motion a long time ago.
Something is crawling out of the wall. Not a crack in the wall. The wall itself, like the plaster and stone is trying to pull itself free. Its long beaklike mouth comes through first. That’s all I need to see. Concentric circles of cutting fangs and grinding molars. It’s a demon. An eater. We can’t make it to the hole that leads to the ocean before it gets loose in the room. I shout at Candy.
