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The lock pops and Julie slides open the door. I look around for hidden hoodoo or trip wires. There’s nothing. These people are pretty confident that their power and magic will protect them. I guess they have for all the years it’s taken to put the Angra’s return plan together. Personally, I don’t want to meet them or their Gods in anything bordering on a fair fight.
Saint Nick stands up with his arms at his side. He looks like he’s in his mid- to late thirties. A nondescript guy. Brown hair and eyes. Flat nose and thin lips. No one you’d ever notice on the street, but isn’t that how it is with serial killers? They’re the most boring people in the world until cops dig up the basement and the news vans show up. “He was always so quiet and polite. I would never have guessed . . .”
He isn’t cuffed or shackled. There’s nothing in the cube with him, not even water or a slop bucket or any sign he’s ever had them. That means he isn’t locked in all the time. Does that mean he’s not a prisoner? This isn’t the time to worry about that.
Julie approaches him slowly and takes his arm. He lets her, and when she pulls him, he follows her out of the cube. She nods at me.
“Okay,” she says. “Take us out of here.”
“You have another glow stick?”
She lets go of Saint Nick’s arm. He sways, looks around like he’s never seen the place before. And steps into a circle.
Lights come on all around us. In the ceiling, the walls, and the floor. Julie and I pull our goggles off. I shove mine in my pocket. Saint Nick looks around. Points to the far side of the room.
Qliphoth claw their way out of an altar built into the wall. A Digger comes first. It gets out and slams into the far side of the cube, clearly not getting the difficult concept of transparency. More Qliphoth crawl out behind it.
“What do we do?” says Julie.
“It’s too light. There are no shadows. How far to the roof?”
“It’s right above us.”
“Come on.”
I get down on one knee, lay the Colt’s barrel flat on the floor, and pull the trigger. The bullet cuts a groove in the plastic tiles all the way to the door at the end of the room.
“Come on.”
“What about the circles?” says Julie.
“I hope the bullet broke them. Otherwise we’re dead.”
That makes Saint Nick giggle.
I grab Julie and she grabs Saint Nick. We run for the door. Nothing comes out of the floor to bite off our legs, but the Qliphoth across the room are finding their way around the cube.
The door is locked. I start to blast it open, but if I do that, the Qliphoth will be able to follow us through. Julie doesn’t need me to tell her that. She has another lock-picking device out and attaches it to the door.
The Qliphoth are coming at us fast. I manifest the Gladius and slice it through the air. The front ones come up short and the rest bunch up behind them. They growl and grab at us, but none want to chance becoming Gladius meat. Then it hits me. They don’t have to rush us. They can just keep us here until guards find us or some Diggers tunnel through the floor and come up behind us.
“Any time now, Julie.”
“Working on it.”
Then:
“Got it.”
When the door opens I concentrate, flaring the Gladius to star bright. I have to cover my eyes, and the Qliphoth shrink back from the light. I go backward through the door and slam it shut, praying that it’s demon-proof. Just to make things more interesting, I run the Gladius around the edge of the door, welding it to the frame.
Saint Nick is standing in the stairwell smiling at nothing. I flash on Candy in the hospital and want to smash his face.
“Stark!” Julie yells. “Guards are coming upstairs. What’s up on the roof?” she says.
“Shadows. I hope.”
We run up a fight of stairs to a locked door. I kick it open and we’re on the roof. Where it’s pitch fucking black. The city lights haven’t come back on yet. Probably no one left downtown to hit the reset button.
