“Well?” said Coleel, appearing from the gloom, his tattoos lighting the fog up around him like a rainbow-hued nimbus. His guards, one of whom was Yoi, ranged to either side. “Which way?”
Avery steeled himself and marched forward, supporting Layanna as they went; she was still sickly. Just as they rounded a bend, dark figures appeared before them—hunched shapes in tattered black robes, vultures in the mist, extrusions of its malevolence. Avery shrank back.
“W-what do you want?” he said.
The shapes all spoke as one, and their voices sounded something like the hiss of radio static merged with the mindless buzz of insects:
“Give us the woman.”
Avery glanced to Layanna, but she looked just as perplexed as he felt.
“Leave us alone,” he told the shapes.
“She must awake the Sleeper.”
“Didn’t you hear the man?” Coleel said. “Get out of here, you bastards.”
Angrily, one of his bodyguards stepped toward the figures. A robed form raised its hand, and shapes could be seen wriggling under its cadaverous flesh. With shocking speed, the figure plunged its palm against the bodyguard’s chest, and the man gasped, stopped, then, slowly, sank to his knees. His gun clattered to the ground. His large body trembled and shook. The figure didn’t take its hand away, and the shaking went on.
The other bodyguard, Yoi, pulled his gun. “Get back,” he told Coleel, who obeyed. Yoi lifted his gun and fired a round at the robed figure’s feet. “Stop!”
The shape didn’t obey. Yoi aimed at its chest.
Three more figures stepped forward, around the first one, still doing whatever it was doing to the first bodyguard, and made for Yoi. He fired. Streamers of flesh and clothing fluttered behind the vulture-like shape, the former just as dry as the latter. The shapes came on.
Yoi fired again, again, then reeled back as the figures converged on him. Avery pulled out his own gun and fired, but though he was certain he’d struck two of them—he could see little puffs where the rounds hit—the shapes didn’t stop.
Yoi tripped and sprawled backward, a cry on his lips. The three shapes fell on him, though what it was they did to him Avery didn’t know. Others moved around the three, toward Avery, Layanna and Coleel.
“Run!” he said.
He wheeled about, off balance and slow with Layanna at his side, and marched her forward. Coleel fell back ahead of them, looking ashen. Passing a corner, Avery handed him his pistol, since Coleel didn’t appear to be armed.
“Fire back,” Avery said, since he himself was occupied.
Coleel swore but dutifully loosed a couple of shots around the corner, then recoiled. “They’re still coming.”
They ran.
“The priests of the Restoration,” Layanna panted. “They must have been.”
“But what could they … want with us?” Avery said.
“Not us. Me. I … have no idea.”
At least it explained, or partly explained, why the Father had stared at Layanna at the temple of the Sisters of Junica. He had recognized in Layanna something that was important to him or his group. She must wake the Sleeper.
The three turned down an alley, hit a cross-alley and took it. The dark shapes followed. Avery yanked his pistol back from Coleel, who didn’t seem interested in wasting time on something that hadn’t worked so far, and swiveled to fire, but he could see no sign of their pursuers, not at first. Then he heard the sound of static. He fired. There came no grunt, no cry of pain, and the static-y sound didn’t even pause … but only drew closer.
The three stumbled out onto a street and ran down it, rounded a corner. Passing a busy establishment of some sort, its glow cutting through the fog, they hit another street and started up it, then drew back.
“Shit!” said Coleel. “Collaborators.”
Indeed, they’d almost run straight into the cordon of Octunggen-controlled troops and their vehicles that fenced the Maze in. A line of cars waited to clear the checkpoint before being allowed to leave, and the soldiers were searching each car thoroughly.
“Shit,” said Coleel.
They started back, passing the establishment again, but before they’d hit the alley they’d come from the dark shapes poured from it. Knives glimmered in their fists, but the rest of them remained in shadow. Avery and the others drew back, caught between one doom and another.
“Into the club,” Layanna said.
Coleel stopped them as they approached the establishment with its bouncers and line of would-be patrons. He stared up at its ornate, sinister façade grimly. The doors were set within the fanged mouth of a demonic serpent skull whose eyes glowed with golden alchemical fire. The Snake’s Tongue, Avery thought its name read. The building was all of eerie green stone.
“I have enemies, too,” Coleel said in a low voice. “One of them might be in here.”
“What choice is there?” Avery said.
Coleel must have agreed, as he scowled, paid the bouncer, and the three entered past the fangs, having to walk along the snake’s tongue as they did. Apparently Coleel was a recognized enough figure that the three didn’t have to wait in line, which was fortunate. Avery wasn’t sure how far behind them the priests of the Restoration were or if the clergymen, whatever they truly were, would be willing to follow the three inside, but Avery wasn’t prepared to bet against it. Smoke surrounded him, as well as the press of people, and a strange, metallic thrumming noise filled his ears. He realized he’d been hearing the noise for some time but hadn’t had time to focus on it until now.
As his eyes adjusted, he saw a strange sight. The room was large and cavernous, dark where it wasn’t lit by glowing columns of quartz-like rock; each one burned, deep in its interior, a lurid sunset red-orange. The lights were set on low, so that only the reddish heart burned in the columns of stone; the rest was black and opaque, so that the illumination shown like lightning behind a bank of clouds. The quartz columns illuminated a stage upon which musicians played odd, alien-looking instruments, with a great deal of metal and wires and things like brass coils. The music they produced was hideous to Avery, but not less than three hundred people lolled on the pillow-covered floor before the band. Some were naked or half-naked and rutting senselessly, their eyes rolled up in their heads, while others touched themselves or simply twitched and shuddered in apparent delight.
A line of standing patrons waited to gain access to the area before the stage, and men and women who must be bouncers let them in one at a time after receiving payment. Upon receipt of it, they handed each patron what looked like a piece of hard candy. The patron would pop it in their mouths, then, clutching a pillow or blanket, move into the area before the stage, where they quickly laid down and made themselves comfortable. Some went in groups, some alone. Some alchemical drug, Avery realized. They take it and then … what? The musical instruments must be specially designed, he thought, to produce very specific effects in people who had taken a very specific concoction. Fascinating.
Those who didn’t want to participate in the drug-induced euphoria, or were gearing themselves up to join it, lounged at the long wooden bar that ran along the opposite side of the room or played darts or other bar games native to the area. Many hunched over a sea of scarred-looking tables.
“They still after us?” Avery said.
The three paused after the entryway and turned to watch the doorway. Someone entered. They all tensed, but it was only two young women clutching pillows and looking excited. The women moved toward the sunken area before the stage.
