The Devil Is a Gentleman (13 page)

“Let’s go find out,” I said.

It was hard, as we stepped into the dimly-lit lobby, not to remember the bodies littered across the floor and blood smeared and spurted across the muted wallpaper walls. I frowned as I recalled the shellshocked spirits, haunting their own bodies and whispering “Why?” as I passed. The lobby was clean and shone to a sparkle. People in suits, mostly men, but a few women as well, were filing out of the elevators at the back. A few of them waved to the large man at the security desk as they passed. I was no expert on fashion, but I was guessing they paid more for a suit than I did for rent. We were a glaring example of what didn’t belong, and the security guard narrowed his eyes at us almost instantly.

Wading through the suits, Gage and I made for the elevator, trying to blend in with the crowd. But since we were the only two people wearing jeans, it wasn’t an easy thing. We were also going the wrong way. No one else was entering the building at almost five o’clock.

“Hang on,” the guard called. “Hey, you two.” I looked up, as if surprised. “You gotta sign in,” he called.

“Make a dash for the elevator?” I said, turning to Gage.

He frowned. “It’s like you
want
them to kill us,” he said. “Follow me.”

Gage sauntered up to the desk and nodded at the guard.

“Are you here to see someone?” the guard asked.

“Yep,” said Gage. He reached into his pocket where he kept his Department of Order and Chaos badge. Sam had given them to us just for times like this. People liked to cooperate after they looked at our badges. But this time I touched his arm and shook my head. He looked at me quizzically, but took his empty hand out of his pocket.

I smiled at the guard. “The thing is, we know what you’re hiding here,” I said, “and I know who’s running the show.” The guard paled and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I’m sure you don’t want to get into trouble, do you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “Who owns this building?”

The guard smiled nervously. “That’s a joke, right?”

“Does the lady look like she’s joking?” said Gage.

“Sorry,” said the guard. “It’s owned by Hal Dorrance. I thought everyone knew that.

“Why’s it called H&H?” said Gage.

The guard shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Never thought about it, I guess.”

“That’s great,” I said. “So now you walk out that door without another word, and the worst thing that will happen to you is unemployment. If you stay, the whole damn story’s coming out, and you’ll have some explaining to do.”

“Look, Mr. Dorrance said
—
”

“Mr. Dorrance is a rich bastard with nothing to fear,” I interrupted. “Can you say the same?”

The guard looked twitchily from me to Gage. Finally he nodded, grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair, and headed for the door, melting into the crowd exiting the building.

“Why’d you stop me?” Gage said.

“Sam asked me not to use the badges,” I said. “Said they’d make trouble.”

“No one told me,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said, “I thought you knew.”

“Whatever,” said Gage. “Up or down?”

“Dorrance and company are probably up,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Gage.

“Don’t really know what to expect with those guys.”

“Nope,” said Gage.

“The Morrigan is possibly somewhere below.”

“Yep.”

“And there’s an angel somewhere in this building.”

“You got a point somewhere in this running commentary?” said Gage.

I shot him a look. “My point is we’re screwed if we do and screwed if we don’t. Let’s go down. Got your book?”

He patted the satchel thrown over his shoulder. “Got it. Let’s go.”

We opted for the stairs to avoid the outpouring of office workers filing out of the elevator. We walked down, our steps echoing in the empty stairwell. We came to a door where the steps ended labeled
Basement 1.

“Why does it say Basement 1?” said Gage. “Is there more than one?”

I looked around for another door but there was none. End of the line. “Only one way to find out,” I said. I opened the door and walked through.

The dank, musty air felt cool and wet. I looked around for a switch, but the lights flickered on, apparently on a motion-sensor.

The basement was being used for storage and was piled from floor to ceiling with office desks, rolling chairs, file cabinets, bookshelves and boxes on top of boxes of office supplies, each box clearly marked with what it contained in black marker on the sides. We walked past
staples, printer paper,
and
ball point pens.

“All the trappings of corporate culture,” said Gage.

There was a clear path through all the stuff, but Gage was right.

“You see a vault anywhere?” I said.

Gage shook his head. “I can’t see anything in here,” he said. “All this junk.”

“Well, let’s keep walking,” I said. “Keep an eye out.” We walked for a long time, passing pile after pile of random office junk. After a long while I noticed a red glow ahead. “Look, an exit sign,” I said.

“Hang on a second, sis,” said Gage. I stopped and looked at him. He was holding out his arms and wiggling his fingers. “Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?” I said. But even as I said it, I knew what he meant. There was an odd tingle to the air. It was faint, nowhere near what I felt the last time I’d been in this building. “Where’s it coming from?” I said. “The angel?”

“I dunno,” said Gage. “But I’m guessing we’re on the right track.”

The exit wasn’t locked and we stepped out into a stairwell identical to the first, except there was only one set of stairs, and they were pointed down. We clattered down the steps as quietly as we could and came to a door marked
Basement 2,
where we were not so lucky. The door was locked.

“Hang on,” said Gage, opening his satchel and pulling a thick, small volume out. It looked like an old, small Bible, but the title was made up of strange symbols. As I looked at them they changed. “This’ll be quick,” he said, flipping through the book. “But cover your ears anyway.”

I covered my ears and watched Gage put his hand over the handle of the door. Symbols danced in the book, even seeming to float out a bit. Gage’s lips moved and suddenly it was over. The door popped open. I took my hands off my ears and Gage closed the book with a snap.

“That’s it?” I said.

“Yup.”

“No glowing eyes or hellfire or anything?”

“It’s just a lock,” said Gage.

We stepped through the door and found ourselves in different sort of basement from the last one. A large furnace filled the center of the room, cold and quiet. There were no boxes here, but there was maintenance equipment stacked in a far corner. Buckets and brooms and mops. A white square sink was built into the floor with a nozzle above it. I thought of Philip Morales, the young janitor the Dark had gone into, and who I had killed here, in this very building. But I shoved him out of my mind. I needed to concentrate. With an effort I looked away from the equipment. There was a washing machine on the next wall, and past it I saw yet another door with an exit sign glowing above it.

“How many basements can one building have?” I said. We passed through the door with no trouble. Apparently they only locked from the outside. We went down another set of stairs and came to a different sort of door. All the other doors had been painted white with rectangular windows built in. This door was solid silver. It had the word
Sub-basement
painted on it in stenciled black writing. There was no window or knob. A dialpad was next to the door, set into the wall. The tingling in the air was far stronger here. It set my teeth to grinding and my nerves on edge. I touched the door and instantly pulled my hand back. It was like a shock almost. I could still feel my hand vibrating as I looked up at Gage. The door looked still, but it was jittering with magic.

“You sure you want to do this?” said Gage. “We don’t know what’s in there.”

“Can you unlock it?” I said. “Looks more complicated.” I shook my hand as the feeling came back into it.

“I’ll try,” he said.

I covered my ears and Gage got out his little book. He flipped through it, frowning, but just as he was about to speak, there was a click that I felt through the soles of my shoes and the heavy door swung inward. I looked at Gage. “That was fast.”

His eyes were wide. “I didn’t do anything,” he said.

“So either someone knows we’re here,” I said, “or we’re the luckiest bastards on the planet.”

“I’m gonna go with the first one,” said Gage. “You want to go in?”

“We have to,” I said.

“Could be a trap,” said Gage, putting his book away. “Sure you want to risk it? We’ve officially broken in. If we get caught we’ll go to jail. I don’t think Eliza’s gonna fess up to sending us here.”

“Maybe someone knows we’re here,” I said. “But maybe it’s not The Blood. Maybe it’s the angel.”

“If he can pop open steel doors with his mind, why’s he stuck down here?” said Gage.

“Let’s find out,” I said. I pushed the door open all the way, and stepped inside.

It didn’t look like a basement. It looked like a fortified prison from a spy movie. The walls were metal, same as the door. A large vault was built into the very center of the room, the door as thick and impenetrable as that of a submarine. A pad like the one outside was set into the door right above a large metal handle. There was a metal chair just below. Our reflections elongated on our right and left on the mirror-like walls, elongating our bodies right up to the concrete ceiling. A blackened light hung from the middle of the ceiling and cast a dim light.

“Why’s the light black?” whispered Gage.

I looked around the room. “Probably for the same reason those spots on the floor are black,” I said. There were starbursts on the cement floor. I counted four of them, spaced randomly near the vault in the middle of the room. I swallowed. There had been a starburst like that at Bradley’s cabin. His had been larger, though.

Gage looked at me. “What do you want to do, Niki?” he said. His eyes didn’t leave the blackened spot nearest to us. “You still want to do this?”

“We have to,” I said. “I go to prison if we don’t. Your record will be wiped clean when this is all over, don’t forget.”

Gage stopped me with a hand on my arm. He shook his head. “Ain’t worth dyin’ for, sis,” he said. “We don’t know what the hell’s in that vault. Sam can get you out, you know he can. Eliza don’t have nothin’ solid.”

“Sam was afraid of Eliza,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to put him in that position.”

“Yeah, but, don’t you feel it?” he said. I did feel it. The teeth-gnashing jolts I had felt outside were almost unbearable here. My hands were shaking. I pulled out the Makarov that Eliza had returned to me and tried to steady it with both hands in front of me.

“You can go back if you want,” I said. “Or you can open that vault.”

Gage narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re goddamn stubborn sometimes, you know that?”

“I know,” I said.

Gage shook his head, but walked to the vault, all the same. There was a noise behind me, a muted clattering outside the door. A series of muffled bleeps on the keypad. I leveled my gun towards the door just as it opened. An old man shuffled in, saw me, and promptly dropped the paper cup of coffee he’d been holding. Black liquid rolled across the floor. The man looked at me, puzzled. He had deep lines on either side of his mouth and wrinkles projecting from his eyes like the hands of a skeleton. His gray hair was slicked back from his forehead and his posture was slightly stooped under his leather jacket. I pulled him inside and closed the door behind him.

“Are you crazy?” he said.

Gage was muttering a spell, the symbols floating off the pages of his book. He couldn’t hear a thing when he was casting. “Who the hell are you?” I said.

“Alex,” said the man. He didn’t have an accent. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Sasha’s girl.”

“You work for The Blood?” I said. “You’re not one of Naz’s.”

“No,” he said, offended. “I’m with the Guard.” He broke into a grin, his teeth gray. “They’re not happy with you, I’ll tell you that,” said the man. “Dorrance about pisses himself every time he hears your name. You’ve got them scared.”

I frowned. “That makes you happy?”

“They stuck me down here because no one else would come,” he said. “You know why, don’t you?”

“They burn up,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Nothing left. I got nothing anymore. I’m not scared. Kill me if he wants. Not going to make a difference. No one will mourn me.” He laughed a dusty cough of a laugh.

“Niki?” said Gage behind me. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” I said without looking from the old man.

“I can’t do it, Nik,” he said, sounding defeated. “I can’t get it open. My casting’s not working on it.”

“It won’t ever work,” said the man. “They thought they were keeping him here for a while. Turns out, though, he could have left anytime. It’s that girl that’s got a hold of him. He cares about her.” His face changed, then. He stopped smiling and his eyes widened.