The stairway swayed and creaked. Bolts were pulling free from the cement wall.
Donna glanced up the narrow crotch of the stair to see how far she had to go. At least seven landings remained, the dim light becoming gradually greenish. How deep can these tunnels be? What earthly reason would there be for such deep tunnels?
Her foot caught on something. She stumbled. Her toes were wedged – not wedged, but held. The killer had grabbed on between the treads. He reached higher, gripping her ankle. She kicked out. His fingers slipped, raking down her already bloody foot. She kicked again. Fingernails peeled back, and he lost hold. By the sound of it, Samael landed in a painful heap midstair and tumbled downward. Donna reached the fifth landing, and the sixth. Each breath felt like a saw sliding down her throat. The metal framework listed outward. Grinding sounds came from above. Rusted bolts ripped away from the crumbling cement. The stairway teetered out into the shaft. He’s coming. He’s closing on me. His footsteps are only getting louder, faster. He’ll catch me. As long as he lives, he’ll catch me.
Donna’s legs were leaden. Three more landings. To die in a hole, away from the sun…
She dragged herself up another flight, but there – there he caught up to her.
Samael vaulted up the steps behind her and seized her ankle. She fell to her knees. She flipped over but couldn’t break his grasp.
“You can’t escape me. You can’t escape love.” He yanked her down underneath him, slid his arm around her neck, and throttled her. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Relax. You’ll fall asleep and wake up, safe and warm on your bed.”
His hold was implacable. She couldn’t break it. Every struggle was agony. Submit. Her body screamed that she submit.
But there was that slumbering baby in the bright, clean room…
They had tried prostaglandin gel. They had broken the bag of waters. They had started Pitocin. Her false labor had become truer than she could have previously imagined, but still, the progress was slow.
“About four centimeters,” said Doctor Lein. He was an East Indian man, tall, with intense brown eyes. Just now, those eyes peered at his gloved hand, prodding the cervix. “This little one seems not to want to come out.”
Donna gasped from the pressure of his fingertips.
“Must’ve heard what it was like out here.” She nodded toward him. “There’s another contraction starting.”
“Yes,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “I can tell. Keep up the good work.”
“It’s been ten hours already,” she replied. “How much longer?”
“Be patient. It’s a hard thing to be born, but everybody does it.”
Gritting her teeth, Donna raised her good leg and kicked, planting her heel in the killer’s groin and flinging him backward, head over heels. She turned onto her belly and scrambled to the next landing. Dull thuds came as Samael struck moldy wood and cracked through.
Please, God, let him be dead – and if not dead, maimed. And please, God, let me reach the top…
The crashing sounds below rumbled into silence. A new noise took their place – the ominous squeal of stressed metal.
The metal tower veered away from the cement wall and out over the darkness. Then it reeled back to clang against its facings. Perhaps if she could break it entirely free after she jumped to the landing – perhaps Samael would be killed as the stairway collapsed. Donna topped the final rise, which drifted ten feet away from its terminus – a wooden door in the smooth wall at the top of the shaft. There was no landing. The door was bolted in place with a fat padlock, and goldgreen light poured out all around it. So close. She couldn’t hope to break through the door, with the tower swaying as it was, or cling to it and pick the lock. For that matter, she had nothing with which to…
Beside the door was an ancient glass compartment, so shrouded in dust that it seemed at first only another panel in the gray cement. As the tower swung inward, though, she spotted within the compartment a bulky fire extinguisher and an ax.
Donna lifted a hunk of rotting stair and struck the glass. It shattered with a dry, dusty sound. The tower drew inexorably away before she could thrust her hand through the jags of glass and bring away the ax. The tower reached its farthest point and pendulumed back toward the door. Donna thrust her hand through the shattered glass and seized the ax haft. The blade broke out through ragged shards of glass. Her hand streamed blood. She gripped the ax with both hands. It seemed to have never been used, sharp despite its corrosion.
“Good enough for me,” Donna said, bracing herself to swing at the door.
The scaffold sighed, slowly approaching the wall. She swung and struck. A few chips of old wood flew back, but the resultant cleft gripped the ax, dragging it out of her hands. It took another sway of the tower before she could reach the ax and pull it free. Light poured warmly out through the chink. As she waited for the next blow, she listened for Samael. Aside from the moan of metal, there was silence.
Donna hunkered down. The door loomed toward her. She struck. A wedge of wood flew free, and she yanked the ax head out. Another five or six strokes, and perhaps she’d have a hole big enough to dive through. Two, and then three more solid hits. The door was cracked down the center. If she got lucky, the door would split in half and fall away. Donna reared back with the ax, holding her breath as the tower and door swooned together.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
Whirling, she lashed out. The blade bit into the side of Samael’s jaw. He fell back, silent and leering. She caught her balance and swung again. This time, the blade cleaved into the killer’s shoulder. The ax head cut muscle and tendon before embedding in the upper knob of the humerus.
Donna didn’t stop, even as Samael staggered back. The ax fell again, nearly severing a leg, and then sank into his belly, like a spoon into oatmeal. He slumped precariously against the framework. With one mighty strike, she chopped the man’s bad arm clear off. Blood jetted from the amputation. He would be dead in moments, and she would be free. She turned. The tower crashed into the wall. The gory ax flew into the fissure in the wood and split the door in two. One ragged half hung by stressed hinges, while the other slid down between door and tower, cracked against stone, and plunged in a long, rattling descent.
Even as the tower leaned away again, Donna leaped. Her upper body and hands caught just within the doorway, the baby and her lower body hanging in the emptiness beyond. It felt as if climbing up onto that ledge would cut the baby in half, but if she were still hanging this way when the tower swung inward, she’d be crushed.
Donna wriggled her way up through the hanging threshold. No sooner had her feet dragged across it than the scaffold clanged into position. Gazing back past the riven door, she saw the immobile, bloody mess of the Son of Samael, slumped on the stairs.
“You’re not my brother,” she blurted. “You’re not anything. It’s time to die.”
She turned to see a wide basement with I-beams and metal posts. This was the lowest level of an abandoned brick warehouse. Through a bank of high, shattered windows, golden sunlight streamed across unmown green grass. It was a beautiful sight. Only the arm amputation bled a lot. He stuck his fingers into the brachial artery. That helped. The bleeding would stop that way. Then a tourniquet for his leg. He could make the tourniquet out of his own shirtsleeve and his own ulna, stripped of skin and muscle, of course. Once the tourniquet was tight, he could use one of these pieces of glass to cut the leg the rest of the way off.
Spirit arms and legs were much better than real ones. If those amputations went well enough, he’d get rid of more parts, and more, until he was a pure angel again.
How strange, he thought. Donna made me human in the first place. Now she dehumanizes me, demonizes me, redeifies me.