Below them, the hurricane that now blasted down from the mountain scattered the burning scrub from which the soldiers were coalescing. Half-formed soldiers splattered onto the sand, a wet corruption of skin, bone and exposed organs.
Overhead, immense, dark things blacked out parts of the sky. Search lights played across the desert floor, illuminating the underbellies of the airships. The lights pooled around the bodies of the dead soldiers near the cave.
Count Non and the others trudged up the hill into the wind, finally reaching Spyder and Shrike.
“We should keep moving.” The Count had to shout to be heard above the wind.
“Can you turn the wind off now, pretty please?” Spyder asked.
Shrike raised her hands and uttered a few words. Nothing happened. She indicated that they should start up the hill. “Sometimes it takes a few minutes,” She said. “This isn’t like turning off the TV.”
They started up and within a few minutes, the wind began to slack off. The airships kept up their search, lighting up the bodies of the slaughtered soldiers on the trail below. Looking for us among the dead, thought Spyder. He felt a surge of excitement, having come through another fight. Primo came up from the rear, still scanning the sky, trying to find some clue in the mad light and crisscrossing shadows cast by the twin moons.
“That archway in the rock above us,” he said. “I think it’s pointing to an opening in the rock face.”
“Lead the way, man,” said Spyder, and slapped him on the back. Primo flinched from the blow. Spyder saw that he was holding his side. Blood stained the front of his white shirt, and oozed from between his fingers.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing,” Primo said. “We’ll be away from them soon.”
Primo went quickly up the trail, but Spyder could tell that he was more badly hurt than he was letting on. The little man constantly looked northward at a stone archway in the rocks above. In the crazy mix of shadows, Spyder couldn’t really see what had Primo so excited.
Thunder rumbled behind them, then lightning. The ground shook. Heat and a wave of static bristled over their skin. Spyder could tell that it wasn’t thunder in the sky, but more of the light weapons he’d seen back in the airship battle. Rocks tumbled down at them as searing white bolts blasted into the mountain. They pressed themselves as close as possible to the rock face and kept moving. Looking up, Spyder thought he saw angels circling the mountaintop, high above.
“There!” yelled Primo, between thunderclaps. The mountain rumbled up through their legs. “I need to climb. Please give me a leg up.”
Spyder still couldn’t see where Primo wanted to go, but he crouched by the little man’s leg to give him a boost. Primo took a breath. His remaining hand was bloody and his balance was a little shaky. Holding on to Primo’s shoulder, Count Non steadied him enough to step onto Spyder’s hands and begin the climb.
He must have cat eyes, thought Spyder. Using his one arm, the little man climbed steadily up the rocks, reaching a deep, recessed shadow just a few yards above their heads. “We would have walked right past it,” Spyder said to himself. The ground shook and rocks came down, almost knocking Primo off his perch at the lip of the cave.
“This is it!” Primo called. “Climb!” The mountain trembled and Primo used his one arm to brace himself in the cave entrance. Where his bloody hand touched the mountain, the rock turned black. The blackness spread outward and around the cave like paper crisping in an invisible fire. “Hurry!” Primo shouted to them.
“Look out!” Spyder screamed.
Primo frowned, cocking his ear, trying to hear Spyder above the thunder. The little man was now standing in a circle of curdling black set against the mountain. Spyder tried to wave him away from the entrance.
“Do you smell something?” asked Shrike.
Above them, Primo screamed as crooked black spikes spun out of the rock, drilling through Primo’s body, pinning him to the rock. As Primo struggled, Count Non started climbing toward him. Too late. Double-edge blades, as long as Primo’s arm, sprang from the sides of the mountain and closed on Primo like the jaws of a colossal mechanical beast. The blades sliced cleanly through the little man and he was silent. Then the spikes rotated out of Primo’s mangled body, allowing the pieces to fall quietly over the rock face. If there was any sound, Spyder couldn’t hear it above the thunder and his own screaming. As the spikes disappeared into black rock, the side of the mountain turned back to a dull gray. Count Non dropped down beside Spyder.
“They’re gone. Primo and the cave,” said Spyder. “I can’t see anything.” Rocks tumbled down the mountain at them.
“We can’t stay here!” shouted Lulu.
“Help me up,” said Shrike. “I’m climbing.”
“It’s gone!” shouted Spyder. “We can’t see anything.”
“I don’t need to see it,” she said. “Can’t you smell it?”
“What?”
“Flowers.”
“The smell of the Inferno is like vanilla roses,” said Count Non. “If you can follow that scent, we’ll follow right behind you.” Shrike nodded and the Count lifted her onto the rock face. Shrike climbed slowly, carefully, feeling her way up the wall, groping with her hands and feet for each purchase on the cliff.
Below, the desert floor was turning red and liquid as the sand superheated to glass where the airships’ light weapons hit. Spyder pressed his forehead into the mountain. For the first time in what seemed like a long time, he stepped outside himself and looked at where his sorry ass had landed him: clinging to a murderous mountain on some imaginary island, with warrior angels above and demons below. “If you could see me now, Jenny,” he whispered. “If you could see me now.”
Count Non put his hand on Spyder’s shoulder. Spyder looked up and saw Shrike kneeling on a ledge, gesturing for them to come up.
“You’re next, little brother. Don’t leave the lady waiting,” Non said, giving Spyder a leg up the rock. As he climbed, Spyder heard Lulu huffing and cursing behind him. When he reached the ledge where Shrike waited, she grabbed him and pulled him inside. Spyder turned and pulled in Lulu, as Count Non came up behind her. Outside, the killing light from the airships was hitting all around the cave entrance. Dust and stones rained down on them from the ceiling. The smell of roses was sickening, cloying and overripe. Spyder was suddenly afraid. A light bolt hit just below the lip of the entrance and threw them deep inside the cave.
“We’re not safe here,” said Count Non. “We have to get down below.”
“Back here.” Shrike’s voice came from deeper in the cave. “Stone doors. They’re warm. And they smell like an abandoned florist.”
Spyder and the others scrambled to her through the dark. At the rear of the cave, stood two massive doors, forty feet high, carved from the mountain itself.
“How do we open them?” Spyder asked.
“They feel light,” said Shrike. “I think I can just pull them.”
“Wait,” said Count Non. “Shrike and Lulu are safe, but Spyder mustn’t forget his blindfold.” Non slid Lulu’s blindfold from where it hung around her neck, unknotted it and stepped behind Spyder to tie it on.
“Shouldn’t we put that back on Lulu?”
“Don’t worry. Even the Clerks can’t see through dead eyes into Hell.”
“You sure?”
“My father knew the place well.”
“I hope you’re right. I didn’t like the idea of stumbling around down there with all of us blind.”
Quietly, Non said to Spyder, “We made it, little brother. The entrance to the Inferno. ‘I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places.’” As the cool cloth of the blindfold slid over Spyder’s eyes, something nicked his left ear. Then his arm. He heard something shoot by and strike the wall.