Asha frowned at him. “All of them? All together? And you believe we can simply walk inside, just the two of us?”
“It’s the only way,” he said. “We need to know where he is, and how he is.”
“We do know where he is,” she hissed. “He’s in there!”
“Not good enough. That pyramid is huge, and none of us have been inside beyond the first chamber,” he said. “We’re completely blind. When we come back with the others, we’ll need a plan. We’ll need to know where we’re going.”
“But the moment we go inside, they’ll hear us and see us and smell us,” Asha said. “They’ll come running before we can take two steps over the threshold. These people have the senses and instincts of wild animals, predators. They won’t be distracted by idle conversation or music or a glass of wine. All of their senses will be focused on us, immediately.”
“I think you’re giving them too much credit,” Gideon said.
“If we’re going to go all the way inside to find Omar, why don’t we simply get him out right now?”
“That would be very reasonable,” he answered. “But I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a very long time, and there’s nothing reasonable about a fight with an animal, or a fanatic. It’s going to be messy, and it’s going to go wrong. I guarantee that. And what if Omar is already some sort of animal-monster? He isn’t going to sneak out with us, or help us fend off Lilith’s beasts. He’s going to try to kill us every step of the way. No, we stick to the plan. Find him. Just find him, for now.”
“Very well.” Asha started walking and didn’t wait for him to follow. “But if we find Omar, and he’s still himself, I’m taking him out of there.”
She tried to keep a straight path in the darkness by watching the small yellow flame at the top of the pyramid, but after stubbing her toe several times on the blocks at the edge of the thoroughfare, Asha made a fist and transformed her right arm from the elbow down, armoring her skin in golden scales and extending her bright ruby claws that burned like angry jewels in the darkness, casting their red light on the ground.
There’s no need for caution here. If there are no windows, then they can’t see my claws out here against the black.
She quickened her pace, jogging briskly across the front of Lilith’s citadel, and suddenly the long stone ledge of the bottom level of the pyramid cut off abruptly to reveal a gap, an opening of deeper darkness.
The door.
Asha slowed and crept off the road into the square tunnel with Gideon just behind her. By the light of her claws, she saw dark stains on the walls and ground, and deep gouges that could only have been made by claws. Very large claws.
She moved carefully but as quickly as she dared, and she let the dragon wrap her left hand in scales and claws as well.
Gideon was right about one thing. This will go badly, eventually. Something will go wrong. We will be attacked. Here, in the dark, in these narrow passages. There may be some warning. Growling and pawing. The flap of wings. Perhaps even a torch light in the distance. But it could just as easily come from nowhere and take us by surprise.
Asha strained her eyes, peering into the distant shadows for some hint of what lay ahead, but there was only darkness. She listened with her dragon’s ear, but still the soul-sounds around her were muddled and wild. Human and animal, whole and broken, and all twisted together. She couldn’t tell where anything was, precisely. Only that it felt like the creatures were in front of them, and above them, somewhere.
The walls opened up and they stepped out into a chamber where their footsteps echoed faintly. Asha raised her claws and saw the flat faces of the walls etched with more of the symbols from the obelisks outside, but nothing else.
“Horus and I killed some of them here,” Gideon whispered. “A few years ago.”
He pointed to the opening in the far wall, and they moved on.
Asha kept close to the wall, and not far down the next corridor she paused to listen. New sounds were mingling with the muddled soul-noises. Real sounds, echoing faintly through the walls. Grunting. Snorting. Stamping.
And voices?
Asha started moving again.
Please, Omar, give us something. Yell at her. Or yell in pain. Yell something. Tell us where you are.
At the next chamber they found much more than in the last. Here there were empty iron torches standing dark in the corners, and faded tapestries hanging on the walls, and a large block of stone in the center of the room like a table or an altar. Doorways on the right and left opened directly onto other small rooms, also filled with bits of broken furniture and cloth scattered over the floor.
Asha stopped. “This is wrong.”
“What?”
“This. Everything.” She gestured to the rooms. “Lilith is keeping a menagerie of monstrous slaves here, and conducting experiments. There should be some normal signs of life. Food, scat, tools, equipment, light. And if these monsters are roaming around, there shouldn’t be anything left intact here. But look. The tapestries aren’t shredded, the furniture is only knocked over, not shattered. This place is abandoned.”
“But I can hear them.” Gideon glanced up. “Can’t you hear them?”
“Oh yes.” She nodded. “They’re up there. But they aren’t down here. They don’t come down here. Which tells me they have a different door. Lilith may have even sealed off this area so no one can get in this way.”
“Or get out this way.” Gideon straightened up and relaxed his posture a bit. “You’re right. She must have changed it after Horus and I were here last. We’re not going to be able to get to Omar from down here, are we?”
Asha shook her head. “No. We go back.”
They moved quickly back the way they had come, jogging down the corridors and back out into the vast darkness of the undercity. And there they turned and looked up at the dancing yellow flame high above them.
“This is going to be even more difficult than I thought,” Gideon said. “I suppose we can scout around the building and try to find the other entrance.”
“No, the longer we’re here, the more likely it is that they’ll find us,” Asha said. “I’ll go alone. I’ll find a way inside. You wait here.”
“Go alone? No, that’s not the plan.”
Asha wasn’t listening. She reached down into her memories of all the horrible things she had seen people do to each other, and she roused the dragon a bit more. As her skin hardened into unbreakable golden scales, she felt herself being cut off from the world outside her body. Everything outside was cold and distant and dark, but inside her skin she was warm and solid and bright. She watched the blackness shift in a warm hazy crimson, where living bodies shimmered in naked white.
Everything was simpler when she wore the dragon. There was nothing to fear, nothing that could hurt her, nothing that could hide from her. Her own soul called out, cautioning her not to lose control, not to give in to the dragon’s bestial seduction.
I must remember to fear it, even now. I could kill Gideon, or Omar, or everyone in Alexandria if I gave in. I could spend the rest of my life raging across continent after continent, crushing and tearing and burning through city after city, killing and destroying everything I find.
But if I did… If I gave in, I wouldn’t care anymore. I wouldn’t be Asha anymore. I would be the dragon, and the dragon would not care. It would only go on living and raging, a force of nature without conscience or guilt, without remorse or regret.
And that’s the real seduction. Not the power.
The freedom.
Asha looked up at the dancing white flame at the top of the citadel, and saw faint white shapes moving about below it.
Seek.
Save.
Asha gripped the stone wall before her and leapt up into the darkness. She was aware of the cool air rippling over her golden skin, but she could not feel it. She moved through it like a spirit, a creature of another world, untouchable. Her feet landed on one of the many step-like levels of the pyramid, and she leapt again, and again, each time flying higher and closer to the white flame. To her left and right, she could see more and more of the city spread out below her as her perspective shifted higher and higher. The obelisks were reduced to stone needles, and the towers become little more than trees. Only the pillars remained massive and otherworldly.