It wasn’t long before he could hear the sound of the ocean and smell the tang of the salt air. Aaron crept from the wooded area and down a sandy embankment to a lonely stretch of road ending in a high, chain-link fence. He could just about make out the shape of the factory beyond it.
A light approached from the opposite direction, and Aaron ducked for cover, watching the road from behind a sprawling patch of wild-flowers and tall grass. The Ford pickup truck slowed as it approached the fence, and Aaron watched the driver slowly climb out. With a key from his pocket, he unlocked a padlock and chain, pushing open the fence to allow the vehicle entrance. Though it was dark, Aaron could see that the back of the truck was filled with people: young and old; men, women, and children—some even dressed in their pajamas and bathrobes. With a chilling resonance, his questions about the townsfolk became horribly clear.
The driver locked the chain again after driving through, then continued on toward the factory. Its headlights illuminated the parking area, and Aaron noticed that the lot was nearly full.
Must be the night shift, he thought as he emerged from hiding, hugged the shadows, and squeezed himself between the gates and onto the property. Using the parked cars as cover, Aaron made his way closer to the factory. Some cars had been parked at the front of the sprawling building, their lights on and pointed toward the structure for illumination. He ducked lower as a police patrol car slowly came around the corner. Peeking out over the hood of a powder blue Volvo, Aaron saw that the car was driven by Chief Dexter, and waited until the policeman had driven around the building before attempting to get any closer.
Aaron watched the group that had been in the back of the pickup stiffly walk from the parking lot toward the factory. A small town with a secret, mysterious disappearances, the locals acting strangely; if he wasn’t currently living it, he’d think he had become trapped in a bad sci-fi movie. They entered the building through a large, rust-stained metal door, and Aaron could hear the staccato rattle of what could only be a jackhammer.
He didn’t want to chance being noticed, so he avoided the main entrance and sought another, less obvious way into the factory. He stayed close to the building’s side, the shadows thrown by the rundown structure serving well to hide him. He was exceptionally cautious of Chief Dexter’s patrol, remaining perfectly still in the darkness and holding his breath whenever the squad car passed.
He found what seemed to be an old emergency exit and tried to open it. No good; it was locked from the other side. “Damnit,” he hissed. He looked around for something he could use to force the door, but there was nothing. Besides, he didn’t want to attract any attention. He needed to get inside. C’mon, Aaron. Think.
And then it dawned on him. It was a wild idea, but the more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that it just might work. Aaron closed his eyes and thought of a weapon—a weapon of fire. It was a different experience than the other times that he had summoned a fiery blade; he was not being attacked in any way, so he wondered if it would even work. The blade of light, brought forth from his recent nightmare, immediately surged into his head, as if eager to be used yet again, but he deemed it too large and unwieldy for the more delicate task he had in mind. Aaron pictured a dagger with a long, thin blade, and he opened his eyes to see it begin to form in his hand.
“Would you look at that,” he whispered as the knife took shape. Maybe he wasn’t such a lost cause after all, he mused as he brought the glowing manifestation of his power to the door and ran the orange blade between the jamb and the door itself. There was the slightest bit of resistance as the knife dissolved the locking mechanism, the pungent aroma of melting metal wafting up into the air on tufts of oily smoke.
He gave the door a sharp tug, and it opened enough for him to slip inside. It was cool, damp, and completely void of light. Aaron wished the tool of fire away and turned on the flashlight he had stuck in his back pocket. He was in a cinderblock hallway that appeared to be used for storage; every piece of old equipment, desks, chairs, and just general crap were piled inside. Silently, he scrambled over the piles of junk, heading for a doorway on the other side, listening intently for sounds of activity outside.
Aaron got to the other side and proceeded down a shorter hallway. The sounds of machinery were louder now; the whine of gas-powered generators, the roar of heavy machinery, the beep-beep-beep of vehicles backing up. He quickened his pace, then stopped in the shadows of another doorway, staring in awe. If this had once been a factory, a place where people had come to work, to make things—sailboats, in fact—it certainly wasn’t anymore. Inside the factory, in the middle of the sprawling structure, was an enormous hole.
Aaron skulked closer, using piles of dirt and rock that had been stacked in huge mounds around the dig as cover, and peered over the lip of the hole. The citizens of Blithe were working deep inside, using all kinds of construction equipment to make the opening even bigger. He actually recognized people from the town: the Mainiac with his dirty Red Sox cap, and an older woman who had been in the veterinarian’s office with a sick parakeet. The people down below moved around like ants, using picks, shovels, and jackhammers, chopping and digging in areas too small for the bigger machinery, while others carted away wheelbarrows loaded with the rubble of their labors.
This is way too much, he thought. He wanted nothing more than to find Gabriel and Camael and get the hell outta Dodge, but he couldn’t do that; he couldn’t leave Katie, and he couldn’t leave the town in the thrall of Leviathan—whatever the heck that was. He wished his mentor was there; he could have a used a little guidance from the angel warrior.
He recalled something that Katie had mentioned about underground caves and tunnels beneath the factory and wondered if they were the reason for this frantic activity. As if compelled, he moved cautiously closer, descending some makeshift stairs that took him deeper into the hole. There were lights strung along the walls, about every five feet or so, and the shadows cast by the workers, as they tirelessly toiled, were eerily disturbing—the distorted versions of themselves upon the tunnel wall more a reflection of the twisted horrors that lived inside them.
At the foot of the stairs he found an entrance to a tunnel, whose edges were not jagged and rough like those hewn with the tools and machines. Flashlight in hand, and making sure that he was not being watched, Aaron darted through the opening and began a descent farther beneath the earth. The walls of the winding passage were strangely smooth, as if polished—maybe by the flow of the ocean at one time, he thought as he placed his hand against the cool rock. It still felt wet, cold, as if the sea had left the essence of itself behind. There was a downward pitch to the tunnel floor, and Aaron nervously wondered how many feet beneath the surface he had traveled. This thought was quickly discarded when the angry sound of something squealing wafted up from the passage ahead.
It was an animal frantically calling for help, and Aaron slowly, carefully, made his way down the declining passageway. He came to a sudden, sharp bend and warily peered around it. The tunnel split, one path veering off to the left, winding down even farther into the darkness, the other ending in a chamber from where he was sure the sounds of distress had come. The animal’s squeals of protest became even more frantic and Aaron was drawn closer to its plight.