He cannot shake the sense of unseen legions nipping at his heels. Surely they will not just let him waltz on out of here. Surely they’ve got something special planned.
Well let’s hurry up and find out what it is.
THE WINDSHIELD IS a solid pane of glass again, lined with a network of filament cracks that slowly thin until they disappear and leave clear spotless glass when they are gone. If the mason jar would only do that.
Suddenly the gate whips by. Niko yells and stands on the brake and then fumbles into reverse and backs up until he’s sitting in the idling car beside the massive gate. Staring out the window wondering what to do next. Beside him looms the massive iron grillwork of the gate. Just beyond that crouches the giant insane dog growling growling growling.
He forgot about the goddamned dog. This time it has no need to strain its anchorchain leash as it faces him with slobbering feral grins. The dog is posted less to keep people from going in than to prevent their leaving. If Niko tries to get past it, it will have no problem at all tearing him into bitesized chunks. No jumbo milkbone gonna save your ass this time buddy pal.
While the dog quivers like a drumhead just beyond the gate Niko surveys the wall. Featureless white marble smooth as glass rising at least thirty feet. No way in hell he can scale it. He fights to quell a white blind wave of desperate panic that will own him if he lets it break. Like trying to figure out a chess problem while a bomb ticks down to zero underneath your chair. Come on. It’s just a dog for christ sake. A hydra headed dog the size of a small elephant but still. Just a stupid fucking animal. Come on smart boy. Can’t you outthink a watchdog on a leash. That old bumper sticker, My Karma Ran Over Your Dogma. Yeah well my karma’s pretty much become—
Niko draws a deep breath as a desperate idea is born. No oh no.
But he goes into action before he allows himself to think about it. For thought would surely paralyze him now. He sees his hand reach toward the shift lever. Don’t do this, old son. Miles away his foot lets in the clutch. You won’t survive this. His remotely operated hand fumbles until it finds reverse. Jemma won’t survive this. He lets out the clutch. God damn it you stupid grandstanding asshole you won’t make it. As the car backs up he turns it to the right until the gate glides into view again in front of him. You think there’s an airbag in this thing? You don’t even have a seatbelt, you moron, you’re gonna kill yourself. He straightens out. The grated gate and eager monstrous dog beyond it shrink as he backs up. The view through the nearly regrown glass is slightly fractured, but the dog remains kaleidoscopic even when the glass is whole again.
Something heavy lands on the back of the Black Taxi. Niko flinches. Guess you were being followed. Oh well.
He stops about a thousand yards from the gate. That should be plenty.
Now winged figures land along the top of the marble wall above the gate to perch like heckling ravens on a power line. They dangle hooves or claws or feet and grin and nudge each other and wager and cackle as they hold up tridents and rocks and bricks.
Niko regards their ballpark camaraderie and on sudden impulse hits the horn. The soul-cleaving shriek cuts the chronic night and batwings spread and flap. One demon jerks hard enough to fall off the wall and land on his head. The others laugh and several jump up to piss on him. The fallen demon grins and opens his mouth and drinks and bows like a courtier. His wings flourish like a sable cape and then he leaps up to his former perch.
Niko lets up on the horn. The sudden reigning silence nearly as painful. He watches the wall a moment longer. Gathering for the pounce. He revs the engine. Ready or not boys.
Why are you doing this?
He puts the Franklin into gear one final time.
What choice do you have?
He looks toward motion to his left. Something big stands on the runner and its leathery brown face fills up the window. Niko calmly elbows down the lock and looks away. Screw it. You want a ride, I’ll give you a ride.
The suicide door explodes open, wrenched off its beehive hinges. Niko’s foot slips off the clutch and the Black Taxi lurches and stalls. Motherfucker! Niko turns to confront whatever has confounded him, not really giving a shit that it just tore the door off a car. It grips him with powerful tendrils and hauls him before its battered and demonic likeness. Niko has a moment to take in darkly bleeding clawmarks raked across the craggy face, an ear shredded to flapping ribbons, a pulped eye lying wet on the swollen cheek, and gleaming bone beneath the ripped scalp before he’s pulled from the car and thrown to the harsh warm ground beside the wrenched off door.
Niko lies there with the wind knocked from him and watches Nikodemus get behind the wheel. He whispers No.
Nikodemus starts the car.
Niko struggles to his feet. “No,” he says. “It’s not your fight.”
Nikodemus looks at him and even though his demon’s face is a bleeding bludgeoned ruin its expression is one of pity.
Niko trudges stiffly toward the car as if poisoned by curare. It doesn’t matter. I will not let my demon do this. This is my job.
But he is stopped by Nikodemus touching his chest. It’s not a whipthin tendril the demon presses against him but the hard curve of a glass mason jar.
Nikodemus fixes Niko with his remaining eye.
Finally Niko looks down at the jar. The gesture also an accepting nod. Gently Niko takes the jar and the tendril withdraws.
The demons waiting on the wall. The jar he cradles close. Smell of perfume rising from the broken glass. Is it fainter than before? His eyes burn and his lips press tight.
Nikodemus gives a little nod and hoarsely whispers Thanks. Because we all want absolution, all want to atone. And then he puts the car in gear and Niko steps back and watches Nikodemus smoothly drive away.
Niko doesn’t know he’s crying until a tear lands on the cracked glass in his hands. Son of a bitch sure learned how to drive a stick.
A THOUSAND YARDS:
Niko watches from this safe distance as the headlamps light the gate like prison searchlights. In the glare the six mad fires of the waiting dog’s reflecting eyes. The engine roar diminishing. Receding taillights blurred by tears. After all he’s done to get this far he stands alone now on the outskirts of Hell with the cracked jar held fast in his arms and watches his demon and his friend accelerate across the thousand yards toward the iron gate.
On the wall they scurry to their feet and hooves and claws. Shouting reaches him across the distance. Tridents rocks and bricks are poised.
The Black Taxi impossibly sleek and smooth and doomed streaks toward the waiting metal.
Just before the crash the demons throw. Missiles smash on grille hood windshield roof.
The mindless dog’s anticipated leap uncoils.
The nightblack car holds steady. Silently hits the iron gate at eightyfive.
The front end accordions. The taillights lift.
The gate buckles then bursts outward.
The front end hits the leaping dog. Meat and metal merge.
The engine plunges past the firewall.
The fused mass of enormous car and monstrous dog slams down beneath the portal.
Blood and burning oil gout the air.
The collision’s thunder reaches him.
Niko runs.
DESPERATE AS HE is to reach the gate he cannot run the whole distance. Niko is too injured and too tired and too goddamned old to sprint a thousand yards. Within a few hundred yards the run becomes a trot, the trot a jog, the jog a power walk. It takes a sundered lifetime to get to the wreck. He’s wheezing and holding his ribcage by the time the portal looms above him once again. All around him on the wall stand demons and gargoyles and abominations. The hot air heavy with their rustlings but they say nothing nor do they shout or move. Unmolested Niko walks beneath their alien scrutiny. They stand in mute witness at the passing of something. Midwives to the death and birth of myth and humbled in their pensive silence.