Johannes spoke for the first time, after his long period of silence. “Don’t let appearances deceive. The angel Faysal is powerful enough that only a god or a demon might pose a challenge. This bird…”
“Is awesome,” Evan said, with confidence.
“Evan is one of the individuals here most qualified to speak on the subject of perseverance,” I murmured.
The High Priest nodded. He sounded so weary, but he was one of the oldest people here, not counting the two remaining Behaims who weren’t named Alister. He sounded so calm as he asked, “He’s earned the right to be optimistic, hm?”
Evan piped up, “Damn straight. I survived for a long time, being hunted by a monster, and I kept up hope until the day I died, and you know what happened after I died? Still hopeful. So if you think you can change my mind about us being able to get through this, you’re going to have to do better than the wolf-goblin-hyena thing did, you’re going to have to do better than a personification of Conquest did, and you’re going to have to do better than all the other practitioner schmoes did, along the way.”
“Schmoes?” Alister asked. One of the schmoes.
Something moved in the bookshelves behind Evan, just at my shoulder. He hadn’t raised his voice that much.
I wasn’t sure I liked that.
“Kathy died, like Callan died,” Ellie said. “Like Molly died. One of the… other people didn’t come back, after that bridge got cut in half. I don’t see how you can be this confident. This place is…”
“Liable to grind us up and digest us,” Johannes said, his voice low.
I caught a glimpse of his, as we ran between bookshelves as tall as buildings. He looked haggard, strained. His long hair was sticking to his head with sweat, and the candlelight glittered in his eyes.
“I wanted to help you,” he said. “Faysal said we met when Molly Walker died. I think my approach to you was the same that it was to Rose. A refuge for a vestige, a kind of peace with a diabolist. As much as that’s possible.”
I thought I detected a faint ringing with his words.
“Shhh,” I reminded people.
“That plan changed,” Rose said.
“Not by my choice,” Johannes said. “In the midst of all this, I still had to maintain my own goals.”
“Past tense,” Alister observed.
“Yes. I’m not sure what the future holds,” Johannes said. “I’m inclined to hope it’s merely a short, brutal, violent end. Not the-”
“Barber,” Alister finished. Then, as an afterthought, “Don’t look!”
It was hard not to, when we were making the connection, when we wanted to see with our own eyes. I hurried to throw my hand over Ellie’s eyes. She had diagnosed impulse control problems.
Alister pulled Christoff close with a bloodstained hand, the boy’s nose shoved into Alister’s armpit, facing away from the demon.
On a distant pillar, the Barber stood on a balcony. The ruined bodies of lost souls lay at his feet, arms twitching, grasping for something that wasn’t there. Hundreds of feet away. Walking to him might have taken two to four minutes, if we’d had a bridge.
He’d just been on the ground below.
We were utterly silent. Even the sounds below seemed muted, now.
The Barber snapped the scissors closed, producing a sharp sound that carried all the way to us.
Tch.
He didn’t move, even as a body at his feet clawed at one of his legs, groping, trying to climb up, plead.
The scissors opened and snapped closed again. Then again.
Tch. Tch. Tch. Tch. Tch.
“Those measures you were talking about,” I spoke to Alister. “For stopping him?”
“Not like this,” he said. “I need time. Open space.”
I didn’t respond. You’re not liable to get either, down here. Not unless the Abyss wants to tease you.
Tch. Tch. Tch.
“Shoes off,” Rose said.
“Shoes?” one of the Knights asked.
“Keep them, but don’t wear them,” she murmured. “Anything that might make noise, leave it behind, or put it away. We-”
Hands snapped out from the bookshelf at her eye level. Grabbing her by the head and throat. One covered her mouth, the other clutched her windpipe.
She was hauled off to the right, away from stairs, still gripped by the mouth and neck. The arms knocked books from the shelves, and those books rained down on the rest of us. One struck Johannes rather soundly.
Rose’s legs struck Alister, nearly knocking him down the stairs. Only a chance catch of the railing saved him.
She dangled at the corner of the pillar, strangling, her toes ten feet up from the nearest stair.
Alister and I both climbed, though I was slower, my wing serving poorly for the task. Alister on Rose’s left, me on her right.
I stabbed the wrist of the hand nearest me, the one that had her throat. The other hand caught at her nose and lip, threatening to tear away skin if she happened to drop while the fingers were in place.
Rose clutched at me, and I folded one wing around her.
Alister touched a silver chain to the other hand, then, seeing it react, he encircled the wrist, pulling it away.
Rose managed to catch herself. She was facing outward, the nearest horizontal surface the stairs that were ten feet below. If she dropped, it would be so very easy for her to simply hit the stairs and keep going forward. Over the railing. Dropping to the ground as if she were falling from a rooftop.
Given the choice of accepting my support or Alister’s, she chose Alister. A grim expression on her face, she managed to get turned around, and she made the climb down.
I kept my wing extended, sheltering her. I wasn’t sure it would make a difference, given it’s general lack of fingers but there was only so much I could do.
There wasn’t a lot of room on the stairs themselves. I paused, not wanting to rock the metaphorical boat, while Rose got to her feet. Others were pulling off boots and shoes, laces tied together, hanging them around their necks.
“Can’t talk too much,” Rose whispered.
I saw her eye flicker in the direction of the bookcase.
Can’t openly discuss how to work against the Abyss in front of the Abyss, I thought. The abyss liked its lose-lose situations.
I found a space to climb down to, and found myself in the midst of Ty, Alexis, and Tiff. My former friends.
They looked so worn out.
Mara told me they wanted a way out. Escape. I don’t blame them.
I had to hope that there was a way to get them what they needed.
They’d gotten into this for my sake, and then I’d been removed from the equation.
Ty cupped one hand over one side of his face, shielding his eyes, and then pointed.
I very carefully followed the angle of his finger.
The balcony. The broken lost souls were crawling away and over the railing. They moved like damaged spiders, shifting around at a glacial pace, leaving bloody handprints and footprints here and there, making whimpering noises that carried through the relative silence. The Barber was gone.
“Shit,” I said, under my breath.
I looked around, and I couldn’t see the demon.
Shit.
He shouldn’t have been able to climb that pillar so fast. But he could. The question was, where was he?