I thought a moment about what he’d said, but the math still didn’t add up. “The fact remains that Danny works for you, and that he stole the soul I’m looking for. I’m supposed to believe those two things are unconnected?”
“Believe what you want, Sammy —and someday, you’ll have to fill me in on how you’ve come to know so much about who I do and don’t associate with —but the truth is, Danny doesn’t work here anymore.”
“He doesn’t.” Skeptical.
“No, he doesn’t. Fact is, the boy got sloppy —unreliable. Became a liability to the organization. So I had to let him go.”
“If that’s the case, then what the fuck would Danny want with the soul of some drug kingpin that wasn’t even his to take?”
“Wait —don’t tell me this Varela you’re looking for is Pablo Varela? As in head of the Varela drug cartel?”
For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if he was shining me on, or if his surprise was as genuine as it seemed. “So you do know of him,” I said.
“Of course I know of him,” he replied. “I’m a big fan of his work! That bastard is as nasty as they come; well, was, I suppose. A shame that someone of his talent would be struck down in his prime…”
“Yeah, I’m all broken up about it. Only now that I know you’re such a fan and all, I’m forced to wonder if maybe you had Danny take his soul as a little keepsake —you know, so you could stick it in a glass case beside the ball from McGwire’s go-ahead run or whatever.”
“Are you nuts? Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Danny no longer works for me, you know the kind of attention it’d attract to my operation, snagging the soul of a rising talent like Varela? And anyways, if any of the Fallen has McGwire’s go-ahead run, it’d be Mammon; he’s the one who cut McGwire’s deal.”
“OK, so assuming for a second you’re telling the truth–”
“Why, Sam, that hurts.”
“–and Danny wasn’t working for you when he stole Varela’s soul, what could he possibly want with it? You think he might be trying to score a skim-fix on his own?”
“Doubt it. Even if he’s desperate, the kid ain’t stupid, and to try and process a soul all by his lonesome with those pathetic monkey reflexes of his, he’d hafta be. Besides, Varela was as twisted as they come —there’s not much point skimming off a soul as corrupted as his. No, what Danny’d want if he were jonesin’ is a soul with a little decent left in it. So either he took Varela just to fuck with you, or…”
Dumas’s eyes got a faraway look in them, and he fell silent for a moment. Then he shook his head and muttered, “Well, I’ll be damned,” more to himself than to me.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
“I do believe I figured out what ol’ Danny Boy might be up to. And if I’m right, you’re not the only one that crazy fucker played.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s all right,” he said, a rueful grin gracing his face. “I’m beginning to.”
Dumas got to his feet, clapped me on the shoulder.
“Come with me,” he said. “There’s something I think you need to see.”
24.
The rain beat down on my face and neck, and made treacherous the stone steps that we descended. These steps were narrower than the ones I’d followed up to the main building, and they hugged the craggy canyon wall, making their path unpredictable and the going slow. The warmth and light of Dumas’s fireplace were but a distant memory, three stories and a world of wet away. Dumas led me downward through the darkness, looking dry as ever, as though the rain didn’t dare to dampen him. It was an illusion, of course; Dumas looked dry for the same reason Dumas looked human —because that’s how he chose to look.
Me, I looked like a drowned rat, my one shoe-clad foot squishing with every step, and my bare sock soaked clean through and caked thick with mud. Figures I’d wind up coming to the desert on the one fucking night it rains. Next time, I’m bringing a slicker and some rubber boots —provided I survive long enough for there to be a next time.
“Where exactly are we going?”
“Servants’ quarters,” Dumas replied.
“Yeah, I can see why you’d want to tuck ’em out of sight,” I said, glancing back toward the main building behind us —its crumbling façade barely visible through the pounding rain. “You’d hate to ruin the lovely ambience you’ve got going on back there.”
“What, you didn’t like the rug? I thought it really tied the room together.”
At the base of the slope up to the main building, Dumas jagged right, disappearing from view. I’d been figuring on a left-hand turn toward the constellation of outbuildings I’d seen on my way in. Visibility being what it was, I had no idea where Dumas had gotten off to, so for a moment, I just stood there like an idiot in the rain.
“Hey, Sammy —you comin’ or what?”
Turned out Dumas was standing in a natural alcove in the rock maybe eight feet high, and barely wide enough for two men to stand side-by-side. At first, the alcove didn’t seem to be that deep, and then I realized that what I’d taken to be the inside wall was in fact a heavy iron door, so thoroughly corroded by the elements that it looked as natural as the rock walls that surrounded it.
At the center of the door was a wheel —a wheel as rust-caked as the door itself. It would’ve taken a dozen Strong Man competitors and a can of WD-40 to move that thing an inch. Dumas spun it like a pinwheel in a stiff wind. And with a shriek like the cries of the tormented, the door swung inward.
Stepping inside, it was apparent this wasn’t so much an alcove as a cave. A well-trodden dirt floor led inward from where we stood, pocked here and there with strange stone outcroppings the color of sun-bleached bone. Torches hung on the walls at regular intervals, casting long shadows of the rock formations, and causing the corridor before me to writhe like a living thing as their flames licked at the stone ceiling above. The air was thick with oily smoke; it burned in my throat and made my eyes water. But beneath its tarry bite was another scent, sour and unpleasant: a sulfurous reek that seemed to emanate from the very walls.
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” I muttered.
“I know, right?” Dumas replied, his eyes dancing with mirth in the torchlight. “I was thinking of having a doormat made special.”
We proceeded down the natural corridor. Rooms branched off from it on either side —some sealed with iron doors of their own, some nothing more than bare rock arches leading into darkness. It was warm inside —too warm. Between the fumes, the heat, and the ever-shifting firelight, I felt dizzy, ill, disoriented. But if Dumas noticed, he paid no mind, instead leading me down, down, down toward God knows what.
No, I thought. About this, God has no idea.
Over time I became aware of a peculiar sound, low and rumbling like machinery. It built and built upon itself until it was damn near unbearable, a horrid oscillating pressure in my eardrums that made my eyes blur and my temples throb like the early stages of a migraine. I tried to hide my discomfort from Dumas. It worked about as well as any of my plans thus far.