Cat didn’t answer. Justice depended on her, and she let herself trust Tara, let herself be betrayed. She shuffled unsteadily along the wall to the door, turned the handle, staggered out, and ran, lurching, down the hall. Justice railed in her mind for control, and she yearned to slip from the dead dry aftermath of the vampire’s bite into her suit’s cold embrace. If she did, though, Justice would know her sin. She could be dismissed for such a lapse, cut off from the the suit forever. She could not allow that.
“Wait!” The vampire—Captain Pelham—followed her out of the room. He wore boots and breeches already, and pulled a loose, unlaced shirt over his head as he jogged to keep pace. “I’m not staying in that bed one more minute. Something’s happened, and I want to know what.”
“That,” she said, trying to ignore the clenching nausea of blood loss, “makes two of us.”
*
Abelard heard a crash of broken glass above as the lantern shattered. Perhaps he had injured the shadow beast, perhaps not, but at least the light had slowed it. He needed every advantage he could seize. Sister Miriel kept the boiler room dimly lit so as not to damage the night vision of Technicians or maintenance crews bound for darker areas of the Sanctum. There were shadows enough here to nourish his pursuer.
He took his bearings, compression chambers to his left, yes, good, and the coal bins to his right, and ran. His cigarette he plucked from his mouth and gripped between two fingers. He needed fresh air in his lungs. Metal distended and tore behind him as the creature descended the ladder.
Winding through tubes and pipes, Abelard chose his escape path, clockwise through the compression chambers that ringed the boilers, and in through a narrow gap between a compressor and a stone wall. His heart lurched in fear as he imagined squeezing through a tight passage with the creature bearing down on him, but the next opening was three hundred feet farther along. Too far.
He turned a hard corner as a mass of shadow scrambled, slipped, and fell to the floor a few hundred yards behind him. Enough of a lead, he hoped.
He ran fifty feet. A legion of centipedes chased after, legs tickling rock and metal, the floor, the walls, the ceiling. A hundred feet, and the shadow’s speed redoubled. It smelled him. Two hundred feet, made in a mad rush, cigarette in one hand and the crystal dagger stuck through his belt.
The dagger had pinned the shadow creature to the altar. Could it harm the thing again, hold it down? Abelard hoped he did not have a chance to learn the answer to that question.
Two hundred fifty feet. Breath hissed through numberless mouths, near, so near. There, the narrow gap. He leapt into it. Cobwebs parted before him. A spider landed on his hand and fell away.
The centipede army drew even with the narrow crack and stopped. Its bulk closed out the dusk-red light. Long, thin arms slid through the crack after Abelard.
Metal caught his robes and he pushed through; fabric ripped as he tumbled into the room beyond. Or, as his torso did.
Long hooks of shadow snared his legs, and pulled him back.
Screaming, he fell. In desperation he planted one foot on either side of the crack and resisted the creature’s pull with all his strength. This only slowed his slide. He clawed for the dagger at his belt. His fingers closed around its hilt, and he stabbed at the tentacle gripping his left leg.
The crystal blade slid through the shadow and cut Abelard’s shin. He cursed, but did not drop the dagger. The creature’s strength grew as his faded. Nightmare mouths gaped above him, filled with nightmare teeth. Living shadow bubbled out through the passage, swelling in the vast dim space.
He was about to die.
In such moments, time expands. To Abelard’s surprise he found the sensation almost pleasant. He was about to be eaten by a giant shadow beast, through no particular fault of his own, and there was nothing he could do.
As the night-mandibles reared to descend, he raised his cigarette to his mouth and inhaled.
Its tip flared.
Flared.
Light hurt this thing, enough at least to anger it. What would fire do?
As the mandibles struck, Abelard plucked the cigarette from his mouth, held it as if the ember were a blade, and stabbed blindly into the shadow.
A roar shook the boiler room. Abelard sprawled back, legs his own again, cigarette still clenched in his fingers. The creature convulsed, outlined in orange flame that chewed its slick sharp edges to crumpled ash. The fire died as it consumed, and Abelard doubted it would kill the shadow, but he didn’t care. He was free, and safety near.
Lurching to his feet in a confusion of ripped robes and bloody limbs, he sprinted for the ladder to the maintenance office.
*
The sun set as Tara crouched in the basement stairwell. She imagined the chase above, Blacksuits swarming over rooftops in search of their winged quarry, who hid and ran, zigged and zagged, fast and brilliant. Night deepened and behind thick clouds the moon rose, granting Shale power and speed. The Blacksuits could not match him. When Professor Denovo defaced Seril’s Guardians and rebuilt them for police work, he would have reduced their dependence on the moon for power—a sensible design decision that left the Blacksuits slower and weaker than their stone adversaries at night.
When enough time had elapsed, Tara touched a sigil on her wrist. It glowed with inner fire, and she saw in her mind’s eye a map of the city from above, marked with a bloodred dot: the location of the tracking glyph she had cut into the back of Shale’s face.
He would never have told her what she needed to know. Nor could she hope to follow him across the rooftops when even Blacksuits could not keep pace. Besides, she believed him when he claimed not to know where his Flight was hiding. They planned to seek him when night fell.
Night had fallen, and Shale moved within her mind, hunting his people. When he found them, Tara would find her answers. Judge Cabot, Kos, and the gargoyles were involved in some deep, secret Craft together, of that Tara had no doubt. Of those three, only the gargoyles survived. Their testimony could prove the Church was not responsible for Kos’s weakness, and help Tara defeat Denovo. Tonight, she would convince the gargoyles to tell her what they knew. Or they would kill her. That was also a distinct possibility.
Tara stood, scaled the basement steps, and walked to the street. Carts and carriages rolled past on their private business. Across the rough cobblestones rose a soaring glass edifice bearing the red tau cross insignia of a Craft firm.
She squared her shoulders and lifted one hand.
A driverless carriage pulled to the curb. The horse eyed her ripped clothes and general disarray with suspicion as she climbed into the coachman’s seat. “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “We’re going to the waterfront. Now giddyup.” The horse didn’t budge. “I’ll tell you where we’re going when we get there,” she said, exasperated. “Can you please move?”
With a toss of its mane, the horse surged forward, and the carriage shuddered into motion behind.
*
The unified chant of “God is dead!” had faded by the time Cardinal Gustave emerged from the small door set into the Sanctum’s looming main gates. It was replaced, after the manner of mob cries, by a host of other slogans, which degenerated in their turn to meaningless roars. A few protesters regained their former ardor when they saw Gustave’s priestly robes, but these were outnumbered by the ones who fell silent when he raised his head and looked upon them with his hard gray eyes.
“Citizens of Alt Coulumb,” the Cardinal began. His voice suggested dark rooms and hidden mysteries.
“Citizens of Alt Coulumb,” he repeated. “I should say, rather, children of Alt Coulumb. What right, you may ask, have I to come before you? My God, they say, is dead, and with Him my authority. I stand before a tower raised to a vanished ideal, and I wear the livery of an absent Lord.”