Age of Shiva (The Pantheon Series) (35 page)

“Yeah, which is bothering me.”

“How so? I’d have thought it was a good thing.”

“Well, surely the Trinity must realise there was a likelihood the asuras wouldn’t finish us off.”

“They wanted us busy so they could make a clean getaway.”

“I wonder if that’s it. What if this trap isn’t done with us?”

“Don’t say that,” I said. “If you’re worried, that makes me worried.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned lately, it’s that you can never be too paranoid where the Trinity are involved.” Parashurama got somewhat unsteadily to his feet. “These might not have been all the asuras they had available. There could be some of the bigger, even meaner ones lurking in the wings. Durga, perhaps. We haven’t met him yet, here or anywhere. Or Prahlada. Or, God forbid, Kali. Look for a hidden door, one that connects to some other holding cells. Maybe there’s a second part to the trap. If the first bunch of asuras were just the warm-up act, then the main attraction...”

He faltered. His voice faded to a whisper.

“Or it could be something else altogether.”

He was looking at the cells with their wide-open fronts.

“Oh, you sons of bitches, you wouldn’t...”

As if on cue, a hissing sound issued from inside the cells.

Not a fresh batch of nagas slithering out to attack.

The vent in each cell was in operation, fans cycling, the first faint wisps of blue vapour fingering downward from the ceiling.

“They’re going to flood the room with antidote,” said Parashurama. “They want to depower us. They’re going to take our goddamn siddhis away!”

40. ANTIDOTE GAS

R
EASONABLY ENOUGH, WE
did nothing for several seconds. We were too stunned. All we could do was watch in dismay as the blue gas tumbled into the cells, filling the cubes from edge to edge.

Only as it began to spill out into the room itself did we act.

Parashurama sprinted to the door and began hammering on its steel face with both fists.

Rama, meanwhile, searched desperately for some alternative exit.

As for me, I ran to a console in the corner. I was hoping to find controls that could stem the flow of gas, or at least close the cells.

All the console had, though, was a screen and a mouse. The keyboard which had previously been attached to it now lay in three pieces on the floor beside the head of a vetala.

I tried the mouse anyway, clicking frantically on desktop icons, opening one after another. Technical files, reams of data, complicated security software. Nothing looked like the master command system for the cells, and I probably wouldn’t have recognised it even if I’d seen it. My savviness with computers extends no further than word processing, sending emails and doing artwork. To me they’re pretty much a cross between a glorified typewriter and a high-tech Etch-a-Sketch.

Besides, I doubted Korolev would have left things so that the release of the gas, once initiated, could be overridden from this console. He wouldn’t be that careless. He ran everything remotely from his tablet. He was, at this very moment, holding in his hands the only means of saving us.

I gave up. It was useless. Out of sheer frustrated spite, I put my fist through the screen and pounded the mouse to pieces.

Remember how I said before that we were screwed?

That went double now.

The gas crept across the floor like an oncoming fogbank.

“Up,” said Rama. “We must not let it touch us.”

He and I hauled Kalkin onto the console, where he lay awkwardly, one hand pressed to his leg to stem the bleeding. Then we clambered on it ourselves.

Parashurama continued pounding at the door. He had managed to put a number of shallow dents in it. Given time, he might even have been able to damage it enough to prise an opening.

But we didn’t have time.

We had three minutes, tops. That was how long, I calculated, until the antidote gas rose higher than our heads and engulfed us, then started working its debilitating magic.

Aside from the console, there was nothing to stand on that would give us extra height, and even the console offered only a few further seconds of grace before we were fully immersed. Nor were the walls climbable. They were smooth, without any crevices or projections to use as handholds.

The blue tide of gas had reached Parashurama at the door and was lapping around his ankles. Still he kept clobbering away, futile though it was.

“I do not wish to go back to being Jean-Marc Belgarde,” said Rama morosely. “To give a man a taste of divine power then tear it away – that is cruelty.”

“And it’s going to hurt and all,” I said.

“Pain is temporary. Loss is everlasting.”

The French. You’ve got to hand it to them. A nation of philosophers.

Parashurama was flagging. His knuckles were raw and bloodied. The door remained defiantly in place.

There seemed to be nothing for it but to brace ourselves and kiss our siddhis goodbye.

Then, with a
chunk
and a
clunk
, the bolts within the door retracted. Miraculously it began to swing open.

On the other side stood Aanandi.

“Well?” she said. “What are you waiting for?”

Parashurama stumbled headlong through the doorway. Rama and I staggered after him, supporting Kalkin between us.

In the antechamber, I turned for a glance back.

The asuras on the floor had started to transform, their bodies writhing and contorting as the gas surged over them. Talons shrivelled to become fingernails. Fangs blunted to teeth. Complexions changed. Muscles shrank. Skeletons regained their normal proportions. Scales melted away, reverting to soft skin. The dead demons flexed and shuddered, their corpses lent a semblance of life by the physiological rigours of the process. The living ones moaned and mewled, but the fact that they weren’t conscious spared them from the worst of the agony. Small mercies.

Then Aanandi slammed the door shut. Tendrils of the gas sneaked around our feet, dissipating, dispersing.

“Miss Sengupta,” I said. “I could fucking kiss you.”

“Not now, Zak.”

“Later?”

“We’ll see. First things first. You four need amrita.”

“We need to go after the Trinity,” Parashurama corrected her.

“And how far are you going to get, the state you’re in?”

The Warrior conceded the point. He was teetering on the brink of physical shutdown, so close to a siddhi crash he could barely move his head to nod.

“Besides, the Trinity haven’t hung around to gloat. How else do you think I was able to open the door and let you out? I wouldn’t have got anywhere near it if they were still here. They’re on the move already, making for the exit.”

“Then the others’ll stop them,” I said. “They’re up at the mine entrance.”

“Different exit. There’s more than one way out of this place. The Trinity have taken the secondary access shaft. I saw them head that way. It’s a staircase, for emergency evacuation. It comes up about half a mile from the pithead.”

“We can still...” Parashurama said weakly.

“You can’t. Accept it. They’re in the wind. You want them, you’ll have to wait. Next time. Okay?”

41. PREADOLESCENT

WISH-FULFILMENT FANTASIES

I
N THE EVENT,
Aanandi had to bring the amrita to us. That was how enfeebled we were. We couldn’t even totter along a few hundred yards to where the serum was stored. Pursuing the Trinity would have been completely out of the question.

She dosed us up, Kalkin first, and ah, sweet, sweet amrita. Renewer of vigour. Remover of exhaustion. Knitter of wounds. The deva’s salvation.

“You’re good at injections,” I told her. “I hardly felt it.”

“Practice. My dad’s a diabetic. As a little girl I learned how to give him his insulin shots, in case his blood sugar level dropped so low he couldn’t manage it himself. He’s squeamish about needles, so he used to make me inject him anyway sometimes, if Mom wasn’t around. He still does when I go home. I refuse, but then he guilt trips me about being a bad daughter, so...”

“There were times when I wouldn’t have minded sticking a needle into my dad. Hard. In the eyeball. When he was being a bastard to my mum. Mind you, she could be as much of a bitch back. It was a match made in heaven.”

“Poor you.” She gestured at my T-shirt. “I see you’re wearing it.”

“I like it.”

“I like that you like it.”

As the other devas and I waited for our physical percentile bars to return to 100, we heard voices in the main corridor. Familiar ones.

“In here!” I called out, and shortly Narasimha, Kurma, Vamana and Krishna joined us in the antechamber, making it a pretty crowded space. They had Parashurama’s, Rama’s and Kalkin’s weapons with them.

Parashurama brought them up to speed on recent events, and Narasimha and Kurma immediately hustled to the freight elevator and ascended up top again. They returned bearing bad news. In the time they’d been away from the mine entrance, the Toyota Land Cruiser and the Land Rover Discovery had gone.

“Damn,” said the Warrior. “Once they got to the surface, they circled back and took the cars. They knew you guys were going to come down when you did, and timed it so that you wouldn’t be there. They knew exactly how long to wait before making their move, because they knew what we’d arranged. Those three are
sneaky
. Heck, I’d admire them, if I didn’t want to stomp on their pointy heads so much right now.”

“We could still go after them,” said Krishna. “They do not have that much of a head start, and my chariot is swift, swifter than any car.”

Parashurama was tempted, but said, “No. We’re going to get them. Of that there is no doubt. But we’re going to do it on our terms, at a time of our choosing, when we’re at full strength and have full control of the situation. Wherever they’re going, they can’t hide forever. We found ’em once, we can find ’em again.”

He turned to Aanandi.

“In the meantime, maybe you’d care to explain why you’re helping us.”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t be?”

“You’re a Trinity Syndicate employee.”

“So are you.”

“A valued one.”

“So are you.”

“Debatable. But you came here with the Trinity from Meru.”

“They told me to come. Not the same thing. And I couldn’t see a way of saying no. They sign my paycheques. I have an obligation.”

“Bait,” I said.

“Yes,” she said with a bitter, deflated sigh. “I know. They were using me. They told me to leave that note. They wanted to leave a trail but didn’t want it to be obvious. Mr Lombard virtually dictated what I should write. I hated doing it. I hated how they were exploiting our... friendship, Zak. Abusing your trust in me. But I had to go along with it. You give in to people like Dick Lombard. You can’t disobey, no matter what your conscience is telling you. There’s no telling what someone like him is capable of.”