Authors: Amber Benson
Tags: #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #Fantasy fiction, #Fiction - Fantasy, #Science Fiction And Fantasy, #Fantasy - Contemporary
Cat's Claw (19 page)
“What floor?” I asked, looking at the panel of buttons that seemed to stretch almost to the elevator’s ceiling. I didn’t take an official tally, but there had to have been at least one hundred buttons on the steel-plated sucker.
Jarvis looked up and shook his head.
“Please press button seventy-three,” Jarvis said, starting to relax a little.
“Okay,” I said, counting two at a time until I hit seventy-three and pushed the button.
“Now press twenty-one.”
I counted again, pushed the correct button, and suddenly the elevator shot upward so quickly that I fell forward, catching myself against the smooth steel of the elevator wall.
“That’s better,” Jarvis said, not at all fazed by the rapid ascent the elevator was making.
“Who was that woman?” I asked as I held on to the elevator wall for dear life.
“She’s the Secretary of Passage. She used to work with your sister Thalia.”
“No way,” I said, feeling woozy, more from having touched an enemy than from the elevator’s speed. “And she had the gall to shake my hand?”
Jarvis shook his head.
“She had nothing to do with your sister’s kidnapping plot,” Jarvis replied. “At least, the Board of Death cleared her of any complicity. But still, it’s always best to keep people like her at arm’s length. She’s very ambitious and
extremely
calculating.”
extremely
calculating.”
I nodded.
“
And
it was very strange, indeed, to see her in the lobby. She has no need to use the lobby entrance. She has access to her office via wormhole. I suppose the only thing that makes any sense is that someone clued her in to our arrival and she scurried down to make sure she accidentally ‘bumped’ into us,” Jarvis finished unhappily.
And
it was very strange, indeed, to see her in the lobby. She has no need to use the lobby entrance. She has access to her office via wormhole. I suppose the only thing that makes any sense is that someone clued her in to our arrival and she scurried down to make sure she accidentally ‘bumped’ into us,” Jarvis finished unhappily.
“How would someone know that we’re even here?” I asked curiously. “You didn’t tell anyone we were coming and neither did I.”
Jarvis sighed.
“They keep a log of all wormhole transport in and out of Purgatory. No one is supposed to have access to it, but that means nothing. Information can always be had here for a price,” Jarvis said uneasily.
“Crap.”
Jarvis nodded in agreement.
“Crap is definitely apropos, Miss Calliope.”
At those words, the elevator came to a smooth stop and the doors slid open, revealing a small, cramped antechamber. It was probably no less than fifteen by twenty-five feet, but it felt smaller. The walls were done in a shade of pale green that I could only call “sickly mint” and the floors were made of neatly fitted white linoleum squares. There was a tiny brown reception desk in the back flanked by four metal folding chairs. As I followed Jarvis out of the elevator, I realized that there was no one in the room, not even behind the reception desk.
The elevator doors shut with a loud
screech
that nearly made me jump out of my skin. Jarvis seemed oblivious to the sound as he beckoned me to follow him over to the reception desk. As we passed the first metal folding chair, I realized that I had been wrong. We were not alone in the room, after all. An almost-transparent figure sat hunched in one of the chairs, its hands clasped together expectantly, watching us.
screech
that nearly made me jump out of my skin. Jarvis seemed oblivious to the sound as he beckoned me to follow him over to the reception desk. As we passed the first metal folding chair, I realized that I had been wrong. We were not alone in the room, after all. An almost-transparent figure sat hunched in one of the chairs, its hands clasped together expectantly, watching us.
I paused midstep as I realized I was seeing my first ghost. Part of me wanted to stop and get a better look, but I could feel a steady hum of weird energy emanating from the thing, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
I felt Jarvis’s warm hand on my arm and let him lead me away.
“Stay far away from that Shade,” Jarvis hissed under his breath. “Only the Devil makes creatures such as those.”
I nodded, not needing to be told twice.
Before I could ask Jarvis any more about the creature, I heard a loud
buzzing
sound—which made me jump—immediately followed by another, longer
buzz
. I looked over and saw Jarvis pushing a little button on the desktop. Beside it sat a tiny golden plaque that read: PRESS FOR SERVICE.
buzzing
sound—which made me jump—immediately followed by another, longer
buzz
. I looked over and saw Jarvis pushing a little button on the desktop. Beside it sat a tiny golden plaque that read: PRESS FOR SERVICE.
I expected someone to appear instantly, but apparently things ran at their own speed in Purgatory. Jarvis knew the drill because he shrugged and walked over to one of the folding chairs facing the Shade and sat down. I didn’t want to stand at the reception desk by myself, so I hightailed it over to the chair beside Jarvis and plopped my butt into it.
We sat there for what could have been an hour—but was probably more like three—waiting for God knew what to happen. I tried to put things in perspective; the Shade had been sitting there longer than we had, so he had it worse than us, but that didn’t really make me feel any better.
I pulled the little rubidium clock out of my pocket and looked down at it, watching the numbers whiz by.
“How much time do I have left?” I asked, not really expecting it to respond, but suddenly the numbers on the face stopped whizzing, and in their place I saw: twenty hours, seven minutes, thirty-six seconds, 5.4 × 10
-44
s.
-44
s.
Now, what the hell does that last equation mean?
I wondered to myself.
Maybe it is that weird Planck-unit thing Cerberus was talking about.
I wondered to myself.
Maybe it is that weird Planck-unit thing Cerberus was talking about.
But before I could give it any more thought, a door behind the reception desk—one that I hadn’t noticed being there at all—opened and a small, slim, dark-haired girl in a yellow shirtwaist dress came out, her porcelain features set in a bland mask. She looked over at the ghost and nodded, then turned to Jarvis, a smile lighting up her face.
“You’ll be next, Mr. De Poupsy.”
Jarvis inclined his head in response. “Thank you, Suri.”
She gave Jarvis a wink before turning back to the Shade. I watched her, surprised to witness her face instantly resetting to its previous state of detachment as she moved to address it; she obviously didn’t care for the creature any more than we did.
“This way, sir,” Suri said, her voice neutral.
The Shade didn’t seem to notice the girl’s coolness toward it as it stood up and followed her out of the antechamber.
“Weird,” I whispered as the door closed on the Shade’s back and I slipped my rubidium clock back into my pocket.
Jarvis nodded.
“You called it a Shade?” I asked, curiosity always a bad habit of mine.
“Well, I don’t have much experience with creatures like that,” Jarvis began, “but yes, it’s called a Shade. It’s a soul that has chosen to be released from the Wheel of Samsara—that’s basically the cycle of reincarnation—so that it could remain in Hell and offer its services to the Devil.”
“Creepy,” I said, shivering. “Why doesn’t it have a body?”
“It does, but the Devil is a wily fellow, as you know, so when he sends his minions to do his bidding outside of Hell, he keeps their bodies with him, forcing them to return to Hell once they have completed their task or forever remain disembodied.”
I had never heard anything so awful in my life—someone keeping your body hostage so you can’t run away? That was just plain mean.
“He’s a real jerkoid, isn’t he?” I said, my mind instantly returning with gut-churning fear to the memory of the one face-to-face I’d had with the Devil.
The jerk had pitched me headfirst into a bottomless pit at the edge of Hell, so that his protégé, Daniel, could take over my dad’s job instead of me. Luckily, God had intervened and I hadn’t been forced to spend my life in free fall like the Devil had intended.
Wasn’t I just a lucky little ducky?
“He’s the worst of the worst, but necessary,” Jarvis replied. “Very necessary.”
I nodded. I completely understood what he was driving at. Without the Devil, Evil wouldn’t flourish, and then Good would overwhelm the world, creating an imbalance in the universe. You had to have both of them—Good and Evil—or else things just didn’t work properly. Weird, but true.
Before we could continue our conversation, the invisible door behind the reception desk opened again and the cute girl in the shirtwaist dress stepped out into the antechamber, dark pigtails bouncing at the sides of her head. She motioned to us and we stood up.
“This way, please, Mr. De Poupsy,” she said cheerfully, no sign of the insipidness she’d shown the ghostly Shade. “It’s always such a pleasure to see you.”
And with that, we followed our guide through the doorway and into the Hall of Death.
twelve
The Hall of Death was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
If the antechamber was a model in Spartan chic, then the actual Hall itself was the antechamber’s antithesis. Part medieval monastery, part steel, skeletal behemoth, the Hall was nothing if not an architectural masterpiece. A hulking monster of a place, it had been created with such an intermingling of old-world munificence and cold modernity that standing before it made me feel as if I were in some kind of hallowed temple.
Sturdy, interlocking limestone blocks that appeared as if they’d been cut by hand stretched so far beyond my field of vision that I couldn’t see where the hallway ended. Each block fitted so elegantly with the next that even when I looked, I couldn’t find a mortar seam. The floor was hewn out of larger blocks of the same limestone, but its length was covered in long Oriental carpets fashioned in repeating patterns of black, crimson, and russet. Upon closer inspection, I saw that each carpet contained such a wealth of intricate detail that no two had been woven alike.
Each one contained a plethora of animals, heavenly bodies, and other strange symbols—some of which I had never seen before, making me wonder if they might be the letters of some archaic dead language that had ceased to be spoken by human tongues anymore. However you cut it, the carpets were beautiful and so fragile looking that it almost seemed sacrilegious to be treading upon them.
On each side of the passage were arched, open doorways that led into smaller rooms containing long, thin wooden tables and matching benches, neither of which looked very comfortable. Every table had three green glass reading lamps set on top of it, giving off a warm, scholarly glow. Here and there I spied people reading from huge, ancient tomes—some of them taking notes, others just casually flipping through pages. In the far corners of each room we passed, I saw hulking suits of medieval armor standing at attention, arms ramrod at their sides, helmets obscuring the faces of anything or anyone that might be hiding inside.
At the side of each archway, a tall, flickering torch stood sentry, filling the Hall with the scent of burning cedar, a smell that was somehow comforting and invigorating at the same time. On some of the walls we passed hung rich tapestries from the medieval period, representing two-dimensional interpretations of crusading knights and their infidel victims.
Some of the tapestries were superviolent—one even showed a guy getting his guts pulled out—while others offered more sedate imagery. I wanted to stop and look at a couple of the ones that had animals on them—animals I had never seen before, like this one crazy creature that had a lion’s body, an eagle’s head, and a set of rainbow-colored wings—but Jarvis grabbed my sleeve and wouldn’t let go.
“Follow me, please,” Suri said, her voice pleasantly chirpy. “And please don’t touch anything, thank you.”
“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed that she had caught me edging toward one of the bloodier tapestries.
She had a slight accent that made me think Arabic might’ve been her native language once upon a time, but it was so obscured by a Mid-Atlantic twang that it was hard to tell.
As we followed our guide down the hallway, I looked up, dazzled by the more modern part of the structure: especially the intricately woven steel frame that made up the foundation of the glass-enclosed ceiling. It was like staring up through the hulking skeleton of a transparent beast. I had no idea how the thing was even possible because, from what I remembered, we were somewhere in the middle of the giant brimstone and steel skyscraper, not at its apex.
There should’ve been a whole other floor of offices directly above us, not empty sky. This meant that the clear blue sky we were looking at through the glass was either some kind of high-tech 3-D hologram, or it was just a really quality piece of magic.
My vote was for magic.
Either way, it was a marvel to behold, the transparent glass allowing a curtain of soft, pale light to trickle down into the hall, melding with the smoky incense from the torches to create a hazy atmosphere that made the Hall feel like a veritable bastion of mystery.
As the hallway stretched beyond us with no apparent end in sight, I had the impression that our movements were being watched. I wasn’t sure who the culprit was, but I got a funny feeling every time we passed an empty room—like there might
really
be knights in that armor, ready to slit your throat if you even thought about thinking about touching something.
really
be knights in that armor, ready to slit your throat if you even thought about thinking about touching something.
I caught Jarvis’s eye, shifted my gaze to one of the suits of armor we passed, and opened my eyes wide, in query. Jarvis instantly caught my meaning and nodded. Okay, so I wasn’t crazy. There
was
something creepy-crawly about the dormant knights we kept seeing. Suddenly, something clicked inside of my brain and I remembered what Clio had said about how tight the security was in the Hall of Death.
was
something creepy-crawly about the dormant knights we kept seeing. Suddenly, something clicked inside of my brain and I remembered what Clio had said about how tight the security was in the Hall of Death.
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