Part 18 (2/2)

”Wa.s.samatta with you, man?” Blondie screamed as his s.h.i.+ny empty eyes rolled up to meet those of the witch. ”You f.u.c.kin' chickens.h.i.+t or sumpin'? COME ON, MAN! DO IT, MAN! DO IT!”

But the witch only leveled the sword at Blondie's throat, the tip caressing his collarbone, narrow blue ice catching the light of the florescents above. ”I want you to live, big man,” said the witch, his voice huge and uncoiling in this small place. ”Live, Stone. Live to bring the Father this message: tell him Debra is coming back, and tell him she's mad as all h.e.l.l and she's going to kick his a.s.s all over Creation. Tell him that, big man.”

Like a kid, Blondie stuck out his tongue.

”Big man,” whispered the witch, ”the Coven's going down and you're going down with it.” He stepped back gracefully, almost catlike, a dance, the sword pointing at the punk's heart, his eyes unwavering, cold. ”And by the way--do yourself the courtesy of staying on this car until the next station, Stone, or I'll be sending your empty, brainless skull back to Amadeus in a box.”

Blondie hissed like a vampire in one of Roxy's books.

Then Snow White pulled the witch down onto the platform with her and promptly slammed closed the sub door.

Blondie slouched in his seat, seething like a bemused brat. He began to methodically ravish his fingernails, snarling at anyone who dared meet his gaze.

In a moment the car would snort and pick itself up along the line, burrowing into darkness. Edna sat down and pulled Roxy to her. She realized it was too late, the line already whining, the worm awakening. They would ride it to the next station and there they would get off, escape this underworld of sword-wielding maniacs and call Brady to come get then. Anything but to be buried alive here any longer with the mad and the monstrous.

Blondie snarled in his seat and lapped at his bloodied fingertips.

G.o.d, the world was full of monsters, Edna Filmore was convinced of it, utterly convinced.

Down here, no one looked twice at them, even when they stopped in the middle of the terminal and turned to study the wall together. All white tile like some universal latrine. The dull little lights burned ineffectually high overhead, and under them Teresa began a ritual dance of hands across the hard scales of the tiling.

Alek touched the wall further up. ”Nothing here.”

”Give me the map.”

He pulled it out of his coat and let her take it and spread it against the wall. She traced a penline with her painted fingertip. She shook her head, tossed her long loose hair back. ”We are not yet there, caro.”

”Far?”

”Not very,” she said, rerolling the map.

The white tunnel ebbed downward and came out in a maze of corridors pitched in darkness under their mostly broken lighting. Here the emptiness lay like a spell, and though there were still posters, the walls were in fact made up mostly of arcane gang graffiti. At the foot of a dead escalator, as frozen as a dinosaur made of metal bones, they stopped.

”Here,” Teresa said.

”There's nothing here.” Alek stared at the flank of mocking white wall.

Teresa unrolled the map once more, studied it. ”Byron,” she whispered, ”what the f.u.c.k were you on...oh h.e.l.l.”

”What?”

”We're not at the right elevation. Too high. There must be another floor.”

”There is no other floor. This is the sub for G.o.d's sake.”

”Collapse and surface deposits then.” She looked up scrupulously. ”There must have been a quake.” He touched the wall as if he could know by touch if the Chronicle rested there beneath the mortar and rock.

”This is useless. Let's go.”

”I want to know the story,” she complained.

”There's no one to ask.”

”We'll ask him.”

Her cattishly aglow eyes cut through the darkness to a corner bench and its token hobo, his overstuffed shopping cart at his side, his folded blankets of newspaper on the floor, ready for use against the night's subterranean chill. All of it like a Rockwell piece turned dark.

”Don't,” Alek told her, suddenly and completely afraid. ”You can't.”

”Of course I can,” she said. ”Don't you know? Old men and young girls.” She moved purposely toward the hobo and Alek followed dutifully behind, armed with words that disappeared when the hobo folded down the comics page he was reading and eyed them both. Alek saw a scraggle-bearded mouth part in surprise at the pale, beautiful little doll-like woman watching him in her soft black halo of tangled hair and china-white face.

”Well, now,” he said.

”h.e.l.lo,” said Teresa.

The hobo smiled and scratched at his shadow. The faded flannel-grey eyes inched upward to find Alek.

”Yours, fella?”

”Yes,” said the girl.

”Lovely thing.” He brushed the loose threads of black over her brow, chucked her under the chin.

”Daughters always are.”

”No,” she said. ”I'm not his daughter. His sister, his lover, more.”

The hobo frowned, then laughed. Here in this place below the earth in the dark and the tedium and the loss without sense or end, her story was funny. ”Who're you, dolly?”

”Something very unlike you.” She tilted her head like a bird of prey. ”We seek the lower level here and the door through which we might find it. Have you seen it?”

The hobo's eyes grew lazy and unblinking. He did not flinch at her words. ”A door into the deep earth.”

”Yes. Where is the floor that was below us?”

For the first time Alek really saw the hobo: grey skin and eyes the same. His face was whorled as if the weight of flesh and time was too great for his bones to withstand. He spied the naked skull in the hollows of the man's eyes, the cavities of his cheeks. ”I remember a door,” he said.

She slipped up into his lap and be received her as easily as a grandfather. ”Tell me the story about the door.”

The hobo coughed, sputtered against the web of phlegm in his lungs. He pet her head like a favorite child.

”Time was, the door was open to below, where the beast usta run, back when the city was beautiful and thought it would go on forever. And in that time, was me and my brother Davey. We worked the rails below and we was the d.a.m.n best and the d.a.m.n finest. And we weren't 'fraid like them all, 'cause the line ran and we ran and the d.a.m.n fool city ran, and it was all gonna run forever, you know.”

He paused, as if for effect.

”And then?”

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