Trapped

I dug my grip into Pelinor's diaphragm. In my mind's eye, I imagined wet white nuggets being pushed up his esophagus into the flame. Burn, you bastards… every last one. More smoke billowed from Pelinor's mouth-rank-smelling stuff, like swamp rot. Annah swept out the dead debris. We were making progress.

As long as we didn't let ourselves think about what the flame was doing to Pelinor's windpipe.

Eventually, the Caryatid had to propel the fire so deep into Pelinor's throat she lost sight of it. I don't know if she lost control of the flame at that point; I don't know if she ever lost control at all. But even if she could direct the cauterizing heat wherever she wanted, she was operating blindly-as she looked into his mouth, all she could possibly see was a dim gleam shining past the blistered epiglottis. Yet she didn't dare reduce the strength of the flame, for fear it would gutter out amidst the moistness of the alien curds.

The end came quickly: a sudden eruption of blood from Pelinor's mouth, extinguishing the flame, splashing in torrents onto my hands where they were still wrapped around his abdomen. In the light of the streetlamps, the blood was bright red-arterial blood from the carotid. Inside Pelinor's neck, the Caryatid's flame had burned through the esophagus and seared into the major artery carrying blood to the brain. There was nothing we could do to stop the gusher; the rupture was deep down, out of sight, out of reach. Even if we could staunch the bleeding, pinch the artery shut, Pelinor's blood-starved brain would die within minutes.

So we watched the blood spill. Watched it gradually slow down. Watched Pelinor die in a pool of crimson and white.

By the time it was over, Impervia was kneeling on the roadway with the rest of us. Her breathing was ragged; being thrown against the guard rail may have broken a few more ribs. But she still had plenty of breath to say prayers for our dying friend. Tears slid down her cheeks as she asked God to have mercy on Pelinor, sword-sworn knight, Christ's beloved son. A man fallen for a righteous cause, called to this mission by heaven itself.

Impervia wasn't the only one weeping. Annah and I had tears in our eyes… but the Caryatid's face was as hard as a gravestone. I longed to tell her it wasn't her fault; if she hadn't tried to burn away the curds, Pelinor would surely have choked to death. What she'd done was the only chance Pelinor had.

But my mouth refused to speak. None of us seemed able to do more than mumble prayers. The look on the Caryatid's face said she didn't want to hear anyone say, "You did your best."

She waited only until Impervia said, "Amen." Then the Caryatid stood up, wiping her hands (damp with Pelinor's blood) on her crimson gown.

"We're going in now," she said. "We're going to burn that demon in the fires of hell."

For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Impervia said again, "Amen."

Together we headed up the steps of the generating station… and if any one of us looked back at Pelinor crumpled in the roadway, it wasn't the Steel Caryatid.

21: THE SHAFT

The station's front door stood open-left that way by Jode or Sebastian. No bombs went off as we climbed the steps, no spikes shot out as we entered; whatever defenses might have been here, they'd been swept away by nanotech brooms.

The inner lobby was resplendent with carved marble: a massive alabaster reception desk, a wide ascending stairway behind it, doors going off in several directions. I recalled that the station had been built in the 1890s… a time when OldTech culture admired stolid geological décor, before tastes mutated to glass and steel and chrome. This room, this whole building, smelled of stone-stone kept damp by the perennial mist blowing off the Falls.

Not so perennial now.

All but one of the doors off the lobby were closed. The exception was immediately to our right, a door left ajar with dirty wet footprints leading up to it. If Jode and Sebastian (or their muddy boots) continued to leave such an obvious trail, we could track them all the way to the generators.

How convenient. Considering how flagrantly Jode had taunted us, did the shapeshifter want us to follow? Perhaps into a trap? If the Keepers of Holy Lightning had laid nasty surprises along the route to the subterranean machine room, Jode might persuade Sebastian to deactivate everything as they went through, then reactivate the devices behind them. But that didn't sound like Jode's style; I suspected the Lucifer liked to see the mayhem it caused. It wouldn't set a bomb unless it could watch the explosion.

In which case, our group might have clear sailing all the way to the generating room. Jode couldn't waste time tormenting us small fry. The Lucifer had more pressing priorities-perhaps, as the Caryatid suggested, freeing a group of its fellows from an electric cage-and Jode couldn't afford to dally before the mission was accomplished. After the jail break, then… then…