Divine Fire (21 page)
The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.
—Ninon de Lenclos
The lapse of ages changes all things—time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing “about, around, and underneath” man, except man himself.
—Byron
To hold a pen is to be at war.
—Voltaire
Damien stepped outside the executive bathroom and looked around carefully. No one was there that he could see. He supposed someone might be hiding in one of the office cubicles, but that wasn’t these zombies’ style. They had no cunning. Still, he listened intently. He scented the air. No hint of sandalwood. Nothing. Brice really was gone, not just hiding somewhere. Nevertheless, he walked cautiously among the bolted-together panels that made up the peons’ offices, peering over those low enough to offer a view of the working-class prisons.
He disliked this place. Damien didn’t understand why management thought underlings needed to be treated like veal, to be confined in identical pens while they worked. Such an environment would make his brain numb. Surely it would do the same to any thinking man or woman.
Of course, right now numb sounded pretty good. Anything was better than imagining what might be happening to Brice.
Damien had known fear before—anger, even despair. But this was worse. It was a witch’s brew of terror and rage, with empathy and guilt added for spice. He was two centuries old, and had lived hard enough for any dozen men, and if you had asked him a week ago, he’d have said that he’d seen and done and experienced everything at least once. This was one hell of a time to discover that he was wrong. That there in fact did exist a new kind of awful emotion that could be attached to love.
Time was ticking down; he knew it, but Damien didn’t consult any of the clocks mounted on the walls. He wouldn’t consult with anything other than his gun and perhaps his hand grenade until he found Brice and killed Dippel.
Dippel. The man was an exception to so many rules. That bastard was going to be killed dead, dead, dead—reduced to molecules so small that there was no chance of him ever resurrecting. It would be Damien’s favor to humanity.
Flash, flash,
went the small red light. Hurry! Hurry!
Damien’s inner rage wanted him to rush about, smashing things, yelling, to find Brice immediately. But he didn’t give way to emotion. He was her only hope of escape—he couldn’t afford to be hurt or killed before rescuing her. He had to be smart.
Instead of haste, Damien used logic. It was difficult, with the storm and his anger urging him to action, but he persevered, using pain to focus himself when his thoughts veered onto unproductive paths. It was doing neither the plaster nor his knuckles any good, but he found punching the walls oddly satisfying.
Damien knew that she wasn’t on any of the floors below him. He’d checked them all from basement to level five. He hadn’t seen anyone, or discovered any booby traps since disarming the hand grenade in the stairwell. That meant they were retreating upward.
To his apartment?
Yes, that made sense. Dippel always had been into symbolism. He would want to kill Damien on his home ground.
“They tried to burn me, you know,” Dippel said softly. “It was an epiphanic moment really, the first time I understood about purification by fire.”
The doctor stood and began pacing. His differentsized arms swung unevenly. Occasionally, the doctor tried to make eye contact with her, but Brice had a difficult time taking her eyes off the scalpel still clutched in his right hand. Nothing had ever appeared more threatening.
“They chained me and my helpers to the wall and piled up the faggots. But it was April, and the wood was green. The Dominicans would have known better than to use it, but those peasants! They’d never cooked anyone before. They didn’t even have the kindness to garrote my people before burning them.” Dippel’s voice was full of contempt. “The fire was slow to start and stayed sullen, even when they added straw. Eventually they got it to light, but it didn’t burn hot enough, and there wasn’t enough smoke to put my people out of their misery. They just singed and smoldered.”
Brice shuddered, but Dippel didn’t notice. He was caught up in his memories.
“I didn’t die, of course, and after a while the superstitious fools got afraid and ran away. Eventually I got free—I had to. The screaming was making me crazy. The smell was maddening too—like roasting pork, but I knew it was my own legs.”
Dippel looked at the fireplace. He went over and threw the last of the wood on the pyre.
Pyre?
“At first, I did nothing. The castle was ruined, my labs destroyed, and I thought I would heal. But the cellular regeneration wasn’t happening quickly enough. The fire had done permanent damage to my tissues. I finally realized that I couldn’t wait anymore. I had to have new legs and another hand before those fools found their courage and regrouped.” Dippel resumed pacing. “I was fortunate. They’d hung Schmidt upside-down before they burned him. His eyeballs had burst and his ears were gone, but the legs were almost untouched.”
Poor, poor Schmidt. Brice closed her eyes and tried to make Dippel’s voice go away.
“I didn’t kill him—no one can say that. The mob did it! That sin can’t be laid at my door. I just ended his suffering, let his soul move on to heaven.” He added pettishly, “They weren’t
his
legs anyway. I gave them to him in the first place, and he wouldn’t need them in heaven. God would make him whole.”
Brice felt sick, hearing her own rationalizations for killing coming out of the mouth of this monster. And there were other reasons to feel ill. It was all too easy to picture the mob scene he recounted, with the flames in Damien’s fireplace roaring, highlighting Dippel’s many scars.
His arms were especially mismatched, one scarred and one not, and she wondered if one of them might also have belonged to the unfortunate Schmidt who went to heaven without his legs.
Though it didn’t seem possible that the horror of their conversation could in any way increase, Dippel’s next words fell like a physical blow, knocking the wind from her lungs. Brice had half expected to hear this from the moment she saw the blaze, but listening to him voice his intentions out loud was more than she could stand.
“I wonder if this fire is hot enough. Byron is strong, you know. He won’t want to burn. But, of course, he must. Suffering is the only way to be redeemed. I understand that now.” Dippel’s voice was one of fanatical earnestness. “I was wrong to try to escape that fire. I should have let it end there.”
Brice’s eyes opened again.
Evil. Dippel was Evil with a big E—Satan’s paw, the devil’s spawn. She didn’t want to start thinking in religious terms again, but it was impossible not to. This wasn’t just madness. Insanity may have cracked open his mind and let the Evil in, but his psychopathy was just a small part of what prompted his actions now.
And Evil had just played its trump card on Brice: fear. Fear of watching another loved one die while she looked on helpless to stop what was happening.
“You look so frightened. Don’t worry, my dear. I am a compassionate man. I shall offer you the kindness that mob failed to offer me. I’m quite good at these things, you know. I’m a doctor. And I won’t let my soldiers have you. Not ’til you’re dead.” Dippel patted her shoulder as he paced by. He still had the scalpel in his right hand.
The moment his back was turned, Brice resumed pulling on her bonds. She felt her skin break open and blood start to flow. She kept on tugging, not caring if she sawed clean through her flesh and bones. If Dippel could do it, so could she. She
had
to get away. She
had
to warn Damien! Anything—
anything!
—was better than waiting for Dippel to enact his horrible plan.
Damien found another zombie in the stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors. He smelled the creature before he saw the outline of its head, peering down into the darkness and snuffling for its prey. Damien took a bead on it, but he didn’t shoot. A single bullet wouldn’t put it down, and would only alert the creature to his whereabouts.
Confronting it headlong while climbing upstairs would be a mistake too. He’d be at a terrible disadvantage. Fortunately, there were other options.
Damien waited until the giant head withdrew; then he put down his rifle and grabbed the railing, mounting it gingerly. Water vapor in the air was beginning to condense and the pipes were slippery. Once he was sure of his balance, Damien began to climb.
He moved silently, controlling his breathing, being careful not to make squeaking noises as he grasped and let go of the painted iron pipes. The last bit of the deadly jungle gym required a stretch—a potentially dangerous one since, if he slipped, he’d fall all the way to the lobby. But the maneuver allowed him to get behind his quarry.
Though Damien made no noise, the creature sensed him and turned swiftly as Damien vaulted over the rail. The zombie was fast, but there was no time for it to aim its rifle. Damien lashed out with his foot, shoving the thing backward down the stairs.
It grunted upon the impact of the sole of his shoe, but then its right hand flashed out and grasped Damien’s ankle with what felt like a steel claw. The left hand held fast to its gun even though it might have been able to right itself by grabbing the rail.
Their gazes locked. The thing had evil eyes, hot eyes that seemed to glow even after the red smoke-detector light flashed off. There was also an intelligence there that hadn’t existed in the other creatures.
But that awareness was where any connection to humanity ended. It had no hair and the skin looked scaly, almost reptilian. Even the underlying bone structure of the head was wrong, though that wasn’t the first thing Damien noticed. Its face was distorted by a long, curving scar that pulled its lips back from its teeth.
Alarmed and repulsed by the feel of its talons gripping his ankle, Damien dropped to the ground, changing the thing’s center of gravity and pulling it off balance. As the creature jerked forward, Damien kicked out with his other foot, connecting with its midriff and knocking the monster away. It crashed down the steps.
Damien rolled quickly to the edge of the landing and watched it fall. The movement looked odd in the slow pulse of the red smoke-detector light. And the thing grunted as it fell, giving audible punctuation as each step forced a small bit of air from its lungs.
It finally reached the bottom of the flight of stairs, and there let out an enraged howl that shook the air of the stairwell. Damien shuddered at the sound. What the hell was this thing? The monstrosity was faster than the others, stronger too. Damien was suddenly willing to bet that this was the creature who’d laid the trap for him.
And apparently, all he’d accomplished by shoving it down the stairs was pissing it off. The damn thing was making enough noise to alert everyone in a ten-block radius.
Damien checked his pistol. Three bullets, and there were two in the rifle, plus whatever the creature had in its own gun. He was willing to bet that wouldn’t be enough.
“Bloody hell.” Damien ran down the stairs until he was at the next landing. There he stopped, sighted on the zombie—no,
ghoul
. The word popped into his head. That’s what it was: a graveyard haunt. The old legends said that ghouls were faster than zombies, smarter too because they survived by eating raw human flesh.
Damien stepped closer. The beast was still clinging to its gun, though the rifle had gotten jammed in the stair railing during the fall. Damien was repulsed, but though he wanted to put his last shots into the creature’s growling mouth, he aimed at the clawed fist trying to free the gun.
The rifle dropped along with the creature’s hand, but the ghoul snarled up at Damien with its long, sharp teeth. Free of its weapon, it leapt to its feet.
Yeah, this creature was a lot faster than the others. It was also sporting some nonhuman tooth braces. Or were those…wire? Whichever, Dippel had outdone himself.
With unbelievable speed, the creature bounded halfway up the stairs, taking the dozen steps in a single leap. It was on Damien a half second later, nails of its right hand clawing at Damien’s face and jaws snapping as it tried to lock on his throat with its filthy teeth.
Damien rolled backward, pulling his knees into his chest and getting his feet planted against the creature. Again he threw the ghoul off, shoving as hard as he could into the soft part of its body.
There was a horrible cracking noise when Damien’s boot punched a hole in the creature’s chest, knocking some organs loose. A gush of dark sludge cascaded down Damien’s leg. It burned like acid.
“Bloody hell!” Damien kicked out again, aiming for the head.
The thing shrieked with rage and down it went, toppling end over end down another flight of stairs.
This time, Damien didn’t wait for it to regain its feet. He jumped after it, landing on the creature’s chest and finishing the destruction of its ribs. The blow knocked the air out of its lungs, and while that stopped the creature from screaming, it didn’t slow it any. The monster apparently didn’t need air to live.
Damien fought the creature off, avoiding its awful jaws while he wrestled the grenade out of his pocket. Claws tore through his clothing and then into the skin of his legs, shredding it into thick ribbons. Then teeth found his arm, midway between wrist and elbow. Damien jerked away, leaving a bit of his flesh and a lot of his shirt behind.
Ignoring the pain, Damien pulled the pin and stuffed the grenade deep into the creature’s chest cavity. He pushed the thing into some soft tissue where it stuck. Then he head-butted the creature—catching some teeth on his forehead—and rolled away, letting himself tumble down the stairs until he smacked against the railing of the next landing. Falling down a flight of stairs hurt only marginally less than being bitten, but at least he would be safe from the blast.
