Hell's Maw

“And…intelligent, beautiful and wise,” Grant finished, an uncertain note of hope in his tone.

Shizuka crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “Hai. Quite true,” she agreed. “However, that was not what caused me to question your statement, Grant-san, because I am a hottie. Rather, when have you ever known this hottie to stay at home waiting for her man?”

Grant looked suitably chastised. “You have a point.”

Shizuka raised Grant’s left arm then and twirled beneath it until she was wrapped in his grip, ready to walk beside him across the bridge. “We both have busy lives, Grant-san,” she reminded him. “You with Cerberus, me with my obligations to the Tigers of Heaven. There is no shame in our choices, nor in shouldering the responsibilities we have both been tasked to endure. However, today is not about that. This night, this week—it is all for us, with no buzzing Commtacts or pleading advisers.”

“I never had an adviser,” Grant stated as they strode arm in arm across the vast stone bridge.

“And I have never had a Commtact,” Shizuka replied, whip-fast.

The Commtact to which Shizuka referred was a remarkable tool that Grant and his fellow Cerberus operatives relied upon for global communications. It was a small radio device that was embedded beneath the skin of all Cerberus field personnel, including Grant. The subdermal devices were top-of-the-line units, the designs for which had been discovered among the artifacts in Redoubt Yankee several years before by the Cerberus rebels.

Commtacts featured sensor circuitry incorporating an analog-to-digital voice encoder that was embedded in a subject’s mastoid bone. As well as radio communications, the Commtacts could function as a translation device, operating in real time. Once the pintels made contact, transmissions were funneled directly to the user’s auditory canals through the skull casing, vibrating the ear canal to create sound. This facility had the additional perk of being able to pick up and enhance any subvocalization made by the user, which meant that it was unnecessary to speak aloud to utilize the transmission function.

Broadcasts from the unit were patched through the Keyhole communications satellite, or Comsat, and then relayed to the Cerberus redoubt headquarters in Montana. Thanks to the nature of the vibration system used by the Commtact, if a user went completely deaf they would still, in theory, be able to hear, in a fashion, courtesy of the Commtact device.

“Anyway, you promised me a romantic evening of dinner and dancing,” Shizuka reminded Grant.

“The evening’s barely begun,” Grant told her, pulling the modern-day samurai a little closer as they walked past the lion-topped columns at the end of the bridge.

The pair had arrived just a few hours before, booking into a grand, family-run hotel after traveling via interphaser. Based on an alien design, the interphaser could tap quantum pathways and move people through space to specific locations instantaneously. The technology was limited by certain esoteric factors, the full gamut of which had yet to be cataloged, but what was known was that the interphaser was reliant on an ancient web of powerful, hidden lines called parallax points that stretched across the globe and beyond. This network followed old ley lines and formed a powerful technology so far beyond ancient human comprehension as to appear magical. Though fixed, the interphaser’s destination points were often located in temples, graveyards or similar sites of religious significance. These sites had frequently emerged around the interphaser’s use, ancient man sensing the incredible power that was being tapped for such instantaneous travel. Cerberus personnel’s access to an operational interphaser had taken many months of trial and error to achieve.

This time, the quantum jump had brought Grant and Shizuka close to an ancient church, more ruin than building now, located in the middle of a dusty, overgrown graveyard on the east bank, their arrival unseen. From there, the couple had made their way to the luxurious rooms in which they would be staying. The rooms were typically Spanish, painted in light colors to reflect the heat and sparsely decorated to leave them uncluttered. The bed featured a brass frame shined to look like gold in the fierce sunlight that blasted through the open window of the balcony, and a complimentary bottle of wine had been left cooling in an ice bucket for their arrival. At reception, Grant had deftly navigated the questions about how their trip had been and when they had arrived; the interphaser was a method of travel exclusive to the Cerberus organization and not something he wanted to advertise.

The midday heat of the Spanish sun was enough to knock both of them out, however, so instead of exploring the city Grant and Shizuka had spent a restful few hours just catching up with each other, tracing the familiar curves of one another’s bodies before indulging in a late-afternoon swim in the hotel’s pool. Now, at a little before 8:00 p.m., the pair made their way toward their destination, a small café that became a restaurant when the sun set.

As the chill of the approaching night began to make itself felt, Grant and Shizuka strolled past a Roman theater, a series of stepped levels organized around a semicircle where ancient actors had once performed. Now it was a little tribute to those long-forgotten days, where only the occasional play might still be performed for a specific celebration or anniversary.

The sky had turned a pleasing shade of indigo when they found the restaurant, Shizuka still aggrieved that they were late. The owner—a large-bellied, red-faced man with a graying mustache and ragged, curly hair—did not mind their tardiness. It seemed that that was very much the culture of this city. “Time,” he told them in ebullient Spanish, “is whatever you make it, and you may make of that what you will.”

Inside, the restaurant was softly lit with candlelit tables and floor-length windows that were open along a side that faced into an alleyway to allow a through breeze to keep the place cool. As they were shown to their table, Grant squeezed Shizuka’s hand, and she looked up at him. He said nothing, but his look seemed to say, Look at this place. Look at all the wonderful things out here for us to enjoy. It was a world away from the one they knew.

And so they ate, unaware of what was occurring barely a block away.

* * *

AFTER FOOD CAME DANCING. Grant jokingly tried to swear off, claiming he was too full of paella to move, but Shizuka shot him a look that could leave no doubt as to why she was the ultimate authority in New Edo.

“You will dance and you will enjoy it,” she said.

“I will dance and you will enjoy it,” Grant corrected with a mischievous, boyish grin.

They made their way down the alleyway that ran beside the restaurant, passing parked vehicles and other couples enjoying the city’s nightlife. Spain was a country of night people, the heat of the day too fierce to enjoy. Now the burning heat had turned to a refreshing night breeze, and Shizuka rubbed her bare arms as they crossed a junction and made their way toward the grand hotel that was their destination.

From outside, the grand, four-story building was awash with lights, its windows burning brightly in the darkness.

“There’s a dance hall inside,” Grant explained. “I hear it can be quite an experience.”

Shizuka smiled as she looked up at her taller companion, her face alive with delight.

Even from here, a dozen yards from the steps that led to the open front doors, they could hear the strains of a band, acoustic guitars rushing through some local number at furious speed, maracas click-clacking to keep time as the tune hurtled toward its finale, a blur of tumbling notes and riffs.

Grant and Shizuka hurried up the steps, a spring in Shizuka’s step as she led her lover through the lobby toward the grand ballroom, which dominated the hotel’s ground floor. Grant stopped momentarily to tip the doorman before dashing after Shizuka as she reached for the double doors into the ballroom itself, the strains of a flamenco emanating loudly from within.

Grant reached for Shizuka, wrapping one muscular arm around her and pulling her close as she pulled one door open. “I love you,” he said as he brought Shizuka’s face close to his own.

“I love you, too, my bravest one,” Shizuka told him before kissing him on the lips.

Then the pair turned back to the doors that were swinging open where Shizuka had pulled their handles. The hurtling notes of the furious flamenco became suddenly louder, twin guitars racing through notes as if trying to outpace one another, the maracas chattering like an insect swarm, a woman’s voice melodically reciting in a foreign tongue. But what lay beyond was enough to stop the two warriors in their tracks.

The ballroom was vast with an ornate ceiling and richly decorated walls, each carving lit by a flickering candle or the low, shaded light of a bulb. To one corner, the band was playing, four men in dinner jackets and a female singer with luxurious, dark hair tied up tight to her head with a flower clipped there and wearing a wispy dress the rich red of rose petals.

But no one was dancing. Instead, perhaps a dozen couples, dressed in their most beautiful clothes—the women’s dresses cut to accentuate their curves, the men’s suits cut to hide their own—were hanging from the ceiling in rows, each couple lined up together, two dozen nooses wrapped around two dozen necks, their feet swaying a few feet above the perfectly sprung wooden floor.

Grant and Shizuka stared at the scene in absolute horror. And suddenly a city of half a million people felt very, very empty.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_a6b32539-e622-51b4-abb2-59151d380fe5)

Grant could tell the twenty-four bodies hanging from the rafters of the ballroom were freshly deceased. He had experienced death from close up many times in his action-filled life and felt no need to shy away from it.

Beside him, Grant heard Shizuka gasp. She, too, had seen death, had dealt it at the tip of her katana sword. But this—this was something unexpected, something exceptional.

A forest of taut necks and sagging bodies hung before them, feet still twitching, tongues lolling out from faces that were strained red with pain, eyes open in accusation.

Grant took a step forward, then turned to the quintet who continued to play their whirling, racing music. “Can you all stop playing?” he shouted to them, striding across the room through the swaying human stalactites.

The band continued for several bars before its players finally brought the music to an abrupt stop. The woman singer in her rose-red dress seemed poised to say something, or perhaps to sing, and looked aggrieved as she watched Grant stalk across the room toward her.

“What happened here?” Grant demanded. “Why did they do this? When did they do this? Did you see?”

The singer stared at Grant, a flash of challenge in her dark eyes. Challenge and confusion, as if he had intruded on her dreams.

“You understand me?” Grant asked. “¿Lo entiendes?” he repeated the question in Spanish as his Commtact helpfully translated in his ear.

“Grant—look!” Shizuka called from where she remained at the front of the room close to the open doors.

Grant turned to her, then spun, following where she was pointing. A pair of double doors stood at the far end of the room, identical to the ones through which Grant and Shizuka had entered. There, through the open doors, three figures were moving swiftly down a hotel corridor, away from the scene. It could be nothing, Grant knew, but he wasn’t one to pass up a lead. Years of Magistrate training had taught him to investigate everything.

Grant ran, sprinting through the room toward the far set of doors. As he ran he called back to Shizuka, “Wait here and get the hotel people on this,” he said. “See if you can help any of these people—if they can still be helped.”

With that, Grant was gone, leaving Shizuka standing in a room full of swaying bodies, the band watching her with what seemed to be almost feral looks.

* * *

GRANT SPRINTED THROUGH the open doors and out into the corridor. The corridor was underlit, and it was decorated in luscious, dark colors with a small side table and two chairs resting against a wall. Grant glanced behind him as he chased after the rapidly disappearing figures and realized that the corridor turned in a right angle back there to wrap around the ballroom, and presumably back to the hotel reception. It probably functioned primarily as a service corridor, which staff used by way of shortcut between the kitchens and the public parts of the hotel.

A bellhop in a white jacket was just rounding the corner holding a tray of empty glasses, and his face became alarmed as he spotted Grant appear through the doors to the ballroom.