Reliquary

Smithback fingered the tape recorder again, hoping it was catching everything. He’d heard of the occasional vagrant retreating to subway tu

There was a pause. “We do not like that word, scriblerian. We have a home, and were you not so timid, I could show it to you. We have everything we need. The pipes provide water for cooking and hygiene, the cables provide electricity. What few things we require from the surface, our ru

“Schoolteacher? You mean there are children down here?”

“You are naive. Many are here because they have children, and the evil state machine is trying to take them away and put them in foster care. They choose my world of warmth and darkness over your world of despair, scriblerian.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

The dry chuckle rose again from the hole in the cinder block. “That is you, is it not? William Smithback, scriblerian?”

“Yes, but—”

“For a journalist, you are ill read. Study Pope’s The Dunciad before we speak again.”

It began to dawn on Smithback that there was more to this person than he had originally supposed. “Who are you, really?” he asked. “I mean, what’s your real name?”

There was another silence. “I left that, along with everything else, upstairs,” the disembodied voice hissed. “Now I am Mephisto. Never ask me, or anyone, that question again.”

Smithback swallowed. “Sorry,” he said.

Mephisto seemed to have grown angry. His tone became sharper, cutting through the darkness. “You were brought here for a reason.”

“The Wisher murder?” asked Smithback eagerly.

“Your articles have described her, and the other corpse, as being headless. I am here to tell you that being headless is the least of it.” His voice broke into a rasping, mirthless laugh.

“What do you mean?” Smithback asked. “You know who did it?”

“They are the same that have been preying on my people,” Mephisto hissed. “The Wrinklers.”

“Wrinklers?” Smithback said. “I don’t understand—”

“Then be silent and mark me, scriblerian! I have said my community is a safe haven. And so it has always been, until one year ago. Now, we are under attack. Those who venture beyond the safe areas disappear or are murdered. Murdered in the most horrific ways. Our people have grown afraid. My ru

Smithback licked his lips. He was begi

There was a silence. “From outside,” came the whispered answer at last.

“Outside?” Smithback asked. “What do you mean? Outside, meaning out here?” He looked around the blackness wildly.

“No. Outside Route 666. Outside the Blockhouse,” came the answer. “There is another place. A shu

“Wait a minute,” Smithback said. “Their flesh eaten? You mean there is a group of ca

“I do not appreciate the doubting tone in your voice, scriblerian,” Mephisto replied. “That is exactly what I mean. Tail Gu

“Yes?” said a voice in Smithback’s ear. The journalist jumped to one side, neighing in surprise and fright.

“How did he get back here?” Smithback gasped.

“There are many ways through my kingdom,” came the voice of Mephisto. “And living here, in lovely darkness, our night vision becomes acute.”

Smithback swallowed. “Look,” he said, “it isn’t that I don’t believe you. I just—”

“Be silent!” Mephisto warned. “We have spoken long enough. Tail Gu

“But what about the reward?” Smithback asked, surprised. “Isn’t that why you brought me here?”

“Have you heard nothing I told you?” came the hiss. “Your money is useless to me. It is the safety of my people I care about. Return to your world, write your article. Tell those on the surface what I have told you. Tell them that whatever killed Pamela Wisher is also killing my people. And the killings must stop.” The disembodied voice seemed farther away now, echoing through the dark corridors beneath Smithback’s feet. “Otherwise,” he added with a fearful intensity, “we will find other ways to make our voices heard.”

“But I need—” Smithback began.

A hand closed around his elbow. “Mephisto has gone,” came the voice of Tail Gu

= 7 =

LIEUTENANT D’AGOSTA sat in his cramped, glass-sided office, fingering the cigar in his breast pocket and eyeing a stack of reports about the Humboldt Kill dive. Instead of closing one case, he now had two cases, both wide open. As usual, nobody knew nothing, nobody saw nothing. The boyfriend was prostrate with grief and useless as an eyewitness. The father was long dead. The mother was as uncommunicative and remote as an ice goddess. He frowned; the whole Pamela Wisher business felt like nitroglycerine to him.

His eye traveled from the stack of reports to the NO SMOKING sign outside his door, and the frown deepened. It and a dozen like it had gone up around the precinct station just the week before.

He slid the cigar out of his pocket and removed its plastic wrapping. No law against chewing on the thing, at any rate. He rolled it lovingly between thumb and index finger for a moment, examining the wrapper with a critical eye. Then he placed it in his mouth.

He sat for a moment, motionless. Then, with a curse, he jerked open the top drawer of his desk, hunted around until he located a kitchen match, and lit it on the sole of his shoe. He applied the flame to the end of the cigar and sat back with a sigh, listening to the faint crackle of tobacco as he drew in the smoke and bled it slowly out his nose.

The internal phone rang shrilly.

“Yes?” D’Agosta answered. Couldn’t be a complaint already. He’d just lit up.

“Lieutenant?” came the voice of the departmental secretary. “There’s a Sergeant Hayward here to see you.”

D’Agosta grunted and sat up in his chair. “Who?”

“Sergeant Hayward. Says it’s by your request.”

“I didn’t ask for any Sergeant Hayward—”

A uniformed woman appeared in the open doorway. Almost instinctively, D’Agosta took in the salient features: petite, thin, heavy breasts, jet black hair against pale skin.

“Lieutenant D’Agosta?” she asked.

D’Agosta couldn’t believe such a deep contralto could come from such a small frame. “Take a seat,” he said, and watched as the Sergeant settled herself in a chair. She seemed to be unconscious of anything irregular, as if it was standard procedure for a sergeant to burst in on a superior anytime he—or she—felt like it.

“I don’t recall asking for you, Sergeant,” D’Agosta finally said.

“You didn’t,” Hayward answered. “But I knew you’d want to see me anyway.”