Reliquary

His thoughts were interrupted as the form of Donovan once again emerged from the blackness, looked around, then motioned him forward. Snow moved quickly toward him, then slowed as a grim sight came into view. The gear was still neatly piled along the wall, a stark contrast to the dismembered, headless figures lying at crazy angles in the muck of the tu

“Hurry up!” he heard Donovan whisper. “No time for rubbernecking.”

He looked up. Donovan stood there, arms folded, surveying the equipment with an impatient scowl on his face.

Above Donovan, in the thick darkness of the vault, a black form dropped from the dangling chain with a sudden shriek and landed on his back.

Donovan staggered and managed to shrug the thing off, but two more figures dropped nearby and grappled with the SEAL, bringing him to his knees. Snow stumbled backward, aiming his gun, unable to get a clear shot. Another lunged forward, knife in hand, and Donovan screamed: an impossibly high, almost feminine sound. There was a strange sawing motion, a guttural roar of triumph, and the figure raised Donovan’s head in the air. Momentarily paralyzed by the sight, Snow thought he saw Donovan’s eyes rolling wildly in their sockets, dim reflections of the red glow at the rear of the tu

Snow fired then, short staccato bursts as Donovan had taught him, hosing the barrel left and right toward the obscene group huddled over Donovan’s body. He knew, somehow, that he was shouting, though he couldn’t hear it. The magazine emptied and he slammed home the spare, screaming and firing until the clip ran dry. As his ears rang in the sudden silence, he took a step forward, waving the cordite aside, searching the gloom for the nightmare apparitions. He took another step, then another.

The blackness ahead seemed to shift—as if moving in against itself—and Snow wheeled and ran for the end of the tu

= 61 =

MARGO CLOSED HER eyes tightly, trying to empty her mind against the ultimate pain. But a moment passed, then another, and she felt herself wrenched from the ground and borne away, slung roughly from side to side, the heavy carryall chafing at her shoulder. Despite the transcendent horror, relief flooded through her: at least she was still alive.

She passed through a close, foul-smelling darkness, then into a large, dimly illuminated space. She forced her eyes open, straining to orient herself. She could see a ruined mirror, covered in what looked like countless layers of dried mud, most of its glass shattered and lost long ago. Beside it, an ancient tapestry of a unicorn in captivity, rotting from the bottom up. Then she was jostled again, and she now saw the marble walls rushing toward a high, glittering ceiling, the ruined chandelier. A tiny metal plate glinted at the ceiling’s center: their viewhole, not ten minutes before. I’m in the Crystal Pavilion, she thought.

The foul odor was stronger here than ever, and she fought against panic and a rising despair. She was brusquely thrown to the ground, the blow knocking the breath from her lungs. Gasping, she tried to rise to one elbow. She saw she was surrounded by Wrinklers, shuffling back and forth, swathed in their ragged patchwork cloaks and hoods. Despite her horror, she found herself looking at them with curiosity. So these are the victims of glaze, she thought, her mind clearing. She could not help feeling a stab of pity over what had happened to them. She wondered again if it was necessary for them to die, even as she knew in her heart there was no other answer. Kawakita himself had written that there was no antidote—no way to reverse what the reovirus had done to them—anymore than there had been a way to reverse what had happened to Whittlesey.

But with this thought came another, and she stared around wildly. The charges had been set and would soon detonate. Even if the Wrinklers spared them—

One of the creatures bent forward, leering at her. The hood slipped back a moment, and all thoughts of pity—even thoughts of her own immediate danger—fled away in overwhelming revulsion. She had a brief, searing vision of grotesquely wrinkled skin with pendulous folds and dewlaps, surrounding two lizardlike eyes, black and dead, their pupils contracted to quivering pinpoints. She turned away.

There was a thump and Pendergast was thrown to the ground beside her. Smithback and Mephisto, struggling wildly, followed after him.

Pendergast looked at her questioningly, and she nodded that she was unhurt. There was another commotion, then Lieutenant D’Agosta was dumped nearby, his weapon tugged from him and tossed aside. He was bleeding freely from a large gash above one eye. A Wrinkler tore the pack from her shoulder and tossed it to the ground, then started toward D’Agosta.

“Keep away from me, you goddamn mutant,” the policeman swore. One of the Wrinklers leaned forward and dealt him a slashing blow across the face.

“You’d better cooperate, Vincent,” said Pendergast quietly. “We are slightly outnumbered.”

D’Agosta rose to his knees and shook his head clear. “Why are we still alive?”

“The question of the hour,” replied Pendergast. “I’m afraid it might have to do with the ceremony that’s about to begin.”

“Hear that, scriblerian?” Mephisto chuckled mirthlessly. “Perhaps the Post will buy your next story: ‘How I Became a Human Sacrifice.’ ”

The soft chanting rose once again, and Margo felt herself pulled to her feet. A path was cleared among the shuffling throng, and she could make out the hut of skulls, perhaps twenty feet in front of them. She stared in mute horror at the macabre structure, stained and unclean, gri

A hand at her back propelled her roughly forward, and she half walked, half stumbled toward the hut. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see D’Agosta struggling with the Wrinklers prodding him along. Smithback, too, was silently resisting. One of them drew a long, evil-looking stone knife from beneath the folds of his cloak and held it to the journalist’s throat.

“Cuchillos de pedernal,” Pendergast murmured. “Isn’t that what the subway survivor told you?”

D’Agosta nodded.

A few feet from the paling, Margo was brought to a halt, then forced to her knees and held along with the others. Around her, the chanting and drumming had increased to a fever pitch.

Suddenly her eyes focused on the stone platforms around the hut. There were several metal objects on the nearest, lovingly arranged as if for some ritual purpose.

Then she caught her breath. “Pendergast?” she croaked.

Pendergast looked toward her inquiringly, and she gestured with her head toward the platform. “Ah,” he whispered. “The larger of the souvenirs. I could only carry the smaller pieces.”

“Yes,” Margo replied urgently, “but I recognize one of these. It’s the handbrake to a wheelchair.”

A look of surprise crossed Pendergast’s face.

“And that piece there is a tipping lever, broken off at the stub.”

Pendergast tried to move toward the platform, but one of the figures forced him back. “This makes no sense,” he said. “Why would such an arrangement be—” He stopped abruptly. “Lourdes,” he said in a low whisper.