Stirred

I reached it, experienced a moment of terror when I remembered there had been no code on the plaque.

So I took a shot in the dark.

211—the police code for robbery.

Punched it in.

Green light.

The door opened and I heaved myself up into a wide air duct. I was still gasping for breath and fighting back wracking sobs that had come out of nowhere when Luther said, “You’re uncharacteristically quiet, Jack…a pe

He misses her response entirely, his attention drawn to a panel of a flat-screen showing the pair of interlopers who have been wandering around his concrete barrens for the last twenty-four hours.

They’re closing in on the warehouse, on all the action, on Jack.

Luther needs to handle this. Now.

But he can’t leave Jack yet.

Not when one of his favorite circles of hell is coming up.

I calmed myself down, doing the Lamaze breathing I’d been taught in that one class I took with Phin. It was supposed to be a three-week class, but we’d never gone back, having endured too many questions about my age, including one young chick who asked if the Gui

It seemed so long ago.

Hell, it seemed like it had happened to someone else, in a different life.

I pushed away thoughts of the past, of Phin, and pressed onward.

Crawling while pregnant was like doing everything else while pregnant: slow and difficult. But I kept moving, shaking off the last few pe

When I reached the end, I pushed open a grating and edged forward.

Poked my head through.

Peered out.

A bare lightbulb dangled from the ceiling on a cord—the sole source of illumination.

This room was twice the size of the previous one, and I wondered how I was supposed to climb down until I fixed my sights on a series of iron bars which had been driven into the stone walls. Just within reach, they descended ten feet to the floor below.

On one wall I saw a black door with a keypad mounted to the wall beside it.

Standing vertically against the opposing wall—a casket-shaped object that appeared to be constructed of solid iron or steel.

I grabbed the closest iron bar and with considerable effort dragged myself the rest of the way out of the air duct. Then I eased my feet down onto one of the lower bars with an embarrassing grunt that made me thankful no one but a psychopath was privy to hear.

Four steps down and I was standing on a floor that resembled a metal grate.

My clothes were still soaked from the gutter-shower, my bones chilled, but this room felt warmer than the others.

Much warmer in fact.

Or maybe just a killer hot flash coming on.

I walked over and inspected the keypad and the door.

Then turned and crossed to the tomb.

Dark gray metal alloy, smooth, and with no defining characteristic beyond a new plaque, its casket-like shape, and the four-inch slot at head-level—

I startled.

—through which eyes watched me.

“Who’s in there?” I asked, taking a step closer.

The eyes stared into mine, unblinking, and what struck me first was their kindness, followed by a second realization—there was no life in them.

The capillaries in the whites had long since broken up.

These eyes belonged to a dead man.

I backed away to let a little of the overhead light stream in. Through the slot, beneath the eyes, I saw a ruined face. Trails of dried blood ru

Luther had killed a priest.

Locked him in a tomb.

Why?

I noticed a plaque midway up the casket as another hot flash enveloped me. I’d suffered my fair share during pregnancy, but nothing as strong as this, strong enough to instantly pop beads of sweat on my forehead.

I read the plaque under the slot:

CIRCLE 6: HERESY

Can you take the heat?

No accompanying quote. No code.

The hot flash was getting worse, and it wasn’t just in my face—it almost felt like drafts of heat were rising up beneath me.

I moved away from the tomb, fighting the kind of dizziness that precedes a heat stroke.

Steam actually lifting off my windbreaker.

I’d suffered through my fair share of hot flashes since becoming pregnant, but this was ridiculous.

The floor caught my attention.

More specifically, something under the grate.

Concentric circles were becoming visible—at first, just a dimly-glowing brown, but that turned amber, which quickly warmed into dirty orange. It reminded me of the burners on my stove.

And still, the heat continued to intensify, the brunt of it blasting the tomb like an oven—hell, it was an oven—fluids sizzling inside and the room filling with the smell of meat begi

I rushed to the keypad.

Found it harder to gather my thoughts as the temperature spiked.

Okay, in the last room there was no code on the plaque, but a corresponding police code worked. So what’s the corresponding police code for…intense heat?

Arson?

I wiped sweat out of my eyes and punched in 447.

Red light.

The temperature was rising faster now. I glanced over my shoulder, saw flames licking up at the priest’s face inside the tomb. The smell in the room was beyond offensive—the odor of a human being turning to smoke and ash.

I tried something else.

Code for fire.

I’d been out of the game a while, and it took me a moment to recall, but I got it.

904.

Red light.

All right—sca

Fire alarm…shit, what was it?

1170?

I gave it a shot.

A third red light blinked at me as I smelled the soles of my shoes begi

Fire report.

1171.

Red light.

“Goddamn it!”

The heating element was turning a stronger orange, and I could feel the warmth in my wet socks, my swollen feet.

I was missing something.

Stumbling out into the middle of the floor, I studied the room once more as smoke poured out of the flaming tomb, filling my nose with a sweet, nauseating acridity.

What the hell was I missing?

I’d already made a close inspection of the tomb, but maybe I’d overlooked something when I’d first entered the room.

Through the smoke, I stared up at the air duct.

There.

I’d completely missed it.

The panel had closed back into place over the duct, and on its surface, I spotted a small circle with a silver perimeter and white interior that contained numbers and dashes.

A clock, perhaps?

No.

Of course—a thermometer.

But I was going to have to climb back up there to get a closer look.

I hurried over to the black iron bars that served as a ladder and reached for one at chest level.

The moment I grasped it, I screamed and withdrew my hands.

The metal was burning hot.

I glanced down at my shoes, where black smoke had begun to rise off the soles.

Any thought I might have had that Luther didn’t want to kill me vanished in the fear of being cooked alive.

I tugged down the sleeves of my windbreaker, and used them as gloves to buffer the palms of my hands from the blistering heat.