The giant’s monstrous form filled the open doorway. “So much for the pentagrams. Now I can come and go as I please.”
Donovan shifted his weight and the door started to slide. It hit the first curve and jammed, throwing him all the way to the bottom. He groaned and reached underneath himself to remove something sticking in his back—the can of spray paint Father Carroll had used. Clutching it, he scrambled to his feet and stumbled along a cramped corridor barely lit by fifteen-watt bulbs.
Breathing echoed all around. Mephistopheles’ evil seeped through the stone and the pipes in a clammy humidity that formed scum on every surface it touched. Donovan pushed on through his panic. He took the next two left turns he came to and found himself in a short corridor that stopped at a dead end.
Now what?
From some recessed corner of his mind he heard a bemused chuckle. “Father?”
Go to the light.
Donovan searched the darkness, his heart lifting. Something beckoned from just ahead. “Father Carroll?”
Go to the light.
Quickly he retraced his steps, choosing a right turn first, and came to a well-lit corridor. On either side was a door: a rounded rectangle of steel surrounded by a gasket, of the same watertight design as those on a submarine. Each had a wheel in the center, pocked with rust, and a filthy plaque labeling it a “Runoff Chamber,” numbered one and two. He tried number one. Ancient hydraulics prevented him from yanking it open, and once he’d gotten it wide enough to slip inside they prevented it from slamming shut.
The “chamber” was actually an oval conduit about fifty yards long, made of damp, stained white tile, fifteen feet across by ten feet high at the widest points. Three rows of halogen lamps lit every grimy brick with light so bright it almost blinded him after the darkness outside. He stood on one end of a narrow walkway that bridged the conduit. It was an unusual perspective—the walkway was level but everything else sloped at a forty-five degree angle. On his side of the walkway, stairs led to the bottom. Opposite him, another staircase led to the conduit’s top. Mephistopheles’ footsteps vibrated at the edge of Donovan’s hearing. He jerked around, gasping as the sudden movement shifted his injured ribs. The door clanged into place, a barely audible “hiss” sealing the gasket. His eyes darted around the conduit, formulating a desperate plan.
A fifteen-foot-wide lattice of bars screened the top of the conduit, covering the mouth of a tunnel that extended back about six feet before curving up and out of sight. In front of the screen, bricks formed an abbreviated landing wide enough for workers to stand on.
Runoff comes from there.
Strings of recessed lights illuminated the deep rust and slime trails on the floor and walls, trails that marked the passage of water between the two openings. At the conduit’s bottom, a metal cover perforated by one-inch holes capped a huge drain.
And is channeled through there.
Handrails, which would enable workers to climb or descend the slopes, lined the walls. A rich, loamy stink of water-decayed pulp and leaves evidenced worker neglect: soggy leaves, branches, dirt and newspapers so old they’d been soaked shapeless clogged the drain.
Clog…
A yellow wheel jutted from the wall down near the drain, below a sign with arrows indicating which way to turn it to
Open
or
Closed
. Another wheel by the upper grate would open the channel to drain the overflow.
He climbed off the walkway and used the handrails to make his way down to the wheel. Seizing it with both hands, he wrenched it free and turned it until it turned no more. Pain from every injury throbbed to life, blazing glorious streaks across his vision. He stumbled to the drain, slopping sludge off the cover until he found a solid place to paint a pentagram. When he’d finished—making sure all the lines connected—he ascended to the walkway. Droplets of mucky, gooey condensation glazed his shoulders. He returned to the door and pushed it all the way open, easing up when he heard it clang against the wall. The metallic noise made him think of a bell tolling. Coughing to cover the noise—and draw Mephistopheles to him—he sprayed a pentagram on the door, blowing as he worked to help the paint dry quicker. When he finished he took off his jacket and hung it to hide the symbol. He then scrambled up to the upper grate and turned that wheel all the way to “Open.” Deep inside the ground, something groaned. A trickle of water dripped through the grate. Donovan made his way back down to the door, allowing his senses to roam. Silence clotted the damp air, thinned only by a high-pitched shriek of rusting hinges closing. The noise made him shiver. Part of him hoped Mephistopheles had gone, had given up the search. He knew it was wishful thinking. In the bigger picture he
had to
beat Mephistopheles here, now. He coughed again, baiting the trap.
Where the hell—?
A single fingernail dragged along stone.
Mephistopheles rounded the corner. The light that had been so bright fluttered and faded, retaining just enough illumination to hint at the evil draining it.
For a second Donovan was positive he would never move again. Jamming the paint can into his back pocket, he bolted back into the runoff chamber. The door continued to close, but so slowly that Mephistopheles followed him in without bothering to touch it. Donovan ran across the walkway and made a show of being trapped. Mephistopheles paused halfway across to allow Donovan to fully appreciate what was coming. Light from beneath them cast Coeus’s scarred features like something out of a campfire ghost story. He flexed and preened, taking full advantage of his captive audience. Donovan forced his teeth to stop chattering. He stared at the closing door and licked his lips.
Come on, come on, come on!
“Are you nervous?” Mephistopheles grinned the hungry grin of a cannibal, displaying teeth far pointier than Coletun or Coeus ever had. “You should be. I’m going to make the whole world a lot more…on edge very soon.” He took a threatening step forward. “Lucifer was partly right—I do get a tremendous amount of pleasure from the bargaining, the strategy and construction of a plan to achieve my ends. But he was dead wrong about my ability to rule. After all, what is ruling but endlessly constructing plots to make use of all that power? I may not be on the throne now, but I still have everything in
this
world at my disposal.” He kept his glowing, piercing eyes fixed firmly on Donovan as if daring him to try to escape. “Not the best result, but how much fun would anything be that only required so,” he jerked his head up, in the general direction of the Great Lawn, “
limited
a scope of destruction?”
“You want limits?” The door clanged shut and hissed as it sealed, bringing a sneer to Donovan’s lips. “‘Can’t cross a threshold marked with a pentagram.’”
Mephistopheles stopped short.
“Look under my coat,” Donovan urged, jerking his head. “Go ahead. I’m not going anywhere. I wouldn’t
want
to go anywhere and miss this.”
Mephistopheles regarded him warily before glancing back. A bare twitch of his hand sent Donovan’s jacket flying. The hunter orange pentagram shone against the blackened steel door as bright as a flatlining cursor on a heart monitor.
Donovan vaulted off the walkway to the sloping floor. He slipped and slid but somehow pulled himself along the handrail to the top of the pipe.
“Distract me and make a run for it?”
He looked up and started—Mephistopheles leered at him from behind the screen.
“Is that your idea of a plan?”
Mephistopheles shoved. The screen flew open on a hinge that swung Donovan back, pinning him between the screen and the wall. He couldn’t move, but he saw the trickle of water had grown stronger. Way up the tunnel, something splashed.
Mephistopheles stepped onto the worker’s platform and jerked the screen closed. With his other hand he grabbed Donovan and pinned him against it. “I could still chase you if you tried to get out this way, because I don’t see a pentagram on the screen here.” He spun and slammed Donovan face first into the bars, breaking his nose with a crunch. Fresh blood poured out of his nostrils. “Do you?”
Far up the tunnel came a noise like an approaching train. A cool wind chilled the damp material Donovan wore. He twisted his head and gave a harsh laugh.
“I see
some
thing.”
Water poured down from above and crashed to the floor on the other side of the grate. Splashes flew everywhere and Mephistopheles gasped as some struck his flesh. Donovan wrenched free from his grip, seized the bars and jump-kicked. Both his feet slammed the giant’s midsection and sent him flying off the landing. He rolled through the slime all the way to the bottom and hit the drain just ahead of the first stream of holy water.
Donovan yanked the screen open. Pushed by the building river it came easily, and he climbed into the tunnel as the flow intensified. The devil prince bellowed as the holy water gushed down the slope but he didn’t give up; his shoes burst apart and his feet morphed into claws that hooked the brick and allowed him to fight the current. Holy water rushed around his knees, already flooding the bottom of the conduit and rising. His clothing smoked and the smell of his skin sizzling gave Donovan harsh satisfaction.
“Do you think this is enough to stop
me
?” Mephistopheles screamed, making his way step by agonizing step. “I’ll swim through an
ocean
of holy water to get you!”
Donovan slammed the screen closed. All around him the water roared down, soaking and freezing him to his core. It filled the pipe, churning and frothing against the bricks, thickening the air with icy spray, pressing him forward against the steel bars. Vaguely he considered he might drown with Mephistopheles, but after what he’d done—
had to do!
—to Joann, he didn’t care. The water cascaded past, battering him from behind. He wondered if this was what it was like, trapped on a sinking ship. Now the conduit was full to the walkway; in seconds that would be submerged. The lights lining the lower end of the pipe cast an eerie, swimming pool glow. Undaunted, Mephistopheles plodded upwards, his skin a hideous mélange of bright red and pale white blotches. Like a burn victim seeking relief he plunged through the holy water towards Donovan, powered by all the rage of Hell.
“You can’t get out of there!” Donovan yelled over the water’s roar.
Unless the paint washes away. Unless you see the wheel to stop the flow. Unless, unless, unless…
His mind spiraled down.
Please, God.
I killed Joann.
“I can’t?” Mephistopheles snarled. “I still don’t see a pentagram on those bars!”
Donovan’s heart stopped.
“Oh, did you forget that part?” Mephistopheles hunched forward while the water, as though coming to Donovan’s defense, surged anew. “Remember it for the last five seconds of freedom you have!”
Donovan scrabbled in his back pocket. The can wasn’t there; as he raised his head he saw it bobbing on top of the water…
…on the other side of the grate.
Mephistopheles held it up in one massive fist and, when he was sure Donovan saw, crushed it. The “pop!” the aerosol can made was nearly inaudible, and the torrent of holy water washed away the sunburst of orange paint.
The water had reached the landing. Mephistopheles was practically swimming now, fighting his way through rapids past his chest. Donovan frantically searched for something he could use to scratch a pentagram into the steel bars. His jacket had zippers with metal tabs but it was somewhere on the other side. He fumbled for his belt buckle but the soaked leather refused to come free.
The water had filled the conduit to his level, and now rose past his knees to his waist. He couldn’t see the buckle in the froth. He clutched for it then stopped, his eyes pointing at his bandaged left hand like it was magnetic north.
“Hell of an electrical burn you got here,” the medic had said. “That’s going to leave one unusual scar.”
Mephistopheles hoisted himself onto the landing, dripping flesh and blood, looking as though he’d emerged from a bath of sulfuric acid. Only the galaxies of his eyes remained unaffected, lasering twin holes in Donovan’s soul.
“I still don’t see a pentagram!”
He reached for the bars. Donovan pulled the bandage away and slammed his pentagram scar forward.
“How’s
this?
”
They touched the screen simultaneously.
White light blazed from Donovan’s palm, lightning coming out of the bottle. Mephistopheles screamed as though he’d been electrocuted, challenging the light, holding on as long as he could before the force was too much. It blew him backwards, out of Donovan’s sight and into the depths of the flooded conduit. Donovan could feel the vibrations of his scream through the water. Grimly he held on, determined not to be fooled by a master liar. The water raged higher, up to his neck, when suddenly a blob blacker than squid ink roiled up. It churned towards him in the shape of a monstrous lamprey eel, jaws spreading wider and wider until it struck the screen. The white charge crackled again, exhilarating Donovan with pure, selfless energy. The darkness exploded into a million tiny bubbles that fizzled into nothingness.
Then there was just the water.
Donovan refused to move, thinking his hand had fused to the bars, not caring as the water rose to his chin.
I did it! I beat Mephistopheles! He’s gone!
His triumph was short-lived as the reality of his situation surfaced.
But she’s still dead.
The holy water continued to stream around him, filling the enclave where he stood. “I’m sorry, babe,” he whispered, salty tears mixing with the fresh water just before it closed over his head…
***
…but it was not his nature to give up.
He released the screen and floated to the top of the tunnel, where an air pocket had formed. As he’d learned from SCUBA diving, he hyperventilated before taking a deep breath and plunging back underwater.
The screen opened easily, and he swam through it to turn the wheel by the upper screen to close off the water flow. The lights in the walls gave enough illumination to see but not all the way to the bottom. A wave of inexplicable panic sucked at him.