The Bone Triangle (35 page)

“When she sleeps, yeah,” I said.

“Maybe we could climb up. I don’t see many cameras on the
outside
.”

I considered his idea. I liked it, but thought it was too risky. “There are bars on those windows. All of them.”

“I’ve seen you melt metal.”

I nodded, knowing I could do so in more than one way. I still didn’t like it. “There’s got to be a sneakier approach than just blasting our way inside.”

Cartoon rubbed his face. “Gutter Jim could get you in there,” he said. “But I don’t think he’s in any mood to help you right now.”

I laughed. “Yeah. We aren’t friends anymore. But I like your idea. I think I know someone who could get us inside.”

I pulled out my cell and dialed Gilling’s number. It rang and rang until I frowned. There was no answer, no voice mail. Nothing. I tried several other cultists who followed Gilling. Many were my friends, and we’d worked together successfully in the past. None of them answered.

“Maybe Meng got to them first,” Cartoon said.

I frowned. “I’ve got another way to contact him.” I dialed Jacqueline next. She answered on the second ring.

“About time you called me! Do you need me to come pick you up? ’Cause if you do, you’re screwed. I gave my ride to that detective guy. You know what? I bet he stole it. You tell him that, if you see him. After a couple of days,
borrowing
turns into
stealing
. Just the way you stole my candy cane.”

Apparently, our time in the desert had just been a lark to her. Maybe she’d gotten what she wanted from me.

I apologized for not having called sooner, and after she was finished scolding me, I quickly filled her in on McKesson’s status. She was sorry about his injuries.

“I’m so glad you’re back in the city,” she said. “Mom’s got another car, you know. It’s a Jag. She hid the keys, but I know where they are. You need a ride, or not? I’m bored.”

“Maybe later,” I said, smiling. “Right now, I want you to go dig out the book we used to communicate with Gilling. He’s not answering his cell again.”

“You think he stepped out to somewhere wild?” she asked, sounding as if she was hoping it was true.

“We’ll find out. Try to talk to him.”

I waited while she got the book and shrieked. “It’s already open, Quentin!” she said.

“What’s the name of the poem?”

“
Thias Amasma
,” she said. “At least, that’s how I would pronounce it.”

I frowned. “What’s that? I don’t recall a poem called that. What’s the English translation say?”

“Um…there isn’t one. Just the French…only, I don’t think it
is
French. Maybe it’s Latin or something. I don’t recognize any of the words. They’re really weird. The poem is really short, there are only—”

Suddenly, I heard odd sounds. A thump followed by the muffled scrabbling sounds of a microphone being mistreated.

“Jacqueline? Jacqueline?”

She came back on the line a moment later, and my heart slowed down.

“Quentin? Sorry. I dropped the phone. You should have warned me!”

“Warned you about what?”

“About the book. I didn’t know it could do that.”

“Do
what
?” I demanded in exasperation.

“New words are appearing in the book—like it’s writing itself. The bottom of the poem is longer now. It’s as if an
invisible hand writes a new word in the book every minute or so. It’s really freaky. You should have warned me.”’

“Read me the title.”

“I already did. It’s
Thias Amasma
.”

The words Jacqueline read haunted me after I’d hung up.

“
Thias Amasma
,” I whispered to myself. In my mind, I could
see
those words. I knew how to spell them without asking.

“What did you say?” Cartoon asked, staring at me.

“Nothing.”

Thinking over my conversation with Jacqueline, I developed a sick sensation in my gut. The twin books had always been unusual artifacts, but now they were behaving in a way I’d never seen. I could only assume that at the other end, the second book was being changed by the hand of whoever now possessed it. This was causing the book’s twin to also change. Right now, someone was writing a new poem on the pages, in words that I didn’t understand.

I found this highly disturbing. Not just because of the bizarre nature of the writing, but also due to the impossibility of it all. As far as I knew, no one had ever managed to alter an artifact. I’d never heard of anyone managing to even deface one. They were impervious to every kind of heat, combustion, and force. A pen should have failed to make a mark. The ink should have slid away.

But the book in her hands had been changing, even as Jacqueline watched.

We looked out the window warily, from the shadows to either side of it. The Sunset Sanatorium stood like a fortress across the street. I wondered if anyone inside it was gazing back at us.

Cartoon watched me with an odd look of concern. “Are we doing this or not?”

I shook my head. “I’m not climbing on that roof and breaking in. Meng will have thought of that. We need to get in some other way.”

“What then?”

Thias Amasma.

Somehow, those words were stuck in my head. I couldn’t get them out. When I looked at Cartoon, the street, or even the tower looming above the sanatorium, I saw an afterimage of those letters. They made it hard to think clearly. I shook my head again, and it cleared somewhat.

I looked up to see Cartoon watching me. “Hey, are you okay, Draith? Maybe some of Meng’s power is rubbing off on you. She’s got half this town under her spell.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’re very close to her domain. But I should be immune. Let’s get moving…we’ve got to find another way in.”

“Who can help us?”

“There are only a few people I know of. Ezzie might be able to do it, but she’s unreliable, and I don’t think we can get to her right now. McKesson is another maybe, but I think he’s already inside Sunset. My best shot was Gilling, but he isn’t answering me.”

“What then?”

“We’re on our own. Did you see a stairway from the lobby that went down to the basement?”

“No.”

Cartoon followed me back out of the apartment and down to the street level. A dozen pairs of eyes followed us as we left, but no one dared to speak to us this time. They knew we were up to something, and they didn’t want to know what it was.

Cartoon reached for the broken panic bar of the door that led onto the street, but I shook my head.

“Not that way,” I said.

I walked to the small elevator doors. They had been kicked in at some point and were leaning inward. A dozen illegible scrawls were interweaved and mixed over the broken doors.

“The elevator? You’ve got to be kidding, man. That thing is broken.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And there isn’t any stairway down. But a building like this always has some kind of basement. How
can there be an elevator and all this plumbing and no basement?”

Cartoon gave me a baffled shrug. “Maybe that stuff is all on the roof?”

“I don’t think so. Help me force this open.”

Together, we grunted and strained at the elevator doors. They were twisted off their tracks, however, and wouldn’t budge. After some fruitless banging, I came up with a solution. I touched the hinge points, turning them soft and pliant. The doors gave way after that with squeals of protest.

We’d expected to see an elevator car, but instead we saw crashed wreckage. Split open and sagging to one side, the car was a floor below us. The shaft was dark, and the cables were frayed and hanging. Clearly, the car had fallen and smashed apart a floor below us, possibly years ago.

“You a pair of
crazy
mothers,” said someone behind us.

We turned to find the hooker with the nose ring standing on the steps behind us. Her hands rode her shapely hips. Her painted lips pursed and her blue-lined eyes glared. “I’m calling Adrian. He’ll fix you clowns.”

“Your pimp doesn’t want anything from us, girl,” Cartoon said. “Just leave it.”

She flounced back up the stairs. Cartoon and I glanced at one another.

“The locals are getting restless,” I said. “Let’s go down this shaft.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” hissed Cartoon, suddenly divining my plan. “You think we can somehow get into the pipes down there and come up inside the sanatorium?”

“Do you want out?” I asked. “The door is right there; take a walk. No hard feelings.” Part of me hoped he would leave. It was great to have his help, but I didn’t want to have to fight him if Meng managed to get a grip on his mind.

He thought about it for a second, then growled and pushed past me. He shoved the doors out of the way and began climbing down into the dark shaft. “That girl was right, you are nuts. Maybe you belong inside Sunset. You ever think of that, Draith?”

“Many times, actually,” I said as I climbed down after him.

We snagged our clothes on bits of twisted metal, but managed to get down to the floor below.

“Told you there was a basement,” I said as we extricated ourselves from the tangle of twisted steel.

“Dammit, I cut my hand,” Cartoon grumbled.

It was dank and dark down there. After feeling around the walls and kicking over boxes of trash, we found a switch, and a dim bulb illuminated the interior. It reminded me of an earthly version of the Beast’s world.

We searched and found very little. A few standing pipes that reeked and a number of rusty valves. I’d hoped to find a walkway, a connection through the sewers into Meng’s domain.

“Nothing,” Cartoon said. “Now what, boss?”

I shook my head. “We’ll have to go back up and try something new. I thought maybe this place was hidden for a reason. I thought maybe it was connected to her building and had been sealed off. But there’s nothing here.”

Mumbling curses as we bumped into things, we headed back toward the elevator shaft. The way up looked a lot harder than the way down had been. Worse, we saw flashlights playing on the walls from the floor above.

“They are down there, I swear,” I heard a woman whisper harshly. “Get your gun out. They look serious.”

Cartoon and I exchanged glances. The voice was a familiar one. It was our little hooker friend, the self-appointed hall monitor of this dump.

“What are we going to do now?” Cartoon hissed at me. “I’m not climbing up out of this hole into a fight. We’ll get slaughtered.”

I nodded and put my finger to my lips. I dug into my pocket for the candy cane. My plan was a simple one, to climb out invisibly, then get Cartoon out by any means necessary.

“Giving up so soon?” asked another voice.

We both whirled around. I saw it first—one of the pipes was open, and something had slithered partway up out of it. I pulled out my bottle and fired a lance of energy toward the apparition. Light flared, filling the room with radiance for a moment.

The shadow vaporized in a puff of foul-smelling steam. I advanced, with Cartoon following nervously.

“That was Gutter Jim, wasn’t it? He’s some kind of ghost. Did you get him?”

I peered down into the pipe, with my bottle still glowing in my hands. It looked like a dying green lightbulb.

“That wasn’t cool, Draith,” came the voice again from inside the pipe.

Cartoon jumped back, and I recoiled with him.

“Damn! You
burned
him. I saw it!” Cartoon said.

“What do you want, Jim?” I asked.

“You’re in a bad spot. Let’s call a truce. Come down here, and we’ll talk.”

I looked at Cartoon, who shook his head emphatically. I smiled grimly, agreeing with his assessment. I’d rather sit here until morning than put myself into Gutter Jim’s power.

“Let’s talk from here,” I said to the pipe. “That way, we’re on equal footing.”

“Very well,” he said, sounding displeased. “You realize why Meng brought the survivors here, don’t you?”

“She has to be covering up the attack by the Beast. She’s erasing minds—not just of the officials, but of any survivors or witnesses. I talked to Trujillo out in the desert. He said the Community was responsible for keeping a lid on odd events in town. For that, the government looks the other way while they make this city and its inhabitants into playthings.”

“Something like that,” Jim said. “It’s never been so clearly laid out and defined. At first, they asked us for favors. We did the same. It’s grown into a systematic deletion of the truth.”

“I watched and listened to the officers on the scene. They believe the cover story, so they must have been affected by Meng.”

“Shrewd guesses. Now you are here to blow the whole thing wide open, correct? You want to get into Meng’s place and finish what you started.”

“I’m not here to kill her, necessarily. But I do intend to stop her.”

“There’s no way to stop a personality like hers short of violence. But you’re totally insane to try that again, you know that, don’t you? A rogue can’t fight one of us on our own ground. You got lucky one time, and now you think you can pull it off again. But you can’t. Especially not when she knows you’re coming.”

“What’s it to you?”

“I’m going to talk plainly with you, Draith.”