I moved to stand behind Astral. I figured I could lean against the fireplace if the dizzies kicked in, but the repositioning worked. The images connected. In fact, Astral was projecting the clearest hologram I’d ever seen from an
His gear seemed even more out of place given his location, standing before an enormous gate the color of tar. It interrupted a seemingly infinite stretch of spiked fencing on which one or more of the inhabitants had set a series of freshly axed human heads. Behind the gate a river flowed sluggishly inside its broad banks as if it had been partially dammed by old tires and the gutted carcasses of washing machines.
Fog hovered over the river and obscured nearly everything on its far side. But once in a while we could see people running, their faces taut and pale, darting terrified glances over their shoulders before the mist swallowed them again. More constant was the screaming. Nearly every thirty seconds it came. Not always from the same throat. And sometimes several voices shrieked together, like a choir of murder victims harmonizing their last earthly sounds. Sometimes, even worse, we heard the laughter of someone who’s left sanity behind for good.
These were the sounds that made the cowboy jerk and stare through the tiny cracks between the wide bars of the gate. But he didn’t stop for long before continuing with the graffiti. Nope, not kidding. He was writing somebody’s name on the bars of the gate. But this was no ordinary act of vandalism. Because his tools were a gleaming silver hammer and chisel.
Now it was the cowboy’s turn to glance over his shoulder. Whatever he’d heard galvanized him. He bent to his work like a jeweler doing the most important engraving of his life. Sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip. By now he had seven letters. thraole.
New sound. Something enormous, snuffling, crushing the things it stepped on as it neared the cowboy’s side of the gate. I expected him to spin around. Raise the hammer like a club. Or better yet draw his gun.
Which was when I realized he carried no other weapons. None.
Though his shoulders twitched like they were covered in tarantulas, the man never looked back. He glared at his work, chiseled a hyphen and four more letters onto the gate: thraole-luli. Which was when the creature shouldered its way out of the fog. Still I couldn’t see. Wrong angle to catch anything more than a hint of bloodshot eyes, a flash of curved tusks. And then the cowboy notched in the final letter.
thraole-lulid.
One wild cry from the fog-monster as the man swung around. I still expected him to attack. Instead he held the hammer and chisel high over his head and slammed them against each other. A light, bright as a welding torch, came from the tools, bringing tears to the cowboy’s eyes. Making the fog-monster bellow with pain. When it faded the monster was gone. And the cowboy held a single tool. At one end was the hammer head. The handles had melded seamlessly, and at the other end was the pointed edge of the chisel.
After that came a quick succession of images. People (usually men) of different races stood in different spaces holding that hammer. It moved from a hospital in Japan to a farm in Armenia to a boat dealership in Maine. Each time the holder tried to separate the hammer from the chisel. And each time he or she failed. Died screaming. Crushed and bleeding in the jaws of unspeakable creatures that should never have pulled breath, much less walked lands that still remembered love, generosity, and honor.
And then, finally, audio of the kind that didn’t make you want to huddle under a quilt with your teddy bear. A flat, bored voice piped out of Astral’s chin, saying, “This is all we know of the history of the Rocenz, a tool crafted by Torledge, the Demon Lord of Lessening. According to legend he forged the hammer from the leg bone of the dragon Cryrise and the chisel from the rib of Frempreyn, the rail who led a failed uprising against Lucifer just after the Fall.
“The Rocenz is a Reducer. The user can diminish anything to its simplest version by using the hammer to chisel its name into metal or stone. If the work is done at the source of the threat’s power, it will be completely destroyed. So, for instance, in the case of those we saw who attempted to fight the
, if any of them could have carved their enemy’s names on the gates of hell, those evildoers would have been diminished into puddles of blood marked with bits of bone and sinew. As far as we know, only Zell Culver, the Hart Ranch cowhand, ever succeeded. But the trick to separating the chisel from the hammer’s handle died with him. Because Zell was dragged back into hell the day after he escaped.
“For our purposes, this tool can also transform and make clear what has been muddy for centuries. This could be most helpful to our research. However, the tool has been lost since 1923 when its carrier, Sister Yalida Turkova, went missing from her hotel in Marrakech, Morocco. We have been unable to locate it since.”
The hologram blanked. Astral yawned widely, giving the miniature projector ample room to reset itself within her jaw before she closed her mouth again.
“That was pretty amazing,” I said.
Bergman snorted.
“You don’t buy it?” I asked him.
“Well, for one thing, you can’t
He shrugged. “I don’t see how it’ll help us with Ky—” She raised her hand to stop him. “Your demon,” he finished.
“I’m not the only one with a problem here,” she informed him. She jerked her head at me. I sighed.
Might as well bring Miles into the loop too. Otherwise he’d be pretty stunned when I decided to take up the bagpipes.
“Don’t freak out, okay?”
Bergman drew his knees together like I’d threatened to kick him in the crotch.
