to breathe, and choked.
Teo closed the lobby door. The scuttle of demon claws dwindled to a crinkle of torn paper. Caleb sank against the wall, let his lungs fill with air, expelled it all, and let them fill again.
Time passed. How much time, he did not care. When the world settled, Temoc was waiting. Caleb read no sympathy on his face.
“Are you all right?” Teo asked.
“Yeah,” he said, more to reassure himself than her. “I’m fine.”
“Good.” Temoc glanced up the gap at the heart of the turning staircase. “We have nine hundred steps to climb.”
“Hells.”
“The trouble with atheism,” Temoc said, “is that it offers a limited range of curses.”
Caleb ignored him, and started climbing.
Heavy footsteps echoed up and down the stairwell. No doors opened or closed. Caleb, Teo, and Temoc climbed alone.
After the tenth story, they rested, though not for long. Teo’s watch read quarter past eleven. The eclipse was due shortly after noon. Temoc claimed he could draw fossilized souls from the altar in ten minutes. On schedule. Barely.
Caleb swayed. Teo draped his arm over her shoulder. At first he tried to walk on his own, but around the fifteenth floor he trusted her with his weight. She bore it without complaint or comment, and they climbed together. Temoc sprinted each flight of stairs alone, and waited at the landing for them to catch up.
“Not much of a team player, is he,” Teo asked when Caleb’s father was out of earshot.
“He had a team,” Caleb replied. “Most of them died.”
“He could at least act like we’re on the same side.”
“We’re not.”
“Maybe you’re not.” Teo grunted as Caleb’s leg gave out and she took his full weight. “He’s trying to save our lives, which puts him on my side.”
“No. It puts you on his side, for the moment.”
At the twentieth floor they allowed themselves another short rest. Caleb sat on a step and leaned against the cool railing. He had slept in beds less comfortable. Teo crouched beside him. Temoc did not sit. Tensed like a spring, he scanned walls, ceiling, and lower floors for threats.
Temoc broke the silence.
“You know,” he said, “these stairs weren’t a part of the original pyramid design.”
“What was here earlier?” Teo asked.
“An empty shaft descending into the sub-basement.”
Don’t ask what they used it for, Caleb begged Teo with his eyes.
“How would they use something like that?”
“We threw bodies down the shaft,” Temoc said, “after the sacrifice. There was a fire at the bottom, for the corpses.”
Teo looked as if she might reply, but did not. Caleb stood, and turned from Temoc to the steps.
They climbed the rest of the way without speaking.
44
Potted ferns lined the broad dark hallway on the twenty-ninth floor, like soldiers supervising an execution. Faint inhuman laughter hung on the still air.
“If we survive this,” Caleb whispered to Teo, “I am never coming in on a weekend again.”
They reached the conference room’s mahogany doors without incident. Caleb’s skin wanted to crawl away and leave his meat and bones to fend for themselves. Veins popped on Temoc’s thick forearms and the backs of his slab hands; he squared his shoulders and stood strong, but his eyes flicked restless about the passage. Teo waited by the doorframe, lips tight, silent.
Caleb opened the doors, and light flooded the hall.
“Hello,” said a voice like honey poured off a razor.
A many-legged horror filled the doorway: thorns and thin-spun glass, steel and barbs and blue lightning, clustered multifaceted eyes, and a mouth like a child’s, above a maw that brimmed with ichor-wet fangs.
“Hello,” the demon repeated with its child-mouth. Its maw shrieked torn metal.
Temoc punched the demon in the face.
It tumbled backward, arms flung out for balance. One of its eight hands slammed into the conference table; knife-claws gouged long streaks from the wood. The child-mouth wailed.
Temoc did not wait for the creature to recover. He became a silvered shadow and leapt on his adversary. The demon swatted him to the ground with a flailing paw, and followed with a kick. Falling, Temoc grabbed the demon’s knee and barbed ankle and wrenched the joints in opposite directions. Chitin cracked like crystal. Temoc struck the floor, and rolled between scrabbling claws to his feet.
Caleb pulled Teo into the room, and closed the door behind them.
“What are you doing?” she shouted.
“The fight might draw others. You think we can hold off more of those things?”
Caleb’s father danced with the demon. A talon slashed Temoc’s side, and he staggered but did not fall. He had grown large in shadow, scars shining. He wrenched one of the beast’s arms sideways, and tore it from the shoulder. Two mouths screamed, and scythe-claws swung, but Temoc was already moving.
Crystal limbs and teeth clashed. Liquid light dripped from the demon’s wounds, and smoked where it fell. Temoc was a dark blur, leaping from table to floor, taunting his opponent in High Quechal. The demon cursed him in its broken tongue, all pretense of human speech gone.
They circled each other around the table, slow enough at last for Caleb to comprehend the demon’s shape: a round scorpion-jointed back, six clawed legs gripping the floor, one of its eight arms gone and two more limp.
Between cries of pain, the demon laughed like thunder.
“I think it’s enjoying this,” Teo whispered.
Temoc was the first to slow, and the demon pressed him until it slowed in turn and Temoc fought back with maniacal ferocity. The silver scars on his face twisted, and by their light Caleb saw, for the first time in sixteen years, his father smile.
The demon leapt onto the conference table and landed with a heavy, hollow sound. Temoc circled, and it scuttled to face him. It hissed, and he was silent; roared, and he showed no fear.
The beast sprang, a storm of teeth and sharp edges. Temoc dove into and through the claws, and wrapped his arms around its body. Knives scraped the corded muscles of his back; jaws snapped inches from his face. His grip tightened, and cracks appeared in chitin. Temoc stepped under his opponent’s center of gravity, and swiveled his hip to the left.
The demon’s left legs gave way, but Temoc did not let go. As it fell, he twisted its torso back to the right.
The snap of the demon’s spine should have been too soft to hear. Somehow, it overcame all other sound.
Thorned legs went limp, but the upper body fought on. Temoc rolled with the demon on the floor. Soon, they lay still.
Temoc rose. Fading shadows hung from him in tatters. His skin was a mess of welts and bruises. Thin, shallow cuts crisscrossed his back and legs and arms, broken by the protective network of his scars.
He retreated from the demon’s corpse, and slumped against the pitted remains of the conference table.
Caleb ran to his father. Temoc held up one hand, motioning him back, but Caleb ignored him.
