drugs, maybe from a combination of both. She had a fading bruise on her cheek and what looked like a burn mark.
'I'm a friend of your father,' Darby whispered. 'Is he here?'
The girl didn't answer. She licked her lips and swayed slightly on her feet.
Jesus, they drugged her.
'Who are you?'
'My name is Darby McCormick. I'm working with your father. Is he… Can he walk?'
Sarah nodded, pursed her lips. 'My mother…'
'Tell me about your father, where they're — '
'My mother here?'
'No,' Darby said, not seeing the point of telling her the full truth. 'And keep your voice down. Where are they keeping you?'
'Far away.'
'I don't understand.'
'This place is big. Lots of corridors and tunnels, lots of floors.'
'Do you know where we are?'
'Hell,' she said. 'We're here to pay for our sins.'
'Listen to me.' Darby kept her voice low. 'I will find a way to get you out of here. I promise, but I need — '
'You're lying.'
'No. No, I'm not. Look, your father and I, we were working with people. The FBI. They're looking for us right now. It's going to take some time. I need you to be strong and brave for yourself and for — '
'You're the one.'
'The one what?'
The girl's eyes grew wider. 'You're going to kill me.'
'No. No, I'm not going — '
'You are. They told me. You're going to kill me tonight in front of the others.'
'What others?'
'The children. They have children down here and these… people who look like ghosts. They're all chained in the great hall, where they're going to watch you kill me.'
'I'm not going to kill you, I promise. Don't walk away. Have you eaten? Here, take some of this food.'
The door opened and two people with lobotomized stares and ghoulish features limped into her room, barefoot and wearing torn sarongs. Their skin, heavily scarred and emaciated, was leached of colour. They held stun batons. One held a key ring.
A robed person came in and hauled Sarah Casey away. He didn't lock the door. It stood open and Darby stared at it, thinking, when she heard the crackle of electricity.
The stun baton hit her waist. Her legs collapsed and the baton hit her again, causing her to fall headfirst against the wall. The baton remained pressed against her waist and she shook violently, chains bouncing against the floor. One of them grabbed her ankle and unlocked the manacle, the fetid odours baked into their scarred skin making her gag.
The baton was withdrawn and, as they rolled her on to her stomach and shackled her wrists, she knew her opportunity had come. She lay there limp and useless, and they grabbed her by the arms and lifted her to her feet.
She was dragged out of the door and down a long, candlelit corridor with a dirt floor and the walls on each side stacked with skulls. She passed an archway and saw a dirt floor leading down and then it disappeared as they led her into another hall, this one narrow and made of bleached and dusty brick. They were close to her now and, suddenly moving her feet behind their knees and arching her back, she threw them off balance. The one to her left fell to the floor, taking her down with him.
She lay on top of him and smashed the back of her head against his face, breaking his nose. Not much room to manoeuvre, but the one now on top of her had no idea how to fight at close quarters. He seemed confused. Scared. His neck was inches from her mouth and without hesitating she sank her teeth into the thin, foul flesh and bit down hard like a rabid dog, tearing. An arterial spray of blood exploded against the wall and the thing howled, a ragged sound, and she slammed her forehead into his nose, pushed him to the side and got to her feet. Rolled back against the dirt floor, swept the chains from underneath her legs, brought her hands up as the bottom one scurried to his feet, clawing the walls for purchase and slipping on the blood. A quick snap of the neck and the bleeding thing dropped. The other one tried to scrabble away and she wrapped the chains around his neck and went to work on strangling him, some boy who had been brought to this place and turned into a monster.
With the things dead and lying on the floor, she found the keys. Four of them. She tried the first one and it worked.
Darby wiped her bloody mouth on her sleeve and ran.
82
A sepulchral tomb of twisting halls leading left and right and forward, some lit by sconces holding candles, some dark, almost every wall lined with bones. Some dirt floors dipped down and some rose, and Darby paused at each one, thinking about Jack Casey and his daughter and the decision she would have to make.
Up, she thought. Towards the surface.
She ran with the keys gripped in her fist to keep them from jingling and each hall led to a circular area of dirt, some with barrels decorated with skulls and bones and holding water. She saw no one and heard nothing but her ragged breathing.
Another circular area, one that held a granite sarcophagus placed in front of a stone altar. Latin words and phrases cut into the dusty stone and she recognized only one, the name on the sarcophagus: Iadabaoth.
To the right of the altar, a staircase made of ancient brick. She saw it curved and led only one way, up. She climbed it, her bare feet sliding across the smooth stone, and it seemed to go on for ever. It was cool and dark in here, musty and dank, and she was sweating. She paused when she heard the screaming.
Not screaming. Roars of approval and delight and triumph, like a Red Sox crowd at Fenway Park on opening day. Darby kept climbing, only more slowly, eyes wide and searching the cool and musty-smelling dark, the roars growing louder.
The staircase ended and led to another smooth-bricked hall. She found a ladder. Ahead, maybe twenty feet, an archway lit up by candlelight coming from somewhere far below. No floor beyond the archway, just the candlelight and the cool air throbbing with roars and screams. She moved towards it, had to see, needed to see, and when she reached it she got on her hands and knees and looked down and down.
A great hall, full of manacled children and the manacled pale things with shaved heads and scarred bodies, a crowd of at least a hundred down there. Some were shackled to the walls; others were shackled by only one wrist, and they picked up rocks and threw them at the person in the centre of the big space: Jack Casey, his massive body tied to a giant, raised wheel that was opposite his kneeling daughter. Sarah Casey had been chained to some contraption that wrapped around her throat, the stiff metal bars leading to rings that encircled her knees. Hooded figures stood behind her and others were gathered near their leader, the Archon Iadaboath, sitting high on a perched throne.
Darby stared at the sailing rocks; the roars were like slaps across her face. Even from this height she could see the tears on Sarah Casey's face, the look of abandonment and hopelessness on Casey's. He had been broken. Shattered. Physically and mentally. He looked dead on that wheel — a medieval wheel used as a torture device. St Catherine of Alexandria had been tortured on such a device, and when the wheel broke, they beheaded her on a guillotine.
Darby looked at the table set up at the end of the Archon's throne, a table stocked with strange and ancient
