But the place felt wrong. Alien, haunted, the air thick with the suggestion of pain, oppressive and soul-destroying. I’m getting a little melodramatic here, but I tell you, that was an evil place.
To top it, we heard singing, echoing from some nearby but invisible chasm, as if a pit into Hell itself had opened. The sounds, deep and seemingly male, were bass and disturbing, suggesting unspeakable things. Rising.
Things were moving in the dark spaces at the base of the stone pillars, flitting about like aerial spirits, or ghosts. The Raggedy Man watched them, apparently unmoved. “Some of the singers are here,” he said.
“What does the Cold Lady use these things for?” said Henry.
“Spells,” said our guide. “To trap the unwary. And also to control the Pullulating Tribe.”
I never heard of this Tribe, but it sounded like bad news.
“The Tribe sleeps out in the great wastes that surround this labyrinth. The Cold Lady wants to rouse it and unleash it on the enemies of the Angels of Malice.”
“Who would they be?” Henry asked I thought a little naively.
“Humanity,” said the Raggedy Man. “The powers of darkness hunger for its enslavement. A time is coming—”
“Yeah,” I cut in. “We’ve seen the trailers. Let’s just cut to the chase. Where are the girls we’re looking for? Are they among those things?”
The bundle of rags shook, nodding but drawing back. “Find them if you can. When you flee, take me out of this place.”
Henry and I were conscious of a swirling movement around us. Whatever these spirit-things were, they had surrounded us and seemed to be closing in on us, like we were at the heart of a vortex. I looked upwards and in the vague light thought I could make out a balcony, or some kind of higher level, cut into the stone. And she was there, that extraordinarily beautiful creature I’d tangled with once before—Carmella Cadenza, now going by the handle of the Cold Lady. I had a brief glimpse of her face—unmasked here—before the shadows covered her. She had been smiling, but there was no warmth in it. Her undeniable beauty couldn’t make up for the maliciousness that fuelled her.
It would have washed over me. I’ve had more than a few withering glances from disgruntled dames in my time. What poured the ice back into my veins was the other shadow I’d seen up there. I’d only had a brief glimpse—a shape that was as hunched over and obscure as the Raggedy Man. Pure darkness, congealed and imbued with warped life, and with an unhealthy spread of limbs, jointed and elongated, as if a man had been fused with some other life form—a spider maybe. A particularly big spider.
This place was where broken things came to be mended. So I knew what that was up there, hugging the shadows beside the Cold Lady.
Spiderhead. An old nemesis of mine. Just as I’d fouled up Carmella’s plans once, so had I put a big spoke in Spiderhead’s wheel. I had a feeling at the time he’d limped away to fight another day. That being today by the look of it.
“They’re here!” called Henry, snapping me out of my daze. He was indicating the faces that were glaring at us from the swirl of creatures around us. I peered into that human whirlpool and saw two faces I recognised from photos Ariadne had shown me. Suki Yosimoto and Maria Mozzari. They were smiling, idiotically, like part of their brain was on hold. That would be the work of the Cold Lady.
As the blurred crowd closed in, their arms reached out for us, slender and pale, making the whole thing look like one unified beast, intent on absorbing us. Which I didn’t think would be a good idea. Their unholy singing had started up, shrill and discordant and definitely not the kind of thing that would go down well in any respectable night club.
“Now would be a good time for some accompanying riffs,” I called to Henry.
“I’ll do the music, you do the muscle,” he said. “Grab the girls,” he added when I gaped at him.
Grab the girls? Like this was a gentleman’s ‘excuse me.’ Well, what else was I supposed to do?
Henry played a gentle riff on the guitar, the sound almost smothered by the banshee screech of the spinning creatures around us. I waited, trying to pick the right moment. I watched Suki Yosimoto’s spinning face, her white arms reaching out in a blur and I tracked her. I let her get closer, closer then reached out myself and made a grab for her. I managed to get one hand fastened on a wrist and I yanked her towards me. It was like pulling something out of a pool of muck, or quicksand.
I could feel the resistance of the powers fuelling that concentrated energy, but the protective charms I was wearing, coupled with the stuff I’d smeared over my flesh so painstakingly exerted its own power. I felt myself boiling, my hapless torso a battlefield for energies that buzzed and fizzed like shorting electricity. Fortunately, the whirling motion of the singers worked in my favour and with a final jerk, I tore the girl free so that she tumbled into me. I wrapped my free arm around her, aware that her mouth, and more significantly her teeth, were inches from my neck.
She did shriek even louder, but her shriek was worse than her bite—that is, she didn’t bite me. She just sagged down as if she’d been slugged, and curled up into a ball. As the others closed in, hands—claws now—still tearing at the air, I singled out Maria Mozzari. Again I struck while Henry played. It took me a couple of goes, but then I had her and drew her in. Steam emanated from me as if I’d got out of a baking oven.
The noise had become deafening and Henry strummed out some stronger chords. The effect was startling. His music went out in waves and it was like two tides clashing head on. In that maelstrom of sound, everything churned and broke like waves on invisible rocks. I gripped both of the fallen girls, while the others started to break apart, flying this way and that like foaming surf, slowly dissipating, their singing melting away.
I couldn’t see the Cold Lady and her companion for the grey fog that palled around us, but I knew they’d both be in a real funk over my antics. Hell knew what they’d try next. I didn’t want to hang around to find out.
“Time to beat it,” I called to Henry.
Carefully holding the guitar, he nodded and followed me as I hoisted up the two girls, one under each arm. They acted like they’d been drugged, which was a relief and I made for the exit to the chamber. The Raggedy Man was in the shadows, waving us toward him. I let him lead the way back through the narrow defiles towards wherever the main exit was. My guess was, we’d have to stop for a time at least, while Henry sorted out his repertoire and played the right tune to open the way back home.
That wasn’t going to be so easy—already the Cold Lady had set about closing her net. The stone walls were moving, like huge doors on hidden rollers. If we took the wrong turning, we were going to be crushed to bloody pulp or pinned helplessly. The Raggedy Man led the way, hopping like a huge flea, and at least he seemed to keep one jump ahead of the closing stone.
There was an eerie light ahead, high up like a weak moon, hidden among dense clouds. We seemed to be out of the labyrinth, but wherever we were, it was obscured. The Raggedy Man pointed ahead into the near darkness.
“Bridges,” he said. “They criss-cross this place. Keep to them. Don’t fall into the mire. It festers with the Pullulating Tribe and they will suck you in and drag the very soul from your bones.”
I didn’t relish that prospect, especially as I could see the many pools of this mire, disturbed by things below their sticky surfaces. On either side of the narrow bridges—which seemed to be some kind of twisted root, interlinked and tangled, slick with moisture—the foul sinks bubbled