“Now, before we move out, I think we should thank our new companions for their presence and support.”
He stretches out a hand to Vehuel, Alice, and the other angels.
There’s more applause this time and even a few cheers. Lucky Magistrate. The angels might be about the only thing holding his crusade together at this point.
The angels pile into the Charger with the Magistrate. How they manage to get in there with their wings and armor is more mysterious to me than anything in Traven’s old books. Alice gets in last, putting on a little show for the crowd, making a big deal of trying to squeeze into the car. People laugh, and as engines start around us, you can feel the havoc begin to relax.
I’ve just settled on my bike when Daja comes over. She looks worried.
“Are you planning on riding up front with your angel pals?” she says.
“First off, they aren’t my pals, and second, I was planning on riding where I usually ride. Unless that’s going to be a problem.”
I glance at the rest of the pack. Johnny, Frederickson, and Barbora, a few others won’t even look at me.
“It’s no problem by me,” Daja says. “In fact, I was going to ask you to stay. After seeing what you did to that angel . . . well, it would be good to have your help looking after the Magistrate.”
“I’m here and I’m ready to ride.”
I don’t say the other thing I’m thinking, which is that despite all his charm and brains, I think the Magistrate is the worst kind of Holy Roller motherfucker. He’s a genocidal bastard with a gallows truck and a gun big enough to blow holes in Saturn’s rings and he’ll use it on anybody who disagrees with him. And now he thinks his divine destiny is proven by a gaggle of angels.
No, I don’t say any of that. I just start my Harley and pull a bandanna up over my nose because the road ahead looks soft and powdery.
Daja says thanks, but it’s drowned out by the thunder that’s the havoc waking up. She goes back to her bike, and as the Charger peels out, we take off after it, not a dog pack anymore. Just a lot of bikes and one car that all happen to be going in the same direction.
We follow the Magistrate’s ley line for a few miles before turning off on a winding road that leads into a jagged mountain pass of shining black stone. The higher we climb, the steeper the road becomes. I can hear the semis grinding gears even over the sound of my engine. Everyone slows so the trucks don’t get left behind, but the road just keeps getting worse. When the trucks get stuck, members of the havoc lead conscripts to the rear so they can help push them free. I wonder if every crusade has its own slaves. It wouldn’t surprise me. If they’d decided I was an “unworthy,” I could be back there pushing with the rest of them. And what’s going through the heads of those angels? I thought friends of Hesediel’s wouldn’t be the usual angel bastards, shitting on mortals and their oh-so-boring suffering. Yet they just sit in the car, doing nothing.
Just when I’m ready to write them off, the Charger stops and the doors pop open. All six angels take off into the air and settle down at the rear of the convoy. Each angel takes a vehicle and pushes with the conscripts. With all that angel horsepower, it doesn’t take long for the trucks to start rolling again. I want to go back and help, but I promised to stay with the pack. Plus I’m not sure I want to give up all my secrets to the havoc yet.
The last couple of hundred yards of steep road are hard, even with the angels’ help. Most of the havoc waits at the top of the hill as the semis crawl forward a few feet at a time. It’s over an hour before the flatbed crests the hill, and when it does, people cheer like they haven’t in a long time. The applause continues as the angels fly back to the Magistrate’s car. Before she squeezes in, Alice makes a muscle in my direction and sticks her tongue out at me. I give her the finger. And we move out again.
There’s actually some scrubby vegetation on this side of the hills, rare for the Tenebrae. The air is clearer, too. I pull down the bandanna and can feel dampness in the air. After two more hours winding down through the hills, we come to a dead end and stop.
We’re at another of the shining black stone mountains. At the base of the peak there’s something I’ve never seen in the Tenebrae before: a small pool of water.
From nearby I hear Johnny say, “If this magic river of theirs has dried up, I swear I’m slitting them.”
There are grunts of agreement. Even Doris, the steadiest person in the pack, looks like she’s ready to turn Vehuel and her pals into chicken pot pies. I have my na’at in one pocket, the golden blade in another, and the Colt at my back. I know that Alice can take down any of t
hem, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give them the chance to try.
All the tough talk and bad thoughts evaporate in the next few seconds as Vehuel gets out of the Charger and says a few words.
The mountain begins to rumble and split open. Massive doors of black stone swing wide, opening to reveal another road leading under the mountain itself. The doors are still moving when the Charger slowly enters the passage into the mountain. Gisco in his convertible goes in second, with the rest of us on bikes on his tail. The rest of the havoc follow us underground. For a long time. When the mountain doors slam shut behind us, every vehicle with a working headlight turns it on.
The road going down is almost as steep as the one coming up. If someone has fucked with the chains on the flatbed and they break, a lot of cars are going to get pancaked. I stay close to the Charger in case I have to pull Alice out.
I haven’t been in this kind of dark since I was in Tartarus and I don’t like it. The big difference here is that the longer we move down, the cooler and wetter the air gets. Which isn’t to say it’s a fucking picnic tunneling under the Tenebrae’s shitty skin. The noise from all the vehicles reverberates off the stone walls and gives everybody migraines. Shadows snake and slide along the walls, thrown at crazy angles by the jagged, shiny rock formations. After the Hellion and angel attacks, you can feel everybody tense, expecting the worst. But the shadows are just shadows and it’s hard to stay scared forever. After a while, they’re just another part of the scenery.
Just like it was easy to lose track of time in the Tenebrae, it’s just as easy here, crawling at a few miles an hour in pitch dark. Eventually, though, the road turns from a steep slope to a gentle grade, and finally eases into a flat, straight line. Better than that, there’s light up ahead. The Magistrate must have seen it, too, because the Charger roars forward. We gun the bikes to chase the car’s receding taillights, finally catching up just as the road opens into a cavern that looks to be a mile wide and just as tall. That’s not what gets everyone’s attention, though.
It’s the three large ships floating nearby on a rushing river.
The Charger stops by a pier extending out a few dozen yards into the water. As the Magistrate and angels get out of the car, we kill the bikes and go over to them.
“Welcome to the Styx, the first and oldest river in Hades,” says Vehuel.
I go to the side of the pier.