Bloodless

58

As they left the library, Coldmoon felt a slight buzz from the Lagavulin — or was it from the mind-bending concept of a machine that had, somehow, opened a hole in the universe? The idea was absurd, impossible... but since he’d first partnered with Pendergast, the absurd and impossible seemed to have grown commonplace. The world according to Pendergast, he realized, was a far stranger place than he’d ever imagined.

As they entered the foyer of the hotel, Coldmoon noticed a television blaring in a lounge area. On its screen was Drayton, standing live on an elevated stage, thrusting his finger into the air and bellowing to a roaring crowd.

“Look at that wasichu,” snorted Coldmoon as they passed. And then he halted. “Hold on a minute.”

“That so many of you have braved the crime wave to come out tonight is a testament to your courage and conviction—”

Now Pendergast and Constance paused.

“—I have been dismayed by the FBI’s inability to solve these crimes, but I can assure you in my role as senator—”

“Hey,” Coldmoon said. “He’s talking about us.”

“—In the face of their ineffectiveness, I am bringing all state and local resources to bear in catching the monstrous criminal or criminals behind these savage killings—”

“He’s blaming us, the jackoff!”

“Not just us, my dear friend, but ADC Pickett, who it seems has been shielding us from the senator’s wrath all this time — and whose career will suffer for it.”

After listening a moment longer, Pendergast and Constance continued on, and Coldmoon hurried after them. There was nobody behind the desk, and they slipped past toward the offices beyond.

“What are we going to do about it?” Coldmoon asked.

“Does the FBI involve itself in politics?” asked Pendergast as they reached the door to the cellar.

“It’s not supposed to.”

“You have your answer.”

The door to the basement was locked. Pendergast slipped a little tool out of his pocket, and with a brief twist of his wrist, the door swung open.

They descended into the gloom. At the bottom of the stairs, Pendergast paused to remove his jacket. “You might want to check your sidearm, Agent Coldmoon.”

“Right.”

Pendergast took the Les Baer from his shoulder holster, ejected the magazine, checked it, palmed it back in. Coldmoon wasn’t sure why this precaution was necessary just to examine a machine in the basement, but he made sure his Browning had a round in the chamber. He noticed that Constance, not to be outdone, had slid her stiletto out of one sleeve: a vicious little device, he thought as he watched the thin, wicked blade spring out at lightning speed. She knew how to use it, too; he’d seen some demonstrations that he’d just as soon forget. Noticing his stare, she gave him a wry wink, then slid the blade home.

“This way,” she said, taking the lead. She led them past Ellerby’s trading office and deeper into the basement, heading away from the central corridor and making for an area that was roped off and marked STRUCTURALLY UNSOUND.

“One way to deter attention,” drawled Pendergast as they passed by it.

Just as it was growing too dark to see well, Constance touched a light switch and some naked bulbs came on ahead, casting baleful shadows. There was a strange, almost industrial smell in the air, Coldmoon noticed, like burnt rubber. Dead insects crunched under their feet as they walked. Constance led them past a double row of old storerooms, wooden doors splitting from dry rot.

“Did Miss Frost give you such precise directions, or are you just a modern-day Natty Bumppo?” Coldmoon asked.

“I prefer the moniker of ‘Deerslayer,’ thank you,” Constance retorted.

Ahead, their path was blocked by a shabby door. Constance opened it to reveal a large storeroom. It was, or appeared to be, a graveyard of old hotel furniture. Most everything was covered in moldering sheets, tears here and there exposing the bones of discarded armoires and bedposts. Constance led them through the cluttered space, which ended in a large wardrobe pushed up against the far wall. Constance tried the wardrobe’s doors. They were locked.

“Aloysius?” she said, stepping back.

Once again, Pendergast applied his lock-picking set. The doors swung open obediently, revealing rows of old clothes.

“Perhaps our friend Ellerby was a fan of C. S. Lewis?” asked Pendergast drily.

Constance stepped in and, sweeping aside the hangers, revealed a half-height panel. “If so, here’s Narnia.” She drew it back, exposing a dark hole.

“I’ll go first,” said Pendergast.

He ducked through, and they followed. A moment of blackness, and then Pendergast switched on a light to reveal a modestly sized room, more than half taken up by a machine that sat against the rear wall. Coldmoon stared at it, unsure what to think. Machine didn’t do it justice, nor did contraption. He’d never seen anything like it. It appeared to be a fusion of two large pieces of apparatus, wired together. The first was a device with a dazzling array of finely machined brass gears, wheels, knobs, dials, chain belts, and springs, almost like the inner workings of a gigantic clock. This was connected via thick bundles of wires to an untidy rack of computer equipment — motherboards, disk drives, keyboards, and monitors, bolted into place in a seemingly haphazard way. Two brilliantly polished stainless steel wands with copper bulbs attached protruded from opposite ends of the machine and pointed to each other at ninety-degree angles.

“How... how do you turn that baby on?” Coldmoon asked. “I don’t see any switch.”

Pendergast moved toward it gingerly and examined the fantastical device in silence, moving from one end to the other, peering at it with glittering eyes. He took out a penlight and began probing its innards.

Coldmoon breathed in deeply, then forced himself to look away and examine the rest of the room. There was a small metal table on the wall opposite the machine, with a chair and a cheap lamp. Sitting on the table was an ordinary laptop, next to a disorganized stack of papers and a notebook. A nearby wastebasket was filled to overflowing with balled-up paper.

The room itself was half-ruined. A brick wall to the left of the machine had a large hole bashed through it, broken bricks strewn about as if hit with a wrecking ball. Beyond, a black hole yawned. Several deep grooves raked the wall surrounding the opening, and it was splattered with what appeared to be the same strange lubricant or grease that they’d found on the bodies of the bloodless dead. The floor was littered with debris — wires, tubes, broken glass, plastic. And it was covered with more dead insects, most heavily in the spot under the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. They weren’t moths, as Coldmoon initially thought. Perhaps they were dragonflies. But as he looked closer, he saw this, too, was incorrect: although the dead insects had wings like dragonflies’, these were attached to bodies that more closely resembled hornets’.

Coldmoon walked over to the broken wall. Beyond lay what appeared to be an old coal tunnel. Lumps of coal were still scattered on the stone floor amid puddles of water, and the walls and ceiling were whitened with lime.

A faint whisper of fabric, and Coldmoon realized that Constance was now standing beside him. “I imagine this is how the creature escaped the building.”

Coldmoon blinked once, twice. “Creature?”

“Yes. The one plaguing Savannah.”

“This is just too strange.”

She turned her violet eyes on him and quoted. “‘Not only is the universe stranger than we suppose, it is stranger than we can suppose.’”

“And whose deathless pearl of wisdom was that?”

“Heisenberg, some say.”

“You mean the guy in Breaking Bad?”

Constance issued a low, mirthless laugh.

Coldmoon stared at the machine, shaking his head. “That’s the most insane-looking thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I imagine,” Constance replied, “that the true insanity will start once Aloysius determines how to turn it on.”

As if on cue, a honeyed voice rang out. “I do believe I’ve found the switch.”