Indigo(74)

“Up or down?” Selene asked with a pained gasp that worried Indigo as much as anything else in the stairwell.

Indigo made an executive decision. “Down!”

In the basement there would be more shadows, more darkness. Down there, she’d find the old archives in a storage space with rickety bulbs, and a boiler room, and below that a crawlspace where no one except workmen in overalls ever dared to go.

“Down?”

“Yes!”

If they went up, they’d land in the sunlight on the roof, eventually. Fewer shadows. Worse odds. Their odds were better if they headed below. If Indigo could only find a shadow deep enough, dark enough … if she could only steal a moment to think, to wrap herself up and build up some proper defenses …

“If wishes were fishes,” she muttered, falling backward and taking Selene with her, into one shadow and out from another. Selene went feral, and two of the nuns screamed. Indigo didn’t see what Selene had done, but those two women quit following them, so it was a big fat win as far as Indigo was concerned.

She was breathless. She was afraid, for herself and Selene, too.

Selene was slowing down.

Down. Always down. Everything was going down.

Selene was bleeding. Indigo was bleeding, too, but it wasn’t bad enough to drag her down yet. Not all the way.

Down. She took another shadow, and Selene hopped the banister to the next level. The slaughter nuns followed their descent, shrieking like Harpies, their tunics billowing like wings in the unrelenting chase.

“We have to get ahead of them!” Selene whispered frantically. “This is too close, too much!”

“Down!” Indigo insisted. “Trust me!”

But when she caught Selene’s eye, she saw fear. When she glimpsed Selene’s arm, she saw a slash. When she looked lower, she saw a puncture in her companion’s left shoulder, and what looked like a wound in her belly. “Something is wrong here.”

“They aren’t alone,” Selene agreed. “One of them…” She cocked her head toward the charging cluster of nuns. “Caedis rides on one of them.”

“Well, shit.”

Indigo didn’t dare take inventory of her own situation. Hers wasn’t much better, and she knew it. She refused to think about it. She insisted to herself that the fire along her right flank was just a scratch. The bleeding down her thigh was only a flesh wound. Never mind the stumbling. Never mind how Selene’s hands were slipping on her blades. Or how she dropped one.

Indigo’s breathing came harder and harder, and so did Selene’s.

“Down won’t cut it,” Selene wheezed.

But they were already committed, so Indigo pressed onward, a little slower. Fewer sisters were on their tail, but it might as well have been a thousand. There were too many, and Indigo and Selene were running out of floors, running out of shadows.

They were running out of options.

They burst through one particularly dense patch of darkness at the very bottom of the very last flight of stairs, and then they were in the basement. It was dark, but not as dark as they’d hoped—and the slaughter nuns were right behind them.

“This won’t work. It can’t work, they’re coming, they’re coming,” wheezed Selene.

Indigo was frozen with uncertainty. Where could they go where the sisters couldn’t follow? After Florence, they seemed almost invincible and immortal. They weren’t. It wasn’t possible. Only the gods were immortal, and that wasn’t a sure thing either.

“The gods…,” she breathed.

“What?”

Indigo closed her eyes. She only needed a few seconds.

“What are you doing?”

She almost responded, but stopped herself. No, Selene might not go for it. She might interfere. She wouldn’t be wrong if she did, but this is what it had come to. Indigo retreated to the shadows in her mind, in her soul. She felt around on the walls and floors of the rooms she’d built, and she found the trapdoor that led some place much, much deeper than the basement.

There was always some place farther down, if you knew where to look.

Damastes, she breathed to the blackness. I know you’re in here.

Time did not quite stop, but it stretched, slowed, and waned.

Yes. But why are you?

The ancient god of violent death, of murder and mayhem, and whatever else he was alleged to oversee … the powerful, sour-tempered brute of darkness … it swelled up and stretched and enveloped her. He swallowed Nora, not quite touching her. He filled the space in the shadows around her and observed her keenly.

I have a proposal. I think you’re going to like it.

You must be quite confident of this, to arrive so boldly. You must need something.

She confessed, You’ve got me there. But I’ve got you here; so we’re either at an impasse, or we’re in a great position to strike a bargain. It’s up to you.

He pondered this. Name your terms.

Help me fight your sister.

Damastes recoiled. Then he recovered and crowded around Nora again. You need me to help fight. You think she’s here.

I know she’s here. There’s no way these slaughter nuns are following me so fast, so crazy, around all these shadows. They’ve got help. Now I need help, so are you in, or what?

What’s in it for me?