Cruel World(84)

“What in God’s name are you?” a gravelly voice said.

“Please,” Quinn said, trying to focus. And as his vision straightened, all he could see was the butt of a rifle. Then darkness.





Chapter 19



Sacrifice



Quinn came awake to blinding pain in his face and the douse of ice water cascading over his head and shoulders.

Reality blazed into existence as he rose from unconsciousness. His hands were bound together behind a wooden chair he sat upon. He was in a room made of cinderblocks stacked together, their borders gapped, daylight pouring between them. Crude crosses were drawn on several of the blocks in what looked like charcoal. The roof was a single chunk of ribbed steel, and there were two people standing before him. One was a middle-aged man with a gray goatee and cold eyes holding an empty ice cream pail. And the other was a woman with long, straggly, blond hair, her age somewhere near the man’s but harder to determine because of the taut skin covering her face, stretched tight by high cheekbones and a broad smile.

“Can you hear me?” the man asked, and Quinn remembered his voice as the last thing he’d heard before being knocked unconscious.

“Yes.”

“And it can speak, too,” the blond woman said. Her voice was velvety soft, a frigid purr that sent a splinter of ice down his spine.

“You can have my supplies,” Quinn said.

“Thank you, we’ve taken them already,” the woman said.

He waited a beat, shifting his eyes between the two of them.

“Then what do you want?”

“We want our world back, demon.”

“What?”

“Oh come now. We were doing so well. I’ll ask the questions and you answer them. Okay?” the woman said tilting her head to one side. She came closer and Quinn could smell her, a molding flowery scent competing with rancid body odor. He looked at the man who merely glared back at him, freezing stare, eyes half-lidded.

“I was just trying to cross the bridge.”

“Jimmy, can you refresh its memory on how this works?” the woman said, stepping to the side, her smile unwavering. The man lunged forward, and Quinn didn’t have time to flinch.

Jimmy’s fist drove into his solar plexus, and his lungs caught fire. He gasped then gagged, stomach acid racing into his mouth. He coughed and spit, the cramped muscles in his midsection slowly loosening.

“There. That’s better. Now, where did you come from?” the woman asked.

“Maine,” Quinn managed, though the word was more of a moan.

“Hmm, you’re not fooling us, harbinger. You crawled from the cracks of the earth, divulged from the stinking bowels of the underworld.”

“What?”

“Jimmy?”

Jimmy’s fist connected with his shoulder this time, knuckles smacking the tender flesh where the nitrogen had scalded him. Quinn cried out as tears flooded his eyes. The pain was something alive, writhing in time with his accelerated heartbeat.

“Listen to me, beast, you have no power here in the sovereign nation of God Almighty. You will answer my questions or suffer his wrath.” Spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke, some of it landing on his face as she neared him. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Quinn breathed. Behind his back he began to feel how he was bound to the chair. The rope around his wrists wound through one wooden support. He touched the wood with his fingers. It was decoratively carved, and thin.

“Good. Again, admit that you are the cause of this plague of the body and mind that has killed so many of the unfaithful and changed the rest into creatures designed by the fallen one.”

Quinn glanced past Jimmy and saw a rickety wooden door set into the building behind him. There was no handle on it. He nodded.

“I am.”

Jimmy inhaled and tipped his head back, closing his eyes. He began to mumble a prayer under his breath. The woman traced the sign of the cross on her forehead, the manic smile still pulling at her mouth.

“I knew it. The moment I saw your cursed face, I knew we’d found the cause of the downfall. Jimmy, go get him. Tell him the news; tell him he was right.”

Jimmy turned away and pushed at the wooden door, which swung open. No lock.

“Before you go,” Quinn said, stopping the man in his tracks. “You should know you’re all doomed. By bringing me here, you’ve killed yourselves.”