The drizzled maze of liquor rose up in rabid walls of white-hot curtains. Mick and the Streeters cowered back as Elijah turned the angels on several more candles, detonating them and showering the ground in more fire. Within moments, the tables were engulfed in an inferno.

  The damned in the crowd were bathed in waves of blue flame, but rather than flail about in excruciating pain, they merely rose from their chairs and pointed accusingly at Elijah and Mia. The forest of flames expanded outward and upward, crawling up the blue curtains and devouring them.

  Elijah sheathed the angels and grabbed Mia by the arms.

  “We’re riding the cart out of here,” he declared.

  “The what?!” she exclaimed.

  “Fine, I’ll go first!” he said, yanking her towards his chest and pulling both of them in a leaping arc towards the cart. He crashed atop the cart on his back with her safely cradled atop him. The angle and speed upon which they landed launched the cart forward through the gauntlet of the burning ballroom.

  Mia buried her head in Elijah’s chest as he aimed the boys outward into the crowd of burning undeath and clicked off rounds, launching hissing bodies tumbling away. When the cart rolled past the congregation of tables, the cart toppled over.

  Smelling blood in the water, Mick and company thought they had the jump on their old pal, but Elijah immediately crawled onto a knee and held Mia down with his left hand as he laid down suppressing fire with the vengeance-spitting angel in his right. They rightly ducked and scrambled away. The Streeters ran for the bar and leapt over the counter for refuge.

  Elijah kicked over one of the round wooden tables and he and Mia took cover behind it. Mick popped up over the bar and drilled a few shots into the table. When the Streeters tried to follow his lead and popped to their feet, Elijah did the same and clipped several of them with his angelic friends. The holy rounds burst the decayed, grayed flesh in frayed chunks that spattered the bar and motivated Mick to stay down.

  “Now! C’mon!” Elijah barked as he yanked Mia to her feet as they tore off towards the exit. He fired several more shots at the bar, shattering bottles and raining busted liquor down on them to keep their heads down.

  When Elijah met Mia at the edge of the ballroom, they looked back at the stage area and were stunned at how quickly the conflagration had engulfed everything. They could feel the heat even at that distance. The throngs of damned emerged from the fire, moving with the same listless gait as they did to enter the hall. This shook both Elijah and Mia.

  “Let’s go,” he suggested softly, their spellbound eyes locked onto the incoming hordes.

  As Elijah and Mia rounded the corner to look for a way out and down, they were stunned. From afar—and tightly nestled within the unfurled hallway whose vanishing point eluded them—a strange, fleshy mass rumbled towards them. Elijah recognized the odd, ominous threat. The fanged meat-worm gurgled a wailing cry, clicking its fangs and flexing the muscles in its throat as it hurtled along a viscous trail of death.

  Mia fell back into Elijah’s arms. “What the hell is that?!”

  “Something we don’t wanna mess with. Gotta find a way downstairs.” Elijah noticed an alcove across the way that was deep enough to provide concealment and cover. “There!” he pointed. “Come on!”

  With the ballroom fire heating their backs, the shambling hordes of blazing death lumbering forth, and the Streeters mere moments from tapping them on the shoulder, Elijah and Mia ran across the way and nestled themselves in recesses of the shadowed alcove.

  Several of the Streeters saw their prey and impulsively thought to give chase. Mick knew better, but the hair-triggers raced wildly from the relative safety of the flaming ballroom and right out into the path of the toothy caravan. The worm moved with such unstoppable ferocity that the poor bastards didn’t have a chance to scream when the collision turned them into a slurry. In a moment, it had already gone, noted by the subsiding rumble.

  Mia shut her eyes and began to sob. Elijah turned to her. “We’ve gotta get outta here. It’s always moving; we gotta stay moving, too.”

  At the rear of the alcove, covered by a mound of trash, was a hollow at the base of the wall just big enough for them to tunnel through. They quickly scurried through it.

  The cramped, dark passageway scraped their palms and knees with detritus as they shimmied through it. It took an uncomfortable amount of time to traverse through the walls, but a glimmer of dull light beamed at the end of the tunnel.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Emerging through the gap in the walls, Elijah and Mia rose to their feet and staggered back in confusion. They were standing on the base of a stairway that led upward to a network of stairways that forked off in every conceivable direction: upward, downward, sideways, spiraling off and away in a manner that physics, gravity and material science was not only defied but broken.

  Staring up into the well of madness dizzied Mia and she slumped into Elijah’s arms.

  “Not something you see every day,” he remarked.

  Mia’s exasperation was caught in her chest as her jaw hung agape.

  “One of them have to lead down to the third floor. Lord knows he won’t give us any freebies.”

  “He?”

  “The guy who talks through the speakers.”

  “The Broker.”

  “You know him, then.”

  She nodded. “I woke up on the floor of a dressing room.”

  “Dressing room?”

  “Yeah, like the ones in the clubs I work.”

  “Hmm. I woke up in a room with these in a suitcase,” he said, flashing the angels.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know. I know we gotta get outta here. Rules are rules. We find a way down to the next level,” he suggested as they weighed their options. From where they stood, there were dozens of stairs that snaked about like the corded roots of a gorgon’s scalp.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Decisions, decisions, decisions,” the Broker’s voice boomed, shattering the tense quiet.

  Elijah’s immediate reflexive instinct was to wince in resentment.

  “Each set of stairs leads somewhere else, but only one set leads to the third floor. But which one? You could end up back on the fourth, fifth or even sixth? That would disappointing, wouldn’t it?”

  Elijah pulled up his shooters. “Hey, why not show your pretty face so I can shoot it off?”

  “If you end up seeing my face, it means you’ve already lost the game. You’ll have to swallow your pride and sally forth,” the Broker broke into a sneering chuckle.

  “Fuck you,” Mia hissed under her breath.

  The Broker’s laugh echoed through the kaleidoscopic hellscape of stairs and doors until it tapered into silence. Elijah sighed, holstering the pistols again. Their skills had no influence over this ungodly chamber of architectural bewilderment. The pair scaled up the stairs that led into the forking, tangled nest of choices.

  Mia looked up and about, overwhelmed by the labyrinthine complex. “Maybe this is it. He wants us stuck here forever.”

  “I don’t think he’s in charge.”

  She turned to him, her brow furrowed. “What?”

  “The Broker. I don’t think he’s calling the shots.”

  “Then who is?”

  He shrugged. “The shot-callers—the real ones—don’t let you hear them call the shots. They pull strings from afar. I ran with crews up, down and around this town. In the army, same thing. Grunts never saw the generals. We never shook hands with the commander-in-chief. We never bumped elbows with the executive branch.”

  “And?”

  “I think the Broker is somebody’s bitch.”

  “Who could be worse than him? He runs this place.”

  “No. He’s like a superintendent. He runs property management on behalf of someone else. Not that it matters. The rules are the rules, regardless of who made ‘em. We’re stuck playin’ by ‘em.”

  A lull settled in. This bizarre realm wasn’t going anywhere and they knew it. They knew that the Broker had them where he wanted them. They didn’t have to worry about the speeding, slug-like maw careening down from above to crash through the stairs—although the terror was that in here anything seemed a possibility. No, it wasn’t the Broker’s style. He seemed to like rules. More so, he seemed to revel in watching others play by them.

  Mia wrapped her arms around her chest. It wasn’t cold, but she was shivering. Elijah wished he had a coat to give her. Instead, he stepped forward with arms open. She gave the subtlest nod and he embraced her. She closed her eyes and loosened up for the first time since awakening in the hotel. He had that effect on her and she on him.

  “I could stay here forever,” she said with a flippant comfort.

  Elijah found the comment concerning. “What?”

  She looked up at him. “I just—this is a nice moment. I just wish it wasn’t happening here.”

  “Forever,” he murmured.

  She could see the gears spinning on his face. “What? What is it?”

  “Look at all that,” Elijah gestured out to the torturous tangle of potential paths. “There’s no way anyone could be expected to make the right choice.”

  “So then the rules are rigged?”

  “Think of it like this: what do you do if you want to make sure someone doesn’t make a choice? Any choice at all?”

  She shook her head, not understanding.

  “Think,” he suggested.

  She did so… and then it hit her. It was so simple that the answer was always there. “Give them unlimited choices.”

  “For some reason, the Broker wants us to run out the clock.”

  “By wasting time worrying about making the wrong choice.”

  He nodded. “I don’t know but if I had to bet, I’d say that it doesn’t matter which door we pick. They all lead...”

  “To the third floor.”

  They came to the same conclusion, nodding to each other before approaching the closest door that was mere feet away. He looked at her one last time for confirmation. Her eyes gave him permission. Elijah reached out and turned the knob, pushing the door open.

  The clear path led into a small alcove that emptied into a larger section of the hotel. He pulled the long irons free to appease his rightful concerns as they ventured within. Unlike the gridded layout where duplicable rooms were stamped in a contiguous pattern, they found themselves in a sterile lounge area. The high ceiling accommodated several tall, fluted columns with ornate crown moldings which supported the level above. Chandeliers furnished with rows of crystal pendants hung from the ceiling. The murderous meat-train couldn’t get them here. Unlike on the other floors, a genuine, infectious calmness permeated. In fact, it was cozy—suspiciously cozy.

  For the moment, they were safe, at least from familiar threats that Hotel Erebus had previously set upon them. He felt at ease enough to holster the angels and loosen his posture. The constant stress had taken a toll and he knew the same was true for Mia. He took a deep breath and looked around to gauge anything that might be of use. There was a brief respite from the suffocating dread.

  Mia sat on one of the lounge chairs and buried her face in her hands, quietly sobbing. “Why? Why are we even here?”

  Elijah sighed. “I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. All I remember is waking up here.”

  “Me too,” she said, weighed down by the heaviness of the moment. “What do you remember before that?”

  He pondered her question deeply. “I remember my life. I remember you. I remember… serving. The war. Coming home. Gettin’ up to shit with the boys. Goin’ here. Goin’ there. I—I just don’t get it.”

  “The last thing I remember is…” Mia suddenly stopped. “You.”

  Elijah’s eyebrows rose. “Me?”

  “I remember that we were together, and then… nothing. I can’t remember anything else.”

  The fog in Elijah’s mind dissipated and his resolve solidified. “You’re right. The last thing I remember is being with you and then nothing.”

  “All I know is that the Broker knows more about me than he should.”

  “Like what?”

  “He knew I grew up in the Church. Mocked me by callin’ me ‘choir boy’. Said it off-hand like it’d be something to pick at me.”

  Mia lowered her head. “Yeah, he knows stuff about me, too. Stuff I never told anyone. Not even you.”

  “We all have our secrets. Things we hold close. Things that are nobody else’s business. That’s our right as the living. The dead got no secrets to tell.”

  She stood up and took his hands into hers. “It’s alright to share things, too.”

  Regret unfurled down his face like a heavy blanket.

  “What is it?” she asked with genuine care.

  “I know I didn’t always treat you the way you deserve to be treated.”

  She smirked softly. “You never treated yourself the way you deserve to be treated.”

  “Neither of us are saints, I guess.”

  “And we don’t have to be. It’s enough that we care. Especially in this city. Who else is gonna care for us if not each other?”

  Elijah nodded. Mia had a knack for dropping pearls of wisdom just when he needed to hear them.

  “I got a lot of regrets, Mia. A lot of ‘em. In the war, I got my hands dirty. I—I killed people out there.”

  “I got regrets, too. I wish I never… you know, started trickin’. Sellin’ myself.”

  “If they call you a whore, then I’m a whore, too. Just depends on why we do it and for who.”

  “True. But then again, if I never got into the biz I never woulda met you.”

  Elijah was quick to add. “Same. And if I never got into the rackets, I never woulda met you.”

  “Sometimes two people are in the right place for the wrong reasons. Sometimes that’s exactly where they need to be.”

  “There you go with that wisdom again, Ms. Wolfe. You’re gonna make an honest man out of me eventually.”

  “If we get outta here, I’ll be happy to try.” Mia seemed to become resigned to a new truth. Her face slacked, possessed by a beautiful revelation. “I’m gonna stop trickin’.”