As large as it was—and Margaret’s personal service elevator was quite large—the ride down to Forty Feet Under was a cramped one. Verune stayed behind in the penthouse, saying he’d take the next ride down.
“There will be plenty of room,” Margaret said.
“I beg to differ.”
She’d tried to convince him otherwise, but he’d refused to budge. Literally.
Margaret found refusal sexually appealing in men. So, she’d stopped bothering.
At first, she hadn’t quite understood what he’d been getting on about. You could fit a small car in the service elevator with room to spare. But then, the elevator and its travelers—Rufus, Eyvan, Margaret herself, one of Eyvan’s trusted bodyguards, and the freak known as Lizzie—reached the lower floor of the skyscraper’s underground parking garage and picked up one last rider, and in that moment, Margaret found enlightenment.
In hindsight, the elevator might not have been big enough, after all.
The rider was long and utterly inhuman—at least below the waist. Above the waist, he had the head, torso, and arms of a man; below it, he was all snake. Dark, scaly, maroon-colored snake. Actually, his chest and torso were more inhuman than they looked at first glance—assuming your first glance didn’t include freaking out about how big they were. The guy’s chest and torso had lengthened and broadened by what had to be half and again their original span. The base of his neck had started to widen to match that same span, as if his shoulders were preparing to move to either side of his body, rather than atop it. As for his tail, it continued at his waist’s thickness for much of its length, except as it began tapering to the point at its tip.
The snake-man—“Steyphan,” Eyvan had called him—was long enough to coil all the way around the elevator and then some. This made it obligatory for Steyphan to be the first one out once they’d reached Forty Feet Under. There was no chance in hell that Margaret’s wheelchair would make it over the sheer girth of Steyphan’s tail.
The Lizzie followed behind the big snake-man after he’d slithered out of the elevator. Rufus, and Evyan’s bodyguard had followed after them, with Eyvan and Margaret herself in the rear.
Whoever said money couldn’t buy happiness must not have had that much money after all. Money could absolutely buy happiness. There were only two things money couldn’t buy: satisfaction and eternal life. DAISHU was working on fixing the latter, and, as for the former, that was what having more money was for. Big spending kept the boredom at bay.
Margaret’s big spending definitely brought her happiness. There were many things she loved about having her very own secret terrorist compound in the bowels the skyscraper she lived in and owned—to say nothing of all the other nefarious things she had tucked away in the thousands of properties she owned across the city through her majority share in the Revenel Construction Company—but the dive bar was far and away her favorite. Her accountant had found a loophole in the tax code which allowed her to avoid both taxes and the internal revenue service’s meddlesome inquiries by claiming all of the income from the bar went to charitable causes, which it did; every penny went straight into the Innocents’ war chest. Every cent that didn’t fall into the government’s grubby hands was one more sliver of cash the Innocents’ could devote to doing the Angel’s work of ridding the world of the heretics, infidels, and atheists.
Forty Feet Under also had some really killer club sandwiches.
But, today, her favorite bar was a shadow of its former self.
Margaret gawked at her surroundings.
“By the Godhead…” she muttered.
The bar looked as dead as Margaret felt. Maybe worse.
On any other day, the place would have looked great. It had an antique feel—early Prelatory; it looked like the joints Margaret’s grandparents might have canoodled in. The ceiling was mottled in grays, blacks, and whites in an impression of owls’ plumage—a bit of dark augury humor at the patrons’ expense. The bar was lit by several bunches of wide-mouthed glass jars scattered around the room, suspended from the ceiling by cords, giving the impression of improvised chandeliers. The LED bulbs at the end of the cords glowed in the colors of candlelight, giving the bar floor the warm hues a night by a campfire in the woods.
But today, the lighting made things feel like hell warmed over.
Instead of resting neatly in their usual places—bunched up against the minimalist bar, or by the small, tall tables that dotted the bar floor—several of the wrought iron stools had been haphazardly knocked over. A trail of dried stains drizzled the floor, as if someone had been carrying a leaky bucket filled with filth. The place even smelled wrong. Its usual musk of booze, fries, cigarettes and lemon wedges was absent. In its place, a faint, sickly sweet aroma clung to the air, like the one that hung over Verune, only even stronger. It stung like toilet bowl cleaner.
No one had collected the dishes. The establishment was littered by the plates and cups from patrons’ meals, complete with rotting leftovers. Weird-looking mold covered every bit of food. It was disgusting, and downright slovenly, though Margaret remembered to temper her anger (somewhat), reminding herself that, unlike she’d initially thought, the pandemic was actually real, and not their long-sought dream for an infidel-killing bioweapon finally realized.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
One plate even had a glowy bulb thing rising up from rotting leftover fish.
Margaret rolled forward with a push of her joystick. “Outta the way,” she said, waving her hand.
Lizzie and the snake-man slunked off to the side; Steyphan coiled up against the back wall.
“What happened here?” Eyvan asked.
The wheelchair’s motor whirred in soft spurts as Margaret followed the trail of stains on the floor, navigating past the overturned stools. The trail led into the kitchen, right up to the base of the cupboard built into the false wall that hid the hydraulic door into the Innocents’ compound—five inches of solid, reinforced steel. Someone could fire a gun on the other side of that thing and you wouldn’t hear a peep.
“Where’s this compound of yours?” Steyphan asked. His voice echoed through the establishment.
“Behind a hidden door in the kitchen,” Eyvan said.
But Margaret wasn’t listening to them.
No, she was looking at the trail of stains.
They gave her a bad feeling.
“ALICE,” she said, “open the door.”
Nothing happened.
“Uh, ALICE… what gives?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Lady Margaret,” the AI said, “the door appears to be malfunctioning. Something is wrong with the motor. I can’t say what’s exactly wrong with it, though. Diagnostic systems aren’t giving me anything useful. You might want to check to—”
“—Fuck.” Margaret bounced her head off her wheelchair’s headrest. Then, with a groan, she wheeled out of the kitchen and back onto the bar floor.
“What’s wrong?” Rufus asked.
“Use your damn ears, Rufus,” she huffed. “The door’s busted.” Margaret shook her head. “Shit, this is bad.” She looked over her shoulder.
“Steyphan,” Eyvan said, “maybe you can use your powers to help us with our door trouble?”
“That depends,” the snake-man said, “what kind of door is it?”
Lizzie made some more of those eerie organ-music noises with her snout.
If that’s what all the divine beasts sound like, Margaret thought, I really hope I’m going to be able to understand it eventually, or things or going to get real awkward real fast.
“I mean, I could,” Steyphan said, responding to Lizzie, “though Catherine would be better at it, to say nothing of his Holiness—but, I’m an engineer. I like to know these things, you know?”
“What?” Rufus asked.
Eyvan looked up at Steyphan, his face full of wonder. “The divine beasts possess supernal powers,” Eyvan explained. “They can rip objects apart and blast things away. And soon, Margaret will, too.” He glanced at Margaret.
“Well, the Lassedite can,” Steyphan said. He looked at Lizzie; she sat in one of the stools. “We’re still learning.”
“Can you do it or not?” Margaret asked.
“I’ll certainly try,” Steyphan said, shifting his coils. “Though, if I can’t do it, you should ask Anne or Catherine. The Innocents should be helping them get into the service elevator by now. They should be here soon.”
“Well?,” Margaret demanded. “I’m waiting…” She twiddled her finger on the tip of the joystick.
Steyphan nodded and then slithered into the kitchen, his underbelly’s scutes brushing against the threshold as he moved from the smooth brown floor to the kitchen’s white tiles. His lower body knocked several stools aside, and he winced as they clattered to the floor.
Lizzie said something in response.
Steyphan twisted his body like an arm as he turned around to face her. “Try making that joke when you’re the one with the tail,” he quipped.
The dragon-headed girl tilted her head to the side.
“C’mon,” Steyphan said, waving his arm, “you’re gonna want to see this,” he said. “It’ll be good for your training.”
Lizzie got off the stool and followed behind him. She had to wait until Steyphan pulled himself into the kitchen before there was enough room for her to walk in herself.
Scales rustled on the floor as Steyphan turned around and stuck his torso out of the door. “Where’s the secret door, exactly?”
“Behind the cupboard,” Margaret said.
“Which one?” he asked.
Groaning, Margaret twisted the joystick—swiveling her seat around—and then rolled toward the kitchen door, raised her arm, and pointed. “That one. Third from the back.”
The snake-man looked behind him and then nodded.
Margaret rolled out of the way as Steyphan slithered up to the false wall.
“Alright,” he said, “here goes nothing…”
A second later, the cupboard shattered. The kitchen appliances on the shelves crumpled like aluminum cans as the secret door buckled. For an instant, the metal groaned, and then blasted away, imploding into the room behind it.
And then everything went to Hell.
Maybe half a dozen figures streamed out of the open doorway—they moved too quickly for Margaret to count. All of them were rotting. Their skin was necrotic. Fungal growths crowned from their heads and limbs. They were frenetic. They clawed and frothing, screaming as they tumbled and scurried, scrambling like rabid insects, bone crunching as hands and fingers and feet broke inside their skin or broke through and snapped off their bodies as they pushed and shoved.
Demons, Verune had called them.
Everyone screamed. Margaret’s wheelchair toppled over, shoved aside by a demon’s flailing limbs. Eyvan’s bodyguard screamed “Run!” as Margaret’s world tumbled head over heels. She heard panicked yells and pistol fire. The percussive spurts made her dead ears ring.
The mad infected swept through the kitchen like a human tide. They crashed into the back wall and tumbled to the floor, and then shrieked and rasped as they got onto twos and fours and skittered toward the kitchen door.
Toward the bar floor.
One of the demons made a cabinet topple over. A kitchenware cacophony spilled onto the ground.
Margaret pushed off the kitchen’s tiled floor. She grabbed her overturned wheelchair and pulled, tugging herself up right as another volley of bullets shot through the demons, splattering black and green on the walls and floor, and—wetly—onto Margaret’s face. The surfaces hissed as the green powder began to eat away at them. It made her face tickle.
The mad infected charged at Eyvan’s bodyguard before Margaret had even wiped the ooze off her face. Several of them threw themselves at the bodyguard—at where he stood in the kitchen’s open doorway; others barreled past him. His scream made Margaret flinch.
The wheelchair groaned, the plastic and metal deforming as Lizzie grabbed it and pushed off it, darting out of the kitchen. The dragon-headed girl swiped her claws through the air, grasping at the monsters, trying to stop them from leaping over the bar. She caught one, but two escaped, flinging themselves straight at Eyvan and the Archluminer, who scrambled to escape, but failed.
They screamed, joining the bodyguard, though his screams cut short a second later.
Margaret screamed, and then shrieked as the walls seemed to move around her, only to realize it was the snake-man moving out of the kitchen, slithering toward the bar floor. The backs of Steyphan’s hands bumped against the ceiling, jostling some of the jar-lights as he raised his arms and said some gibberish that Margaret couldn’t understand.
“Fleoganin stan.”