Damn Him to Hell (31 page)

Thunder Voice staggered, grabbed a table, turned, and fired a round from a nasty little gun in his hand. I ducked. Glass shattered over my head. I only registered that he had a piggy face before I whipped out my surgical knife and aimed for his balls.

But the turd bastard had turned his back on Andre. Always a mistake. Picking up my metal contraption, Andre rammed it even harder than I had across the jerk’s balding skull. This time, Thunder Voice had the sense to go down and stay down.

I wanted to be grateful, but mostly, I was annoyed that Andre had finished the job. “Tell me he’s evil and he’s a goner,” I thundered as best as I could in my feeble contralto. It’s hard for a woman to do bass. Superheroes really ought to sound heroic. I snapped on my flashlight so I could see where Andre had got to and make sure Thunder Voice didn’t come around.

Andre had dropped beside Paddy, who lay sprawled across the floor in a bed of glass. “Define evil,” he said, lifting Paddy’s eyelids. Paddy groaned, indicating he
was still alive, and my red rage retreated to its hiding place, replaced by my stupid conscience.

Leave it to Andre to hit on exactly the argument I’d been having with myself. “Is the shit redeemable?” I asked, forgetting to thunder. After nearly breaking a man’s skull and almost getting shot, I was more confused than angry. Usually, I damned people to hell when I was blind mad. In my current state, I probably couldn’t fry bacon. So I was hoping Thunder Voice only sounded like a demon and wasn’t actually one.

“From all reports, Ferguson’s a pervert, a yes man with no spine, and probably a coward. He hit a defenseless old man. What does that make him?”

Crap
. I’d seen Ferguson’s computer files. Looking at pornography was disgusting and illegal if he was distributing. He was certainly guilty of breaking the law, but no one had given me an objective definition of evil. He had thundered in a not-normal voice, hit an old man, and shot at me. Except Andre and I didn’t exactly belong here, so there was that crummy self-defense argument. Demons ought to have horns and tails or cackle madly or be more identifiable if I had to be both judge and jury. Maybe I should read more comic books and figure out how superheroes made these decisions.

I was ready to resign my position as a daughter of Saturn. How the devil was I supposed to envision justice in this case? I kicked the fat turd to see if he would roar some more, but he was out cold.

“It makes him a toad,” I decided. Inspired by a
SAVE KERMIT
poster on the wall, I resisted temptation.
“He can spend the rest of his days eating insects and doing good instead of harm.”

I visualized a toad. I was more familiar with horny toads than garden ones, and perverts ought to be labeled horny, except I knew horny toads were actually lizards. Pity. For lack of any better idea, I pictured something that could have been a frog or a toad. Or Kermit.

Andre nearly fell over backward when Thunder Voice shrank and bellowed in protest. Bullfrog was my guess. I gaped in astonishment. I hadn’t actually expected my image to
work
.

Still bellowing, Ferguson hopped under a cabinet and out of sight.

Really, I scared myself when I did these things, and I’d sure put the fear of God into Andre’s eyes. He was watching me as if I were the demon in the room.

I
glared at Andre as if I’d turn him into a toad, too, if he gave me any lip. I was pretty shaky, but I’d be damned if I’d let him know that I’d never turned a man into a bullfrog before. I’m a smart-mouth with grandiose dreams, but until Max’s death, I’d never done anything more dramatic than have a corrupt provost fired. And myself expelled. Consequences were always a bitch.

Of course, for all I knew, I was already damned for my incompetence, and turning someone into a bullfrog would get me sent directly to the devil. I needed a scorecard to keep track of my failures, but I dared him to come up with a better solution.

Shaking his head—probably in disbelief—Andre
lifted Paddy’s shoulders to examine him for injuries. “Good thinking,” was all he said.
Cool, Andre, really cool
.

Under normal circumstances, I would probably have found a seat until I was certain my knees would hold me up.

This time, I’d turned a two-hundred-pound bald guy into a
toad
. Or a bullfrog. As if I had a magic wand.
What in hell was I?
And there was that bad word again. Witches turned men into toads, right? Daughters of Saturn did bullfrogs?

I’d spent a lot of time months ago worrying that I was hallucinating, but now that I knew I wasn’t, I really needed to get my head together and deal with my weirdness.

Before I could collapse and turn into a wuss worrying about the toad’s family, the ground shook again.

Andre and I exchanged glances. In perfect accord for a change, we moved Paddy under a sturdy desk and raced into the corridor, following the thrumming sound.

We were on the right level. The roar of an engine grew louder and emanated from the second lab. Andre had his gun out, but I had a notion that shooting motors didn’t lead to happy results. What did engines have to do with chemical plants? And why the devil was this one shaking the ground? Did Acme breed mad scientists? Did swamps breed mosquitoes? We were talking the
Zone
here.

Magic
, Paddy had said. Maybe I’d better start believing in the improbable. Hell,
I
was improbable. I’d
turned a guy into a bullfrog. Could I do the same to a machine? Were there any limits to what I could do?

One of my limits was my annoyingly overdeveloped conscience, with the occasional embellishment of logic—except when I went into red-rage mode.

The second lab was as large as the first, and equally cluttered with counters and equipment. No dangerous machinery. But on the far end was what should have been a closet door—except it was shaking.

Dodging counters, we crossed the lab and, without discussion, leaned against the wall on either side of the vibrating door. Andre turned the knob, holding his automatic ready. I had my flashlight. The door opened inward. No one shouted or started shooting.

Cautiously, I peered around the doorjamb. Andre hissed at me, but one of us had to do it. At the sight within, I straightened in awe. The shaking was so bad that I seriously considered zapping the whole room to hell. If any machine was capable of going down, it ought to be this one. I stepped inside to examine it up close.

I was no mechanic, but this contraption resembled nothing more than a giant boiler energized by an enormous generator connected to . . . I squinted and followed the various pipes and gauges up to the ceiling. A calliope? A steam organ? Steampunk, anyone?

Pipes went down into the ground as well. I studied them with distrust, expecting pipelines to hell and demonic bats. Nervously, I fought the urge to zap now and ask questions later. Only my earlier notion that people needed this plant kept me from attempting to create a bomb crater.

Although from the size of this machine and the enormity of the vibrations it was sending out, I suspected that if it blew, it would take Baltimore with it.

“That’s what happens when a bunch of eggheads think they know engineering,” Andre said in disgust, studying the contraption. “And that thing’s likely to blow at any minute unless there’s an automatic shutoff valve.”

So not how I wanted to end my days—as a greasy puddle in the sky.

“Pull the plug?” I suggested valiantly. I had a sense that the shudders were sending gas or steam or some kind of heated energy up through the pipes. It was hot in here, and that ozone stink I’d noticed with the green cloud made my nose twitch. The damned thing was loud. And scary. And I really wanted to get the hell out and damn it into outer space.

My reward for resisting was realizing I was judging by appearances again. I didn’t know the machine was bad. I only suspected it caused earthquakes and gas clouds. I bit my tongue on another
dammit to hell
. We were risking our lives for a damned machine that was about to rattle my teeth out of my jaw.

But the demonic bats in Gloria’s cellar had shaken my cynical belief that hell was here on earth. If demons really were dancing around in eternal flame, could this contraption be pumping vapors from sulfurous zones? Was that their
magic
? Shouldn’t I be a priest instead of a lawyer if I had to confront Satan’s infernal engines? Or maybe I was overthinking this.

In my head, I visualized the machine turning off. It didn’t.

I imagined finding the power switch. I didn’t.

Saturn was a useless bitch.

Using the flashlight, we hunted but couldn’t find a plug. Generators operated on kerosene or gas, so maybe that’s what the thing was, although unless those pipes were vents, I couldn’t see how they were discharging the fumes. I swept my light back and forth, but I couldn’t find an
OFF
switch. This wasn’t the polite little generator my mother had attached to our trailer.

“Turn it into a toad?” Andre suggested—facetiously, I hoped, as he followed the path of my light beam on the machine with his hands, searching for who knew what.

“Right. Poof. Machine, you’re a toad.” I snapped my fingers. “Oops. Guess that didn’t work so hot.” I was nervous. Andre needed to be damned glad he was cool with my Saturn talent, or I’d be turning him into a grinning Cheshire cat. I’d warned him about my instability. I was a lot shakier than I was letting on. Nervousness was bad for my soul.

For all I knew, syringe-wielding mad scientists would be down here any second.

The machine clunked on, rattling the walls, vibrating our teeth. I really didn’t like the appearance of those pipes. They could go anywhere—into the plant, into another machine, into the Zone and surrounding neighborhoods. The ones going down might go straight to hell or the harbor for all I knew. Acme
could be brewing their very own terrorist plot. Or an environmental disaster to beat BP on the Gulf Coast.

Apparently with the same thought in mind, Andre circled the enormous boiler. It practically filled the room, so this took some acrobatic maneuvering. If I could have seen him climbing through pipes, I’d probably have appreciated his prowess, but he was merely a vague shadow in my flashlight beam.

I was shaking, but that could have been from fear. In my limited knowledge, boilers could and did explode when they built up too much pressure. But we couldn’t in all good conscience run like crazy. Not only would we have no chance of escaping, but an explosion could take out too many other lives besides our own. Bill, Leibowitz, the lab researchers, and the homeless guys, as well as Paddy, were all still downstairs.

Why wasn’t anyone trying to dismantle the monster?

I inched around the room, focusing the light on Andre so he could see, sort of. On the far side, he located a panel and popped it open. I wasn’t sure if I should back out of the room in case he blew it up or ease over to check out what he’d found. Since I wouldn’t know a gauge from a switch, I opted for keeping an eye on the door to the corridor.

He fiddled and punched until the boiler shuddered, hissed, and expired. The generator switched off automatically.

I wiped sweat off my brow and Andre the Über-Cool did the same.

The silence was almost frightening. Only then did I realize that the emergency exit lights in the corridor had all gone out. We were now relying solely on my flashlight.

A bloodcurdling scream broke our paralysis.

I thought the shriek was more fury than pain, but that didn’t stop me from running for the stairwell. The noise was definitely above us, and I didn’t want to try the elevators if the lights didn’t work.

I found a public stairwell, not the secret one to the lower levels. Our footsteps echoed off the metal stairs and concrete block enclosure. It smelled of old cigarettes and fried onions and ammonia. Or pee, but I wanted to give the scientists more credit than that.

We burst into Acme’s main corridor and straight into the arms of half a dozen of their black-suited security goons—like the ones who had lied about Andre killing Gloria.

I bit my tongue on an instant curse until I could judge objectively. All black suits looked alike.

As startled as we were, the guards jumped at our arrival. Through the air vents, an outraged bullfrog croaked. He’d found the vents?

“The freaks have ruined us!” a white-haired, Einsteinish character in a lab coat screamed from further down the hall. “That was the last damned batch! We’re ruined!”

His thick white eyebrows almost crawled up his forehead when he spotted us. “There they are! Catch them!”

As if the goons had to be told.

I kicked the shin of the brute trying to manhandle me and elbowed another. “Bergdorff?” I shouted, needing clarification before I got all red ragey. The Einstein character certainly looked like a mad scientist.

The goons were too busy grabbing at us to answer and the troll doll just kept shrieking in rage. Violent, insane rage, as Gloria and the vagrants had demonstrated.

Even though the goons accomplished nothing by jerking us around, they still had to get nasty. The one I’d elbowed yanked me off my feet by the back of my shirt and left me flailing, with the girls practically hanging out of my collar.