Dark Revelations (29 page)

Authors: Duane Swierczynski,Anthony E. Zuiker

chapter 53

LABYRINTH

T
hey’d mark you in the old days.

If you were a criminal.

Anglo-Saxon law had it so vagrants and Gypsies were branded with a large
V
, permanently seared into your chest with a hot iron. Brawlers and fighters were given an
F
; slaves an
S
. Thieves would receive burns on their cheeks so that all may know not to trust them around their personal property.

Even as recently as two centuries ago, disloyal soldiers were tattooed or branded with the letters
BC
—bad character.

Senator Ayres deserves his branding.

I could have burned his face. But this is the twenty-first century, after all. Such tortures are best left in the Dark Ages.

People may think the act was cruel.

That will change when I upload the good senator’s real biography, the one they don’t hand out in his public affairs office, the one I’ve been compiling for ten years, the one that talks about his supposed humanitarian efforts to fight disease and hunger around the world, and how these efforts resulted in millions of dollars in contributions....

And how many of these millions went to the good senator’s spacious manse in the O’Fallon suburb of St. Louis, Missouri.

And a vacation home near Myrtle Beach.

And lavish buffets of fat-laden foods for your family and mistresses and their families, in and out on a rotating basis?

Did you go to the beach to sun, my dear senator?

Well, I’ve saved you the effort, haven’t I? Your face will appear nice and sunburned for the rest of your life.

I follow the social media hive mind for a while, pleased that the message is getting out.

Then there is a sound.

In the hallway.

Slight.

But I hear it.

I turn—

[To enter the Labyrinth, please go to
Level26.com
and enter the code: enter the maze]

chapter 54

DARK

N
o.

Impossible.

Not him.

Not here . . .

Everything had happened in a frenzied blur—the chase, Dark’s shots missing Labyrinth....

Not only missed, but seemed to pass right through him.

The fuck?

Dark had never seen a suspect move so fast, not ever. And he almost didn’t see the figure in the robe charging at him, slamming into Dark’s sternum with the strength and speed of a sledgehammer.

And in that moment he saw Labyrinth’s mask—

A crow-featured plague doctor mask.

Beaked, black, grotesquely inhuman features—but with all-too-human eyes staring at him from cutout holes in the mask.

A glimpse was all Dark had before the fight resumed. Dark nearly fell to his knees but focused on breathing. Just the oxygen and blood flowing.
The adrenaline in the blood will keep you moving. Hurt later. Move now. The monster is getting away....

Dark charged forward with punches to his attacker’s face, his right arm partially numb—but that was okay, because it wasn’t really attached to Dark’s body anymore. It felt like its own living organism, a slab of bone and muscle designed for one thing: beating the living fuck out of Labyrinth with a series of supercharged blows.

But the man in the mask absorbed every punch without it seeming to affect him at all. And during a brief pause between blows, Labyrinth returned a jab of his own that pained Dark down to the marrow of his bones. Dark wasn’t even sure where he’d been struck—only that it hurt far worse than it should have.

Labyrinth took a step back, put a hand to his face, then removed the crow mask.

Revealing
another mask
beneath.

The last mask Steve Dark thought he’d ever see again.

The Sqweegel mask.

The man behind the mask let out something that sounded like a chortle, or a snort, or perhaps even a choked laugh before turning and disappearing into the gloom.

Again: Dark knew it was impossible. It wasn’t him. Not here. Not anywhere. He’d watched the bloodied chunks of his body burn in a furnace. There was no coming back from where he’d sent Sqweegel.

So Dark swallowed hard and pursued his suspect. He could hear frenzied slaps of boot heels on stone stairs, so Dark followed him up into the top stories of the ancient building, even though his guts felt like they were lined with razor blades. Dark ascended the central staircase, floor by floor by agonizing floor, until he was almost at the roof level....

chapter 55

LABYRINTH

O
h, Steve Dark.

Ever since seeing you in New York City I had a feeling we’d be meeting up.

And you don’t meet someone new without giving them a present.

So I did a little digging into your world . . .

And oh, you won’t believe what I found.

It’s been difficult to contain myself.

Almost sent it to you directly.

But I thought . . . better to wait.

I knew you’d come along eventually.

And you did.

You found me.

You can be proud of that, at least.

No one’s ever looked me in the eye and saw me for my true self.

No one’s ever come close.

You climbed up and skittered across the top of the maze just like a brave little dark mouse, didn’t you?

More than Damien Blair’s ever done.

It took me a little while to find just the right one as described by Tom Riggins, but it was worth the effort and shipping.

The mask:

White latex with metal zippers along the mouth and the top of the head.

Eye holes so its wearer can see perfectly, clearly, no obstructions whatsoever.

You had to keep it greased inside, and that was going to wreak havoc with my hair later.

But it was worth it.

Oh, the look on your face, Steve Dark.

To smash away the visage of your latest enemy, only to reveal your ultimate nemesis beneath.

“Sqweegel.”

I don’t even have to say anything.

The shock temporarily paralyzes you. This is the face you see in your nightmares, isn’t it, Steve Dark? Tom Riggins sees it, too. All the time. He doesn’t tell you, but this face is his greatest fear. That someday he’s going to wake up in the middle of the night to discover this face looking down at him, only he’s afraid he’s going to see
your eyes
through the cutout holes, and
your mouth
, curled into a defiant, sickly smile, the open zipper teeth only increasing the effect.

Tom Riggins is afraid of this because he knows the truth about you, Steve Dark. About the blood that runs through your veins.

I know it, too.

Do you?

No.

I don’t think you do.

That beautiful moment of Steve Dark’s paralysis is all I need. I chose this specific spot. I led him to this point in the maze because I knew it would work to my advantage. Even down below in the gloom of the close I saw it perfectly and knew how it would play out. And Steve Dark followed me right into it, just like everyone else.

Everyone
has a secret that can be pulled from deep beneath the flesh, then held up, dripping with blood and viscera, to be examined in the naked light.

Dark’s secret is bigger and uglier than most.

I chose this spot because of the window behind Steve Dark. Now I rush forward.

The face of Sqweegel temporarily fries his internal circuits—

So it is relatively easy to push him OUT of the window.