City of Shadows Read online

  This was all worse.

  I felt the pressure of my hands ripped with power tools. My fingers crushed by hammers. Being set on fire. Being burned by endless steam. Every bone in my body broke. Every joint shattered and dislocated. My back was set on fire. I was sexually assaulted with and without foreign objects. I was whipped, stripped, hung, crucified, gassed, strangled, shot, and inflicted with every manner of torture that could be devised over thirty years in a torture chamber, a war zone, and in a city where hundreds tried to provoke a reaction of despair and pain.

  And I felt every bit of pain and trauma and despair from decades in a matter of seconds.

  The pain laid me out so badly I dropped to the floor—but it was over so fast I caught myself before I could hit the marble. Help.

  Kozbar chuffed. “You’re still alive.”

  Hidden by my doubled over body, I reached into my suit jacket and touched my cell phone.

  I looked up and met Kozbar’s eyes. I smiled at him with a wolfish grin. “My turn.”

  I will note here for convenience sake that it did not take me two hours to walk from the cafe to Toynbee Tower. It took that long for me to call home, talk to my former partner, and confirm his exact recipe for a useful chemical mixture… then I had every altar boy, deacon, and volunteer at the Westminster Cathedral to assemble aluminum tape, iron oxide and magnesium together in the right formula … then they delivered it. After that, it took what felt like forever for me to levitate up the side of Toynbee Tower, smelling my way to the right floor, and placing the thermite charges against all of the office windows, all without being seen.

  And it took only seconds for the signal from my cell phone to set off all of the thermite charges.

  Every window—two walls of the room—lit up in a massive, exaggerated fireball.

  I grabbed the gun in my jacket and shot to my feet in one smooth movement. I whipped the gun out and across Kozbar’s face as I jumped up. The pistol-whipping rocked his head back, and I added insult to injury by kicking him away.

  With my left hand, I smacked Fowler in the face with the Soul Stone. He fell back, screaming in pain. Then I opened fire with my pistol, shooting out the lights in the ceiling.

  The jihadists around us were already distracted with the windows turning into a giant fireball. Those who did see my move couldn’t risk opening fire without hitting at least one of their employers. By the time everyone else turned their attention to us, I had shot out all the lights, leaving the only light in the room coming from the wall of fire trying to get into the building.

  Then the windows finally shattered under the stress, opening up the chamber to the high winds of being over 400 feet in the air, as well as covering the jihadists in a blanket of broken glass.

  Meanwhile, I was running for my life, out of the chamber, into the massive marble hallway, and heading for the elevator.

  The elevator doors opened when I was halfway down the hall. The elevator was filled with security guards armed with batons and guns.

  I didn’t hesitate and tacked right into the first door I saw—it was the stairwell.

  I narrowly missed a lighting bolt thrown my direction. It cut through the first guard in the elevator and made the elevator explode.

  Then a second explosion rocked the building. One of my thermite charges had ignited some of the internal writing of the building and caught a gas main.

  All of the lights went black, casting everything into utter darkness…

  Except for the fireball coming from the landing below me. One guard leaped through the flames, rolled to put out his uniform, then came up, aiming at me with his MP5.

  I tacked left and shot up the staircase as the bullets rang out behind me.

  Biraq, the lightning thrower, kicked open the stairway door and nearly walked into the gunfire. He cursed the guard and sent a casual lightning bolt back at him, killing him immediately.

  I started up the second set of stairs when the next explosion rocked the building so hard, it threw me into the wall. I bounced against it and caught myself before I started bouncing back down the stairs. The Soul Stone was in the crook of my left arm like it was a football, and I was going to score the touchdown of the game. I kept running for the door of the next level when the door itself exploded open in a massive fireball. I swung around and kept running up. A girder came down out of the ceiling and swung for my head. I dove underneath it, crashing on the next landing above me.

  At the next floor up, I crashed into the door with my shoulder, expecting it to open. It bounced me back and wrenched my shoulder. I reared back with a kick and smashed through it. I turned left, into the hallway, and a group of armed guards was coming down the hall for me.

  The wall beside them exploded, ripping them apart.

  Crap. I think the whole place is coming down? What the hell did I set off?

  The ceiling collapsed, blocking my path.

  A lightning bolt sizzled past my head, and I ran straight for the fire. Before I had to consider running through the flames, the wall that had exploded was relatively clear of debris. I dove through it.

  I had to catch myself before I slid down a bunch of roof tiles.

  Roof tiles?

  I took a moment to look around. There was still a wall of glass around the building, so I was still inside Toynbee Tower. But I was standing on another structure. Another building. They had moved what looked like a temple into the tower. I felt the stonework. It was older, not modern. They had taken an original, older building, and moved it, brick by brick, into the tower. They had wired it into the rest of the building’s utility systems, giving it power and light … and connecting them to the gas mains.

  I hunched down and scrambled along the roof tiles, cornering around as the wall exploded behind me, and more explosions came from below. The roof skirt I was on dead-ended in a wall. I pocketed the Soul Stone and leaped up to the next level up—I couldn’t even tell if God levitated me or not, and I wasn’t going to stop to ask questions now.

  I grabbed a window ledge and worked my way over, hand over hand, and swung myself to the next window over. There was a bit of ledge sticking out, something for me to grab onto—a balcony that ran around the building? I reached up to grab hold when the roar of flames and screaming rushed at me. I pulled my hand back from the ledge when a man on fire flailed and roared as he went over the edge, plummeting to his death. I pulled myself up and charged along the wooden balcony. I ran along the balcony, and it led to a wrecked wall, leading to a hallway on fire.

  I turned left, heading for the side of the building away from the exploded elevator and the fiery stairwell. I figured it didn’t matter as long as I could get to a window. The hallway ended in a blind corner, and I wheeled around it.

  I crashed into a group of three guards. I clothes-lined one as I collided into them, sending him straight to the ground. I whipped the arm around the neck of the second guard and dragged him to the ground between him and number three. I rolled around with guard number two, cutting out the legs out from under the third. I cranked number two’s neck with a crack. I scrambled to my feet at the same time that the third got to his feet. I leaped over the second and drove a flying knee into the third.

  I swept down, picked up one of their MP5s, and pressed on, nearly running onto one of the random furniture items left—first a table, then a wardrobe. I noticed that the flames had not yet reached this area, though the smoke started to leak in.

  Two guards popped out down the hallway and fired. I ducked back behind the wardrobe. It was sturdy enough to endure the gunfire. I slid down into a crouch, but I couldn’t wait long. The fire was behind me and perhaps also Biraq.

  I peeked out around the corner and fired my MP5 at one guard, killing him. He fell back, but the other one had a bulletproof metal shield. He kept coming. He kept firing. He kept coming. Step by step. He’d fire every so often to keep my head down.

  I waited until he was so close, I felt the footsteps in the floor as he took a st
ep.

  I burst forward, throwing myself across the floor in front of his shield—but my upper body could aim around it. I pressed the MP5 into his side and pulled the trigger, shredding his insides. He didn’t even have time to scream.

  I rose, charged down the hallway and swept up another MP5. I kept going, even though the way was made more difficult with flaming wooden beams. They had fallen halfway down the hallway, all on fire. I threw myself on the floor and bear-crawled underneath them. I came up and half the ceiling above was torn away. I could see an open window, plain as day. It had been shattered by … something. It was only a few more floors up. I could make it if I ran.

  The flaming beams behind me exploded with lightning bolts. I whirled and fired, causing Biraq to fall back.

  But Shifa kept coming, screaming and laughing like a maniac. I fired for his face, drilling the bullets through his head. No matter how fast he could heal, he wouldn’t recover from that in a hurry.

  The building shook with another explosion, and I felt the time getting away from me.

  Levitation, please, God. Levitation, please, God. Levitation, please, God. Levitation, please, God, I frantically prayed as I leaped for a handhold I saw in the ruined stonework.

  I fell back to the wooden planks.

  A lightning bolt sizzled over my head where I would have been had I not fallen back. Well timed, Lord.

  I turned and ran down the hall as the floor caught fire. Biraq took almost no notice as he threw more and more lightning my way—thankfully, as his bolts came faster and more frantic, his aim suffered.

  Then a bolt exploded behind me, sending me in the air, crashing onto the floor.

  Then the floor gave out from under me.

  I reached out and grabbed the floor ahead of me, sending the MP5 clattering to the wood.

  “End of the line, infidel.”

  I looked up and behind me. On the edge of the floor behind me was Biraq, lightning flickering from his eyes and between his fingers.

  I was a perfect target.

  Then an explosion of fire from behind him ignited Biraq and sent him flying. I ducked my head for fear that he would land on me. He didn’t. He fell into the gaping chasm below me—other floors in the building had even given away. The entire building was going to go.

  Then Biraq caught my pants leg.

  Biraq’s weight pulled me down. My fingers slipped between two of the planks of the floor ahead of me, and I jerked myself forward.

  Biraq pulled himself up over my body, still on fire. I wouldn’t be able to pull up the both of us. I looked down, pulled up one leg, and kicked him in the face. He wouldn’t let go, the adrenaline was giving him deranged strength before the end. He made it up to my belt, even though his back and his hair were on fire. He scrambled up my body until I felt his breath on my neck.

  I let go with my left hand and drove my elbow into Biraq’s face. The blow disoriented him. I struck him once, twice more. Then I heaved forward, grabbed the MP5, and drove the butt of the gun into his forehead.

  I shattered the flake of obsidian under his skin.

  Suddenly, Biraq’s lightning eyes flickered. and his body seized as the electricity he had stored cooked him from the inside out. He screamed in sudden agony that not even being on fire had invoked.

  Biraq let go of me and fell, screaming, into the fiery abyss.

  I pulled myself up and charged forward. The wall ahead of me led up to the next level. I charged at the wall, kicked up it, and got the height I needed to get a finger hold up. I looked around, and there was a broken ramp going up further still. I thought it was a really stupid idea to keep heading up—until I looked down and saw the flames below, coming to get me.

  I ran up the wooden ramp. An explosion of flame fountained up through the ramp, ripping it to pieces right in front of me. Torrents of orange molten metal flowed toward me.

  Levitation, please, God, I thought and ran harder, leaping off the edge of the broken ramp and through the flames.

  I was certain I was in the air a little longer than I should have been as I came crashing down to the ramp at the other end. I circled around the edge of the temple, going further up. I kicked through the next door.

  Then I fell, slamming into the floor below.

  I looked up. The walls were on fire. The room I had been walking into didn’t have a floor anymore. The floor I was on was only 20 by 10 feet, for a fifty-by-fifty room. Fire had eaten away at the rest of it. I looked down over the edge of the little platform I had left. There weren’t any floors below that either. I looked up at a retrofitted wooden staircase that was about twenty, maybe thirty feet away. The wall next to it was on fire, but the stairs weren’t in flames Yet.

  I backed up for a running start—Best not to test the Lord thy God by making Him do all the work—and ran for the edge of the platform. I leaped for the stairs.

  I missed the wooden railing.

  I missed the safety rail underneath it.

  I caught the wooden beam that framed the staircase itself. I pulled up, hauling my carcass behind me.

  I saw that the only thing left of the stairs weren’t stairs—just the railing. Everything else had burned away, and the railing itself creaked, slowly giving way.

  I ran along the railing like a balance beam from Hell, only the floor really was on fire. And the walls. And the ceiling. The ceiling glowed with amber light, ready to give way as well.

  God, please, levitation, I thought as I ran along the balance beam from Hell. There was a crate suspended from the ceiling. It was fifteen feet tall with several reinforced boards horizontally across its side.

  As I neared the edge of the beam, I started a new prayer—to Saint Joseph of Cupertino, patron Saint of Pilots.

  Dear ecstatic Conventual Saint who patiently bore calumnies—

  I leaped for the crate as flames chased after it.

  —your secret was Christ the crucified Savior.

  I grabbed the bottom border of the crate. The flames licked at my heels—

  Who said: “When I will be lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.”

  I used the space between the boards to climb up. I hauled myself up two boards at a time, one after another, hefting my weight.

  By the time I was halfway up the crate, I noticed the massive label burned into the wood: DANGER: EXPLOSIVES.

  I tried to move faster, even though I was already at top speed.

  You were always spiritually lifted up, I prayed.

  By the time my hands clamped down on the top of the crate, the flames below licked at my shoes so much I felt them smoking.

  I pulled my feet up, swung them over the edge, and clambered up. I made it to my feet in time to see that the rope suspending the crate in the air was already on fire—both above me and below me.

  Which meant the crate below me was already on fire.

  I continued. Give aviators courage and protection—

  On the other side of the crate was the broken out window. The ropes were burning away.

  —and may they always keep in mind your greatly uplifting example.

  I ran forward, covering the top of the crate in two leaping strides.

  The rope broke.

  I leaped.

  Amen.

  18

  Wing and a Prayer

  I missed the window ledge.

  I missed the mark by about five feet.

  I went through the center of the open window.

  I spread my arms as though in a swan dive and entered free fall.

  All I could think as I fell was simple: the Soul Stone was away from Fowler and Toynbee and Kozbar. Their reign of terror was over. Let them go back to backyard explosives. They were stopped.

  Thank you, God. They lost.

  I dropped about twenty stories before my wind speed had hit terminal velocity, then I nosed up. The levitation was taking me for a ride, and I didn’t fight it. I flew in… and kept flying. I closed my eyes, enjoying the wind on my face. There was n
o windburn. There was no loss of oxygen. There was just me and God, and a demonic rock.

  I looked over my shoulder at Toynbee Tower. The entire top twenty floors were a mass of flame and smoke. It was impossible that anything could have survived that. Granted, the three big names in this battle had been twenty floors below the inferno. They could have escaped. But they didn’t have the Soul Stone.

  And all I could think of was Psalm 30: I praise you, Lord, for you raised me up and did not let my enemies rejoice over me. O Lord, my God, I cried out to you for help and you healed me. Lord, you brought my soul up from Sheol; you let me live, from going down to the pit.

  You could guess that being raised up was very much on my mind.

  As I started to lose altitude, I opened my eyes. I was back in London, at the very edge of the city. I blinked, taken aback. I didn’t understand what happened. Why not take me all the way back in?

  The answer came to me quickly—London was the home of the CCTV. They had more security cameras on hand than a mall during the Christmas season. It wouldn’t do to have me flying on film.

  I started walking for the center of the city. Unfortunately, the adrenaline was wearing off, and I felt exhausted.

  “Tommy?”

  I looked over. It took me a moment to recognize them. They were the first homeless I saved with Pearson before we entered the museum.

  “Jillian? Robert?”

  They both smiled at me quizzically, looking me up and down. Robert asked, “Good God, man, where did you come from? You look half-roasted.”

  I looked down at my clothes. I must have smelled like smoke because I looked like an ashtray. “Just a little.”

  “Where are you trying to get to?”

  “Westminster Cathedral.”

  Robert and Jillian exchanged a look and nodded. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll get you there.”

  “Thanks.”

  Robert and Jillian got me back to the Cathedral without a problem. I suggested they leave by the back way—if we were being followed by anyone, I didn’t want them caught in the crossfire. Though I didn’t even think that Kozbar’s Jihadists could come after me that fast … but then, if he was in a car within five minutes of the lights going out in the chamber, he could have been back to London before I even got out of the building… if he were speeding. My airspeed was low enough that I didn’t die, and I didn’t look at my watch along the way. I knew it was night by the time I arrived—the cloud cover had finally departed. The moon and stars shone through. The darkness must have receded entirely into the stone in my jacket pocket.