Richard Kadrey - Dead Set

She fell back against the old furniture. Footsteps grew louder below, but before she could run, a snake darted down from overhead and bit her cheek. Then another. There were six of them overhead. They dive-bombed her, hitting her face and forehead. They’re trying to get my eyes. Zoe threw her hands up and kept her head down. That’s when saw what was happening. She might have closed the door and locked the wolves out, but the little snakes wriggled underneath, slithering into the stairwell.

Zoe slipped off her coat and threw it at the bottom of the door, kicking it into place with her heels. Still, the snakes that had made it in were coming at her. Running upstairs wouldn’t help because they could just follow her. Their high-pitched chittering was like ice picks in her ears. She slashed at the snakes with the razor, cutting a wing off one, so it crashed into the floor. She stamped on it until it stopped moving. Keeping her hand in front of her face, she slashed overhead, hitting two more snakes. They slammed into the wall and tumbled onto the stairs. The snakes’ chittering went up an octave and the whole flock rose into the air, too high for Zoe to reach. They circled the ceiling a couple of times and flew up the stairs.

Howls came down to her from above. The enforcers below were closing on her and the door she’d locked shook more and more as the wolf men in the hall rammed it over and over again. Zoe looked around frantically. There was another door by the stairs. She ran to it and opened it a crack. Beyond was an empty office. There were marks on the floor where souls had once worked. A few windows showed the moon high in the Iphigene sky. Zoe went back into the hall and got Caroline’s perfume bottle from her coat. Back in the office, she unscrewed the top and threw the bottle as hard as she could at the far wall. It shattered. The glass shards looked like jewels in the moonlight. Behind her, the door on the stairs started to splinter. Zoe ran back to the stairwell and crouched down behind an old desk just as the door burst open.

A crowd of wolf men charged into the stairwell, their snouts in the air, sniffing. A second later, they tore open the door to the office and ran inside. Zoe stood up in the stairwell and slowly came out from behind the desk. At that very moment the wolves from the dungeon level broke through and ran up the stairs. She threw herself back down onto the floor as the wolf men pounded past her, following the others into the office. Zoe got up and ran through the splintered door.

She was in a hall that looked like something she’d expect to see in an old office building. Tiled floors, wood-paneled walls and glass-fronted office doors, piles of unwanted chairs, boxes, and tables pushed against the walls.

“Excuse me,” came a voice from over her shoulder. “Are you supposed to be here?”

Zoe spun around, sweating and bleeding, gulping in big lungfuls of air. A young man stood there with a pile of large ledgers in his arms. He wore a tight gray suit, a bow tie, a starched collar, and small round metal glasses. Zoe thought he looked like a character in a Dickens novel.

“Who are you?” asked the young man more insistently.

Zoe’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. Then, “There’s trouble downstairs!” she said. “Prisoners have escaped. Get help!” The young man’s eyes widened. He turned to go, but came back and grabbed Zoe’s arm. “Come with me so you can explain what’s happening to the head clerk.”

Zoe grabbed the ledgers and threw them up into the air. They popped open and papers flew everywhere. The young man stood in shock, watching the pages float down like a slow-motion snowstorm. Zoe shoved him from behind so that he fell over a small table leaning against the wall. She never saw him hit the floor. She was already running the other way. At the end of the hall was an imposing set of double doors. She pulled them open and ran through.

The room she entered looked like a large auditorium. At the far end was a dais on a low stage. The middle of the room was empty, but folding chairs were stacked neatly by the door. Overhead, an enormous wrought-iron-and-glass dome let in spectral moonlight.

Zoe thought that the auditorium must have been converted into a storeroom when Hecate took over. The walls rose thirty or more feet above her head, but they were piled all the way to the ceiling with books, old desks, chairs, statues, plaques, crumbing, yellowed records, lamps, bookshelves, rolled carpets, and hundreds of unmarked boxes. The contents of the old city hall spilled up the walls like a tidal wave of junk. Towering over it all was a mammoth ornamental mirror, as tall as the room. Its old silver face was peeling and speckled with grime, but its ornate gold-leaf frame glowed like candlelight.

Zoe looked around, but didn’t see any exits. She realized that the piles of discarded office equipment probably blocked any doors. For a moment she panicked, but she couldn’t go back into the hall. The young man would have gone for help by now. Looking around, she saw windows dotted around the room above the piles of detritus. One window stood just above the enormous mirror. If she could get up to it, she could use the ornamental frame like a ladder and climb to the window. She climbed onto a desk, then up onto a bookcase, and onto a pile of filing cabinets. Nothing fell. Nothing wobbled. The pile felt firm under her feet and her ankle felt strong enough to keep going. She started up.

Below her, Zoe heard the auditorium doors slam open and the sound of running feet. Human voices and wolf howls filled the air. Zoe didn’t look back until she heard someone climbing up behind her.

Balancing on a couple of boxes of books, Zoe looked down. Wolf men and human souls in uniforms were clambering up the mountain of junk, eyes flashing, thrilled by the hunt. Zoe tried climbing faster, but the higher she got, the more careful she had to be. Every movement felt like it could start an avalanche. But she was going too slowly and looked around for a way out. On each side of her were boxes of books. Bracing her back against a big desk, Zoe dug in her heels and pushed a stack of boxes over. They rained down on her pursuers, catching a couple square in the face and knocking them to the ground. She pushed over more boxes, kicked over lamps and rolled office chairs over the edge at them. A few of the humans fell back off the pile. The remaining wolves retreated, but more came up behind them. Zoe kept climbing, stopping only to push over a drafting table or an unstable desk on the mob below.

“Leave her!” came a woman’s voice, cool and commanding. It echoed around the room, repeating the order until it finally faded, leaving a charged silence behind.

“What are you doing, child?” came the commanding voice. Zoe didn’t want to stop and look, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to see the woman. Carefully, moving only a few inches at a time so she wouldn’t fall, she turned and looked down at Hecate. The queen was dressed in a long flowing gown of black and red. She wore a beautiful metal crown that looked to be made of silver wolf teeth.

“What a brave girl you are,” said the queen. “And resourceful, too.” Her smile was like the night sky-cold, beautiful, infinitely deep. “No one has ever made it this far into my palace before. Do you know why?”

Zoe didn’t want to answer, but couldn’t look away from the queen. “No,” she said.

Hecate gave her a dazzling smile. “Because no one has ever dared to. But you did.” The queen approached the pile of junk. The wolves and human souls fell back, creating a lane for her to pass. “That’s why I like you. That’s why you and I can be friends. Because we dare. We do what these blackguards and minions wouldn’t dare dream of.”