George Chesbro: The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

Out of curiosity, I groped my way along the wall until I came to the door, then pushed on it. It swung open. Kitten must have picked this lock, too, and was either lurking on the stairs or already in the loft.

I waited a few beats, put my Beretta back in its shoulder holster, then pulled the door shut with what I hoped was just enough force to allow the sound of steel clicking against steel to be heard by two ninjas listening in the silent darkness four floors above me; it would tell Veil that help-if that was an appropriate word to describe me and my rather untenable position-was on the way, and could serve to distract Kitten. At the least, I hoped it would have the ninja assassin looking in the wrong direction if and when I joined the party.

After slipping out of my light jacket and dropping it to the floor, I jumped out into the elevator shaft and grabbed hold of the thick guy cable that ran up the center of the shaft and was attached to the bottom of the elevator. Then I began hauling myself hand over hand up into the pitch blackness.

It had been a long time since my days as a headliner with the circus; I was a lot older than when I'd made a living climbing, swinging, flipping, and soaring, but I made it a point to stay in peak physical condition, and I found the going up the steel cable probably easier than I had any right to expect. By stopping occasionally, wrapping my legs around the cable and allowing my arms to hang free for a few moments, I was only slightly winded, with a mild case of palm burn, when I finally reached up and felt my knuckles graze the rough, splintered surface of the elevator floor.

Trying not to think of the chasm that yawned below me, I groped to both my left and right, found a warped slat to my right, wrapped my fingers around the edge and swung away from the cable. I dangled for a few of the most exquisitely exciting seconds of my life, twisting back and forth, then found a second warped slat farther to my right. A second swing got me to the steel and wood frame of the chute, and within seconds I was up and over the side, in the box of the elevator. I again drew my Beretta, got down on my belly, and crawled forward toward the open end of the box. The fingers of my left hand touched the steel lip at the four-foot-wide entrance to the loft; the gate was up. The elevator was eight feet wide, which left me a two-foot "safety zone" on either side of the opening. I slithered to my right, sat up in a corner to ponder just what it was I planned to do next.

I had been up in the loft enough times for me to be able to picture its layout clearly in my mind. The freight elevator entrance to the loft was about three-quarters of the way down its length. Just inside the entrance, to the right, a plywood partition separated Veil's austere living quarters from the vast work area. The entire wall at the opposite end was comprised of a bank of windows; normally, Veil pulled a heavy drape over the windows at night, but when I had approached the entrance I had glimpsed to my left a large, cross-hatched patch of pale moonlight-which only served to make the rest of the loft seem darker. In the far corner, to the left of the windows, there were thick mats, punching and kicking bags suspended from the ceiling, and a large wooden box filled with martial arts weapons. There were three support columns marching down the center of the loft. The entire floor would be covered with stained tarpaulins, paint pots, palettes, mauled tubes of oil paint, brushes soaking in jars of turpentine-all of the paraphernalia for a different kind of battle, one of the mind, that Veil waged constantly in order to produce the kind of eerie, multipaneled mural that covered most of the wall directly opposite me.

Once inside the loft, I could scramble for cover to one of the support columns, or try to make it around the partition into the living quarters. But either route I chose, there was no guarantee that I wouldn't run right into the deadly embrace of Henry Kitten. Then again, if he was indeed wearing night-vision goggles, he could simply put a bullet in my head the moment I showed myself. On reflection, it seemed a good idea to stay right where I was.

"Yo," I called softly into the darkness. "Anybody home?"

There was no answer, which didn't surprise me. Both men would be crouched inside somewhere in the darkness, poised, waiting for the other to make some kind of mistake and show himself, or betray his position. The difference was that Kitten had use of both his arms, and could undoubtedly see.

"Yo, Kitten," I continued in a conversational tone as, taking care to keep pressed against the side of the elevator with my gun at the ready, I sidled closer to the entrance. "This is the cavalry speaking. You could have killed me up in Fort Lee, but you didn't; I figure I owe you one. I won't kill you unless you force me to. I say it's better to light one little candle than to die in the darkness. Drop whatever it is you're carrying, then walk on over and stand in front of the windows with your hands in the air. Then the three of us can chat about what we're going to do with you. If we wait around here long enough, the lights are eventually going to come back on, anyway. Then you're finished; if Veil doesn't nail you, I will."

I paused, listening intently, but there was still no answer or sound of movement from inside the cavernous loft. Despite my conviction that sudden death crouched somewhere beyond the entrance, I had to admit the possibility that I'd rolled and bounced into Veil's building, hauled myself up four floors on a steel cable, to end up sitting in a freight elevator and talking to myself.

I had no way of knowing how long it would be before Consolidated Edison recognized the problem and restored power to the block, especially if Kitten had blown up an entire circuit. In the meantime, at that very moment Kitten could be on the move in the darkness-heading toward me. He would not want to fire a gun, because the muzzle flash, if not the deafening blast, would give away his position to Veil, who could see pretty well in the dark even without night-vision goggles. But Henry Kitten had a few dozen other ways to kill, and the thought of him skulking in my direction and suddenly popping up beside me in the elevator sent a chill through me and caused the small hairs on the back of my neck to sit up and take notice. Sitting in the darkness and talking to myself was decidedly too passive a strategy to use against the ninja assassin, and so I decided it was time to up the ante in our silent poker game.

I transferred my gun to my left hand, arched my back, and stretched my right arm around into the entrance. I groped around on the floor until I felt the paint-stiffened edge of a tarpaulin. I wrapped my fingers around the canvas, began pulling the tarp into the elevator. I heard something tip over, and then there was the sharp, eye-watering smell of turpentine. Perfect.

"We're going to play a little game of chicken, Kitten," I said as I continued to haul the tarpaulin into the elevator. Finally my fingers touched what I had been hoping to find-a turpentine-soaked paint rag. "I presume to speak for my friend when I say I believe he'd rather lose his loft than his life. If you're not silhouetted in front of those windows in ten seconds, I'm going to set this place on fire. With all the wood, canvas, turpentine, and oil paint in there, it'll go up fast. But you're the only one who's not going to get out of here. The first glimpse I get of you, I'm going to put a bullet thr-"

I ducked away just as something whistled through the air, sliced through the front of my shirt, and planted itself in the wood siding of the elevator with a solid thunk. Shuriken. So much for the pleasant fantasy that I might be talking only to myself. Wherever Kitten was, he now had an angle on me. I crabbed sideways back into the corner of the elevator, groping in my pocket for the book of matches I always carried, since a cold day in Wisconsin years before when Garth's life and mine had depended on a single match I'd found in a grimy book at the back of the glove department of a car. Lying on my side in an attempt to make myself as small as possible, hoping I wasn't going to catch the next star-shaped blade in the throat, I put a match to the corner of the paint rag. Instantly, it burst into flames. I sucked in a deep breath, got to my feet, and dove for the opposite side of the elevator, hurling the flaming paint rag into the interior of the loft as I sailed past the opening. I landed on my shoulder and rolled over on my belly, crawled back to the entrance and cautiously peered around the corner.