Marc Zicree - Angelfire

I grabbed her arm and physically moved her out of my way, trying to keep an eye on what Howard was doing. He was peering at a mail slot centered in a brass plate. He poked the end of one finger into the slot, then jumped as if he’d been shocked and stuck the finger in his mouth to suck on it.

Strange. “I don’t see anything,” I said.

Goldie shook his head. “Me neither.”

“Whoa. Well, neither do I now, but a second ago there was this … Well, it looked kind of like a curtain of static electricity. Yellow and green and all …” She made a circular motion with her hand.

“Wax on, wax off?”

She threw Goldie a dirty look. “Staticky.”

Howard had shuffled back to us. “Okay. Now we go in.” He led the way, turning the doors as if they were made of balsa wood instead of thick, tempered glass. I will forever be amazed at how much strength is contained in a grunter’s body.

We crossed the windbreak and went through the second door into the foyer. It was a huge, vaulted chamber, harshly lit by sun filtered through the ruby veil. Banks of elevators lay in the semidarkness beyond, useless now; twin escalators, reduced to toothy staircases, led to the second floor.

I looked up as we entered the hall, our footsteps tapping out echoes on the gray marble underfoot. The upper floor was dimly lit by globes of light much like the ones Goldie produced. These were the color of dying embers and filled the upper reaches of the building with a dull, red gleam that made me think of volcanoes, lava lamps, and hell.

In the center of the floor the artfully combined letters CMG-apparently the Chicago Media Group logo-were inlaid in solid brass. Howard squatted in the middle of the logo with an expression of resignation on his face. “We wait.”

“You’re kidding,” said Colleen. “Wait for what?”

“For me.”

We glanced up in unison toward the farther of the two escalators. A man was descending. He was dressed in a long, silk Chinese robe, his hands hidden among the billows of fabric in that archetypal pose that probably had little reality outside of Saturday morning cartoons and old Charlie Chan movies. On his head was an extravagantly tall hat of the same fabric and pattern. His face was heavily made up, more like a kabuki dancer than a Chinese noble. He even sported a Fu Manchu mustache. In spite of that, he did not look the least bit Asian.

“Trick or treat,” Howard singsonged. He looked back over his shoulder at me, his mouth wriggling with what I would have said was derision on a fully human face.

The faux Chinaman set foot on the marble and glided to meet us, his feet moving invisibly under the robe. It dragged the floor in a soft whisper. He stopped in front of us. “I am Clay,” he announced, then cocked an eye at Howard. “You’ve brought… friends?”

Howard nodded and pointed at me. “Cal here wants to talk to Primal. Cal’s a lawyer.”

Clay’s eyes wobbled up to meet mine. They were strange eyes. One of them seemed to focus in a different place than its mate. They held an expression of perpetual surprise, probably because of the curved eyebrows penciled in arcs above them. “A lawyer? Why does a lawyer want to see Primal?”

“He wants to … er … serve notice,” Howard informed him.

“Notice? What sort of notice? I need more specifics, Cal…?” His brows rose with the inflection of this voice. “Griffin. Cal Griffin.”

“Ah, Cal Griffin, attorney at law. Do you have a business card?”

I glanced at Howard, who looked the other way. Primal had interesting taste in toadies. “Sorry, I seem to have left them in my other pants. Primal has a musician under contract named Enid Blindman.”

Clay’s eyes fluttered and his lips formed a wordless O. “You’ve heard of him.”

“Oh, my, yes. Everyone here has heard of Enid. Primal’s been waiting for him to come home. He thought he might be in the neighborhood. Have you brought Enid home, Mr. Griffin?”

“That’s an issue I need to raise with Primal.”

We locked eyes for a moment, then Clay’s lips curved into a smile. “By all means, come up. I’ll announce you.”

We followed him up the escalator into a broad second-floor gallery, then turned the corner, mounted a second escalator and climbed to the third floor. He turned left down a wide, marbled hallway, Howard moving just behind him, the rest of us walking three abreast like a trio of gunslingers.

“Freaky,” mumbled Colleen. “I feel like I’m in a production of the Wizard of Oz .”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Goldie began intoning the chant of the Witch’s Guard, “All we owe, we owe her,” under his breath.

“Wrong scene, Goldman,” Colleen murmured.

He switched to a mumbled rendition of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” I glanced at him sharply. His eyes glittered and a grin was tugging at the corners of his mouth, giving me vertigo.

The end of the corridor disappeared into red twilight. Up ahead I could see people moving back and forth across intersecting halls. We traveled all the way to the end of the north-south corridor and turned left toward the front of the building, which gave us every opportunity to see the denizens of Primal’s domain up close.

“Normals,” murmured Goldie.

They seemed to be. Among the dozen or so people we saw roaming the corridor, not one was a tweak. At least, not as far as we could tell. Just like the rest of the Loop. At the same time, Howard’s presence didn’t seem to cause them any pause at all. He had pushed off his hood, fully displaying his distinctive features, but no one had given him any but the most cursory notice.

We reached a point in the east-west corridor where a huge set of wooden doors, decorated with the CMG logo, halted our progress. Clay did an about-face and looked from me to Colleen to Goldie. “Do you need to bring your people with you or shall they stay outside?”

“They’re not my ‘people,’ ” I said. “They’re my friends. We stay together.”

His eyes repeated the journey from Colleen’s face to Goldie’s. “I see. In that case, they may enter.”

I steeled myself for my first sight of the monster that might be Primal, and followed Clay into the room. Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I actually expected to enter a boardroom-the sort of regal wood, chrome, and glass chamber that Ely Stern had favored, decorated to intimidate or impress. But this was a grotto, a cavern, dimly lit, seemingly boundless, a place the dragon-Stern would comfortably hang out in now, if he still lived. The walls and ceiling were invisible, obscured by gloom and glistening streamers of what looked like wet silk. Woven among those were strands of something like silver Christmas garland. Some of the banners hung so low I had to duck to avoid them. Eerie light in shades of blue and green oozed from unseen sources overhead.

There were people here, collected in small groups and draped in long, strangely kinetic shadows. Their voices made soft, pink noise like the murmur of moving water. I thought of the Indian Caves at Olentangy and was surprised at the depth of my longing for the place. As we passed through the chamber, a wave of silence followed in our wake.

“It’s like an underwater cocktail party … or a disco,” murmured Colleen. “All it needs is the damn glitter ball.”

I barely heard her over the trip-hammering of my own heart. Looking up, I had found the source of the spectral light. Floating high up amid the trailing banners were several flares, gleaming emerald and aquamarine. They watched us, lazy-eyed, and drifted aimlessly, as if their only purpose here was to light Primal’s world. I found myself trying to make out the features, coloring, and clothing hidden beneath Saint Elmo’s fire. Hoping to surprise something familiar and beloved.