Hellraisers by Alexander Gordon Smith Page B

opened his mouth to reply, found nothing there to say. He spun around, clenching his teeth against the wave of dizziness and nausea. Somehow he made it out of the living room, up the stairs into his bedroom. It was brighter in there, syrupy light seeping in through the filthy glass. But it still took everything he had not to run to the window and drop headfirst to the street where he wouldn’t feel that unbearable weight on his shoulders, like the whole house was resting there, the whole big, dark, screaming world.
    Instead, he stripped off the clothes, slung on a fresh tee and some sweatpants and his old sneakers. He grabbed his spare inhaler, then bolted past his sad, old dog for the door.

 
    FAST EXIT
    They moved out as quickly and as smoothly as they had moved in. Like a rising tide, Pan thought, each wave so small and so quiet that you didn’t notice them creeping up the beach until your feet were soaked. Nobody said much as they traipsed out of the building. There wasn’t exactly much to talk about. Nothing good, anyway. And it was nice to get some peace and quiet.
    Pan had almost managed to shut the elevator doors when Herc’s scarred hand slid through the gap. Her sigh of relief became a splutter of frustration as the big man clambered inside, slamming the gates behind him. He stood on a streak of fading blood that stretched along the floor, his boots squeaking as he spun to face her.
    â€œHow you holdin’ up?”
    â€œWorse now than I was a second ago,” she grumbled. The doors closed and the cab rocked as it started to descend. She sighed again, not enough left inside her to have this conversation. She lifted a hand, placed it against her chest, against the scar she could feel beneath her tee. It was like a lump of hot coal had been stitched there, her body trying to repair a wound that it couldn’t even understand.
    â€œYou talked to Ostheim?” Herc asked, knowing full well what the answer was.
    Pan felt her whole body slump. She closed her eyes, listened to the whining gears of the elevator.
    â€œHe needs to speak with you, Pan,” Herc said, and the rush of anger that rose from her gut was so fierce it scared her. She bit down on it, trapping her response behind her teeth, taking a deep breath through her nose.
    â€œI know,” she hissed. The elevator growled, then thumped home. Herc snatched the gates open, let her out first. The building was an empty office tower, abandoned when it was only half-finished by an insolvent developer—one of an endless list of deserted buildings they’d already used that year. She marched through the empty lobby, just wanting to be out in the sun, wanting to leave all of this behind her. Keep walking, keep walking, keep walking.
    â€œPan.” Herc’s voice was like a choke chain around her throat, stopping her dead. She looked back, saw him lob a cell phone her way. She snatched it out of the air, fought the instinct to throw it back like it was a live grenade. Herc stood in the flickering fluorescent light of the elevator, shrugged his big shoulders. “He’s on now.”
    She punched through the doors into the noise and heat of the street, clutching the cell so hard she thought it might splinter into pieces. No such luck. She barged past the people, swearing at the ones who didn’t get out of her way, ducking into the nearest alleyway. For a second or two she stood in the muggy shadows, took a couple of breaths of exhausted air. She could almost feel her employer there, a presence at the end of her arm, and she wondered if somehow he could see her, if he’d hacked into the phone’s camera, or a nearby CCTV camera, or a even a satellite. She glanced nervously up at the white-blue sky. There wasn’t much that Ostheim couldn’t do. She lifted the cell.
    â€œOstheim.”
    â€œAnd here’s me thinking you’d left off without so much as a letter of notice,” he replied,