Book 2 The Gods of Light and Liars

Chapter One: Hell-bound

Author's Note: This is the second book in the series. The first is A STORM OF GLASS AND ASHES, which I have linked to in this paragraph's comments. While you should be able to just dive in, you may want to read the first book first. 

***

Haven "Hawk" West surveyed the cacophony of supplies in front of her, an array of useful things interlaced with the unknown and unknowable. She knew what the MREs were for, why she was being given a knife, a flashlight, and mylar blankets folded in small packets; she was going to need basic survival supplies. But the climbing equipment gave her pause, and it was a pause she couldn't afford. Time, never a friend, was running out between her fingers, fluid and poisoned. She had the potent awareness that she was running out of it.

No, sunshine. You're already out of time, the mental darkness whispered. 

"Kaiser," she said, because if she didn't start talking she was going to scream, "Why do I have climbing ropes and hooks in this kit?"

The Richest Man in the World, the Lion of Industry, and the biggest asshole Hawk had ever met looked up from his own supply bag. Kaiser Willheim was an older man, white haired, in his fifties. He looked a bit like Ed Harris met Clark Gable, and Hawk was pretty sure those were the precise instructions he'd given his plastic surgeon. Normally he wore either pin neat business clothes or something more folksy and flannel and faker than hell. Hawk didn't know who the real Kaiser Willheim was, but she could bet money that it wasn't any of the faces he presented to the world. This face was the impotent man, and she didn't believe it any more than she did the folksy farmer boy he'd pretended to be, just several precious days ago. (Days. She'd been waiting days. Oh god, oh god, she was running out of time). But it served his purposes, and if she wanted to save her husband, Kaiser's purposes were hers.

He surveyed the scientist he'd essentially bought and paid for, and then turned back to his own collection of rope. "Well, the Rifts we've looked into have a significant drop. The one at the Bronx was several hundred feet down, at least. This one looks significantly deeper. We're going to have to climb down...and hope that the bottom is somewhere we can reach with a rope."

Goddamn the man. He'd said the word, rift, reminding her again that they had to go, and they had to go now. Because Alex—

--don't think about him right now. Don't you dare. You think about him, and you're going to break. And you cannot, absolutely CANNOT break down in front of Kaiser.

If you do, he'll kill you.

It was strange, looking at someone and knowing he wanted to be your murderer. But she was pretty sure that Kaiser had already tried to get her killed. Twice. Once, at a dead old woman's house, and once more at the Bronx zoo.

He might have gotten her husband killed already.

No. We aren't thinking about that right now.

She hadn't thought about anything else for three days.

Three. Days. That was how long it had taken for her to get to this moment. Sixteen hours to get from Arizona to Boston. Another day lost arguing with government officials and Kaiser Willheim, who hid behind the government goons with that Mephistophelian smile of his. He'd waited for Hawk to approach him and assume the supplicant's position, which she'd fought kicking and screaming. And then, finally, something had broken in the government ranks, and they'd given the OK to allow a team of people to go down the most dangerous hole in the world. Three days, and her husband Alex was at the bottom of that hole somewhere, waiting for her to come to his rescue.

But if she wanted to be truly honest with herself, this had started a week ago, when her husband's client Elizabeth Cummings had contacted him about her poisoned garden. She'd been a dotty old lady on the edge of dementia, but she'd been sure something was killing her plants. Something had been. A group the government were calling terrorists (She wasn't sure what you'd call Edgar and Naomi Studdard now, but she was pretty sure the terror their actions had evoked was a side-effect; still, 'terrorist' would do, for now) had opened a hole in reality, testing the old woman and her pet basset hound to see if they could survive exposure to the energies of another dimension. They could not. Elizabeth Cummings, her dog, her garden, and the yards and wildlife for several blocks around her house had all been reduced to a strange, crystalline ash. It held the shape of whatever it had been—a rose would still resemble a rose, for a few precious seconds. Then it would collapse from the slightest touch—but it killed, and killed swiftly.