The building was old and badly in need of renovation, yet the place was neat, floors dust-free, no cobwebs, the walls and ceilings clean, the entire facility smelling of pine cleaner and disinfectant.
Moving cautiously, Max signaled for them to split up, Alec and Mole each taking one of the side halls while Max went down the middle.
Max found fire stairs at the end and started up.
The second floor was cells — cries for help, shouts for attention, echoed down the hallways. No guards were around, no robed Familiars — no one home but the inmates. She had a good idea who they were: prisoners of the Conclave, perhaps ordinaries who’d tipped to the evil practices and intentions of the Familiars, or betrayers among their own ranks, possibly even transgenics — mixed with the real mental patients who’d provided the cover.
On the third floor landing she found another small reception area, this one not so spare — nicely paneled, with comfortable chairs and magazines on end tables, another window (empty, of course) where a nurse and or receptionist could sit.
She pushed through double doors down a short corridor of examination rooms and more small tidy offices. The medicinal scent was strong, making her nose twitch, but that was well in keeping with what seemed a clinic of some kind. This section of the building seemed to her a facade designed to fool state inspectors and those families who really were committing their loved ones (unwittingly) to snake-cult care.
At the end of the short hall was a windowless metal door, with no knob — just a slot for an ID card. In bold red letters on the gray door it said:
NO ADMITTANCE
Well, surely somebody could go in there, she thought. What was the point of a place that no one could be admitted to?
So she kicked the door down. It was solid and took two tries, but on the second it went flying and clattered to an obsidian floor.
She got a quick look at the room — a large rounded chamber, with a planetarium-type dome, a vast curved viewing window that made the starry sky, in effect, the room’s ceiling. The circular room, dimly lighted by recessed fixtures, was wall-to-wall stacked monitors; a dozen seats — empty at the moment — faced these monitors, with computer stations at each post. About a third of the monitors were security cams — showing inmates in their cells, views of the grounds and hallways and stairs and the downstairs reception area, and the area she’d just come through, for that matter.
The rest of the monitors were satellite images from all around the world, each boldly labeled with a red-letter readout that identified the city shown, as well as the local time — she glimpsed Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Seattle, Toronto, Moscow, London, Lisbon, Sydney, and on and on. On the screens were live pictures of the cities, in populous areas — Chicago’s cam was on Michigan Avenue, near the Water Tower, and New York was, of course, Times Square, where Christmas Eve had turned into something approaching New Year’s Eve, people with little glowing candles in hand, watching the sky, waiting for the comet to come.
And in the center of the room, raised up on a five-foot platform, was a molded black chair, strangely like a human hand rising to caress the person perched there, with controls built into the wide flat armrests — Captain Kirk’s chair, revised by Salvadore Dali. In this chair, this throne, his hood back, sat silver-haired Matthias.
All of this she took in, in a moment, which was all she had before a figure flew at her, snarling, a priestess with a ceremonial dagger in one hand and long clawed nails ready with the other. Rather lost in her robe, the priestess was slender and lovely, or would have been if her face had not been covered in ritual tattoos, and she took Max down in a diving roll, one powerful arm and hand slipping around Max as the knife rose.
But before the blade fell, Max grasped the arm hugging her and snapped it like a twig, then flung the woman off — the priestess, Familiar or not, was feather light.
One arm dangling, useless, the priestess hissed and came at Max low, charging, knife again raised; and Max sidestepped her, latching onto the flowing robes and running her headlong into one of the monitors, crashing the woman’s head through the screen in a shower of glass and an eruption of smoke and flame.
“So much for monitoring London,” Max said to Matthias as the priestess shuddered and shivered, literally jolted as electrocution won out over centuries of selective breeding.
Matthias swiveled toward Max. He seemed not at all concerned, certainly not a whit distraught over the loss of the priestess.
“In the pre-Pulse world,” Matthias said to her, his voice rich, strangely soothing, with a faint Teutonic lilt, “such demonstrations of your mutant powers might impress. Now... as we await the momentary arrival of the Coming, seeing such a childish display on your part, 452... seems almost nostalgic.”
She kept her distance from him, for the moment; his hands were on controls on those armrests, and she had no idea what he could do from his perch.
She heard something behind her, whirled, and it was Alec, with Mole bringing up the rear.
“Whoa,” Alec said. “Dude’s got some home entertainment center...” He nodded toward the slumped, smoking priestess hanging out of the London monitor. “But y’know, it’s dangerous, if you sit too close to the screen.”
Mole, glancing around, said, “So who’s this character? Blofeld?... Building’s clear of snake suckers, except for this guy. Lots of inmates, though, on the second floor.”
Matthias seemed bored with them. But he granted them this observation: “The Coming is inevitable. Your efforts... They are small, pitiful attempts, small boats hoping to ride out a typhoon.”
Hardly listening, Alec was staring at the ceiling. “Now, that’s a skylight...”
Matthias gestured toward a bank of monitors — in the hooded, loose robe, it was like the specter of death, pointing.
“We flee into the night, and you cannot stop us,” he said.
Among the monitors were views of the parking lot, where robed Familiars were frantically getting into their cars and booking.
“Where do you keep your car keys in those cloak things?” Alec asked.
Max shot him a look.
“Just wondering,” Alec said.
“Some of our brothers have fallen tonight,” Matthias said. “But these others will go out into the world and spread the word... and our seed... even as the ordinaries wither like unpicked fruit on the vine.”
Alec, still chatty, asked, “So in a few minutes, when this biotoxin hits... How long’s it take to kick in?”
“Many will die in moments,” the silver-haired Familiar said. “Others, the strongest of a weak species, will cling to life.”
“And Max here,” Alec said, “can give ’em a clean bill of health, once we get the vaccine goin’... Mole, you’re a businessman. How much do you think we can get, for a shot of Maxine?”
Max arched an eyebrow. “Maxine?”
“Vaccine... Max... get it? We’ll have to trademark it.”
Mole was not amused. “Let me ice this sucker, and let’s be home for Christmas.”
Matthias stood, looming over them. “Kon’ta ress! Ken’dra hiff!” He was staring at the sky — the stars — and, seemingly, speaking to them. His arms outstretched. He continued the ancient incantation: “Adara mos rekali... konoss rehu jek!”