“Halyna, now! Light ’em up!”
Fwooooossshhh! A great billow of greasy flame exploded from the rifle-shaped nozzle. The half-dozen bugbears flinched back and then retreated, moaning in anger and distress so deeply that the few glass cases still unshattered now vibrated and cracked. Some of the nasty blobs were burning like Christmas puddings covered in brandy. I turned and reached as high as I could, then opened a Zipper right in front of the wall, from a couple of feet over my head down to the floor. Then I did a sensible thing and got the hell out of the way.
I knew Halyna couldn’t see it, so I shouted again, “Now give them the second burst! Drive them right toward me! Force them all the way to the wall!” I was taking a huge risk, of course, because I had no idea whether or not anything as weird and inhuman as the bugbears could be pushed through a Zipper and into no-Time on the other side, but it was all I could come up with.
The flamethrower belched its last blazing plume, dripping fire and shedding black smoke. Sam understood what I was doing. He came roaring in from the side, holding the God Glove in front of him. I didn’t think he could have mustered the force to knock over a child’s punching clown at that point, but he made it blaze like a magnesium flare. Caught between Halyna’s wall of flame and Sam’s bewildering white glow, the jelly-things hunched and slid as quickly as they could toward the Zipper. At the last moment, as the flamethrower ran out of flame, I sprinted toward the herd of Boneless Ones myself, screaming like an idiot and adding to the general chaos. The flabby things began to pile their way into the opening to escape the flames, tumbling into Outside. It must have looked to Halyna and Oxana as though the jelly-monsters were disappearing into thin air.
The flames fell away. The last bugbear, still sizzling and covered with blisters like hubcaps, hesitated in the opening and began to slop back out again. I grabbed at it, trying my best to ignore the feeling of my hands burning, then shoved with all my strength. It teetered there on the edge of nothingness for a moment, then Sam was beside me, and we forced it through. I reached up and closed the Zipper. It held.
“What happen?” Oxana asked. “Where they go?”
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “We have to get finished and get out of here.”
“We have to get out of here, period,” said Sam.
“No! Not when we’re this close. Use the glove, Sam.” I grabbed his arm. It was shaking badly. “I know you’re a mess, and so am I, but I need you to use the glove again. I have to find that horn if it’s hidden down there.”
“Are you fucking nuts?” Sam pulled away. “Do you have any idea of the shit that’s going to hit the fan in about two minutes? She’s going to know someone’s using one of her God Gloves.”
“Anaita?” I steered him toward the stairs. He seemed overwhelmed, or I wouldn’t have been able to do it, because Sam’s a big guy. “Look, even if she knows that you used it and where you used it, I’ve been to her house! She lives miles and miles away—fifteen minutes from here even if she’s got a private helicopter. Hurry up, and we’ll be out of here in five!” I turned to Clarence. “Keep Oxana and Halyna here—they’re both pretty banged up, and Oxana can barely stand. We’ll be right back.”
Sam was still arguing as we hit the bottom of the stairs.
“Sam, just use the Glove, please. Tell me if there’s anything in here that feels like serious power. Edie Parmenter said it had to be here, and the less we talk, the sooner we’ll be done. Come on, man, I never ask you for anything!”
“You are shit and you are a liar,” he said, but he thrust the glowing hand out in front of him. The light was so much dimmer now I could see the actual shape of his fingers inside the sphere of radiance, and the light itself pulsed weakly, like a dying fluorescent bulb.
“Well?” I asked.
“Shut up. You’re right, there’s something here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely . . .” He closed his eyes, then moved his hand slowly through the air.
I’d hardly had a chance to look at the room before, but it was a very nice office, which made it even stranger that it was completely secret and hidden. A large desk made of some dark, shiny wood dominated the space, and behind it stood a high-backed chair made of the same dark wood, amply decorated with gold. There were Oriental rugs hanging on the wall and objects of brass and silver, oil lamps, bowls, vases set on shelves in tasteful clumps. The sumptuous carpet beneath our feet was probably worth enough to pay the salaries of the entire museum security staff, including the widow of the dead guard, for twenty lifetimes.
Sam swung around, letting his hand drift sideways, moving it along the walls and up toward the ceilings, sometimes toward the floor. He kept rotating until he faced a rectangular piece of stone on the wall at the opposite end of the office—white marble carved with letters in a script I didn’t recognize, something so plain and simple in design that it looked almost like modern art. He hesitated for a moment, then swung past it and continued around the room again. Then he turned back to the marble rectangle.
“That,” he said. “But it’s not the horn.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The horn isn’t here. What else do you want me to say?”
“What else could Edie have felt? She’s good, Sam. How can you be sure it’s not here?”
“I know because I know. The glove makes me . . . feel things differently. Like hot and cold spots, or air currents, but that’s not it.” He shook his head. He looked ten years older than the last time I’d seen him, when he cursed me out at the restaurant. “I think it’s a door.”
“Door?”
“Shit, is there an echo in here? Yes, Anaita’s door to Kainos.”
“You mean the Third Way?”
“Yes. The only magicky, angel-y thing in this room is that slab on the wall, and it’s a Kainos door. If you want to understand better, you wear the glove.”
I hadn’t thought of this. “Can I?”
“Oh, sure, if you don’t mind your hand bursting into flame without the protection I get from being the rightful owner.” His face darkened. “Rightful for now, anyway. Let’s get out of here. It’s a bum steer, B. The horn’s not here.”
I didn’t know what to say. After all this, after the blood and the flames and the armies of horror we’d just fought. “I don’t believe it. Try again.”
“Don’t you get it? We don’t have any time—!”
“Sam, Bobby!” It was Clarence from upstairs. “Get up here!” A second later his voice rose in pitch. “Quick!”
“Shit, what now?” I hurried up the stairs with Sam limping behind me. When I got there, Clarence was staring at a spot near where I’d Zippered up the bugbears, and for half a second I thought they’d somehow gnawed their way back out. I should have been so lucky.
What the kid was pointing at, and what Halyna and Oxana were also staring at, faces pale and slack with fear, was the huge mosaic of Anaita that had covered the door to her secret office. The mosaic was sparkling. No, it was sparkling and moving. Ripples of animation made the whole thing seem to vibrate, blurring its edges.
“Get out,” I told Clarence. “Hurry. Now.”
“What . . .?” He couldn’t look away from the mosaic, so I shoved him in the back. Hard.
“Get the hell out of here now, Harrison! We need you on the outside, because this shit has gone as bad as it gets.” If I could have sent the Amazons away too, I would have, but they were both hobbling, Oxana quite badly, and Clarence never would have made it carrying the two of them.
He opened his mouth to say something, but I shoved him again. He finally got it, although he looked like he didn’t want to, and sprinted off across the Asian Hall.
I turned back in time to see the entire flat figure of glass and stone and porcelain tiles step off the wall in one piece and float to the ground. A moment later two porcelain and gemstone lions leaped down beside it.