Soon, both ankles were buried.
I scooped up piles by the handful, throwing them over my shoulder, and once my feet could move, I scrambled up onto all fours.
It must have been as close a sensation as it gets to walking on water—the surface constantly changing and sinking, always threatening to drag me back under. I worked my way over to the wall and spread my stance, ever shifting as the coin-level rose, making me ascend, inch by inch, toward the air duct above.
I saw a hand rise up out of the pennies, reaching for the sky, for something, bejeweled fingers twitching.
I stepped into the middle of the room, got a decent purchase on the surface, and grabbed Amena’s hand, squeezing for ten long seconds, the coins rising over my ankles, until her grasp went limp.
I didn’t know this woman, but my eyes filled with tears in that awful blue light as the copper rain poured down on me.
• • •
In another three minutes, the pennies had lifted me high enough to climb into the air duct.
Just before squeezing myself through, I noticed something on the concrete above the opening to the vent.
A plaque:
CIRCLE 4: GREED
Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many,
On one side and the other, with great howls,
Rolling weights forward by main force of chest.
They clashed together, and then at that point
Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde,
Crying, “Why keepest?” and, “Why squanderest thou?”
Inferno, Canto VII
I heaved myself into the air duct, wriggling my swollen belly along the metal, coins dropping out of my hair.
It was much darker in here, and the thunder of falling pennies behind me had begun to ease.
By the blue panel of light in that concrete room, I glimpsed the keypad up ahead.
I reached it, experienced a moment of terror when I remembered there had been no code on the plaque.
So I took a shot in the dark.
211—the police code for robbery.
Punched it in.
Green light.
The door opened and I heaved myself up into a wide air duct. I was still gasping for breath and fighting back wracking sobs that had come out of nowhere when Luther said, “You’re uncharacteristically quiet, Jack…a penny for your thoughts?”
He misses her response entirely, his attention drawn to a panel of a flat-screen showing the pair of interlopers who have been wandering around his concrete barrens for the last twenty-four hours.
They’re closing in on the warehouse, on all the action, on Jack.
Luther needs to handle this. Now.
But he can’t leave Jack yet.
Not when one of his favorite circles of hell is coming up.
I calmed myself down, doing the Lamaze breathing I’d been taught in that one class I took with Phin. It was supposed to be a three-week class, but we’d never gone back, having endured too many questions about my age, including one young chick who asked if the Guinness World Record people had been notified.
It seemed so long ago.
Hell, it seemed like it had happened to someone else, in a different life.
I pushed away thoughts of the past, of Phin, and pressed onward.
Crawling while pregnant was like doing everything else while pregnant: slow and difficult. But I kept moving, shaking off the last few pennies stuck in my clothing.
When I reached the end, I pushed open a grating and edged forward.
Poked my head through.
Peered out.
A bare lightbulb dangled from the ceiling on a cord—the sole source of illumination.
This room was twice the size of the previous one, and I wondered how I was supposed to climb down until I fixed my sights on a series of iron bars which had been driven into the stone walls. Just within reach, they descended ten feet to the floor below.
On one wall I saw a black door with a keypad mounted to the wall beside it.
Standing vertically against the opposing wall—a casket-shaped object that appeared to be constructed of solid iron or steel.
I grabbed the closest iron bar and with considerable effort dragged myself the rest of the way out of the air duct. Then I eased my feet down onto one of the lower bars with an embarrassing grunt that made me thankful no one but a psychopath was privy to hear.
Four steps down and I was standing on a floor that resembled a metal grate.
My clothes were still soaked from the gutter-shower, my bones chilled, but this room felt warmer than the others.
Much warmer in fact.
Or maybe just a killer hot flash coming on.
I walked over and inspected the keypad and the door.
Then turned and crossed to the tomb.
Dark gray metal alloy, smooth, and with no defining characteristic beyond a new plaque, its casket-like shape, and the four-inch slot at head-level—
I startled.
—through which eyes watched me.
“Who’s in there?” I asked, taking a step closer.
The eyes stared into mine, unblinking, and what struck me first was their kindness, followed by a second realization—there was no life in them.
The capillaries in the whites had long since broken up.
These eyes belonged to a dead man.
I backed away to let a little of the overhead light stream in. Through the slot, beneath the eyes, I saw a ruined face. Trails of dried blood running down the cheeks. The white and black of a clerical collar.
Luther had killed a priest.
Locked him in a tomb.
Why?
I noticed a plaque midway up the casket as another hot flash enveloped me. I’d suffered my fair share during pregnancy, but nothing as strong as this, strong enough to instantly pop beads of sweat on my forehead.
I read the plaque under the slot:
CIRCLE 6: HERESY
Can you take the heat?
No accompanying quote. No code.
The hot flash was getting worse, and it wasn’t just in my face—it almost felt like drafts of heat were rising up beneath me.
I moved away from the tomb, fighting the kind of dizziness that precedes a heat stroke.
Steam actually lifting off my windbreaker.
I’d suffered through my fair share of hot flashes since becoming pregnant, but this was ridiculous.
The floor caught my attention.
More specifically, something under the grate.
Concentric circles were becoming visible—at first, just a dimly-glowing brown, but that turned amber, which quickly warmed into dirty orange. It reminded me of the burners on my stove.
And still, the heat continued to intensify, the brunt of it blasting the tomb like an oven—hell, it was an oven—fluids sizzling inside and the room filling with the smell of meat beginning to cook.
I rushed to the keypad.
Found it harder to gather my thoughts as the temperature spiked.
Okay, in the last room there was no code on the plaque, but a corresponding police code worked. So what’s the corresponding police code for…intense heat?
Arson?
I wiped sweat out of my eyes and punched in 447.
Red light.
The temperature was rising faster now. I glanced over my shoulder, saw flames licking up at the priest’s face inside the tomb. The smell in the room was beyond offensive—the odor of a human being turning to smoke and ash.
I tried something else.
Code for fire.
I’d been out of the game a while, and it took me a moment to recall, but I got it.