PART ONE: The Shadow Before

Epilogue

Around me the auditorium collapsed in flames. The room was an inferno. The spot in which the late George 'Harvard' Desoto terminated his existence was now a flaming crater in a sea of shattered seats, looking like a picture of a nuclear test in a forest, with all the trees fallen around the blast.

I pushed myself up in the wreckage of the control room. By the sounds of things the explosion had spooked whatever of Hades' men were left and they'd decided to flee. At least I didn't have that to worry about any more. Small mercy, I guessed.

Hunks of flaming debris continued to fall – pieces of seats, hunks of wood. I staggered and choked on smoke and fumes. The edge of the control room, where I had been standing just minutes ago, had been taken off by the blast and now lay along the roof somewhere and mostly over the office. If I crawled to the edge of the wreckage, I could just about see one of the gods nearby.

"Mona!" I cried out, over the crackle of the fire.

A part of me, a strong part, wasn't expecting a response. If she'd somehow managed to hold off all of Hades' men, there was still the explosion. Which was why, when a weak voice replied, "I'm here, Max!" my heart raced with such fire I thought it would burst.

I leapt from the jagged edge of what had once been the control room, shattered floorboards crumbling beneath my toes, and landed hard on the nearest god. The heat from the flames was incredible. My body was soaked in a thin sheen of sweat. I pushed myself up and walked across it. Mona was still on the broken god, resting against the wall, surrounded by used shells. She looked as if she'd aged twenty years since I'd left her.

"Stay there, Mona!" I called over to her. "I'll be there any second now!"

I ducked through the door behind the gods, into a passageway that connected all the balconies. Out here the air was heavy with smoke, but the inferno seemed a little more distant – a loud crackling, the occasional crash of falling debris. I coughed and staggered along the red velvet, tears filling my stinging eyes.

That little voice. The one that just kept on telling me to stand up, swallow back the pain, ignore everything else. Finish the job. Clean up the mess. It was getting louder, somewhere inside me. You may be going blind, your throat and lungs may feel like someone's lighting a match on them, your ankle and your arm may be screaming in agony, but you damn well carry on, and don't you even dream of stopping, even if you lose those legs.

I reached the door to the god in a haze. My world was spinning. A loud crash from the room beyond jerked me to my senses and I threw open the door.

"Max," Mona coughed.

I almost had to look away. Was I too late anyway? She looked like a skeleton. Her throat seemed to have swollen. Her eyes were rimmed with red and black. For a horrible second she looked just like Maria Escobar, and I felt time seeming to double back on itself. Then she tried to stand.

I wrapped an arm around her and lifted her so that she rested on my shoulder. Don't know if she can manage the walk. I swept her off her feet and cradled her in my arms, then stopped through the door, like some twisted wedding night scene – the groom carrying the limp corpse of his wife over the burning threshold. I barely noticed her weight in my arms.

We made our back through the building whilst behind us the fire greedily consumed everything. Occasionally a wall would come down, or you'd hear a distant explosion. Now and again you'd hear rushing footsteps and panicked screams – the last of Hades' men, maybe. Leaderless and scattered.

The exit wasn't a glorious ray of sunlight, or a well-guarded gate like something from King Kong. It was an old rusty fire exit with a faded green sign. I kicked it down and it screeched on its hinges, and suddenly we were stumbling into a back alley in the sweltering heat of the New York night and taking big, greedy breaths of oxygen.

I carried Mona to the edge of the alley, laid her down against a wall and, beneath the glow of an orange security light, rested my head in my hands. I could still hear the building blazing, but there were sirens coming now. Police, fire service, ambulance, the whole thing.

I thought about stepping out of the lane into the middle of the whole circus, of throwing up my hands and giving it all up. Then I realised that it'd be a huge mistake. If whoever wanted me dead was as powerful as Hades said – and after vaporising himself I didn't doubt it – seeking police protection would be like signing my execution. I thought of Troy Novak, and I shuddered.

Behind me Mona groaned.

"Max," she coughed. "Max, come here."

I leaned down next to her. There was raw fear in her eyes now.

"I've got it, Max," she said. "Miasma. I've got it."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"It's all connected," she said. "I don't know how, but it is. I was working on the same case as you, Max. I've got an insider who reckons it's man-made. I followed up his lead and it led to that address I gave you. You want the answers, go there yourself. I couldn't piece it all together."

"Where's your insider?"

"Dead. Just like everyone else. This is big, Max. We're stepping on some big toes."

She broke off into a harsh burst of coughing, and then stared up at me, her eyes red and watery.

"I'm going to get you to a hospital," I said, lifting her up.

"No good," she rasped. "Solve the case, Max. Piece it all together."

We both walked out into the hot, indifferent night. Somewhere out in that city, someone wanted me dead. I had a feeling that if I wasn't careful they'd soon get their wish.

………………………..

AUTHOR'S NOTE: There will be a Part Two, but I'll probably publish it as a separate story. I'll get it up ASAP, trying to fit it in around uni and stuff. Thanks for reading the first part.