Page 129 of Dead Beat

“If the soldier falters, he may call upon his second,” Hector said, as if he were reciting from a rulebook. “But Danny was yellow. Just a no-good.”

“He was fighting his own demon,” Alex said.

Hec shuddered. “I can’t blame him. I was yellow too in the end.”

“You were supposed to bring a demon back with you. Put it in a cage.”

He laughed. “Can you believe it? What a bunch of rubes we were.”

“But the armor was your fail-safe.”

“That’s right. If something went wrong, if we couldn’t control the prize, the soldier was supposed to shove the thing back through. Send it on its way.” Again that pleading light came into his eyes. “You see how it was, don’t you? We were all supposed to be together. A team.”

Like players on a field. Like children in a schoolyard.

“Sorry it didn’t work out that way, Hec.”

“You shouldn’t go.”

“I have to. Someone has to clean up the mess you and your chums made.”

Hec shook his head. “But you can’t win.”

“So people keep telling me.”

It was time to let Hec go. “Is it then so sad a thing to die?” she quoted.

Death words. A little Virgil to send two phantoms on their way.

46

Darlington and Tripp were waiting outside the cemetery gates.

“You were supposed to stay home,” Alex said, but she just wanted to burrow into his coat and breathe in clean wool and all the mysterious components that made Darlington smell like Darlington.

“I blame Tripp,” he said.

“For what?” Tripp squeaked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Should we go home?” asked Dawes.

They all knew she meant Il Bastone.

Turner took a long breath. “I’m trying to be respectful of whatever the hell that was, but I just heard half a conversation and none of it sounded good.”

Alex wished she had more hope to offer, but at this point they should be used to bad news.

“You were right,” she said to Darlington. “Harkness and the Memorial Quadrangle were built as a mirror of Sterling. The tower is the ascent.”

“To heaven?” Tripp asked hopefully.

“It’s a way to open another door to hell without entering it, to pull Golgarot through to our world the way we once entered his.”

“Why would we want to do that?” Turner asked.

“Because I can’t beat him in hell,” said Alex.