Candy comes through the tunnel next, followed by Vidocq, Brigitte, and Traven.

The new room looks a lot like the last one, probably just an extension of it. The same rough walls and unfinished feel.

“Where to next?” I say.

“We’re about there,” says Hattie.

There’s a grunt and a whirring sound from the other end of the room, then the growl of a generator coming to life. Bright halogen work lights come on all around us. I go blind for a few seconds.

When I can see again, there they are. I have to give it to the Shoggots. They know how to make an entrance.

The passage opens onto a wide concrete room with a metal catwalk overhead. At least twenty members of the Shoggot tribe are lined around the walls and on the walk. And they are dead-dog ugly.

Hattie and the boys pull up short. We stop behind them.

All of the Shoggots, the men and the women, are in looted designer suits. High-end stuff. But the silks and expensive wools are covered in grime and dried blood. Probably the Shoggots’ own. They’re definitely human, but they’ve been holed up down here working on their bodies for so long that at first glance they look like some peculiar flavor of Lurker. Their teeth have been filed to points. Some have split their nostrils. Others have cut off their noses or lips. Their cheeks are adorned with ritual scars and metal. Most have similar body mods on their throats, arms, or chests and many of the cuts are held open with metal hooks embedded in their skin. Some of the cuts look fresh. Others are old and infected. I see maggots in more than a few of the deeper cuts. I wish I’d quizzed Hattie on how crazy these crazies were before we came down here.

A tall Shoggot in the middle of the catwalk rests his hands on the top of the rail.

“Hattie. Lovely to see you. And you’ve brought friends.”

“Hello, Ferox. These aren’t friends. They’re travelers looking for the old Roman.”

“And what good is that old madman to anyone?”

Delon pushes his way up beside Hattie.

“If it’s a matter of payment, I have things to trade for information.”

Ferox stands up straight, scowling.

“Who was talking to you, traveler? What you want couldn’t matter less to us.”

Delon reaches into his pack and pulls out a long, thin knife.

“This is a Liston knife, once used by Robert Liston himself. Before the days of anesthetic, he was one of the most famous and fastest amputation surgeons in Europe.”

Ferox takes a step forward to get a better look at the blade. He gestures to a couple of Shoggots on the floor nearby.

“Bring it to me,” he says.

While they’re carrying it up to Ferox I get next to Delon.

“Are you stupid? Giving these psychos a knife?”

“I’m trying to make us a deal.”

Ferox takes his time looking over the Liston, holding it from different angles to see how straight it is. Moving it through the light to test its sheen. He makes a shallow cut inside one of his wrists, testing the amount of pressure needed to break the skin. He smiles and looks down at us.

“Hello, Officer,” he says. “Would you come up here, please?”

It takes a minute before anyone figures out who he’s talking to. Then Diogo takes a tentative step forward in his mall-cop shirt.

“Yes. You. That’s right. Please come up and join me.”

Diogo takes a couple of more steps and stops.

“Don’t do it, kid,” I say.

He looks at me.

“Diogo,” says Hattie.

He’s frozen in the middle of the room. His dim brain is overloading.

Ferox looks annoyed.

“Bring the pig up here,” he says.

Shoggots grab Diogo and drag him, kicking and screaming, up the catwalk.

Hattie and the boys don’t do anything. They’re paralyzed. I reach for the Colt but decide to wait it out. Even with hoodoo, I don’t know if I can take on this many crazies at once.

A couple of Shoggots hold Diogo as Ferox raises the kid’s right arm.

“If I remember correctly from my reading, the technique was like this. A single deep curved slice, severing the skin and connective tissue in one cut. Let’s see if I’m right.”

He draws the blade across Diogo’s biceps, digging deeper into the skin until the Liston disappears inside. He draws it all the way around so that both ends of the cut meet. Diogo screams and thrashes in the Shoggots’ arms. When Ferox is finished they let him go. He falls onto his face and vomits over the side of the catwalk.

Hattie holds on to Doolittle’s arm, whispering over and over, “My boy. My boy.”

“Not bad for a first time, don’t you agree?” The other Shoggots nod and grin. The ones with lips, at least. “We neglected to bring a saw, so we’ll have to go through the bone later. Tie off his arm so he doesn’t bleed to death. Leave the travelers for now. Bring me the other boys.”

“No!” Hattie shouts.

Ferox points at her with the Liston knife.

“I told you not to come back here, Hattie.”

I pull the Colt and take two quick shots at Ferox. The first just misses and he hits the deck before the second can get him. Two Shoggots on my level rush me and I put a bullet through their foreheads. Out of the corner of my eye I see vials fly by as Vidocq throws his potions. Candy blasts away with her folding pistol while Brigitte takes careful single shots. Delon has disappeared into the back with Father Traven. It looks like his gun is jammed.

Ferox whispers an incantation and deflects Candy and Brigitte’s shots into the ceiling. So the Shoggots are Sub Rosa. I was afraid of that. Ferox tosses a ball of white-hot plasma at Doolittle, burning him from the inside like he’d swallowed a pound of phosphorus. A group of Shoggots knocks Hattie down and drags away the rest of the boys as they scream, “Mama!”

I bark some Hellion and send a stream of fat, needle-sharp projectiles at Ferox. He sees them coming and suddenly his arm looks like a skinny porcupine when he raises it to block the needles.

This time he throws a plasma ball at me. I deflect it with some defensive hoodoo and knock it into a big Shoggot rushing at me with Diogo’s ax.

Before I can go after Ferox again, a couple of nearby Shoggots throw their own flashy hoodoo my way. Muscles split open beneath the open cuts in their arms and shoot out at me like quivering pink tentacles. I blast one of the tentacle throwers with the same needles I used on Ferox, catching him in the face. Another tentacle latches on to my Kissi arm and pulls hard enough to knock me off balance. I grab the black blade from under my coat and slice through the muscle in one blow. The Shoggot screams and is joined by two more.

All three hammer me with hexes. I can barely throw up enough of my own defensive hoodoo to keep them off me. I can’t see Candy or any of the others anymore. I think they’ve been pushed back behind me to the door.

I pocket the knife and grab the na’at. Swinging it out like a sawtooth bullwhip, I take out two of my attackers. But three more join the fight. Even in the arena I never went up against this many armed fighters at once.

On the catwalk I catch a glimpse of Ferox hexing rubble, tossing it at me like hundred-mile-an-hour fastballs. I bob and weave, trying to keep off the nearby assholes, when a piece of brick slams into my ribs. I slip and go down on one knee as more debris hurricanes around me. Another brick slams into the back of my head. The nearby Shoggots keep up a stream of blasts. I can’t catch my breath, trying to keep up with them. Blood runs down the side of my head and into my eye. It burns and blinds me on one side. I turn just in time to see a pipe flying at me. And the world goes dark.

I’M LOST. I’M not sure if I’m in Hell, L.A., or Kill City. It feels like I’m in the arena. I’m hunting something and I’m being hunted. I’ve seen the water and the smokes they left behind. But this doesn’t look like the arena. Concrete corridors alternate between long straight lines and sharp turns left and right that double back on themselves. Shit. I’m in a maze. I was just in one of these, wasn’t I? Something like it. I was definitely lost, with something on my tail and closing fast.