Hell's Maw. James Axler

      And so they ate, unaware of what was occurring barely a block away.

      * * *

      AFTER FOOD CAME DANCING. Grant jokingly tried to swear off, claiming he was too full of paella to move, but Shizuka shot him a look that could leave no doubt as to why she was the ultimate authority in New Edo.

      “You will dance and you will enjoy it,” she said.

      “I will dance and you will enjoy it,” Grant corrected with a mischievous, boyish grin.

      They made their way down the alleyway that ran beside the restaurant, passing parked vehicles and other couples enjoying the city’s nightlife. Spain was a country of night people, the heat of the day too fierce to enjoy. Now the burning heat had turned to a refreshing night breeze, and Shizuka rubbed her bare arms as they crossed a junction and made their way toward the grand hotel that was their destination.

      From outside, the grand, four-story building was awash with lights, its windows burning brightly in the darkness.

      “There’s a dance hall inside,” Grant explained. “I hear it can be quite an experience.”

      Shizuka smiled as she looked up at her taller companion, her face alive with delight.

      Even from here, a dozen yards from the steps that led to the open front doors, they could hear the strains of a band, acoustic guitars rushing through some local number at furious speed, maracas click-clacking to keep time as the tune hurtled toward its finale, a blur of tumbling notes and riffs.

      Grant and Shizuka hurried up the steps, a spring in Shizuka’s step as she led her lover through the lobby toward the grand ballroom, which dominated the hotel’s ground floor. Grant stopped momentarily to tip the doorman before dashing after Shizuka as she reached for the double doors into the ballroom itself, the strains of a flamenco emanating loudly from within.

      Grant reached for Shizuka, wrapping one muscular arm around her and pulling her close as she pulled one door open. “I love you,” he said as he brought Shizuka’s face close to his own.

      “I love you, too, my bravest one,” Shizuka told him before kissing him on the lips.

      Then the pair turned back to the doors that were swinging open where Shizuka had pulled their handles. The hurtling notes of the furious flamenco became suddenly louder, twin guitars racing through notes as if trying to outpace one another, the maracas chattering like an insect swarm, a woman’s voice melodically reciting in a foreign tongue. But what lay beyond was enough to stop the two warriors in their tracks.

      The ballroom was vast with an ornate ceiling and richly decorated walls, each carving lit by a flickering candle or the low, shaded light of a bulb. To one corner, the band was playing, four men in dinner jackets and a female singer with luxurious, dark hair tied up tight to her head with a flower clipped there and wearing a wispy dress the rich red of rose petals.

      But no one was dancing. Instead, perhaps a dozen couples, dressed in their most beautiful clothes—the women’s dresses cut to accentuate their curves, the men’s suits cut to hide their own—were hanging from the ceiling in rows, each couple lined up together, two dozen nooses wrapped around two dozen necks, their feet swaying a few feet above the perfectly sprung wooden floor.

      Grant and Shizuka stared at the scene in absolute horror. And suddenly a city of half a million people felt very, very empty.

       Chapter 2

      Grant could tell the twenty-four bodies hanging from the rafters of the ballroom were freshly deceased. He had experienced death from close up many times in his action-filled life and felt no need to shy away from it.

      Beside him, Grant heard Shizuka gasp. She, too, had seen death, had dealt it at the tip of her katana sword. But this—this was something unexpected, something exceptional.

      A forest of taut necks and sagging bodies hung before them, feet still twitching, tongues lolling out from faces that were strained red with pain, eyes open in accusation.

      Grant took a step forward, then turned to the quintet who continued to play their whirling, racing music. “Can you all stop playing?” he shouted to them, striding across the room through the swaying human stalactites.

      The band continued for several bars before its players finally brought the music to an abrupt stop. The woman singer in her rose-red dress seemed poised to say something, or perhaps to sing, and looked aggrieved as she watched Grant stalk across the room toward her.

      “What happened here?” Grant demanded. “Why did they do this? When did they do this? Did you see?”

      The singer stared at Grant, a flash of challenge in her dark eyes. Challenge and confusion, as if he had intruded on her dreams.

      “You understand me?” Grant asked. “¿Lo entiendes?” he repeated the question in Spanish as his Commtact helpfully translated in his ear.

      “Grant—look!” Shizuka called from where she remained at the front of the room close to the open doors.

      Grant turned to her, then spun, following where she was pointing. A pair of double doors stood at the far end of the room, identical to the ones through which Grant and Shizuka had entered. There, through the open doors, three figures were moving swiftly down a hotel corridor, away from the scene. It could be nothing, Grant knew, but he wasn’t one to pass up a lead. Years of Magistrate training had taught him to investigate everything.

      Grant ran, sprinting through the room toward the far set of doors. As he ran he called back to Shizuka, “Wait here and get the hotel people on this,” he said. “See if you can help any of these people—if they can still be helped.”

      With that, Grant was gone, leaving Shizuka standing in a room full of swaying bodies, the band watching her with what seemed to be almost feral looks.

      * * *

      GRANT SPRINTED THROUGH the open doors and out into the corridor. The corridor was underlit, and it was decorated in luscious, dark colors with a small side table and two chairs resting against a wall. Grant glanced behind him as he chased after the rapidly disappearing figures and realized that the corridor turned in a right angle back there to wrap around the ballroom, and presumably back to the hotel reception. It probably functioned primarily as a service corridor, which staff used by way of shortcut between the kitchens and the public parts of the hotel.

      A bellhop in a white jacket was just rounding the corner holding a tray of empty glasses, and his face became alarmed as he spotted Grant appear through the doors to the ballroom.

      “¡Hey!” the bellhop shouted in Spanish as he spotted Grant.

      Grant ignored him, scrambling along the corridor toward the retreating figures. There were three of them—two men led by a woman. The men had coffee-colored skin and were muscular and bare chested. They wore dark pants and boots. One of them seemed to have tattoos across his back, painted there in dark patches like beetles running across his skin. Two steps ahead of them, a curvaceous woman was stepping toward another door on six-inch heels. Grant saw the dazzle of the streetlight that was situated just outside when she pushed against it—and realized that it led out into the street. Glanced in the half-light of the service corridor, the woman appeared to be dressed for carnival, with a towering headdress swaying high over her head, and a plume of white feathers attached to her butt, swinging back and forth like a pendulum with every movement of her legs.

      “Hey—wait up!” Grant called, scrambling along the corridor after the figures. He did not know if they had had anything to do with the scene in the ballroom, but he could only rule that out if he spoke to them.

      The bare-chested men halted to let the woman slip out through the door before them. As they did so, they both turned back at Grant’s call, and he saw them more clearly in the artificial light streaming in from the street. They had shaved heads and grimly