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family of yours. It’s funny how they look nothing like you,
hm?”
The taunt found its mark, and I raced forward, heedless
of the god’s cleverness. Tom yanked away the darkness as
if it were a magician’s curtain, revealing the trick beneath.
His laughter sank beneath the sound of something large
and mechanical, and the god’s shadow stretched toward
me, pushed by a large, blinding spotlight projecting from
somewhere behind him. The shadow transformed as it fell
over me, revealing the monstrous outline of the thing hidden
within the dead, ever-crumbling folklorist.
The sight almost distracted me from the gunfire thundering
through the window at the end of the hallway—a police
helicopter fired both its mounted machine guns, chewing the
world around me into so much smoking ruin.
I followed the curve of silence where it diverted into an
adjoining hallway. More police vehicles massed around
the building as the skies filled with additional spotlights. I
needed to finish the god quickly if I was to have any chance
of escaping. Tom would need to conserve and repair what
was left of his vessel, I suspected. It seemed a worthy idea
to make my way toward the hotel wedding chapel, should
it have one. Secrets have no greater haven than beneath the
shadow of religion.
Regrettably, according to the map of the hotel carved
beautifully into a nearby wall, the chapel was located many
floors above me, near the “rooftop lagoon,” of all things.
The most direct paths to my destination lay on the outside of
the building or up the elevator shaft, and I was fairly certain
my armor of dream would not long survive the vulgar reality
of several police gunships’ sustained showers of high caliber
rounds. I pried open the elevator doors and scaled the shaft
to the top of the building.
It was a predictable route to take, I confess, but I hadn’t
realized how predictable until large numbers of people
began tumbling down at me from the floors above. I was
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