City of the Snakes Read Online Free PDF Page B

as the door swings open with a series of heavy clicks. A light is shining inside. “It comes on automatically when the door opens,” Sines explains in answer to my inquisitive look.
    I edge forward. The Cardinal’s coffin is set on an ornately carved slab of marble in the middle of the room. He used to say he didn’t care what happened to his body when he died, but the specific instructions he left about what he wanted done with his remains proved that was a lie.
    “Lock the door after me,” I tell Sines.
    He blinks. “The room isn’t ventilated. A few hours inside and you’ll run out of air.”
    “That’s OK. I’ll signal when I want to leave.”
    “There isn’t a button you can press, and nobody would hear you if you hammered on the door or walls—they’re too thickly insulated.”
    I frown. “Then give me an hour and come back. If I want to stay longer, I’ll let you know when you open the door.”
    “You’re the boss,” Sines mutters, hits a couple of buttons and watches, troubled, as the door slides shut, entombing me with The Cardinal.
    “And then there were two,” I mumble, turning to face the coffin.
    No answer.
    I circle the coffin. Long. Wide. Black. Ferdinand Dorak’s name engraved on a silver plaque, along with birth and death dates, and a short epitaph— NOBODY TOLD ME THERE’D BE DAYS LIKE THESE . I laugh out loud when I read that. Nice to see the old bastard’s sense of humor didn’t desert him at the end. I skipped The Cardinal’s funeral. Had other things to worry about, like running a city all set to blow in the wake of its former ruler’s death.
    “Where are you now?” I whisper, touching the coffin (it’s warm, some kind of hard plastic, softer than I expected). “Riding the devil’s ass in hell? Tearing up the heavens? Simply rotting here?”
    I don’t know whether or not I believe in life after death. I’m proof that the dead can be brought back, but that doesn’t mean they can move on. What happens to the billions of spirits not waylaid by the
villacs
? Do they find rest elsewhere, or did the Ayuamarcans, by their very existence, signify that this plane is all there is? The priests are powerful, but I can’t picture them wrenching control of a soul from a god or devil. Perhaps they’re only able to wield power over the dead because the dead have nowhere else to go.
    Shaking my head, I check the lid of the coffin. It’s held in place by screws that can be easily turned. Suppressing a shiver, I undo them all and gently slide the lid aside. I’m ready for anything—a living, grinning Ferdinand Dorak, a
villac
, an empty coffin—but all I’m faced with is a standard, gray-skinned corpse.
    The Cardinal’s hair is a mess, and his nails look jagged and long on his shrunken fingers, but otherwise he’s much as I remember. His hands are crossed on his chest in the traditional manner of the dead. I check the smallest finger of his left hand. It used to bend away from the others each time he created a new Ayuamarcan. Now it’s straight. Whoever’s bringing the dead back to life, it isn’t this decrepit stiff.
    Curious, I press a couple of fingers to the flesh of the former Cardinal’s left cheek. There’s a thin snapping sound as the bone gives way. I pull back quickly before it crumples. The Cardinal was in a pretty sorry state when they scraped him off the pavement at the foot of Party Central—a fifteen-floor drop takes it out of even the toughest son of a bitch. The undertakers did an incredible job piecing him back together for the televised funeral, but it’s all spit and glue. One punch to the jaw and his head would explode.
    I grin at the thought of desecrating the corpse—part of me hates The Cardinal for creating me and sentencing me to eternity—but I don’t. He was only obeying his nature, as I’ve obeyed mine since taking over. The
villacs
are the real enemies, the sly bastards who manipulated us.
    I lever the lid of the coffin back into place.