Hell's Maw Read Online Free PDF Page A

stared at Grant, a flash of challenge in her dark eyes. Challenge and confusion, as if he had intruded on her dreams.
    â€œYou understand me?” Grant asked. “¿Lo entiendes?” he repeated the question in Spanish as his Commtact helpfully translated in his ear.
    â€œGrant—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.
    * * *
    G RANT 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.
    â€œÂ¡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.
    â€œHey—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 fixed expressions. And, strangely, from this distance it appeared that their eyes were blank, white orbs, like hard-boiled eggs without their shells.
    â€œStop!” Grant ordered, using the same tone of voice he had employed in his days giving orders as a Magistrate.
    The two men ignored Grant and stepped out through the doorway. Why shouldn’t they—he had no authority here.
    But Grant was determined. He dashed down thecorridor and through the door before it could slam closed behind the disappearing party, shoving it open again as he