The Golden City by John Twelve Hawks Read Free Book Online

can’t go back to Los Angeles. If you’re leaving London, then why not fly to Tokyo?”
    “You’re manipulating me …”
    “I’m offering you a different kind of journey. Any one of us can dedicate our lives to hate. It happens every day. This is your moment to consider an alternative. Go to Japan. Look for this spirit woman.Perhaps you wouldn’t find her. Maybe you’ll come back and tell me: ‘We’ve got to be like our enemies if we want to defeat them.’ If you say that, if you believe that, I’ll listen to you.”
    Footsteps on the stairs. Hollis glanced over his shoulder and saw Linden return to the room with a cup of coffee in his massive hand.
    “I’ll think it over,” Hollis said. “But I still don’t believe you can talk to the dead.”

5
    M aya reached the fourth floor of the abandoned office building and passed slowly down the central hallway, checking for new footprints in the dust. When she was sure that no one had visited the building since her last visit, she scattered broken glass on the hallway floor, then approached a suite of rooms once occupied by an insurance company. Her hand touched the handle of her sword and she got ready to attack.
    Moving as quietly as possible, she slipped into the reception area. Stop. Listen.
    No one was there. Maya pushed a desk against the entrance door and opened a hallway air vent so that she could hear anyone approaching. There was no electricity on the island and the only light in the room came from a gas flare out in the street. The flame wavered back and forth, burning with a dirty orange light. Shadows touched the old-fashioned office furniture and the wall of rusty file cabinets. During one of her earlier visits, Maya had searched through the cabinets and found water-stained files filled with insurance contracts and payment stubs.
    She entered one of the offices, found an executive chair, and brushed off the dust. Something moved in the next room and she drew her sword. The inhabitants on the island could be divided into two categories: the cockroaches were weak, frightened men who tried to survive by hiding in the ruins; the wolves were much more aggressive, roaming through the city in groups looking for prey.
    The sound came again. Maya peered through a crack in the door and saw a rat scurry across the floor and disappear into the wall. There were rats all over the island as well as gray animals resembling ferrets that darted through the undergrowth of the abandoned parks. No danger, Maya thought. I can rest here. She returned the sword to its scabbard and pushed the padded chair into the reception room. After checking the door one last time, she sat down and tried to relax. On the floor near her feet were a steel-tipped club and a shoulder bag that held a bottle of water. No food.
    This dark world had many names: the First Realm, Hades, Sheol or Hell. It had been described in many myths and legends, but one rule was always the same: a visitor like herself should never eat anything while she was here—even an elaborate meal offered on gold plates. Travelers left their real bodies in the Fourth Realm and could escape this danger, but if an ordinary person swallowed a crust of bread, they could be held here for eternity. Maya felt like one of the fires that burned in the rubble, a bright point of flame that was slowly consuming itself. Most of the city’s mirrors had been destroyed, but she had seen herself in a sliver of window glass near the city’s abandoned museum. Her hair was matted and her eyes were dead.
    Her appearance didn’t bother her as much as the deterioration of her memory; sometimes it felt like entire periods of her life were melting away. She guarded the vivid images that still remained. A long time ago, she had spent a winter’s day in the New Forest watching a herd of wild horses run across a snow-covered pasture. Withinher mind, she saw stocky legs and tangled manes, hooves kicking up the snow as white breath lingered in the