Free For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) by Guy Adams Page B

Instead they had presented a lamb, its fleece aglow with sickly light.
    The concierge stood back to allow Jones into the elevator. For a moment, the outlaw wondered if this small steel box was a trap, but he entered it anyway. If the residents of The Exchange wanted him captured they would have plenty of opportunities to do so. In truth, he had been theirs from the moment he had crossed the threshold.
    “Someone will escort you once you arrive,” the concierge said. “I never leave the foyer.”
    “Who wants to get in here anyway?” Jones asked.
    “Oh, nobody,” the concierge said. “My job is to keep people in, not out.”
    It reached inside the elevator and pressed the final button on the panel, the lowest floor. The Exchange was nothing if not traditional. In the world of mortals, the most important residents occupied the penthouse, reaching up towards the heavens. In the Dominion of Circles honour went in the opposite direction.
    As the elevator descended, Jones’ sensitive ears began to pick up other sounds over the creak of winch and cable. As he passed each floor, sounds faded in and out: laughing; screaming; a rattling of sewing machines; the chinking of metal; the lowing of animals in captivity, abattoir music; a sound like, but not quite, the chopping of firewood; the plucking of tuneless harp strings; the stretching of rubber; the whisper of the confessional... The work of the Exchange was busy and varied.
    Finally, the elevator reached the bottom and, after a pause that felt like a breath, the doors opened and the cool of the foyer had been replaced with an icy cold that brought clouds of condensation from his lips.
    “Welcome, Mr Jones,” came a woman’s voice. It was as sharp and precise as a newly minted coin, a voice of business and professionalism. “May I welcome you to the corporate floor? It’s an honour to meet you, I’m a great fan of your work.”
    “Nice to know.” Jones stepped out of the elevator, taking a ‘read’ on his new companion. She was small, wrapped in what he assumed from the smell was a fur coat. “What is that?” he asked, leaning in and taking a sniff. “Rabbit?”
    “The coat?” She laughed. “Not quite. It gets quite cold down here, one has to take measures.”
    She reached behind her to where a short rack of coats were hung, selecting one from its hanger and opening it up for him. “Please, I’m not sure how long you could stand the temperature in the boardroom without it.”
    He let her help him as he pulled on the coat. It clung to him with warmth and the musk of the dead.
    “Do follow me,” she said, leading him along a narrow corridor that opened out into a large cavern after a few steps.
    He couldn’t get an accurate sense of how big the place was. Their feet rattled on a metal gantry as they crossed the space but it was so large the echo was all but nonexistent. The cold that surrounded them made him glad of the coat. He had recently survived a bout of exposure, his skin frostbitten, his fingers turned ragged until the attentions of a deluded angel had healed them. This was far colder. This was ice colder than the mortal world could ever create. He leaned over the gantry. As far as his senses could tell there was nothing beneath them.
    “If you had eyes,” the woman said, “that would have been more than your mortal soul could bear.”
    “My mortal soul can bear more than you might think.”
    “You’ve proven as much, true. But even a dangerous animal like you has its limits.”
    Jones was aware that she was intending compliment rather than insult.
    “The abyss,” she continued, “is not something that should ever be stared into.”
    “What’s down there?”
    “Nothing. At all. Which is why it’s more than most can stomach.”
    To Jones, not a man with a mind that leaned towards the philosophical, this sounded like a nonsense. He had no interest in pursuing the matter and they continued on their way.
    At the end of the gantry, his