Viper Moon Page 14

I faced him. “You think the real Barrows will drive him away.”

  “Maybe.” Michael, seeing my rage had passed, moved closer. “But regardless, I want you alive. Please.”

  That last word cost him. Michael wasn’t accustomed to asking for anything.

  Flynn had sized up the situation between me and Michael, too. He slipped an arm around my waist, a possessive arm that claimed me for his own. Great Mother, let him feel the same way after our trip through the Barrows.

  The phone rang, a shrill, strident sound that shrieked down my nerves.

  Michael made a sharp turn and hurried to it. “Wait.” He held up a hand to us.

  “Archangel,” he answered. He listened. “Hundred. Yes. Cash. Of course.” He listened longer, his face intent as if he tried to squeeze more meaning out of the words coming from the other end. “Half an hour. I’ll be there.” He hung up the phone and gazed at us. “This is a line I set up for information. We have an informant.”

  “So.” My fury had drained away, but a deep, abiding anger remained. “That’s your hunt. Not mine, Mr. Moneyman.”

  “Very well. But why don’t you and Detective Flynn join me? He didn’t say to come alone. It’s probably bogus. I’ve had a number of those.”

  I glanced at Flynn. He was looking at me. “Okay, but where?”

  Michael gave me a brilliant smile. “Behind River Street about six blocks in. Too deep for me not to be suspicious. There are many more suitable sites around, all less dangerous. I’ll send for my car.” He reached for the phone again.

  “No. We should go in mine. That fancy Jag will attract too much attention. I take the POS in a lot. No one will be suspicious . . . I hope.”

  Michael nodded. “You’re right.”

  Before we left the office, Michael walked behind the bar, drew out a knife in a leather sheath. He also picked up a briefcase. A hundred thousand dollars? Like pocket change? The action wasn’t lost on Flynn, either, because he turned a thoughtful gaze at me. I shrugged. “Money doesn’t buy the things I need, Flynn. And that was a mighty damn convenient phone call.”

  “Seems that way,” Flynn said. “But over the years, I’ve seen more coincidences than you would believe. Suspicious, but sometimes they happen.”

  I’m sure he had, but I think his thought process might have been skewed on this one.

  Michael handed the knife to Flynn. “Take this. It’s the only bronze I have.”

  To my surprise, Flynn accepted the knife. Of course, he’d done so carefully, not touching the handle. The damned thing would be under a microscope and in a police evidence locker somewhere soon.

  Michael shrugged. He had to have known, but he also knew the value of bronze in the Barrows. A puny defense, a single knife, but better than nothing.

  We trooped downstairs and out into the parking lot. The day’s furnace had passed its peak temperature, but the asphalt radiated accumulated heat in intense waves.

  Michael opened the back door of my car and slid in as graceful as a ballet dancer. He would make any vehicle, even my POS, seem like a Jaguar.

  Michael’s instructions were easy to follow. To my surprise, it was to the place Abby had brought me on my first day in Duivel. She said she wanted to show me what I’d face occasionally, and this was a great classroom.

  “Why bronze?” Flynn asked as I started the car. “What’s it for?”

  “Bullets, usually,” I said. “Some things are hard to kill.”

  “Things?”

  “Things.” I sounded grumpy, but I wasn’t a patient teacher and I had no way of truly explaining what he needed to see for himself.

  After we turned off River Street and, into the ruins, Flynn watched the passing blight, actually seeing it for the first time. His expression was one of a man who found something appalling in his closet or under his bed. I understood. If I’d gone uptown and picked up an ordinary citizen and brought them here, it would be the same. However, that knowledge would most likely pass away as soon as the ordinary citizen left the invisible boundary of the Earth Mother’s spell. Because of his involvement with me, I think Flynn would remember.

  I carefully steered the car through the desolation across cracked pavement, around potholes, and past abandoned buildings with gaping black holes where windows once protected humans who called it home. Rusted and burned-out cars sat in empty lots, wastelands where even weeds wouldn’t grow. The side wall of one building had a single graffito word painted in black: UNCLEAN.

  When we reached our destination, I parked, climbed out, and opened the trunk to retrieve the glass bottle of blood Abby had preserved for me. Blood worked great as a distraction. I could always break the glass. Monsters naturally gravitated toward it as food. If Michael’s weasel didn’t show, I’d use it to teach Flynn what we faced.

  “This was a school.” Flynn climbed out of the car. He nodded at a chunk of granite with the figures P.S. 112 carved in the stone.

  Michael came to stand beside us. “This part of Duivel was once almost the entire city. Its decline began in 1900, and it was systematically erased from the history books. The larger part to the south lasted until the early 1960s.”

  “That’s been a real bitch for me,” I said. “All I can find is bits and pieces of information. No street maps, nothing to help me.” My sense of direction didn’t need maps, but one would be nice occasionally when I scouted out Bastinado hideouts.

  Flynn waved his hand at the blight around him. “This is irrational. Crazy. I never saw past River Street and the docks. No one looks past River Street. Why? And who would—or could—go in and erase history?”

  “It’s cursed,” Michael said, his voice hard as the broken stone around us. “The ground, the air, the Barrows. It’s an evil place.” His voice had lost that perfect musical tone. Michael’s face was no less handsome in the bright sunlight, but it appeared harsh and very human.

  Flynn frowned. I’d bet it jarred him, Michael’s sudden personality shift from rich business owner to a mystic speaking of curses and evil.

  Flynn’s eyes met mine, and he spoke with what I knew would be short-lived surety. “Places aren’t evil. Only what lives there.”

  I remembered my own shock at the Barrows’ desolation and the way people ignored it. “What’s that?” Flynn pointed at my glass bottle.

  “Blood.”

  “Whose blood?”

  “I don’t know. It was buy one get one free at the Barrows Jiffy Mart.”

  Flynn started to argue with me, but Michael interrupted.

  “Let’s get this over with. I expect it’s a false call anyway. There were a couple of Bastinados last night who thought alone meant helpless.”

  “You think this is a trap?” I slid my hand over my gun and loosened it a bit.

  Michael smiled. He’d stuffed the briefcase under the car seat. “We’ll wait a while on that.”

  The brick building was a single story, an oddity here. Those that weren’t warehouses or factories were usually two or three. Interior floor coverings, ceilings, and walls were long gone, making one enormous room with a concrete floor. Holes pocked the roof, creating an eerie, dappled light. It grew darker, deeper in the building, and the shadows suddenly weighed on me like a black soul, unable to pass beyond the prison of the living world. I glanced at Michael and Flynn and knew they felt the same.

  “Whoa,” I said as we approached a gaping black crater in the concrete floor twelve feet in diameter. “It’s gotten bigger.”

  A crude crosshatch of bronze rods, held together by thin wire, covered the hole. Time had chewed its edges, so the bronze grid balanced precariously over the darkness. I didn’t know who’d laid the prison bars down, but I knew why. The creatures below wouldn’t risk passing by the bronze except under extreme conditions.

  I didn’t need my bottle of blood. An appalling liquid sheet of red smeared across the concrete floor toward the pit’s crumbling edge. “Is that your weasel, Michael?” I pointed at a male body, drained of vital fluids, that lay fa
ceup in a pool of thickening red fluid. The gruesome clean slice across his throat looked as if someone held him while he bled out. Fresh, very fresh, cut only minutes earlier.

  “It would appear so,” Michael said, his voice tight and definitely unmusical this time. He knelt by the dead man. Flynn simply stared. My hardened cop appeared to be on sensory overload. Up close and personal in the Barrows can do that to a person. I was used to it. I’d seen worse. And I saw it for what it was—a trap.

  “There’s nothing here. Let’s go, Michael.”

  “No.” Flynn suddenly remembered he was a cop. “I have to get someone down here. Identify him. This is a crime scene.”

  “They won’t come, Flynn. There’s no phone service this deep in the Barrows. Even cell phones won’t work here. And I keep telling you this place doesn’t exist uptown.”

  I heard the sound then, the frenzy of small things that came from the hole. Little creatures with their ratlike squeaks and chatters, small harmless horrors scrabbling around, crawling over each other, seeking drops of blood. My mind pictured the little creatures now chattering over the blood drained into the hole, an incredibly ugly mixture, some spiderlike, others shaped like giant toads or turtles.

  I understood the nature of the trap now. Simple, nothing sophisticated. The clamor would attract a larger predator. Whoever did this thought Michael would come alone, maybe in the Jag. And if he happened to have the money in the Jag . . . yeah, definitely worth it. They would back him against the hole where he couldn’t escape and toss his body in when they finished.

  Men’s shapes appeared in the doorway we’d entered. The sudden rattle of Bastinado chains signaled they were headed into battle. As a rule, Bastinados aren’t very bright. Except for an occasional leader, they are locked into their rules and rituals and would follow them to hell. Rattling chains equal a battle cry.

  A thick grunt came from below.

  The bronze crosshatch suddenly popped up like a champagne cork. The crosshatch toppled over and landed with a screech and clatter on the concrete floor, where the thin wire holding it together broke and it collapsed into a pile of bronze sticks. Above that racket came an undulating foghorn howl of a very large beast.

  The Bastinados raced out the door. They’d wait outside for the monster to get us. We’d have to go out shooting. “Run!” I shouted. “Get into the light.”

  Even as we turned, I knew it was too late. The grizzly bear–sized monster huffed, rumbled, and clawed its way out. Like an obscene rhino, gray hide armor plated its body and its four long legs ended in big cat claws. Its elongated head had a mouth with multiple rows of teeth, and the bulbous eyes of a creature that hunted below the street in eternal night.

  As we scrambled away, I drew and fired one round. The bronze bullet hit midchest, directly under its jaw. It bellowed in pain and staggered, but it kept coming. Shallow penetration in tough hide. The predators I’d encountered before would never have touched the bronze barrier over the hole. Did that tough-looking hide make this one less sensitive? It should have gone for the easy meat, too, the body on the edge of the pit.

  Because I’d turned to shoot, it caught me first.

  It slung one clawed leg.

  Too close. The claws missed. Its leg slammed me on the hip and sent me flying. I hit the concrete with bonerattling impact. Then it was on top of me. I stared straight up into a mouth of razor teeth. Bloody slobber sprayed over me.

  Great Mother! Its breath smelled like its guts had died and rotted and its animal brain didn’t know it yet.

  I’ve learned to hang on to my gun, though, no matter the circumstances. I pulled the trigger and shot straight into that gaping maw. One. Two. At the third shot the thing jumped straight up and away. It choked and vomited blood. I didn’t kill it, though. This kind appeared damn near indestructible. I needed an eye and brain shot.

  I didn’t know Flynn’s or Michael’s location, so I couldn’t risk dangerous random fire. The three shots had hammered my eardrums. I couldn’t hear them, either.

  I spotted Michael to my right. The creature charged him. He swiftly and gracefully danced out of the way. Where was Flynn?

  As I scrambled to my feet, the barbaric creature charged again. It had a knife hilt sticking out of its neck. Great Mother, the knife Michael had given Flynn. Had Flynn jumped on the thing’s back?

  I shot again. Solid in the body but missed its head. An agonized roar vibrated even my abused ears.

  Flynn suddenly stepped between me and the creature. Oh! He’d remembered my words. He hadn’t drawn his gun with its useless bullets. A bronze rod from the shattered crosshatch shield poised over his shoulder like a baseball bat. He gripped the rod tense and steady, like a pro baseball player who knows he’s facing an incompetent pitcher. His mouth tight with determination, his dark eyes focused on the bizarre creature rushing toward him. The man who’d walked into a nightmare of epic proportions now stood between me and death.

  Flynn swung the rod with enough force to hit a home run way past center field. The bronze rod smacked straight across the eyes. They popped, spraying sulfur yellow slime everywhere. I dropped the magazine from my gun and quickly shoved in another.

  The thing still stood, blind, head swaying.

  Flynn stood watching ten feet to my right. Michael on my left. Relief. Both men lived.

  I closed in for a kill. Careful aim . . . one of the damaged eyes . . . I pulled the trigger. A direct hit. The creature flung itself up, whirled around, coughing and clawing at the concrete floor. It collapsed and died. As it did, it slammed into Flynn and knocked him backward into the monster-filled sewer.

  chapter 17

  I raced for the hole, but Michael beat me to it. He snatched one of the bronze rods on the run and, without hesitation, jumped in, feetfirst. I made it to the hole and, by all logic and reason, should have stayed there to help them get out.

  Fate isn’t logical. The unstable edge crumbled under me. I’m quite sure Michael landed on his feet in a graceful upright position like a gymnast. I landed on my ass.

  Many of the storm sewers under the Barrows still function. During a rainstorm, deadly walls of water rush through them and out to the river, cleaning them to a degree. It hadn’t rained in three months, so at least a foot of monster shit cushioned my fall. I held my gun high and kept it clean at least. I straightened and the stuff oozed over my legs. Great Mother, what a stink.

  Flynn, also slimy, crouched next to a wall near me, puking his stomach out, just as I had the first time I went below the streets. Michael stood guard over him, bronze rod poised to fend off larger predators. Sure enough, the shit reached only to his knees. A medium-sized predator, one certainly big enough to kill a man, lay to the side, its head a bloody mass. It would have taken Flynn if Michael hadn’t guarded him.

  All the little horrors had scrambled away in terror, so we were alone—for the moment. This sewer wasn’t the largest I’d been in, ten feet high and ten wide. To my right, it tunneled into darkness, black and thick as roofing tar. To my left, the faint glow of lichens marked a funnel deeper into the Barrows.

  I managed to get to my feet without using my hands, but filth coated me from the boobs down. I went and crouched by Flynn. “You hurt?”

  “No.” He choked on the word and retched again.

  “You’re doing good,” I told him. “My first time down here I couldn’t talk for a couple of hours.”

  Clinging to the wall, Flynn forced himself to his feet. With shallow breaths, I could see him fight for control. I wanted to wrap my arms around him.

  But first we had to get out. “If one of you gentlemen could give me a boost, there’s a rope in my trunk.”

  “We don’t have time for that.” Michael nodded to the sewer hole behind me.

  At least four hulking predators stood at the edge of the pool of dim light, and there might’ve been more behind them. Not as big as the one who climbed out, but still dangerous.

  I’m not sure what they were waiting on,
unless they could sense the bronze rod in Michael’s hand. The monster that dumped us into this mess had ignored the bronze hatch. If they charged en masse, they’d overwhelm us in an instant. Why hadn’t they charged? All Michael had was a single piece of bronze. They almost seemed to be waiting on something, some signal to attack.

  I glanced the other way. Nothing, and the faint lichen glow meant we wouldn’t be completely blind.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ve done this before. They eat anything organic. I’ll take one of them down, and we leave while the others have dinner. They’ll follow, but it’ll buy us time.”

  Michael nodded.

  The predators staring at us walked upright on two legs and had arms that ended in clawed hands. A couple of them had porcupine quills down their backs like some I’d seen before, but the others were a new . . . breed? Species? And when did there get to be so many of them? A year ago, I could walk these tunnels for a mile or more and never encounter one.

  They twisted and shuffled as they watched us with glowing eyes. I have an affinity for Earth Mother’s animals, even those that are not special like Nirah and Nefertiti. These strange creatures did not belong to her.

  I aimed for an eye of the one that appeared the softest. “You guys head the other way. I’ll catch up with you. Shouldn’t be too far to a manhole or grate.” I pulled the trigger.

  Good shot. The bronze hit the eye and sheared off the top of its head. Before it hit the floor, the others pounced on their meal. One more shot and another went down.

  A storm sewer, like an enclosed building, isn’t a good place to shoot a high-powered gun. The blast slapped my already sensitive eardrums again. I didn’t want to hear the feeding frenzy anyway. Too many beasts and not enough food. If I’d had an extra magazine, I’d have killed more, but I had to save the precious bronze for whatever lay ahead. I hurried after Flynn and Michael.

  The lichens’ faint glow showed only the silhouettes of the two men ahead of me. Michael led the way and Flynn staggered along. When I caught up with them, I could see that with each step, though, he grew stronger. He’d glance at me occasionally, but I couldn’t read him. I prayed the memory of what we shared last night would override the impromptu lesson I’d thrown at him like a grenade.