The Sunken City Trilogy

by Phil Williams

  “I’m coming.” As impossible as Letty. And no sign that Holly was going to stop him. Pax accepted it and Obrington gave them all a broad smile.

  “Right you are,” he said. He drew a second pistol from the back of his belt, chunky like a nail-gun, and offered it to Barton. “Take this. Little recoil and barely needs to be aimed in the right direction.” Without further explanation, he continued into the tunnel.

  Pax raised her eyebrows to Letty as a cue, expecting the fairy to insist on coming right away. But Letty jumped off Pax’s shoulder and flew to land on Holly’s instead. “Holler when you’re ready.”

  Pax nodded. Sure. As if. Barton embraced Holly with a whisper of love, before they continued after Obrington.

  “I should –” Rufaizu whispered, but again Holly held him back.

  “You should live a full life,” she told him, plainly.

  He cheered them on instead. “Kill a few for me, Citizen!”

  Back in the Sunken City, they entered the older variety of tunnels; wet brickwork, greening at the edges, dimly lit. Arched doorways branched off every hundred metres or so. Obrington led a winding route, constantly referring to his phone.

  Their advance was interrupted by the patter of feet ahead, and the breathless arrival of an unfamiliar agent. Also splattered with blood, his tie almost undone. He saluted Obrington like a soldier, not out of habit but from being caught up in a situation he didn’t fully understand. “We’re clear to the black spot; Agent Vinton’s up the east tunnel.”

  He rattled off a series of other names, agents coming as quick as they could. Casaria was a way off yet, with Landon, engaged with a tuckle. It might be five minutes or fifteen minutes before they got here. Not good enough, Obrington said; the longer they waited, the more chance a monster might break loose. Report given, the agent mumbled something encouraging to Pax then broke away to cover another passage. The trio moved forward to a hefty metal door. Obrington opened it, took a look in then stepped back.

  “Bleeding weird, but it’s all yours. Give me a minute to take up position myself.”

  Pax let him go, staring into the abyss of the empty chamber. This one was formed of four walls sloping towards each other, meeting in a sharp point, designed to house a toppled pyramid. Pax mouthed, “Why . . .”

  But the why didn’t matter. It was a refuge, that was all. Somewhere the monsters didn’t go, making it as good a place as any for them to make a stand. If it could help her get the minotaur alone, that was all she needed. Stepping inside, she was hit by the same emptiness that had struck her in the chamber they’d visited that morning. Hell, was it only that morning, when she’d woken up secure in her poker winnings, determined to help put her city to rights, unaware she’d be a human sacrifice by nightfall. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  Barton followed and voiced a shudder. The slope was shallow enough that they could go in a few paces before it started to become uncomfortable, so they stopped before the centre of the room.

  “I can still take it, at least pull the trigger…” Barton held out a hand to Pax, but she only handed him the radio Obrington gave her. He frowned, seeing she had no intention of calling Letty, but he said nothing. She drew the Dispenser closer to her. Fully fuelled with moss, cranks turned and ready. She adjusted her grip, finding the button that would set it off. Resting it against her hip, she popped open the canister of dust with her other hand.

  “Get out of here,” Pax told Barton. “Stay safe. I’ll scream if I need you.” Pax forced a smile. Fairly sure she’d be screaming anyway.

  As he dutifully left the room, she tossed a heap of dust into her mouth.

  15

  Sam hauled the garage door up and ducked into the light of the tight space. Holly and Rufaizu stood either side of the gaping trapdoor, startled to see her. She said, “You should wait in the car – I’ll keep an –”

  She froze, seeing the tiny woman sat on Holly’s shoulder. One wing, a pistol hanging over a knee.

  “Yeah, we’ve got it covered,” the fairy said, like it was nothing. Letty, wasn’t it? Sam had heard her voice before, on the phone. She couldn’t close her mouth for surprise. They were here, just like that. Sitting on a civilian’s shoulder – armed – “I do autographs for a tenner.”

  “I – just –” Sam tried to shake herself out of the surprise. This wasn’t the time. She dragged her eyes away from the fairy and drew a pistol. “I’ll take watch here, you can all go.”

  “You ever fired that thing before?” Letty said.

  “I think between being here and in the car,” Holly offered, more reasonably, “it’s not going to make a difference where we wait. So we’ll wait together, shall we?”

  “All pray on the bar fly,” Rufaizu said, determinedly.

  Taking in their companionable looks, Sam lowered her gun, hoping she wouldn’t have to shoot again today. It was more likely a fleeing human would come up these stairs than a monster, surely? A distant, horrible moan rolled out on cue, the sound of immense pipes heaving, but belonging to something far less ordinary. Beyond that, something chattered rapidly, like a bird’s sinister laughter. Mercifully a long way off. A bang followed, a short, sharp gunshot. The tunnels carried sound well.

  “They’re converging,” someone said through Sam’s radio. Letty snapped around with alarm.

  “What the fuck’s that mean? No one –”

  Sam’s radio crackled again: another agent. “I’ve got sickles.”

  The thrums of energy weapons followed. From another far-off location, the same agent’s voice bounced up the hall. “Two down. Two. I’m seeing movement!”

  The escalating sounds of discharging weapons blocked out his further shouts, as Holly whispered quietly, “God save them . . .”

  “Oh hell no, Pax, you bitch!” Letty jumped off Holly’s shoulder, readying her gun. Another Fae rose from the shadows, making Sam’s eyes widen further. Letty instructed, “Guard these fools, Flynt. I’ll be back soon.”

  “You don’t –” the second Fae protested, but Letty shot down into the tunnel like a bullet. As if responding to her approach, a series of pained groans echoed up the hall.

  “I can go, should go too,” Rufaizu insisted, but Holly’s disciplined look told him no.

  Sam stared blankly at the stairs. Should she go herself? There were countless threats, a horde that they’d always made it their business to avoid.

  “Get some!” Letty’s voice rose from the tunnel with the barest crack of miniature gunfire. Flynt flew by Sam’s face, making her jump, as a screeching trill came up. The fairy steadied himself in front of the tunnel, silently waiting, not so eager to be here himself. She had to do the same: they were the last line of defence, here.

  The horde moved quickly.

  Only minutes after the radios had announced that Pax was in the tunnel system, another message reported, “It’s working.”

  Casaria was running, ruing the fact he had entered so far across town. He hadn’t expected Pax down here. Didn’t even know if Ward had intended for her to draw the beasts all along – surely not, she’d come to him. Raging, he fired into the face of a screeching creature as it launched at him from the shadows. Not even stopping to check it was dead, not caring what it was. A terror goose?

  It didn’t matter. He’d carve a hole in the horde all the way back to Pax, to the centre of the chaos. He’d find Pax and protect her, as he had before. Pluck her from the clutches of the praelucente. Protect the city, as he –

  More fiends came with the clicks of bone on brick. Tapping hurriedly down the halls, racing towards him. Casaria skidded to a halt and spread his legs, aiming ahead. The clicks got louder, moving fast, and were joined by a great groan far behind them. Come on you bastards, come to me.

  With a fierce clicking cry, a bunch spider scuttled into view. Behind it, a dozen more.

  Barton stood with his back to the wall, watching the corridor past the doorway to Pax’s chamber, unable to keep his hand still as he clutched the Ministr
y gun. A weighty, impersonal device. He’d never shot anything before. He hoped he wouldn’t have to now. Better that Pax’s plan not work; that the horde not come, and they give this up. He could track the minotaur the way he used to, quietly, with minimal conflict.

  When the sounds started he knew that wasn’t going to happen. They were advancing with the wretched shrieks and scratching claws of unholy beasts. Ones that would kill Holly and Grace, given the chance.

  The Ministry men were firing, far off. One man was shouting, somewhere. The creatures roared closer before going quiet as they were cut down.

  They were definitely aiming for Pax, with a speed and fury Barton had never encountered before, funnelled between gaps in the Ministry’s defences. The men firing on the monsters would be making way for the light of the approaching minotaur. Let that one pass, as they culled everything else.

  The clucking of a glogockle sounded in an adjacent tunnel.

  His old friends, it had to be one of them.

  But an electric discharge silenced that. Then came the rapid patter of something else, scraping on the floor. Barton aimed down the corridor and called to Pax, “Get ready!”

  A sickle raced into view, a slick-skinned centaur with pincer arms stretching ahead of its gnashing zip-jawed mouth. Barton roared a challenge and pulled the trigger. The gun emitted a dazzling ball of blue light that startled him into throwing his arm, the projectile hitting the ceiling with a snap. He blinked to refocus. The sickle was halfway to him, about to pass Pax’s door. He fired again and the second shot burst over its shoulder. The sickle kept going, ignoring Pax’s chamber. Barton threw the gun down and hopped from one foot to another. The other being his bad ankle, which flamed with pain and made him trip.

  Just in time – the sickle leapt the last few metres and its great pincers narrowly missed his head, slashing his shoulder. He rolled under it, down onto his rear, its bulk taking up most of the tunnel above. He threw his fists and knees up as the sickle fought its own momentum to twist back at him, mouth snapping. He caught it with a good strike to its gut, but barely slowed the thing down. It slashed at him, a blade-like limb slicing his face, and he cried out. Pax shouted, “Darren!”

  “Stay there!” he yelled, blocking the monster with his forearm. It was heavier, stronger than him, and its jagged teeth bit close to his nose. He yelled at it and with a last effort drove his forehead into its jaws. It shook off the blow, regrouping, and screeched into his face. But the screech was abruptly cut off as the lower part of its jaw shattered, struck from the side. As it turned it was struck again, in the centre of its head, with a little snap of gunfire.

  Barton winced as the creature collapsed beside him. Letty sped down the hall, firing two more shots into it for good measure, shouting, “Pax you motherfucker, you –”

  A great cascade of noise made her turn back. Barton struggled to push himself up as a sea of shadows followed the fairy into the tunnel; at floor level, three-feet armoured bugs, giant roaches. Above them, a flock of leathery-winged, skeletal-faced birds. Flying to Pax’s doorway, Letty shot at the mass expertly, dropping a handful of birds, but her bullets chimed off the roaches’ shells. One scuttled up a wall near her, feelers probing ahead.

  Barton grabbed it before the thing could reach the fairy, twisting it away from the wall and pounding it with his fist, the shell cracking. Letty fluttered by his head, reloading, and fired again into the approaching swarm. A screech drew Barton’s attention back the other way; some other horror coming from the opposite direction. The tunnel was alive with movement, everything the Ministry hadn’t held back descending on them – and as he shouted, punching, kicking, surrounded by clawing limbs, something serpentine slipped past, into Pax’s chamber.

  “Missed one!” he yelled, and Letty zipped past him, firing away.

  Twisting to try and keep track, Barton was caught from somewhere below and dragged down, smacking a knee into the floor. Something tore at his upper arm, pushing him further down, and more roaches scuttled in – overwhelming him. He roared again, thrusting back at them with all he had –

  A brilliant blue light burst through, and the shadowy mass of advancing creatures subsided with the speed of retreating spiders. Roaches rounded the far corner as ethereal tendrils of electric blue snaked into the hallway, the first hints of the Sunken City’s vilest monster. It came in tentacles of light, exactly as Pax described, and Barton stared with wonder. Without the goggles glo had given him, he saw it now, in all its blinding glory. Definitely not a minotaur.

  Time had not stood still for Pax, not like before; not once she realised that with the intense power of the dust high, she could control this feeling. Once she latched onto that, after the initial stretched-out sounds of advancing creatures and devastating weapons, she sped it up, the screeches and scratches reaching helium pitches. Then slowed it down to something like normal. She could feel the activity better than ever: every creature moving, even the people. The vocal agent, nervous and firing his weapon too soon. Obrington, businesslike, just doing a job. Landon, dispatching one creature after another with dogged determination – be good to get home again. Good to get home. Then Casaria, his aura unmistakable, tightening like a spring, wrapped in something that blurred excitement with deep, unspeakable fear. And Barton. Pure. More afraid of failing than dying.

  Her feelings stretched to Sam Ward at the top of the stairs. Hopeful, quietly dreaming of success. Keeping a silent tally of possible deaths. Worried for her. Everyone worried for her. Them watching, waiting, and the others fighting, overwhelmed by the pressing monsters, all of one thought. She’s counting on me.

  Then Letty. A furious little ball of lightning rapidly approaching.

  Hell, she should’ve stayed out of here. But she was in the thick of the fight, gunning down creatures fearlessly, and Pax sensed, with relief, that the horde wasn’t going after her. They felt Pax, as she felt them; the dust worked, she was their target.

  It was coming closer by the second, her nemesis. The beast, minotaur, berserker, praelucente. She felt its true heart – and knew it to be none of those things. There was nothing conscious in it at all, it wasn’t a malevolent force, it was pure hunger. An unthinking, unfeeling parasite that would drain the world if it wasn’t trapped here. If it didn’t have the limitations the Sunken City held over it.

  And with it came the screens.

  All the screens, she felt each of them as individuals, racing through the city as fast as the beast itself, gliding over surfaces. Drawn impossibly along, some against their will, unable to resist her promise: combining the Fae dust and whatever part of the Bright Veins’ magic ran through her, Pax was a magnet to them. And as they flooded towards her, she started to understand them. Their fears, their wants, their burning, arrogant scorn for humanity. Pax crouched, hands on the floor, feeling the whole system of the Sunken City, like the tunnels were a part of her. She started to get it. Even this room – this black spot, dark in her mind, fit a necessary part of the whole. She couldn’t put it in words, but it made sense, she felt it.

  Various energies competed for dominance, some with truly ancient roots. The screens, connected to the walls, locked it in place, preying, simply preying. The screens behaved according to their nature – aggressive, devious. They formed patterns of unthinking deception, manipulation that came as naturally to them as the design of a hive came to a bee. Even now, unhinged by their surge, ideas formed: blame the Young One for theft – release the criminals from prison – poison her family –

  Then came the sickle, charging down the hall. Past her doorway.

  Barton shouted. The fight going badly.

  Pax couldn’t move to help, caught as she was in the grip of the entire energy of the Sunken City. She cried out, but was fused to the spot, her own stubborn mission holding her as much as the conflicting sea of life energies.

  Worse followed the sickle, a flood of creatures rolling over each other to fill the tunnel and claim her. Shapes passed the doorway in rapi
d, ferocious flurries, Letty out there now, firing without remorse, Barton doing all he could to keep from drowning. And then one shape slid in, a jagged-spined snake of a creature, red eyes fixing on her. It shuddered on the threshold, pained to enter, but pressed on, revealing a mouth of crooked, spiky teeth. Behind it, another monster crept around the entrance, a dozen limbs venturing in.

  Pax stared, transfixed, unable to move as the world’s energy held her.

  The snake’s head popped like a tomato and it dropped lifeless. A second later the other monster was thrown back into the tunnel, shot off the doorframe. Letty hung in the air between them, a ball of light in Pax’s warped vision. The fairy gave her an angry look, but Pax smiled back as time stood still.

  Then something changed. Letty darted over and landed on Pax’s head. She could feel her crouched, reloading, as the shapes outside hurriedly retreated.

  A gentle glow suffused the doorway, a beautiful wash of blue. Gradually the minotaur stretched into view, intensifying to its full blinding self as it slid inwards, bright as a star. Pax slowed time again, one arm covering her eyes and the other closing over Letty, like her fist might protect the fairy. She knew the beast, what it wanted, what it would take. And they came with it, the blue screens swarming in, surrounding her. It hurt them, entering this chamber, but they couldn’t resist. They called to the minotaur and its limbs stretched into them, anchoring into a score of locations around Pax with terrific lightning cracks. They didn’t think in language but she understood: her, her, of the human of the Fae, suck her dry. Fear and hatred mixed with hunger. A tentacle quested towards Pax at tremendous speed, and she let it come, as she took the Dispenser in her hands.

  Her senses slowed it right down. Almost to stillness.

  Letty shouted something, low, too slow and muffled against Pax’s hand to be heard.

  Were they all here? Pax couldn’t tell, their power boxing her in. Dozens, at least, had joined the feast. It had to be enough. She could wait no longer. With a defiant cry, the minotaur’s grasp inches from her, Pax pulled the trigger and the Dispenser exploded forward. She felt that energy, too. Understood the raw power of the weapon, and exactly what it would do.