by J. C. Staudt
“Quim, stay close to Shenn,” Ryovan instructs. “While we’re inside the station, we’re going to use our inside voices. If something goes wrong or we get split up, we meet out here by the vans.”
“The basement is flooded,” Shenn adds, “so I hope everyone brought their high-waters.”
“I didn’t,” says Quim, worried. “Are there any extra?”
Des racks the slide on her Glock and shoves it into her holster. “You’ll be fine. It’s a foot and a half deep, if that.”
“Why do we have to go into the basement?”
“That’s where the portals are opening.”
“Multiple portals?” I ask. “How can you tell?”
“We only know what Mazriel tells us.”
And I just found out how Mazriel knows, I want to say, but don’t. Which begs the question—how many of the Guardians know they possess one of the six grimoires, and are thus colluding to keep it a secret from me? “How do we get inside?”
“That’s your job, highness,” says Ryovan. “Alright, folks. Let’s move out.”
We fall in line and round the fence, passing several of the black-and-orange NO TRESPASSING signs posted along its circumference. Ryovan stops at the nearest gate, where a padlock is fastened to a length of chain. He motions me forward. “Work your magic, Prince Cade.”
“Be more specific. Do you want me to pick the lock, or blow the gate off its hinges?”
Baz caresses the underslung grenade launcher on his custom-kitted rifle. “You need something blowed up, boss?”
Ryovan glances at his watch. “Not right now, Baz. Prince Cade’s got it. The portals open in seven minutes.”
“Everyone take three gigantic steps backward,” I instruct. “This one’s gonna be a doozy.”
I kneel at the gate and draw from my blood reserve to send a squiggling mass of black tendrils through the keyhole. After a whole lot of convincing, Ersatz finally taught me this spell. I feel along the tumblers with my mind’s eye, massaging them into place. At the flick of my wrist, the lock clicks and falls open. I back away with a sweep of my hand. “All set.”
“Damn, he’s good,” says Baz. “What’d we back away for?”
“Tension-breaker. Had to be done. After you, my good man.”
Chapter 7
The locks on several of the entrance doors have been vandalized, so getting inside the building is no sweat. Urdal and Githryx watch our six as we make a beeline through the grand marble waiting room, where massive round columns soar toward vaulted ceilings. On the adjoining concourse, a wide ramp descends into the darkness of the train tunnels.
“You all ready for this?” I ask.
“If I happen to know the killers,” says Des, “there’ll be hell to pay. I only have a few contacts in the Hallowed, so you can bet you won’t be getting any more inside information if they find out I’m with you.”
Ryovan is all business. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes. Let’s hurry, or we’re going to be late.”
Quim’s human form pales in complexion, a flash of white in his cheeks signaling his anxiety. As the ten of us descend the ramp toward the lower levels, those of us carrying assault rifles—Shenn, Ryovan, Desdemona, Fremantle, Baz, and myself—flick on our rail-mounted Maglites and lead the way, forming a protective spearhead around a shotgun-wielding Urdal and the unarmed Quim, Calyxto, and Githryx. At the bottom of the ramp we’re greeted by a foot-high bath of murky water whose surface swirls with oily rainbows and stinks of other disreputable liquids. The train track viaducts are completely submerged, as is the hallway leading to the main tunnel. Ryovan wades in without stopping.
Quim, on the other hand, recoils at the sight. “Oh, god. I don’t want to do this. There’s probably alligators in there. Or snakes. Really big snakes. And leeches. Ugh. Leeches. I bet they’re hungry.”
“Quim. Shut your mouth. Move your legs.”
He backs up the slope. “I’m not going in there.”
“Get ahold of yourself. Haven’t you ever watched a horror movie? The scared guy dies first.”
“I’m that guy,” he agrees.
Shenn juts her hip. “We don’t have time for this, Prince Cade.”
“I know. I know. Give me a second.” I pull Quim aside. “The rest of us are going down there. If you want to stay behind and wait, just be quiet, hang tight, and don’t turn into a flamingo and fly off.”
“Finch,” he says.
“Huh?”
“Finch. That’s the bird I like turning into. The red-breasted house finch.”
“Fine. Whatever. Don’t do that, because then we’re going to be looking for you, and we won’t be able to leave until you’re with us.”
“I don’t want to be down here, Cade. I should’ve stayed back at the vans. Hell, I should’ve stayed at the hospital. Being locked in a safe, sterile quarantine room would be better than this any day. I’ll meet you outside.”
I sigh. “Fine. Just don’t get into any trouble.”
“See ya.” His body shrinks instantly. The little red songbird flits up the ramp and vanishes from sight.
“Anyone else need a potty break, or can we move on?” Shenn asks.
When no one responds, she and Ryovan plow ahead. The rest of us splash into the murk after them and wade down the tunnel into darkness. Cold water soaks my pants to the knees. The surface is chunky with floating debris, and our flashlights catch only glimpses of the bottom, where dark, grimy, shapeless things become too bleary to identify.
Desdemona’s piercing eyes flit through the tunnel, shining against the darkness. She bites her lip, breathing through her nose to take in every scent. Her shins glide in delicate ripples while the rest of us plunk and splash like a bunch of uncultured philistines. Shenn moves with comparable grace, but Des’s gait is especially cautious. Mine would be too, if I were working as a triple agent for the Guardians, the NDPD, and the vampires.
The thought makes me wonder. Why is Desdemona so afraid of running into one of her contacts from the Hallowed? Whose side is she really on? Is she pretending to be with them, or with us?
Rays of bluish-purple light pierce the darkness, illuminating the right-angled bend in the tunnel ahead. There’s a crackling sound, followed by an enormous splash.
“Lights off,” says Ryovan. “We’re going stealth.”
Our flashlights wink out one by one. We head toward the light, passing grungy columns and exposed pipework. Ryovan backs to the tunnel wall and leans out for a look, then signals us forward. The tunnel opens onto a wide junction where a submerged ramp descends to the train platform and its adjoining tracks. A creature emerges from the deep water along the main viaduct. I can’t believe my eyes at first, such is its size and shape. Quim was right to be afraid, though this is no alligator or snake or leech. It is a thing born of nightmares, something more terrifying than any predator or parasite I’ve ever seen.
As it lifts its broad amphibious head and blinks gel-covered eyes, a spined crest rises around the creature’s neck. Tentacles writhe at either corner of its mouth. They, along with the rest of its slick wet skin, are a noxious yellow-green color. It’s difficult to tell how big it is with the bulk of its body submerged, but its head alone is the size of a compact car.
“What the fuck is that thing?” I whisper.
A second portal oozes open. The creature which falls out of it and plops into the shallow water atop the train platform is as big as a house. Searing light breaks from a third portal further along the platform. Another of the creatures drops into the deep water with a magnificent splash and goes under.
“Flickerfrogs,” Ryovan mutters.
“Why do they call them flickerf—”
The rapid chugging of submachine guns interrupts me. We duck for cover as dark-clad figures leap and tumble down a rotted staircase across the junction. They’re not shooting at us. They don’t even know we’re here. The first flickerfrog—the one with only its head visible—vanishes before a hail of bulle
ts can strike it. Water rushes into the empty space. The creature materializes across the platform a split-second later and slaps its tentacles around one of the figures. The captive screams as the slimy tendrils constrict his slender neck and ankles. I’m expecting the flickerfrog to drop its prey into its mouth; instead, it twists him like a dishrag.
The body explodes in a spray of blood.
Blood. So the attackers aren’t vampires. Maybe they’re elves, like Baz thinks.
Ryovan signals us to hang back and let the battle play out. Agile though the attackers may be, the wet environment stymies their movement. Running through eighteen inches of water is tough even when you’re as fast and strong as these people appear to be. Several times they lose their bearings along the platform and stumble into the deep water along the track viaducts, where the flickerfrogs hold the advantage.
Bullets fly, striking the tunnel walls and splick-splick-splicking across the water. Tongues and tentacles lash out in answer, snatching the attackers like flies to crush them or fling them or devour them whole. The frogs blink from spot to spot across the cavernous depths to avoid harm or drown their victims in the deeps. Apparently the mystery murderers weren’t expecting to be outmatched in this fight, which means either they didn’t know what they’d be facing or they underestimated their enemy.
The fight wanes as the surviving attackers scatter, realizing the hopelessness of their efforts. A few swim for their lives down the opposite tunnel while the rest climb the rotting staircase. Each of the three flickerfrogs has been wounded, but the bullet holes are little more than pinpricks in their slick amphibian skin.
“Don’t you think it’s time we stepped in and finished the job?” I whisper.
Ryovan shakes his head. “Let the monsters deal with the murderers.”
“The murderers are getting away. I say we get in there and kill everything while we have the chance.”
“Your highness, I must respectfully disagree. I’d sooner we not risk unnecessary danger to ourselves in this particular scenario.”
“Ryovan. We’re the Guardians of the Veil. We’re here to guard this world against the evils that would harm it. Those big slimy freaks aren’t going to kill themselves, and neither are the assassins. Let’s go guard the shit out of this abandoned railway tunnel.”
Ryovan gives me a warning look. “Prince Cade. I’ve made my decision.”
I sigh and turn back toward the fighting, gripping my rifle in white-knuckled frustration. We’re missing out on an incredible opportunity here. The dark conceals us, and we have the element of surprise. We’ll never find a more favorable advantage than the one we’ve got now.
Ersatz said I didn’t have to fill my father’s shoes. But it’s what the Guardians expect from me. Ryovan served and admired my father. Shenn wishes I was like him. Fremantle hates me because I’m not him. If I’m going to rise up and show them I can lead, now’s the time. Maybe I’ve never commanded an army, but I can sure as hell manage a strike team of nine.
“Guardians,” I shout. “Attack.”
I spring to my feet, casting a spell as I splash down the watery ramp toward the platform. Ryovan is shouting something at me, but I’m not paying attention. The portals are closing, sucking the light from the tunnels.
A sliver of razor-sharp steel as long as a man’s arm winks to life in front of me. It travels with me as I move, hovering beside my head. It’s a start. I focus, drawing energy from the injected blood. Three more blades sing into existence, forming the beginnings of a circle around me. Five more. Ten more.
A hot brand presses into my thigh, a burning pain I’ve never gotten from an injection before. I hit the platform and level my rifle at the nearest flickerfrog, firing a three-round burst through the growing darkness. The creature vanishes before my eyes can adjust to the muzzle flashes, and my bullets strike the far wall. I scan the room, waiting for the frog to reappear. It doesn’t.
Where the hell did it go?
A tentacle slams into me from behind, throwing me forward in a flailing dive. I splash hard into the murky water, blades fizzling out. The Guardians send up a war cry as they rush to engage the enemy, but it’s a distant sound. When I try to stand, I find the tentacle wrapped around my leg. It yanks me in a skid across the water toward what I can only imagine is a gaping amphibious maw.
A burst of gunfire, and the tentacle releases me.
I stand, coughing and sputtering a mouthful of water bearing the taste and smell of a rusty trout. My vision blurs in the dark. I’ve got enough magic left to try my spell one more time, so I close my eyes and focus again.
Slivers of cold steel sprout into existence around me. Something is wrong, though. I’m getting light-headed. I open my eyes. The train tunnel twists off-kilter, and a sluggish malaise falls over me like a shroud. The water stings my leg. Not my upper leg where I injected the blood; my lower leg, where the flickerfrog’s tentacle grabbed me. I lift my foot.
Bubbling denim sticks to my shin where the frog’s tentacle has eaten a spiraling path through the fabric of my pant leg. Wide swathes of hair have burned away beneath a viscous slime, the skin blistered and inflamed. A growing nausea overtakes me as the poison goes to work.
I push through it, knowing if I don’t get my spell off the next thing I see will be the inside of a stomach. The blades begin to circle, a carousel set in motion. I take a deep breath to keep my legs from buckling, but in doing so I inhale the toxic fumes of the sludge soaking through my jeans. I stumble, wincing as the water stings my contaminated leg.
I am certain of death’s approach, but somehow the flickerfrogs are too busy dealing with the others to finish the job. I close my eyes and fixate on the blades again, reaching out with my mind to spin them faster, faster, a merry-go-round of ruin. Soon the steel slivers are glinting with speed in the flashing light of the muzzle blasts, spinning so fast everything around me is moving in the cut-rate time of an old film strobing through a projector.
Shenn runs up a stone column and flips onto a flickerfrog’s head, landing deftly on its spines and driving her katana through its skull. By the time her blade descends, its skull isn’t there anymore. She falls twenty feet into the water as the frog reappears across the room. Urdal’s shotgun blast, aimed at the frog’s face, flies through open air to strike Shenn on her way down. My stomach lurches with a green feeling, but I manage to find the button on my flashlight and flick it on.
There are patterns of slime swirling on the water’s surface, traces of the frogs’ previous locations. I notice none of the frogs have blinked to the same spot twice. They must be depleting the pockets of Between they travel through, so they can’t use them more than once in a short span. Or it’s a tactic to spread their poisonous oils as widely as possible. This is a big room, but there are only a few spots they haven’t tainted yet.
While we deal with the frogs, the mysterious assassins flee. The last of them disappears up the stairs as Githryx puffs into sight above a flickerfrog in his usual cloud of sulfur smoke. The frog parts its lips. A long red tongue smacks Githryx in the face. The tongue whips back like a rubber band, pulling the imp into its waiting mouth.
Baz’s grenade launcher emits a hollow thunk. The frog’s left foreleg squelches apart in a blaze of shrapnel and wet flesh. The creature rolls its eyes and puffs its throat, slapping the water and burbling in pain. Its head quivers. A slime-covered Githryx slithers out through its lips amid a torrent of flatulence from both ends. The imp shakes his wings to wring off the mucosal poison, which doesn’t seem to have affected him in the slightest.
The frog tries to flicker, but it only manages to displace itself by a few feet. Fremantle swoops down from her chameleon perch on the ceiling, channeling the force of her downward motion into a clawed punch which craters the frog’s skull and sets it twitching. She swings her rifle around and unloads into the crater, then slings it across her shoulders and begins cracking off slabs of skull the size of subway tiles.
Across the room, anoth
er frog flicks its tongue and grabs Ryovan, dragging him toward the deep water and its outstretched tentacles. At the last possible instant Desdemona runs by in a blur, severing the tongue without slowing. Ryovan hits the water, the tongue’s giant pink end still suctioned to his chest. He peels it off and circles the wounded flickerfrog, brandishing the long Kabar bayonet attached to his rifle as his shots punch the creature full of holes.
It can see you, I want to scream. They’ve got eyes in the sides of their heads. I realize this is my moment. My last chance to pull off something relevant in this fight. Something helpful. Ryovan is going to be the one who winds up inside a frog’s stomach if I stand here and do nothing.
My spell is now a blazing-fast whirlwind, though I’m not sure why I’m still holding it up. My power reserve is nearly spent and if I take one more step I swear I’m going to puke and drop dead. I stumble toward an open patch of platform where there’s no green stuff swirling in the water, dragging my poisoned leg and pushing the last remnants of magical energy into my spell. Ryovan reaches the frog before I reach my intended spot, so I dive for it.
Ryovan charges his bayonet.
The frog blinks.
Next I know, I’m enveloped in darkness. I’m vomiting, and it smells terrible. Not my vomit—well, that too, but mostly the darkness. My blades are spinning with the force of a jet engine, slicing through something soft and warm and soggy. Instead of landing in the murky water, I hit a smooth spongy wall and stop, wedged into a moist womb-like cavity.
My blades spin. The cavity disintegrates around me. I fall through the frog’s belly and hit the water in a mist of blood and slime, as if the great beast has given me birth and ripped itself open in the process. The last of the blood in my thigh burns away. The blades vanish, and the creature collapses onto me in a heap of dripping sludge.
I lay in the sick and filth as the frog’s poisoned viscera settles in around me. The weight of the collapsing corpse is crushing me, its thickness trapping water and cutting off my air supply. I’m submerged with little hope of escape as the poison seeps through my system.