Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  “Sorry, no. But there’s some gold back there.” I jerked a thumb behind us. “We can come back before the general populace finds this place and collect enough to pay the bills for a few months. No need to keep ads—or sensationalist pictures—plastered all over our business site.”

  Simon shrugged in defeat and turned around.

  We made it back to the intersection and climbed up the way we’d descended. The smooth walls didn’t offer any handholds, and soon we were all streaming with sweat. Temi never complained, but I heard hisses of pain, though she tried to stifle them. The leg she favored stuck out behind her, so she was using only her arms and her good leg to climb up the slope.

  I kept waiting for the light to appear ahead of us, but it never did. My brow furrowed in confusion when we came to a dead end. I pointed my flashlight at the coarse rock blocking the way.

  “There’s only one tunnel, right? We didn’t go up a wrong one somehow, did we?”

  “No,” Simon said, his voice grim and without the confusion in mine. “This is our tunnel.”

  The truth dawned on me. “Oh.”

  The creature had blocked the exit.

  CHAPTER 24

  Pushing against a boulder isn’t comfortable under any circumstances. I recommend it even less when doing it in a four-foot-wide tunnel with two other people trying to help. After suffering Simon’s hair up my nose and Temi’s elbow in my back for a small eternity—at least thirty seconds—I backed off and slumped to the ground. The others sighed and sank to their butts as well.

  I pointed at Simon’s nose. “I want you to remember this the next time you wish to insult, demean, or stick your tongue out at a man-slaying monster.”

  Simon opened his mouth as if he’d protest, but then he flopped against the wall. “Yeah, I am feeling a bit like the fox in the hunter’s trap.”

  I rolled to an upright position, insomuch as I could in the low tunnel. “Let’s see this other exit you found.”

  “We’re going into the cavern?” Temi asked.

  “I don’t know. We can take a look. Didn’t you want to warn the others?”

  “It may be too late by now,” she muttered.

  “If they’re dead, we have to get that sword so someone can put it to use on the monster,” Simon said.

  “Someone, not us,” I said. “Maybe we could recruit some uber warrior to use it.”

  “Do they have uber warriors in Prescott?” Temi asked.

  “I’m sure there are black belts in some martial art, not to mention all those soldiers who rolled in. At the least, there are better fighters than us. Besides—” I pointed at the boulder, “—we’re not getting out that way without explosives, and I forgot to pack the TNT.”

  I started sliding back down the tunnel. At this point, I was willing to risk being horribly slain for the chance to stand up straight and stretch for a few seconds.

  “I think they use C4 these days,” Temi said, crawling after me. With her stiff leg and six-foot frame, she had to be aching for a chance to stand up even more than I.

  “Yeah, but we don’t have any of that,” I said.

  “You have TNT?”

  “In our storage locker in Phoenix,” Simon said. “We found some old unexploded sticks while we were scavenging around the Superstition Mountains. Don’t tell the manager. It’s not legal.”

  “Legal? Is it safe?” Temi asked.

  “No,” I said. “The sticks were tucked at the bottom of a crate of dusty mining helmets and lamps we found on an old claim. We’re lucky we didn’t blow ourselves up coming down the bumpy road out of the mountains.”

  At the intersection, I headed right this time. Simon’s tunnel was shorter than ours had been and we soon reached the cavern again. The passage had sloped downward, so we didn’t come out so high up on the wall, and there were a few feet of a granite shoreline beneath us this time instead of pointy rocks. The underground lake stretched to the left and the front, but a narrow ledge ran along the cavern wall to the right.

  A crash came from somewhere ahead, like rock toppling onto rock. I doubted that was Eleriss and Jakatra, but at least they’d hear it and know something else was down here with them, assuming they were still alive. If the monster had made the noise, that meant it was relatively far ahead of us. Good.

  Simon peered over my shoulder. “We going out or staying here?”

  I exhaled slowly. “We can’t get out the other way, so I think our best bet is to catch up with the others and hope they can help us escape. The predator dropped through a hole in the ceiling, but it was thirty feet above the water. I don’t see how we could get out that way. Also, if we were to stay here, and the creature finished whatever it’s down here doing, then it’d have nothing better to do than stake out these tunnel exits until we ran out of food and water and hunger drove us to desperation. If we’re going to try and get past it, better to do so while it’s distracted.”

  “You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?” Temi asked.

  “I’ve thought about little else for the last ten minutes.”

  I probed the cavern with my flashlight, making sure there wasn’t anything inimical crouching in the darkness, before dropping down to the granite beach. While I waited for the others to join me, I studied the uneven stone ceiling overhead, wondering if any more holes might lead out. I had a feeling the creature had found a special way in, one that involved holding one’s breath for a few minutes and navigating all sorts of ups and downs through a watery passage. If there were easily accessible entrances, we’d see bats and other signs of animal visitors.

  “It’s stale smelling in here.” Simon shrugged off his backpack and pulled out a yellow and black device.

  “Methane detector,” I told Temi when she looked at it curiously. “Though it’s not as if we can get out if the cave is full of methane, so I’m not sure I’d like to know.”

  “You just want to nod off and fall in the lake and drown?” Simon asked.

  “Sounds like a better way to go than decapitation and mutilation.”

  “You know,” Temi said, “when I decided to drive across the state to ask if you’d hire me, these aren’t the sorts of conversations I imagined would be common during the work day.”

  “We’ll have to update our pamphlet,” I said.

  Simon returned the gas meter to his backpack and issued a thumbs up. “The levels aren’t any worse than in your average dairy barn.”

  “Comforting.”

  I headed off along the ledge. The uneven ground and the need to jump across channels of water made the going slow, and Temi gestured for Simon to go ahead of her. I made sure not to outpace her. Splitting up would be crazy. Being down here at all was crazy.

  Another crash boomed from up ahead. The sound made me think of stone columns being tipped over. I hoped that creature wasn’t trying to bring down the cave on our heads.

  I kept our pace steady and even. I wanted to catch up with the others—and their sword—but I was afraid we’d run into the creature first, and I couldn’t imagine my bow or whip harming it. We needed a weapon that could make a dent in the predator’s hide. Preferably a dent in its heart. If it had one. Maybe the creature was made entirely of plastic, or maybe it was some mechanical construct with a plastic hide.

  The new thought jolted me so much that I slipped and almost ended up in the lake. I recovered, shaking off a steadying hand from Simon, and continued on, but it surprised me that I hadn’t thought of the idea before. Its power, resilience, and cunning would make more sense if it was a machine or robot than if it was an animal. What if it had a brain full of circuits rather than blood cells? It hadn’t eaten any of the people it’d mauled, so maybe it didn’t need to take in sustenance—it was killing because it’d been programmed to do so. Heck, maybe some battery powered it, or maybe it had a tank and stopped to fuel itself at the gas station when nobody was looking.

  My snort was almost a laugh.

  “Glad you’re finding our situ
ation amusing,” Simon whispered.

  “I had a funny thought. What if our monster is a robot instead of a living, breathing predator?”

  “Yeah, I had that thought too,” Simon said.

  “You did?” And here I’d felt original.

  “Right after we learned about the plastic.”

  A third cacophonous smashing of rock came from the shadows ahead. We’d made some progress following the ledge, and those crashes no longer sounded quite so far away.

  “I’m not sure I should admit to another thought I’ve had,” I whispered. I don’t know why I was whispering—that creature probably knew where we were—but it seemed appropriate to the dark setting.

  “That it’s trying to push down supports to cave in the ceiling?” Simon asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Temi grunted, and I glanced back in time to see her catch herself on the wall.

  “You guys can go ahead if you want,” she said. “I’ll catch up.”

  “Animal or robot, I’m not in a big hurry to come face to face with that thing,” I said. “I’m also not sure how we would stop it from pushing over supports.”

  “If it’s a robot,” Temi said, “maybe that swim it took will cause it to rust.”

  “I think this model is a hair more sophisticated than that,” Simon said.

  “Darn.”

  Another crash put an end to our conversation. We were definitely getting closer. I swept my flashlight across the space ahead again and spotted another stone beach with a wall behind it. That wall held a dark opening. Another chamber? That seemed to be the direction the crashes were coming from.

  I licked my lips and continued along the ledge. Nobody spoke as we padded across the beach. I slowed, nearly walking on tiptoes, as we climbed up to the new opening. I approached it from the side instead of straight on, having some notion that I shouldn’t reveal myself. The soft scrapes of claws rasping on stone reached my ears. I stopped and leaned my shoulder against the rock instead of looking. We needed to wait for it to get farther ahead. It’d be a long, hard sprint to get back to the small tunnel. I wished I’d ordered Temi to stay behind instead of simply asking if she wanted to.

  The scrapes continued, and I thought I caught a soft grunt too. Of effort?

  Temi pointed to my lamp and mouthed, “Off?” I had the light pointed to the ground and could barely see her face. I shook my head though. I knew what she was thinking—that the light was telling the creature where we were, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of plunging all of us into blackness. Besides, our predator could doubtlessly navigate in the dark far more effectively than we could.

  A new crash sounded, this one the loudest yet, though maybe it was only our proximity to the noise that had changed. A hint of dust wafted into the air. I crinkled my nose. Was that the smell of blood as well?

  More scrapes came from behind the opening, this time in a regular rhythm, as if the predator were running. Because it sounded like it was running away instead of toward us, I risked poking my head around the corner. I swept the flashlight beam through the chamber, catching the broad black back of the creature as it disappeared into one of several tunnels at the end of a long, rectangular chamber that sloped downward, its floor surprisingly smooth after the humps and dips of the outer cavern. Jumbles of broken stone lay at irregular spots in little alcoves that ran along the left wall.

  A flash of something pale like straw caught my eye, and I focused my light on the first rubble pile. Stones weren’t the only things in it.

  “Is that... a person?” Temi whispered.

  What I’d thought might be straw was hair. Blond hair.

  I swallowed. One of the riders? If they were dead, who was going to help us escape?

  I glanced at the end of the chamber again, making sure the creature hadn’t returned, then crept closer to the first alcove. A wet puddle was spreading from beneath the jumble of rocks. My stomach gave a sick lurch. It wasn’t water.

  Simon’s light joined mine in its focus on the rubble pile—and the male body half buried in it. His light wasn’t entirely steady. Maybe mine wasn’t either. It didn’t matter; it was enough to see that this wasn’t Eleriss or Jakatra—in addition to the blond hair, this guy had a big shaggy beard. I was relieved... but confused. I didn’t know what I’d expected to find down here, but it hadn’t been more mutilated bodies.

  I walked forward, numbness and confusion making my steps slow. How could there be people down here, and why wouldn’t someone have yelled or tried to run or anything when the predator attacked?

  The body hadn’t been decapitated, but bloody gashes across its neck and chest left little doubt that the man was dead. Maybe the creature had been in a hurry, I thought bleakly.

  “That’s a strange... costume.” Temi pointed to a bear fur cloak that was clasped about the man’s pale shoulders. His muscular chest was bare, with dark blue tattoos running up and down his arms, and he wore some very old-fashioned wool trousers.

  “Looks like he was planning to go as a Viking this Halloween,” I said.

  There were weapons too. A spear had broken when a rock fell onto it, though a sword leaning against the back of the alcove had survived unscathed, along with a battered and gashed wooden shield. I picked up a leather helmet that had rolled away from the pile and turned it over in my hands.

  I must have made some noise, or perhaps stared at it for an inordinately long time, because Simon prodded me.

  “Delia?”

  “This is bizarre,” I said.

  “Tell us something we don’t know. Are you referring to the situation as a whole or that helmet in particular?”

  “This. All of it.” I waved toward the weapons and the body. “I don’t think this is a costume.”

  “What else would it be?”

  A real Viking, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud, because it sounded idiotic. This was the American southwest in the twenty-first century, not medieval Europe. “I don’t know. I guess it has to be a reproduction. Nothing is aged the way it would be if it were a museum piece. Whoever crafted it did a good job making it look real though.” I avoided eyeing the dead fellow. It made me uneasy knowing he’d been alive a half hour ago. At least it seemed that way. I was still mystified at the idea that someone had been down here.

  “Shouldn’t there be horns sticking out of the helmet?” Simon asked.

  “No, that’s only in the comics and cartoons. This is a much more authentic kit. Look at the shield. There are even teeth marks in it—the berserkers supposedly bit their own shields as part of their warrior fury.”

  “Maybe he’s a part of someone’s LARP team,” Simon said.

  “And what were they role-playing down here? Viking spelunkers?”

  “What are you saying?” Simon asked. “That this guy was a Viking?”

  “No, of course not. He just died. How could that be possible?”

  “Enh, all sorts of weird stuff is happening in town this week.”

  I forced myself to consider the man more closely. I’d have no trouble poking and prodding at a thousand-year-old mummified cadaver, but studying someone with blood still trickling from his wounds was a different story. Summoning the detachment of a scientist—or a morgue worker—wasn’t easy. In addition to the fresh gaping wounds, he had a number of old scars on his arms. I didn’t know enough about sword fighting to proclaim that he’d gotten them that way, but they were a mix of straight lacerations and punctures.

  “I don’t know,” I said again, reluctant to commit to anything. As the one with the archaeology degree, I ought to be the last one to posit ridiculous unscientific notions. “For all we know, he might have been made by whoever made the monster.” Speaking of unscientific notions.... “Maybe it’s a robot,” I said helplessly.

  “A robot that bleeds?” Temi asked.

  I made a throwaway gesture, half dismissal and half frustration, then walked farther down the chamber, only to halt at the next caved-in alcove. This one held a body
as well, the gashed remains of a lean, muscular black man with his hair pulled back in tiny braids and his ears pierced with disks of elephant tusk. Streaks of red ochre paint smudged his cheeks, and he wore a dyed garment that I dubbed a toga, though I doubted that was the right word. I’d only had one class that had touched upon African history.

  “Masai warrior?” I asked and found myself looking at Temi for her opinion. She offered a blank look in return, and I blushed and gave myself a mental kick in the butt. Right, because she was black, she was automatically an expert on nomadic African tribes from centuries past.

  “This one got a weapon out at least.” Temi pointed to his hand.

  He’d died holding a knife. But if he’d been fighting the creature, why hadn’t we heard any sounds of combat? Surely he would have yelled or screamed in pain when his flesh was torn asunder. His eyes weren’t even open. The first man’s hadn’t been either. From their calm faces, it appeared as if they’d died in their sleep rather than in battle.

  Simon had moved farther down the chamber, and I was of a mind to catch up and leave this mystery until later, but something about the African man’s face snagged my gaze. He appeared to have been about thirty with broad handsome features. Trying to put scientific curiosity ahead of squeamishness, I knelt to examine his teeth. His lips were still warm. I felt sick. If we’d had decent weapons or some kind of plan, we might have been able to stop the predator from slaying all of these people. Whoever they were—had been—I was certain they would have been intriguing to know.

  “What are you looking for?” Temi asked.

  Remembering my original purpose, I leaned in with my flashlight and inspected his teeth. They were white, straight, and uncrowded in his mouth. He had flawless skin as well, aside from a few scars that, as with the first body, appeared to have come in battle.

  “Answers,” I said, “but all I have is more questions.”

  “About his teeth?” Temi raised her eyebrows.

  I sat back on my heels. “I thought that if he had some cavities, it’d be a clue that he was a modern dude dressed to look like a primitive dude. You didn’t see much of that before sugars and processed foods were introduced to cultures around the world.”