by R. L. King
They trudged on. They couldn’t walk fast due to the treacherous footing, since they couldn’t tell what lurked under the water, ready to trip them up. At one point Jason saved Verity from a nasty fall by grabbing her after she slipped on an intact glass bottle. After that they moved even more slowly. It was an unnerving walk, with their faint source of light casting weird shadows on the walls, and the echoing quality of the rounded tunnels making it impossible to identify where sounds originated.
They approached what looked like a more open area when Jason suddenly stopped and put his hand up. “What was that?”
They all halted, listening. All they could hear was the sound of their own breathing and the echo of water dripping and sloshing in the tunnel. Off to either side of them, two more large tunnels headed off in opposite directions, forming an intersection with their current one.
“I heard it too,” Verity whispered. “It was—”
Something creaked off to their right. They spun to face it, but nothing was there as far as they could see.
“Let’s not get ourselves spooked,” Stone murmured. “If there’s something down here, likely that’s what it wants—”
This time the sound was to their left. An unmistakable growl. Again they spun.
“Fuck,” Jason whispered. “That wasn’t human.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Stone held up his magical ball of light, trying to pierce the unrelenting darkness. For several seconds he saw nothing, then first one and then two pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the left-hand tunnel. The growl repeated, echoing eerily off the concrete walls, seeming to come from everywhere at once.
“Who’s there?” Stone called. “We’re just passing through—we mean no harm.”
“Get out,” called a low, guttural voice. “You don’t belong here. Go now.”
Jason and Stone exchanged glances. “Who’s there?” Jason called again. “We’re not staying—we’re trying to find somebody. We need to talk to them.”
“Go,” the voice said again. It seemed to come from a different place this time, and the unseen growls punctuated the words. To their right came the snick-klunk of a shotgun being pumped.
Verity froze. “Was that a gun?” she whispered. Her gaze darted around, but she couldn’t see anything beyond their small circle of light.
Stone took a chance. “We’re looking for the Forgotten,” he called. “Do you know them? We know they’re down here—we’ve seen their signs.”
A long pause stretched out. Another growl, followed by a whispered command and the growl ceased. “What do you know about the Forgotten?” asked the guttural voice. Again, it seemed to come from a different location.
“They’re friends,” Stone replied. “We’ve come from California. We have Forgotten friends there. We’re trying to find something here in Las Vegas, and we’ve come to ask for help from any we can find here. Do you know them?”
Again, a long pause that felt like it dragged out for several minutes in the darkness even though it was only a few seconds in reality. “Shut off your light,” the voice ordered.
“Do you know them?” Jason asked. “We’re not gonna just—”
“Shut it off. Now. Or you’ll be dead before you can run.”
Stone took a deep breath. “Stay close,” he whispered. “If they try anything, I’ll shield us.” Louder he said, “All right, I’m shutting it off now.” The glow around his hand disappeared.
The darkness now almost palpable. As the three of them stood huddled together, it seemed to press on them.
“Okay, the light’s out,” Jason called. “Now, can you take us to—”
Suddenly torches and flashlights flared all around them, bathing the intersecting tunnels in bright light. Dazzled, Stone, Jason, and Verity shrank back, shielding their eyes.
Figures moved in on them from all sides. It was impossible to tell how many, backlit as they were, but there were at least ten. One held two leashes, each with a large, wolfish dog straining against it, teeth bared and eyes glowing with malevolent anticipation. Another gripped what looked like a shotgun, its barrel pointed at the newcomers.
“Keep your hands where we can see them,” ordered a voice. A man stepped out from the group and looked them up and down. He was quite tall, with a formidable frame that looked like it had once been muscular, but had now gone to paunch. His leather jacket was old and cracked, his jeans stained. Under a shock of black hair, his eyes glittered coldly out of a scarred face. He might have been Hispanic or Native American—the uncertain, flickering light made it hard to tell.
Stone, Jason, and Verity did as they were told, holding their hands at their sides. The man regarded them in silence for several more seconds, as if waiting to see if he made them uncomfortable.
When none of them spoke or moved, he glared at them. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded. “What do you want down here?” He looked at Stone’s overcoat and sodden trouser legs and snorted. “Fuckin’ tourists. Too stupid to even dress right comin’ down here. The tunnels’ll eat you alive.”
“Hey, we got chased down here,” Verity protested. “We didn’t exactly have time to change our clothes.”
“Chased by what?” asked another voice.
“You guys try cheating the casinos?” A female voice this time. “Get yerselves on the bad side of their goons? Flash too much money around, and somebody tried to roll yer tender little tourist asses?”
“The Evil chased us down here,” Stone said, meeting the tall, leather-jacketed man’s gaze with his own unwavering one. “They’re not exactly pleased with us at the moment.”
All around them rumbles and exclamations rose as the group reacted to his words. The two dogs, sensing their owner’s agitation, growled again.
“You fuckin’ idiots,” the black-haired man snapped, stepping forward and looming menacingly in Stone’s face. He towered over the mage, who himself stood over six feet. “You led the Evil down here?”
“So you do know who the Evil are,” Stone said, sounding satisfied. He didn’t flinch under the man’s obvious attempt at intimidation. “Do we have the honor of addressing the Las Vegas contingent of the Forgotten, then?”
“Answer the question,” the man ordered. Around him, his companions scanned their surroundings as if trying to spot anything approaching.
“They didn’t follow us down here,” Jason said. “As soon as we went into the tunnel, they hung around outside for a while, but didn’t come in.”
The man barked a laugh, but it wasn’t a pleasant or happy sound. “That’s ’cause they know we’ll rip the shit out of ’em if they come down here,” he said. “You’re lucky we didn’t tear you up. We might still. We don’t like soft little tourist strangers comin’ down here.” He looked at each one of them in turn. “Hand over your lights, and any weapons you got.”
“Why?” Verity demanded.
“Because this is our place, and there’s a dozen of us—that you can see right now—and only three of you. And because we say so. You won’t last five minutes down here if you fuck with us. I promise you that. Hand ’em over, and then maybe we’ll talk to you.”
Verity sighed. She glanced at Stone, who nodded once. She fumbled in her bag, pulled out her little flashlight, and passed it to the man. “The batteries are dead now,” she said. Her eyes flashed. “You want my wallet, too?”
The man ignored her except to take the flashlight and put it in his jacket pocket. “You too, Prince Charles,” he said to Stone, putting out his hand. “Gimme your light.”
“I don’t have a light,” Stone said. He spread his hands to prove he held nothing.
The man looked for a second like he might hit Stone, but settled for glaring at him. “Don’t fuck with me, man. That’s a bad idea. I saw you had a light before. Now hand it over.”
“I don’t have a bloody light,” Stone growled right back. “If you’re Forgotten, you should damn well know there are ways to produce light that don’t require flashlights.”
The man stared at him. He made an abrupt motion, and two other men came forward and frisked Stone with rough efficiency. They both shook their heads. The leader continued staring at him. “Fuck, you really don’t have one,” he said.
“I told you that.”
“Are you—?”
“Let’s just say we’re not quite as soft and helpless as you might think we are,” Stone said. “Now, then. We’ve handed over our tiny flashlight and our nonexistent weapons—will you talk to us now, or do we have to do a bit more of this pointless little dance first?”
Once more the man looked like he was about to slug Stone, and once more he got himself under control. “He always like that?” he asked Jason.
“Pretty much,” Jason said, shrugging. “We’re kinda used to him by now.”
The corner of the man’s lip quirked in what was almost—but not quite—a smile. His shoulders relaxed nearly imperceptibly, and he hooked a thumb toward one of the tunnels. “Come on,” he said. “And keep up. We ain’t slowin’ down for your tender little feet.”
The figures lurking in the side tunnels formed a ring around Stone, Jason, and Verity. The leader took point, his heavy boots sloshing through the filthy water as he moved into the left-hand tunnel. Now that he had his back to them, Stone and the others could see that he had a large, red symbol painted on the back of his jacket. It wasn’t one they recognized, but it matched some of the graffiti they’d seen scrawled in the tunnels earlier.
Since they couldn’t do anything else while they were following, all three of them did their best to take in as much of their surroundings as possible. Jason scanned the tunnel walls for Forgotten symbols, and wasn’t at all surprised to see that they existed much more abundantly here. The combination of the scrawled symbols and the graffiti looked almost tribal. He also studied their “guides,” or at least those he could see without turning around. Four walked in front along with the leader and two on each side of them, silent and watchful with their flickering torches. Almost all of them were male, dressed in ragged pants, old jackets or coats, threadbare caps—though he noticed that in every case, their boots looked in better shape than the rest of their clothing. The two women he spotted couldn’t have been more different from each other: one was short, squat, and middle-aged, built like a football player; the other was a skinny Asian-looking teenager with hard-set eyes and a long black braid that ran down her back. Several of the group sported the same symbol that the leader wore somewhere on their persons: spray-painted on their coats, drawn on a swatch of fabric pinned to their hats, or scrawled in pen on the bags some of them carried.
They walked down the tunnel in silence for several minutes. It was mostly straight, with regular smaller tunnels to the sides and manhole hatches above. The space out in front of them seemed to go on forever, disappearing into darkness. Jason wondered where they were now, and how far they’d come from the trench where they’d entered.
“How much further is it?” he asked.
He expected the leader or one of the others to tell him to shut up, but instead the squat woman said, “Just ahead.”
Jason looked, but still saw nothing but darkness. He was about to say something to that effect when suddenly it was as if they had passed through a curtain and the tunnel widened out into what looked like a utility area. He could have sworn it hadn’t been there, but yet there it was.
The leader stopped. “Okay,” he said, pointing. “Sit.”
He indicated a couple of dilapidated, mismatched plaid couches near one of the walls. Like everything else in here, they were raised up on pallets. Several other couches, chairs, and mattresses dotted the area; other ragged figures lounged on them, either sleeping or high. Graffiti and Forgotten symbols covered the walls.
Stone, Jason, and Verity took seats on one of the couches. Two of the Forgotten moved to positions near the area’s two entrances, obviously standing guard.
The leader didn’t sit down; instead, he paced back and forth in front of his three ‘guests.’ “Okay,” he said. “You heard of Forgotten. And you’re not from around here. We got that. What we don’t got is what you’re doin’ here. And don’t lie to us, either. We’ll know, and you’ll never make it out of here alive.”
Stone glanced at the two dogs curled up on one of the mattresses. Their handler poured a generous pile of kibble from a bag in a milk crate into two chipped bowls, and they both leaped up and eagerly began snarfing it down. “We were looking for the Las Vegas Forgotten community,” he said. “It seems that we’ve found it.”
“Community!” One of the other Forgotten, a skinny white guy who looked like a junkie, snorted. “He makes us sound like a fuckin’ church group or somethin’.”
“Shut up, Twitch,” the leader ordered without looking at him. “You guys wanna start out by tellin’ us who you are?”
Stone nodded. “Fair enough. This is Jason, and Verity. I’m—erm—Al.”
Jason grinned.
“As we said before,” Stone continued with a quick glare in Jason’s direction, “we’re from the Bay Area.”
The leader digested that for a moment. “Call me Luke,” he said. He didn’t introduce any of the others. “You said you were lookin’ for us. Why? What do you want with us?”
“We want you to help us.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Why the fuck would we do that? We don’t help nobody but ourselves. Only way to survive in this town.”
Stone met his gaze. “What would you say if I told you that we’re looking for a way to get rid of the Evil?”
“I’d say you were a fuckin’ moron, and a suicidal one at that.” Luke’s reply was instant. “The Evil run this town. We stay out of their way, and fuck ’em up when we can get away with it. That’s how you survive. You don’t go after ’em. Too many of ’em for that.”
“Just how much Evil is there in Vegas?” Jason asked.
Luke shrugged. “Everywhere. They got their hooks into everything—casinos, cops, pols, the do-gooders who try to ‘help’ the homeless, the papers—you can’t move without hittin’ ’em.”
“How many homeless are Forgotten?”
“I dunno. Lots aren’t. Mostly the ones you see topside, and in other parts of the tunnels. This town’s full of people on hard times. The tourists never get it. All they see is the casinos and the money.”
“What you mean, get rid of the Evil?” asked a chubby black man with dreadlocks in a Sands T-shirt and sweatpants. “That’s crazy.”
Stone shook his head. “It might not be.” He looked back at Luke. “How do you think I made light without a flashlight? Do you know what that means?”
Luke sighed, dropping down onto the nearest chair. “Means you sling the mojo. I heard of your type before. Never seen one, though. Lotsa fake magic in this town, but the real stuff’s thin on the ground. Unless the Evil’s tossin’ it.”
“Are they?” Verity asked.
“No fuckin’ idea. You think we get close enough to find out? That’s just askin’ for trouble.” He looked at Stone again. “So what do you mean, get rid of ’em? You can’t kill ’em. There’s too many.”
“No,” Stone said. “But we might be able to stop them coming here. New ones, I mean.”
That got not only Luke’s attention, but that of most of the other Forgotten as well. “What the hell do you mean by that? They come from somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “And the place they come from is in Vegas, or near it. We gotta find it. That’s what we need your help with.”
Luke scrubbed at his face like he was having trouble understanding. “Waitaminnit, waitaminnit. What the fuck’re you talkin’ about, a place they come from? What, they, like, show up on a goddamn Greyhound or somethin’?”
“Not exactly,” Stone said. “Think of it as—more of a doorway that they come through. If we can shut that doorway—permanently—then they won’t be able to come through anymore. They won’t be able to possess anybody. And at that point, it’s only
a matter of dealing with the ones who are already here. Not easy, true, but much easier than if they keep bringing in reinforcements.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Why you wanna do somethin’ like that? You ain’t even from here. Why do you care?”
“We’ve already done it once,” Stone said. “This is the last doorway. If we can close it, the Evil will stop coming. Wouldn’t it be worth it to have them gone?”
For a long time, Luke didn’t speak. Then he glared at the three of them. “Stay here,” he told them. He stumped off, waving at several of the others to come with him. They huddled up on the other side of the room and began conferring in hushed voices.
Verity leaned in to whisper to Stone and Jason. “These guys are different,” she said. “Not like Lamar’s group, or the ones in West Virginia. They’re—more like a street gang or something.”
“Maybe they have to be,” Jason said. “You heard what he said—the Evil are all over around here. It’d make sense that they’d have to band together to keep safe even more than usual. It’s not like they can just leave town, not easily.” To Stone, he said, “How are we even gonna ask them to help us if they agree to do it? We can’t exactly tell them to go running around looking for big glowing things. I doubt it’s somewhere they’ll just be able to spot it.”
“There wasn’t anything in the notebooks about where it was, was there?” Verity asked.
“I don’t remember seeing anything specific about it,” Stone said. “But now that we’re here, it might be worth taking another look to see if I’ve missed something.”
“We gotta get out of here first,” Jason pointed out. “And hope nobody stole your car in the meantime.”
Luke and the others came back. Luke resumed his pacing while the rest of them sat back down or leaned against the tunnel walls. “Show me the mojo,” he ordered Stone. “Show me it wasn’t some kinda trick what you did back there with the light. And don’t try anything cute, or Sharky there’ll plug you.” He indicated the guy with the shotgun.
Stone shrugged. Raising his hand, he gestured at one of the chairs containing the dreadlocked black man. Chair and man rose off their stacked pallets and hovered two feet above the ground.