“No?” Porter said, running his fingers over his blood-pocked face in wonderment. “What part did you do?”
“I wanted them gone, so they were.” He finished inspecting his myriad wounds. “Sisu came to mind. They had to be turned into something.”
Porter surveyed the group. “Everyone all right?”
No one answered. If bloody, wet, mud-crusted, and pincer-chewed qualified, then yes, they were.
“Well, we walk from here,” the Envoy said. He cast a baleful eye over the roof of the tunnel ahead. “Let’s just hope the rest of this stays off our skulls.”
The boy’s luck couldn’t hold.
Truitt, for all his buried enjoyment at the Shade’s setbacks, ultimately wanted what Mr. Brill wanted. Paul Reid needed to be brought within the fold, his apparent ability to change the flow of Essence controlled or shut down altogether.
Mr. Brill’s structure of power was, simply put, a dam blocking the flow of Essence, with vents and causeways directing that energy. As Truitt had explained to June Medill, if that dam were ever opened fully or burst, with Mr. Brill’s influence washed away, the judgment underlying The Commons and the justice that was its foundation would awaken.
Verdicts would be arrived at, fates locked into place. Mr. Brill and those who had done his bidding would not be viewed kindly.
Thus, the Shade needed to liberate itself.
Mr. Brill chuffed and shifted his bulk.
The Shade began to dig out.
31
A Clouded Lens
“I thought Liam said those things were hibernating.” Paul’s mud-stiffened pants and the complaints of his countless bites weren’t doing his mood much good.
“The bombs disturbed their nap,” Porter said.
The beetle-rats had taken a lot out of them. The long slog up the slope of the tunnel took more. Exhaustion settled in. Even Ken and Po slowed under the malaise of spirit as they trudged along.
After a time, Paul noticed that Porter was moving even slower than the rest of them. He’d spent a great deal of his recovered energy jumping the beetle-rats away from the train.
“How far is this silo?” the Envoy said.
“Liam did not specify,” Ken said. “Several miles.”
“Well, I’ll endeavor to remain positive. It can’t get much more unpleasant.”
Po halted abruptly and turned to face the tunnel behind them.
“What?” said Ken.
A growl, like that of a wolf or something worse, echoed up the tunnel in answer. A splash followed. Another. And then a series of slapping footfalls as something big and weighty ran through the mud with a speed rivaling that of the train they’d just crashed.
Rain pulled her shotgun. Before anything else could be said, a mud-covered monster—an upright horned toad or bulldog demon the size of a bear—came straight at them.
Po engaged. It went for him at full speed, which was exactly what the monk wanted. As the dark thing charged, the monk rolled onto his back and, with hands and feet, used its mass and momentum to launch it through the wet air. It hit the tunnel wall with a low smack, dropping onto what passed for its head.
It bounced up immediately, faster than Po, who looked to be staggered by his contact with it. He got to his feet, but without his usual grace.
They fanned out around the monster, forcing it to address all directions. It, in turn, sized them up—its breath heavy but not labored. Even with the distance it had just covered, it was not tired, and its flight into the wall hadn’t cost it anything.
“A Shade,” Ken said. “An Essence leech.”
“Brill’s hand,” Porter agreed.
At the utterance of the name, the Shade turned toward the Envoy. “It’s been some time, Mister Brill,” he told it.
The shadow beast sprang at Paul without warning. Po met it in the air with a double-foot kick that deflected it and sent it sprawling to the tunnel floor. The monk landed and tumbled, rolling to his feet. But once again, he’d lost a step or two.
The Shade came right back up.
Ba-room! Rain blasted the monster full in the face. The force knocked it back a step but otherwise didn’t appear to cause any harm. “Any ideas on how to kill this thing?” she asked no one in particular.
“It prefers bona-fide Essence, as Brill does,” Porter said. “But it will take anyone or anything in a pinch. It hates sunlight, which we don’t have. And wooden weaponry or anything that used to be alive—again, which we don’t have.”
It went for Po, but Ken headed it off. He swung both fists overhead, smashing it to the ground. The blow and the following thud were such that all of them felt it.
The Shade grunted with what sounded like discomfort. Good thing the mummy was on their side.
“Anything dead—or undead,” Ken said.
It was true. Like Po, the mummy was visibly shaken by his contact with the beast, but he’d hurt it noticeably more than his friend had.
Porter watched the monster rise from the floor. It panted wetly. “I’m certain you don’t know or care, Mister Brill, but we’ve a score to settle. Many of them. Dance with me?”
It wasn’t clear to Paul whether the Shade had understood the Envoy or not. Either way, it leapt at Paul instead.
Paul was no stranger to the mayhem of a good fight, but all of his experience had been against human opponents. This was another level. This was a drooling vehicle-sized mass of pissed-off evil coming through the air at him. So he did what came naturally.
He froze.
Again, Ken was there first, body-blocking it to the ground. Porter, with surprising speed of his own, flicked his staff around and caught the beast on its sloping shoulder.
The effort cost the Envoy. He gasped and dropped his stick, but succeeded in jumping away a chunk of the Shade’s shoulder. It let out a bawl, which seemed to come both from it and from the walls around them. A gout of black pudding erupted from its wound.
Rain let the monster have it again, blowing it back into the wall. It pushed itself off of the mud and faced them, gripping its shoulder to stem the flow. Porter picked himself up.
They faced it in a half-moon formation, taking stock. Ken was wobbly, Po more so. Porter was upright—but was shaky and separated from his staff, which lay in the mud a short distance away. Rain was fine, but it was clear that her gun could only move the Shade, not hurt it. And while they watched, the flow from its shoulder slowed, then stopped.
“There’s more of that for you, to be sure,” Porter said. “Another round?” His tone was brave, but he didn’t look ready to go again.
Po eyed Porter’s staff.
The Shade, its healing finished, faced the Envoy. Wherever he was, Mr. Brill had accepted the challenge.
So had Paul. Whatever had held him in place a moment before was banished by the realization that his allies were all limited in what they could contribute—or were just flat-out spent.
“No,” he said.
They all turned to him as he stepped forward, the monster included. A dollop of goo dropped from its mouth to the tunnel floor with a splat.
An awareness took possession of Paul. He was a part of everyone in the tunnel—where they stood, their pulses. Even the Shade had a pulse. Each breath they took, tense and tight, was his breath.
They were poised for battle, and now he knew truly why fights were so short. Nobody, human or inhuman, could maintain such a state for long.
His sense of the group’s presence—of their Essence—roamed beyond them and into the soil of the tunnel. Beetle-rats deep in their warrens—ones he hadn’t reached in his panic. He knew their names, though they fit no language.
The soil, too, had its name. As did the water dripping into the tunnel. The steel of the train and rails. The wooden ties that held that steel.
Everything.
If he let himself go, he’d be absorbed by those things. But he wouldn’t allow that to happen. If anything, they wanted to be absorbed into him—to bend to his will.
>
And while it would be a mistake to give into that urge for too long, he knew that he was not helpless before Brill and his creature. Not even close.
Ken maneuvered to impose himself between Paul and the Shade. Paul knew it without looking, just as he knew that Po had moved closer to Porter’s staff and was about to dive for it. He knew Rain was going to chamber a round before the sound of it reached his ears.
“Leave my friends alone,” he said. “I’m here.”
Porter spoke his name. Rain started to ask him what he thought he was doing. He screened them out, sent his thoughts to the tunnel. Directed it to help him.
The Shade leapt. Paul closed his eyes, blinking out what was about to hit him. He set his mind on the no-longer living.
A half-dozen thick wooden stakes rose up out of the tunnel floor in front of him, reaching forward in pointed arcs. They met the Shade at a height of a good eight feet. It impaled itself on them, long arms reaching for him.
The beast shrieked and writhed, its screams terrible to hear. Yet it continued to grab for Paul, driving itself further onto the wood, its cries louder, higher.
He knew now what the others saw in him. They were warriors all. And while he felt the Shade’s screams go through them, he also sensed their respect for the strength he displayed.
Losing fights taught you to finish them when you were winning. “They had it right,” he told the creature. “You do hate wood.”
The screams of surprise and frustration became full-blown pain. The monster gave up reaching for him and instead attempted to lift itself off the stakes. No good—with every try, it lost its grip. It couldn’t maintain contact with the wood.
Essence freely leaked from the Shade, and Paul called it to him for his own. “What else?” he said. “Oh. Right.”
He didn’t need to close his eyes to focus now. The tunnel was all too eager to help. With his silent guidance, its ceiling began to hollow out and up in a tube, an invisible drill boring to the surface. The dank funk around them receded as Paul turned the disappearing soil into fresh air.
The others stood and stared at the spectacle, too awestruck to speak—or maybe they were just enjoying the show. Rain took it all in. Po smiled.
The Shade began to kick, trying to loosen the stakes enough for it to get its feet on the ground and gain leverage. Paul hurried, concentration slipping a bit.
Some of the soil didn’t finish its transformation to air and instead dropped onto the Shade’s head as dirt. He willed the tube toward the surface.
The dark beast rocked back and forth on the stakes, its screams undulating with the motion—a blend of anger and agony.
Too late.
“Bright light,” Paul said.
And there was. The tunnel went from darkness to sunlight as the hole in the tunnel roof broke through to the world above, which answered with illumination.
Burned by the rays, helpless to get away from them, the Shade wailed. It thrashed, mud flying from it—mud and layers of itself. Smoke rose as the monster began to come apart, shaken to pieces by its own struggles.
The light from above had an odd, shifting quality, as if filtered through a clouded lens. The reason was revealed a moment later as a great volume of water crashed down through the hole in a massive torrent, breaking over the Shade and the stakes that ran it through.
The water flowed over their feet and stopped as abruptly as it had arrived. The wet Shade now gave off steam as pieces of its flesh continued to fly from it.
And still it fought. Soon it was down to ebon muscle, then bone, as it shook itself apart, its cries growing dry as chalk.
Finally, it was spent. Paul had used Essence stolen from the beast to dig the hole in the roof. With its remainder, he shifted his thoughts to creation, closing his eyes again. He needed to get this right. He knew he’d succeeded when he heard Rain gasp.
He opened his eyes. The Shade’s skeleton sagged on the stakes. The bones of its long fingers dangled, as if accusing the wet earth of crimes against it. Final wisps of steam rose from the frame.
Now the reward for Paul’s efforts was plain to see. A spiral staircase of sturdy wood reached up into the hole in the ceiling from the floor in front of them, corkscrewing its way around the smooth clay walls to the surface above.
“I can’t explain it,” Paul said as they climbed. “It’s like making an idea solid.”
They rose up from a deep well. Porter never seemed to have a chance to recover. Paul felt his weariness, as well as the licks that Ken and Po had taken on his behalf.
If only Paul had discovered his abilities earlier. There was no denying he had them now. If he’d gotten better with them sooner, he might have been practiced enough to keep his friends from getting hurt. As it was, they had to protect him until he was freaked out enough to do something useful.
Friends.
He’d had friends among some of the New Beginnings kids, but those relationships were more like pacts to watch each other’s backs. There was little real caring. Few of them were around long enough.
In contrast, Porter stayed on as his Envoy when it might well get him killed. The others had even less reason to stick with him. But as Rain said, they did anyway.
There was nothing but downside for any of them should Paul fail. Come to think of it, even if Paul made it, Mr. Brill and the Ravagers would take it out on them. So he needed to get good at what he did.
The way up was long. Porter’s hard breathing was a soundtrack to the effort, punctuated by the squish of their wet footwear on the steps. Where had the water come from?
That answer became apparent as they reached the top and gained a view of the surface world for what seemed like the first time in days. Paul’s upward tunnel had pierced the center of a white concrete expanse—the floor of a rectangular pit with thick black lines painted along its floor.
There were numbers on the vertical cement walls around them and a tile border above those numbers. They stood in the deep end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, which Paul had just drained.
“Stinking sprawl,” Porter said.
Up at the shallow end, a gaggle of old ladies in one-piece swimsuits and bathing caps adorned with plastic flowers perched on the pool deck’s edge, gawking at them. Paul could only guess at what they were thinking. The mole people, invading at last.
Behind the women was a one-story cinderblock pool office. On the front of it hung a whiteboard that said in neat capital letters, “Water ballet, 3 pm.” Next to that, an oversized clock showed the current time: 3:05.
A sturdy-looking coach flipping pages on a clipboard hustled out of the office. “Ladies, I’m so sorry,” she said, eyes on her papers. “Anita called to reschedule, and I just couldn’t get her off the phone.”
She shut up when faced with the waterless pool and its filthy, bloody inhabitants—one a mummy and the others looking nearly as dangerous.
Paul grew a little light-headed when he considered what he’d almost done. Had the class started on time, the pool would have drained the women down dozens of stories, right onto the Shade and the stakes.
“We regret the damage, madam,” Porter offered. “If ever you were going to begin late, this was certainly the day to do so.”
The class and their teacher didn’t respond. Even if they didn’t know about the monster and the pointy doom below, they surely saw that they’d nearly met the fate of bubbles in a bathtub.
They remained silent as Paul and the dirty, exhausted group crossed to the shallow end and mounted the steps. Around them was a collection of three-floor buildings with an adjoining restaurant, gift shop, playground, shuffleboard court, and putting green. They’d reached the Dew Drop Inn, according to a sign in the distance—a family motor lodge.
“Any vacancies?” Porter asked, cracking mud from his hat. “With showers?”
Rain shook crud from her sleeves. “And a laundry room?”
32
The Battle of the Dew Drop Inn
In The Comm
ons, as in life, a Journey was often a series of lines connecting the dots of diners. So it seemed as Porter sat in a booth with Ken and Po in the Dew Drop Inn’s Pot Luck Family Restaurant.
Worn out though he was, he hadn’t been able to sleep after checking into his room and cleaning up. So he’d decided on coffee with a diet-cola chaser. It was an old combo for him; his Envoy colleagues used to suggest that he drop the can into the mug for efficiency’s sake.
Ken and Po, who were already there when Porter arrived, made for perfectly acceptable sounding boards for Porter’s ideas on the unusual stakes of Paul Reid’s Journey. It wasn’t the same as talking it over with Envoys, though—and the two didn’t know to make the depth-charge joke.
The mummy had a triangular peg puzzle in front of him. In the past hour or so, he’d left it with a single peg in its center—solved—numerous times. Po was well into a palace built with sugar packets and stirrers and had somehow managed a series of flying buttresses.
“I owe you two a debt for standing with us,” Porter told them. “If nothing else, I thank you for not destroying this place before I’ve finished my coffee.”
Ken nodded and loaded the puzzle with pegs. Shelley, the waitress who’d been filling them with coffee and tea while trying to sell them some scratch-crust pie, stopped by with a fresh pot.
“You sure I can’t get you anything to eat?”
“No, thank you, Shelley,” Ken said. “Just the check, please.”
“Big guy like you?” She’d taken a shine to the mummy—not in a romantic way, but more in the fashion that women her age sometimes did when they saw the opportunity to have an experienced, non-threatening male provide them with a peek at his side’s playbook.
Porter judged her to be about nineteen or twenty, but he could still see the child in her when she lingered by their table, trying to steer Ken back to the topic of her relationship. He’d tackled her questions and problems earlier, right after the dinner crowd cleared out, around cup two or three.
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