Underground (Greywalker, Book 3)

by Kat Richardson

  “No! The other one’s still out there!” he shouted, stumbling a step backward in fright. “The big . . . the big thing, the snake-dog! It’s gonna eat me, man. It’s gonna tear me up like Tandy! Got its eye on me. It’s gonna eat me!”

  Quinton shifted to the right, herding Lass into a blank wall. “That why you sent me and Harper to its nest? So it would eat someone else instead?”

  “I didn’t mean to! But, but . . . y’know . . . it’s hungry all the time,” Lass whined, pinging between terror and self-justification. “Gotta keep it fed. And I thought . . . I thought you knew about the others. It’s not my fault! I didn’t make it eat ’em!”

  “I know you didn’t, Lass. It’s been a good hunting dog—it ate your enemies for you. Why would the dog eat its master?”

  “I’m not its master! I don’t want it! I didn’t know what it was. It ate Tandy! And then it started following me around!”

  Lass had run out of room and bumped up against the wall. He jerked to look at what he’d bumped into and Quinton closed the gap between them, snatching the stun stick from his hand and locking his other arm around the quivering junkie’s shoulders, pulling him in tight against his side. “It’s OK, Lass. I won’t let it eat you,” he said, crouching down and bringing the other man down with him. “We’re much too small for it to see.”

  Quinton waved the rest of us closer, to make a fence between Lass and any immediate ideas of escape. We gathered around in an arc with the dark wall of the fishery building at Lass’s back and the spawning pool at ours.

  “These guys will keep the monster away while we talk. Now, how did you end up with the snake-dog?”

  Lass shook and huddled under the edge of Quinton’s coat, like a child. “The fat old squaw woman—you know, the one in the park who laughs at everyone. She was stuck in the pit, so we went to help her out. Tandy was pretty drunk. He fell in. I got the old lady out and I was going to get Tandy when this big thing came out of the hole and ate him! It bit him in half! I got the hell out of there. I figured the old lady could run away her own self.”

  “Did the old lady give you anything?”

  “Yeah, she was all happy I’d helped her and she said she was going to give me something, but all she gave me was a piece of string. I had it in my pocket for a while, but I threw it away.”

  “Why?”

  “I figured it out,” Lass said, squinting as he tapped the side of his head and tried to look clever. “It was the string that tied the snake-dog to me. I wanted to get rid of it, so I threw the string away. Smart, huh?”

  “Where did you throw it away?”

  “I’m not gonna tell you! You might go get it. . . .”

  “I think the old lady probably wants it back, don’t you?”

  I wished Quinton would hurry—the cold fog was crawling into my clothes and making me shiver. I also didn’t much care for Lass and found myself impatient to be done with the creep.

  “It’s a bad thing!” he insisted. “It’s the only thing I had—I ain’t got nothing in the world but my clothes, not even family, not even friends—but I didn’t want that piece of string. It’s bad!”

  “I agree. But you don’t want it lying around where someone will find it,” said Quinton. “If you tell me where you dropped it, I’ll take it back to the old woman. OK?”

  “You would?”

  “Yup.”

  “In the bricks . . . After Jenny . . . I had to get rid of it! You understand?”

  Quinton nodded and began to say, “I understand—”

  The spawning pool erupted behind us and we all spun to stare as Sisiutl leapt into the air with a rush of water and a shriek like metal tearing apart. Twisting and flickering through a dozen appearances, it screeched its polyglot language and dove through the air toward us.

  Fish shouted in Lushootseed as Lass screamed and jerked out of Quinton’s grip, dashing for a hole between the fog-bound buildings. Confused, Sisiutl whipped toward Fish and roared a string of angry Lushootseed. Fish, bug-eyed with terror, stumbled and fell backward, babbling uselessly.

  The face in the center looked disgusted and the serpent heads at each end snapped at the air in fury as the creature whipped around to go after Lass.

  Ben waved his arms in the air, shouting out words in as many languages as he could, until the zeqwa turned its attention to him, snapping its various jaws near his head. Ben flinched but didn’t run, continuing to shout and seeming to demand a response.

  At last Sisiutl roared a reply and ceased thrashing the air so violently to concentrate on the man between its two hissing heads. As man and monster spoke in a rattle of Latin and several other languages I could almost catch, Fish crawled to me in a daze. He looked sick and shocked.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I whispered.

  “Yeah . . . I just . . . I guess I wasn’t ready for . . . this,” Fish said.

  “No one is. I wish I knew what they were saying. . . .”

  “Sisiutl says he wants to eat us. Ben is saying we’re not to be toyed with. . . . Umm . . . something about powers and the favor of gods I’m not really getting . . .”

  I stared at Fish. “How do you know that?”

  “I can hear him. It’s weird. I know he must be talking to Ben in whatever freaky mix of languages they’re using, but I get Lushootseed in my ears. Some of the words are muffled though. Probably concepts my language doesn’t have.”

  Sisiutl rolled like an impatient whale and shrieked.

  “He’s losing his temper. He’s hungry. He says the man with the dog wasn’t enough food. He says we’re enemies of the man he helps, so he should eat us.”

  Ben frowned and shook his head, making a flinging gesture with his arms as he replied in fast syllables. Then he yelled in English, “I’m telling him he’s free, so he doesn’t have to eat us—we’re not his master’s enemies. He has no master now but Qamaits.”

  Sisiutl reared up into a U, the snake heads snapping at us and the main face screaming.

  “Uh-oh . . . he’s going to eat the other guy—Lass. The one who ran off,” Fish exclaimed, scrambling to his feet. “Sistu says he will take him to the sacred ground. Oh, shit . . .”

  Sisiutl sprang into the air and dove into the fog-shrouded water, leaving a knife cut in the rising mist.

  “Sacred ground? What? Where?” I demanded.

  “There’s a marsh on the other side of the bridge. You know?” Fish burbled, starting to run in the direction Lass has gone. “Foster Island—it used to be sacred to the Duwamish people—they used it as a burial ground! That’s where he’ll go! He’ll herd the man there to kill him! We can’t let him do it!”

  “It’s heading for the arboretum!” Ben exclaimed, starting after Fish.

  “We can’t catch them on foot,” I said, grabbing Ben as Quinton went after Fish. “We’ll take the Rover and catch up, but we’ll have to be faster than Sistu—Lass has a lead but the monster won’t kill him in plain sight if the marsh is close,” I thought aloud. “He’ll carry him there in one of his webs.”

  “You can’t let him be killed,” Fish said. “He has to answer for his crimes. I—I have to believe those legends. I’ve seen them now! He has to make it good—that’s what the legends say!”

  “How?” I asked, starting to run for the truck, thankful for the brace on my knee that kept it from collapsing, and hauling Fish along with me. “The cops won’t believe it.”

  “Not them. The sky gods! He used their gift to kill other men—it’s evil! He has to apologize, make good, or they’ll unleash the storms.”

  “Storms?” I shouted, incredulous.

  “The winds, the rain,” Fish panted as he ran. “These gods . . . drowned villages for less . . . in the days of the People. If their . . . monster exists . . . the gods must, too. I told you—there will be hell to pay . . . if this man doesn’t . . . apologize. Dead or alive.”

  EIGHTEEN

  We caught sight of Lass running at the end of the bridge before he bolt
ed down the stairs to the greenbelt that ran along the canal edge to McCurdy Park. Sisiutl leapt from the water and looped across the ground like a giant sidewinder. I turned sharply onto the grass and rammed the front of the truck into Sisiutl’s side. The monster whipped around to glare at me with all its eyes, setting one head to snap at the Rover’s headlights, ripping into the metal around them. The monstrous serpent bit and struck at the truck repeatedly, gouging chunks from the steel body, shrieking in a chorus of languages as Lass dashed farther away.

  Roaring when it noticed its prey escaping, Sisiutl lashed one last, hard time at the truck—denting the hood and rocking it on its tires—and bolted back into the water. I turned the truck and gunned its engine, jolting across the grass and into the parking lot beside MOHAI—the Museum of History and Industry—that lay next to the park and the pontoon bridges through the marsh that linked Marsh and Foster Islands to the arboretum beyond.

  I left the scarred Rover parked awkwardly at the edge of the fog-filled lot, as close to the footbridge as I could. We all spilled out and started for the bridge, hoping to catch Lass before he entered the marsh, but we were not as fast as the terror-driven speed of his flight and he slipped through ahead of us, making no more sound but the panting of his breath and the slap of his broken-down shoes on the wet boards. He disappeared into the grasping mist, pink tinged as swift winter sunset pierced the clouds.

  We pounded behind him onto the bobbing planks of the bridge to Marsh Island. We plunged into the tunnel of fog, stumbling on the uneven, wet ground of the marsh trail in the eye-dazzle of the sunset-colored murk.

  Cold, wet mud sucked at my boots where the cinder trail had been washed partially away by the winter storms. The noise of Lass floundering through the marsh, startling animals from the reeds ahead, led us forward. Cattails and knife-edged grasses rattled like bones and slashed at us as we passed. The mist muttered with the voices of water and lost souls. Behind me I heard a splash and a cry.

  I spun back, finding Quinton and Fish just a handbreadth away, half obscured in the fog. We’d stumbled right to the very edge of the island’s ragged, flooded shore without knowing it. Ben was partially in the lily-choked water, clawing at the muddy trail.

  “Help,” he gasped, his teeth already chattering from the cold.

  Quinton threw himself down and caught Ben’s hands. Fish and I started to anchor him and pull Ben up when the water of the lake heaved and broke over us.

  A cloud of hidden birds startled into doomed flight as Sisiutl launched from the water with a Fury’s scream. Its rush ripped the fog aside, showing a clearing where the trail opened into a lakeside viewpoint. Lass was a dark shadow on the far side and Sisiutl crossed the clearing in a handful of sidewinder bounds, its heads snapping at the man who had so recently controlled him. Lass snatched up a branch thrown onto the swampy shore by the storms and batted at Sisiutl.

  We yanked Ben out of the mud and I darted toward the monster as soon as my hands were free. I grabbed my pistol, taking care to keep the lethal muzzle pointed away from Lass as I aimed at the zeqwa. I yelled at it and fired at the first snake head I got in my sights.

  Sisiutl shrieked and whipped one head to bite at me. I ducked, sidestepping into muddy water to the knees.

  Ben dashed past me, waving and shouting, “No, no!” before relapsing into a blur of languages that sang in the double mist of Grey and normal in raucous raven cries. Ghosts circled and gibbered around the clearing in some macabre dance of death as the fog drew in close again. The remaining three of us surged closer to Ben, but were still a length behind in the darkening haze.

  One gigantic serpent head cut through the mist, jaws agape, and snapped down into the distance, bringing a short scream from Lass. Another reared closer, hissing in anger. Ben’s dark hair showed against the pale fog and the head darted for it, the maw opening to strike.

  “Ben, down!” I yelled, hearing the echo of my cry from Quinton and Fish.

  The booming voice of Sisiutl shook the marshy ground and the gust of its breath opened a window in the fog as Ben tried to duck away. The teeth snapped onto Ben’s side. I fired into Sisiutl’s grinning middle face as Quinton darted forward and shoved the arcing stun stick against the nearest bit of the monster’s body.

  Sisiutl screamed and hissed, jerking sideways and dropping Ben into the muck with a wrenching flick of one head. I corrected my aim and kept shooting.

  Fish yelled at the zeqwa, darting back and forth in frustration and fear.

  The other head rose into the thinner fog, Lass’s form writhing in its mouth.

  “Put him down! Fish, tell him to put the man down!” I shouted. “He has to answer to your gods, remember?”

  Fish bellowed the words in Lushootseed. The far serpent head shook its prize like a dog with a rat, and the horrible face in the middle, its catfish barbels dripping water and blood, roared a defiant reply.

  Fish cried back, pounding the ground with his hands, nearly spitting with rage and fear. The spirits of the island rose into the air at his pounding and keened silvery shards of recrimination.

  I let off my last shot and Quinton jabbed the shock stick one more time into the lurking serpent face that hung over us.

  Sisiutl screeched and flung Lass down nearby. Then it dove back into the brackish water. A wake of bubbles moved fast and straight toward the canal and we were alone with the ghosts.

  Fish swore and threw himself on Ben—lying still and quiet— feeling for a pulse and pressing on the bright red wound that covered his side and shoulder. “Oh shit, oh no,” he muttered, and began ripping at Ben’s clothes. “Go look at the other one!” he ordered. “I’m going to work on Ben. And call the medics!”

  I stumbled to my aching knees beside Lass, but I didn’t need to touch him; his eyes were already dim and glazing as his breath dribbled out in a long, slow sigh. Sisiutl had snatched gullies in his flesh, leaving bone and muscle exposed and wet with gushing blood. I could see his spirit loosening from his mangled body with no hope to stop it.

  The shades that roamed the island circled us in the fog, whispering and crying, teasing the tenuous threads to snap and dissipate into the pulsing swirl of the Grey. “Oh, no, you don’t,” I muttered.

  Quinton caught my arm as I started to lean forward and reach for the tangle of energy that was slowly rising out of the shell of flesh. “What are you doing?”

  “I have to catch him. He has to fix this—remember what Fish said about there being hell to pay? Lass has an appointment with some gods, and I’m not letting him duck out just because he’s dead. You need to call 911 for Ben. There’s nothing else to do for Lass.”

  My hands closed on the burning cold of Lass’s soul.

  NINETEEN

  I’d never tried to hold on to a knot of Grey energy before. I’d always let them fall from my hands and ravel away, being more interested in breaking them apart than holding them together, until now. My fingers hooked into the knot of brilliant yellow fire that broke from Lass’s body and sharp shocks racked my frame, shaking grunts of pain from my mouth and keeping me swaying on my knees.

  Outside of his body, his remembered shape formed in my grip, and Lass glowered at me and tried to twist away. I clutched him hard. His mouth began to move—

  A noise like a train wreck wiped out all other sound and rocked me back onto my heels. Sisiutl’s screech of defiance rose on a black plume of smoke from where my Rover had been—the pissed-off monster had taken out my truck. Quinton, holding an unfamiliar cell phone, shot a look toward the parking lot and then back to me.

  “Harper?”

  Shuddering from the contact, I fought to my feet, never letting Lass’s specter go. “It’s going to be a long walk home with this bastard.”