Underground

by Kat Richardson

  Something about knots . . . Then I thought of Ella Graham’s feather: She’d said it would help to untie the dead—no, she’d said “unpick” the dead things. She’d lived through the Depression and raised grandkids during the war, and she’d learned frugality the hard way, remaking clothes and salvaging bits and pieces by picking them patiently apart with a bodkin or needle. Maybe I could use the pheasant feather the same way to loosen the knots of the Sisiutl’s snare? Pheasants had one eye on death and one on life, so maybe the feather did have some affinity for the Grey, as Ella had implied. It was nuts but so’s the Grey and, when in doubt, crazy sometimes works.

  I still had the feather in the pocket of my jacket and I pulled it out. It was a little bent and wet, but it seemed OK. Feeling like an idiot, I held it by the quill and brushed it at the zombie’s head.

  The Grey web split a little. I brushed more and the web began to loosen and fall away. I could see seams opening up in the fabric of it, like faults or runs in a nylon stocking. I swiped and swabbed until the web was loose. Then I tore the last of it away with my free hand. The dead man’s form grew softer and slacker as the web fell away, but it was still knitted together too strongly to pull apart as I had the first time.

  Quinton’s light wavered. “I think . . .” he started.

  A distant swishing sound had started up.

  “I think something’s coming. . . .”

  Hurry, hurry . . . My mind felt jellied by the cold—I needed to finish and get the hell out of the water before I got hypothermia. The feathery end wasn’t doing any more work. My heart pounded and, in spite of the cold, I’d begun to sweat.

  If there were any gods watching, I hoped they were on my side. Desperate, hoping the picking-apart analogy would keep working, I flipped the feather over and teased the quill over Felix’s slumping shape until the tiny ridges on the tip caught on a thin yellow strand of energy. I resisted the urge to panic and dragged it toward me with a steady pull. A visible loop of energy sprang up out of the density of his form and I snatched it on the little finger of my free hand. Then I reeled it in against the growing pressure of the knot inside him.

  The strand popped free and I rocked backward as the hot yellow skein of Felix’s trapped life spun out faster than film from a runaway projector. There was an odd shushing sound and the body fell down, boneless and loose.

  A flash of white shot from the body and cut the gloom in two. The swishing sound stopped and something hissed. Then it roared, and the swishing became a hailstorm sound of scales on stone.

  I cast one last glance at the rotten body at my knees. Gone, dead, nothing but decaying matter now. Felix no longer inhabited his corpse.

  Quinton grabbed my elbow and yanked me to my feet, my knee protesting with a ratcheting sound I felt through my whole body.

  “C’mon!” he shouted, dragging me toward the fissure in the wall through which we’d come.

  A gigantic head with a pair of horns like a Japanese war mask’s thrust from the hole, roaring and flicking a forked tongue as long as my body into the air in front of us. The horrible sound shook through my chest and rattled us both back a few steps as adrenaline lit a fire in my sluggish blood.

  “Other side!” I shouted, pulling Quinton at a right angle to the monstrous head that was coming deeper into the room on a neck as thick and shaggy as a hundred-year-old cedar. A jaw full of glittering teeth snapped at the air where we’d been.

  We bolted south across the floor, staying out of the deep water to the west. But any door there had been buried in a cascade of cement, and we found ourselves in a dead end.

  “There’s no way out of here!” Quinton yelled.

  “We can’t get out until the hole’s not full of monster! We just have to get out of its way until the tunnel’s empty. Then we can bolt for it,” I gasped back, dragging him around the edge of a marble toilet stall.

  The hailstorm sound of the creature entering the room petered out and we could hear it thrashing the water near Felix’s body. It shouted something and I thought I recognized the sound of Lushootseed, though I didn’t know what it had said. We peered out.

  At the far end of the room coiled Sisiutl, gleaming in the Grey. In the dark, I judged it about thirty feet long and thicker than the totem pole outside. Its shape flickered and melded from one serpentine thing to the next—Medusa’s coils, a dragon, Cerberus with three heads on snakelike necks. . . . Something moved a bit at one end and, with a slithering sound and a splash, a monstrous serpent head reared up and turned our way. I could see the curving shape of its horns and some kind of frilled shape just behind the jaws. The forked tongue that had almost tasted us before shot out and the snake end hissed. Another shifting snake head rose and the whole, huge creature settled into a solidly ophidian form that lay in both realms at once. Then it flipped itself violently into a sort of W shape, and the booming voice shrieked again, coming from the center of the body that now looped toward us like a sidewinder, splashing and hissing through the water at a furious speed.

  “Rur! Thief ! Ladro! Vohr!” it roared, flickering through its many shapes.

  “Light!” I ordered Quinton. “Let’s see if we can blind it for a moment.”

  Quinton snapped on the beam of his flashlight and waved it at the beast. At its center we caught sight of a horrid face with dripping fangs and strands of fleshy hair around a wide mouth that shouted the words as the serpents at each end hissed and spit in rage. The center face yelled as the light caught in its dark-adapted eyes. Two clawed hands pawed at the dazzled eyes and the face screamed a cacophony of languages as we dashed past it.

  One of the snake ends whipped after us and I yanked a bit of Grey shield between us, my shoulder protesting the quick movement. The snake head thrust through the shield but let out a sharp hiss and recoiled, shaking as if confused and raising its frilled ruff in a lightning-quick motion that cracked the air with a boom.

  The hole lay just past Sisiutl’s body. I shoved Quinton ahead of me as the next head came around and snapped at us with a mouth full of needlelike teeth flanked by venom-dripping fangs. I shoved the point of the pheasant feather at it, hoping it would have an effect, but the thing just pulled back, shadows of its varied seemings wavering over its body like a heat mirage for a moment. Then it firmed again to Sisiutl, the head drawing back in confusion. But the human face with its slash of a mouth shouted some more and the two snake heads writhed as the massive body whipped about, trying to track us.

  Quinton dove into the hole as I unholstered my pistol. If the feather didn’t work, I was willing to try anything. The HK made a hard click as I squeezed on the cocking lever.

  As the first of the serpent heads darted in, I fired at its eye. In the speed of the moment, I missed the plunging orb, but the bullet hit the head’s nose and the central face shrieked as the whole creature jerked back from us.

  I leapt for the crack in the wall and scrambled up, ignoring the complaints of my limbs as Sisiutl screamed and threw itself against the hole in fury, shaking the wall. It appeared I’d done no more than piss it off, but I was still ahead and I ape-scrambled up the tunnel as fast as I could, tearing my shoulders, knees, and gun-filled hand on the rough surfaces of the rift. I heard the hard-rain sound of its scales and the furious hissing of one of the serpent heads as Sisiutl shoved itself back into the tunnel.

  “It’s on my heels!” I shouted to Quinton, buzzing from the fight-or-flight chemicals flooding my system. “Get out into the alley and hold the grate for me!”

  Fangs bit at my boots and I kicked free viciously.

  Ahead, Quinton pounded up the metal stairs and through the steel doors.

  I flipped out of the tunnel and into the open space at the base of the stairs. I rolled onto my back, bringing my gun up as I tried to gain my feet. A snake head shot out of the hole and I kicked it hard as I got up.

  It recoiled only an instant and then whipped forward again and met a volley of lead as I fired at it as fast as I could. Shrieking, it
fell back a little, and I jumped and ran up the steps, kicking the doors closed as the bleeding head snapped upward from the pit.

  Quinton grabbed my hand and we bolted down the narrow tunnel to the vault beneath the alley. My shoulders throbbed from the effects of recoil and my weak knee dragged me sideways. Quinton reeled me back in and hauled us both forward.

  With Quinton holding my hand, I couldn’t reload, but I wasn’t sure how much good shooting Sisiutl was doing. It seemed to shock it, but it certainly wasn’t more than that.

  We flung ourselves out of the vault and slammed the grille down over the hole, hearing the rush of the monster behind us. Panic-driven speed pumped heat into my limbs and I ignored the twinges of joints, didn’t even notice my soaked clothes as we tore out of the alley and onto the street.

  “It’s fast,” Quinton panted.

  “Then run faster!”

  We dashed into Pioneer Square and down Yesler. “Stay in the open,” Quinton yelled. “It’s keeping to the alleys! If we can force it into the dead end of Post at the Fed Office Building, we might be able to slip it!”

  We ran past Post and turned at Western, keeping the tall old brick warehouses between us and Sisiutl. My knee protested every step, but I didn’t dare slow or limp and Quinton seemed to be having more trouble than I was, since he kept looking back to keep an eye out for Sisiutl.

  I didn’t need to: the roaring and hissing of the zeqwa was as loud as traffic to me. I could hear its enraged babble as it pursued us, spitting words in dozens of languages. We had a lead of about a block, since it had had to go several blocks out of the way to stay out of sight while we just ran as straight and hard as we could. The cold air burned my lungs and I could feel the instability of ice forming on the bricks of this stretch of road. Sisiutl had kept to Post, as we’d hoped, but we couldn’t know if we’d be able to keep ahead long enough to lose the monster at Marion.

  We shot out of the narrow confines of Western at Marion and into the open ground behind the Federal Office Building. We heard Sisiutl’s shriek of frustration and the ground shook as it slammed into the building’s wall at the end of the cul-de-sac. Quinton’s tugging on my wrist didn’t let up.

  “He’ll avoid the open. He’ll dive for the sewer.”

  “He’ll be pushed toward the bay,” I gasped.

  “Right!” Quinton yelled, and jerked me in that direction, up Madison on the other side of the federal block, and then body checked me to the left onto Post. We pounded along for one block before pausing.

  “We lose him?” Quinton panted.

  I couldn’t hear the roaring of Sisiutl’s curses so well, but they weren’t gone and they seemed to be getting closer under the street. “No,” I gasped back.

  Quinton nodded and dragged me out of Post Alley and up Spring Street to the door under McCormick and Schmick’s side entrance without even checking for observers. He wrenched the faked lock open and shoved me through the door, pausing only long enough to close the door properly behind us before we were pelting down the ghost-thick passage under First Avenue to the last wall at Seneca—the wooden wall between Quinton’s lair and the rest of the underground.

  Quinton grabbed something from his pocket and pointed it at the wall, which twitched and sagged a little as we dashed closer. Quinton dug his hand into a crack in the wooden structure and heaved his back door open, throwing me through and following just as fast before slamming the door closed again and slapping at a few bolts and switches to secure it.

  My knee started to fold and Quinton slipped one arm around my waist, drawing me close as he leaned against the wall and stared at his security monitor.

  Both our chests were heaving as we panted for breath, trying to keep our noise low and not alert the monster if it should find the passage. Quinton kept me pulled to his chest and I noticed one or both of us were shaking. I kept my ears cocked and my sight tuned to the Grey—just in case.

  But the roaring and multilingual cursing had moved away and was fading toward the waters of Elliot Bay.

  “He’s not coming,” I panted.

  “Looks like you’re right,” Quinton replied, pulling his gaze away from the monitor. He leaned his head back against the wall, his chest still heaving. “I thought we were gonna buy it. Holy crap . . .” He looked back at my face and wrapped both arms around my shoulders like he didn’t plan to let go for a long time. “I thought he had you. I thought that thing was going to eat you. You kept pushing me out of the way and I thought you were too worried about saving me to get out of its way.”

  “You had to save me at the end. Let’s not get stupid here,” I admonished, at least as much to me as to him. I was trembling and it wasn’t all from flight adrenaline and imminent chill. Some people get a rush of excitement from surviving a near brush with death. I’d never been one before, but this time I was sweating and restless and throbbing with heat.

  Quinton’s eyes in the dim safety lights of his refuge looked smoky and hooded as he looked at me, still breathing too fast. “Oh, no. Let’s,” he said, and brought his mouth hard against mine.

  I clutched him and pushed into him, kissing back and feeling the quickening of desire between us and some tiny voice telling me to stop stop stop. . . .

  “Stop,” I panted, pushing back.

  “What?”

  I looked him in the eye, terrified I wouldn’t see the mate to my own emotion, and tried not to laugh with delight. “I want to be sure this time. . . .”

  “I was sure the minute I met you.”

  Catherine wheels of pink and gold sparks spun off of him, lighting my world with the glow of his affection and desire. I laughed and dropped my mouth back onto his, pulling and shoving at his wet clothes and warm body, wanting him against me and in me and right now, damn it!

  We staggered as my knees gave out and tumbled onto the narrow pallet of his bed under the stairs, tearing each other’s damp clothes off and scattering the pieces everywhere as we fought our way to bare flesh. We tangled together roughly at first in demanding sexual frenzy, relieved to be alive and frantic to be together. Crying out and laughing ran one into the other as we gentled, finally, into making love, coming to a shattering peak, and falling, finally, against each other, exhausted and wet.

  Then we rolled apart and blinked at each other, my sight filled with the afterimages of flashbulbs and fireflies. Before I could get cerebral about it, I stumbled off the bed and grabbed his clothes, throwing them to him. Then I started snatching and donning my own, grinning like a maniac, even as I fought to stay upright on my abused knee.

  “Let’s do that again. At my place,” I said.

  Quinton dropped the wet things I’d thrown on the floor and yanked on dry jeans from a pile by the bed. He grabbed me by the shoulders as I went by, a blaze of gold and pink around his sweat-gleaming body.

  “What?” he asked, shaking his head, bemused.

  I leaned over and kissed him. “I want to take you home and ravish you, idiot.”

  “When?”

  “Now!”

  I did not care that my clothes were damp, torn, and dirty, that I ached all over, or that the drive to West Seattle was long enough to restart the chill on my skin. Quinton didn’t let me keep the wet things on once we were inside my condo and I heartily approved of his methods of warming me back up. The electricity of our coupling lit my world in giddy swirls of hot pink and gold light until we both curled into my devastated bed, quivering with happy exhaustion that dropped us into deep, contented sleep.

  FIFTEEN

  I tend to wake up grumpy. I am not a morning person in spite of years of rolling out of bed early to hit the gym or practice hall or to pound out a few miles of calorie-burn on the street before breakfast. Tuesday, I woke up downright effervescent—even if I did have to ice my knee and take pills to relieve the swelling. I’d never “done” bubbly before that I could remember—not since being a little kid bouncing out of bed in anticipation of holidays and Christmas packages—not even with Will.
Warm, mellow, glowing, yes, but not, as my uncle put it, “bright eyed and bushy tailed”—which I always thought sounded a lot like a squirrel, and considering my uncle’s .22-caliber reaction to squirrels, I found the phrase horrifyingly ironic.

  I let Quinton get up at his own speed while I started coffee and took a shower. Chaos had been irascible, dancing around in fury and then throwing herself on the floor like a bratty child pitching a fit. She was bouncing around, trying to get a bite of my bare toes, when Quinton emerged from the bathroom, pulling his shirt on over his shower-wet hair.

  “Hey there—” I started, but he put a finger to his lips and then leaned in to whisper in my ear.

  “Ignore me.”

  Puzzled, I bent down to pick up the ferret before she could get too badly underfoot. Chaos bit my thumb. “Ow!” I yelped. “What was that for?”

  Chaos made a high-pitched barking sound and fought to escape my hand. Quinton stopped rummaging in his backpack and turned an expression of mixed concern and curiosity on us. I loosened my hold on the ferret a little but didn’t let her go, and she settled down a bit, but still wanted out of my hand. I put her down again and she darted for her cage.

  I followed and bent down beside the cage to look in at her while Quinton began to walk around the room with some kind of electronic device in his hand.

  “Hey, ferret-butt,” I cajoled my pet. “What’s up with you?”

  She poked her head back out of her nest of old sweatshirts and heaved a ferret sigh. I reached out a finger and stroked her ears and she rubbed against my hand, but as soon as I tried to pick her up, she squirmed away.

  “What a contrarian you’re being today. Are you sick or something? You don’t look sick. . . .”

  Quinton put his things down and joined me on the floor, peering into the ferret’s cage. “How old is she?”

  “Six.”

  “Huh. That’s getting kind of old for a ferret. Maybe she needs a checkup.”