Hounds of the Underworld (The Path of Ra Book 1)

by Dan Rabarts

  Cupping her left hand, Penny pumps a shot of shampoo into her palm, then works the foam into her hair. The cleansing scent of tea-tree saturates the shower stall, infusing her with a sense of calm. Bucolic.

  That’s when the name pops back into her head: Buchanan. She and Matiu had seen it on Fletcher’s computer. Penny remembers now where she’d seen that name before. It was on a death-by-suicide case she’d consulted on a couple of years ago with Noah…with LysisCo, Penny corrects herself. She massages her fingers into the scalp at the back of her neck. If she remembers rightly, on that occasion, the victim had been suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer, but wasn’t responding to treatment. He’d become sufficiently demoralised to commit suicide. And his oncologist?

  Buchanan.

  Could Fletcher also be Buchanan’s patient? If their victim has cancer and is struggling with depression, that might explain the motivation for his disappearance. But surely Rose Fletcher would have mentioned it? Or perhaps her brother hadn’t told her? It wouldn’t be the first time a brother kept something from his sister now, would it? Rose did say Fletcher had lost a lot of weight recently. Rapid weight loss could point to cancer. And if he did have advanced cancer, he might consider a quick death a blessing. Horrible disease. Centuries of research and still no easy cure. Rinsing the suds from her hair, Penny remembers downloading a few of Buchanan’s papers. She’ll have to look them up again, but she vaguely recalls that his treatment protocol at the time had been experimental, and not always successful, which was why his patient had chosen to take his own life. Of course, the Buchanan in Fletcher’s records might be another Buchanan altogether. It’s a common enough name. Or if it were the same one, Fletcher might have contacted him for another reason. Perhaps their correspondence was related to a Dish-It investigation. Well, one thing’s for sure: she’s not going to find out while standing in the shower. Ignoring the twinge of guilt she makes no attempt to move. She’s steamed up the bathroom big time: she can hardly make out the mirror. Little rivulets snake their way down the tiles. She really should get out. Her daily water allocation will run out soon, and she still hasn’t had anything to eat. Besides, Matiu will be all impatient, out there on the street waiting for her. Then she remembers how he kept her waiting yesterday. Turning his phone off. Ignoring her calls. His cheeky toot when he finally arrived forty minutes late.

  Tilting her head to one side to allow the shower jets to work their magic on her neck, Penny figures, to hell with it, a few more minutes won’t hurt.

  - Matiu -

  Matiu sets the teacups down with a soft ceramic clink, steam spooling away from the rims like wairua leaping off the edge of the world. The woman sitting in the worn armchair barely registers, looking past him through the window, through the years, nodding in that distant way that is so familiar to him. Moving like a cat, he eases himself into the chair beside her, lets the moment sit quiet between them for a bit. When she’s ready she’ll talk. There’s not much point starting into anything before that. She knows he’s there. Sometimes it just takes her a while to arrive at the same place, in the same time. Such a lot of distance to cover between here and wherever it is she goes.

  Where she has to come back from.

  Matiu settles back, sips his tea and waits, even though his nerves are as frayed as the edges of the throws on the old armchairs. A breeze stirs the bead curtain. Just outside the back door, Matiu can hear Cerberus, whimpering quietly. The heat, the haze of summer, sits heavy on the house. But for a short while, Matiu has no choice but to sit quietly, to feel the warm wind wafting through. It should bring him some peace—normally, it does—but not this time. The heat, the quiet are oppressive, weighing him down. There are things he should be doing, like checking in with the probation office, but none of it can happen until this conversation has taken place.

  “Mārama, I brought you tea,” he says, gesturing to the cup. It’s as much of an ice-breaker as he’s willing to risk. Pressing her into conversation can tip her over into one of her episodes, and he can’t afford that, not today. Today, he’d appreciate it if she could be having one of her lucid periods.

  Her nodding pauses and she looks past him, as if towards something far away growing steadily closer. Then she turns to him, and a phantom of a smile crosses her lips. “My boy,” she says, and her fingers twist one against the other, tug at the wrap which shrouds her shoulders. “Always such a good boy.”

  “How have you been?” he asks. As ever, he struggles to start the conversation, never quite sure how close she’ll be to this reality, how far lost in the other. Wonders, as he always does, if this is what he too has in store as the years wear him down.

  “I stood on the beach,” she says, her voice little more than a whisper. “The tide was coming in, and it just kept coming. Right up the beach, covering the sand, and the stones, and the flax and the dunes, and the water…the water was cold. Really cold. Too cold for swimming. So I just stood and watched from under the waves. The sand, Matiu, it swirled up and around me as the tide washed in and out, and it was hard to breathe, with all that sand and water in my mouth. Aue.”

  Matiu nods, as she reaches down to pick up her teacup in hands that tremble. “Everyone’s good,” he says, moving right along. “Pandora’s taken on some police work. If she can keep that up she might be able to stay afloat, with her lab and all.”

  “Tino pai,” she says, smiling, and for a moment Matiu thinks he can see through the distance that falls away behind her eyes, see the Mārama he has known from time to time, on those rare occasions when the inexplicable sadness retreats, and she emerges to face the world with her bright and shining self. “You should bring your dog in to say hello.”

  Matiu shouldn’t be surprised. Walls and doors seldom hide anything from Mārama if she chooses to see past them. Obedient to her every request, he goes out to the back porch, unties Cerberus and leads him inside. The dog sits beside the armchair, tail swishing slowly back and forth, floppy ears twitching. He looks from Matiu to Mārama and back, before settling on his front paws. “We’re looking after him, Penny and me.”

  “Penny and I,” Mārama corrects absently. “What’s his name?”

  “Cerberus.”

  “Of course. Quite a monster, by the looks.” Cerberus’ dark eyes stare up at her. She stretches a hand towards him. “Kia ora, e kuri,” she says.

  Matiu watches, transfixed, remembering what happened the first time he touched the dog. Partly, he hopes the negative energy that had been clinging to the dog is gone now, grounded out through him in Fletcher’s apartment, but he also hopes that something remains, enough of a trace that Mārama will touch, sense something. She rubs the top of the dog’s head, and he leans in to her. A frown crosses her face, though her eyes remain distant. Matiu can feel the silence as it falls across Mārama’s shoulders, across the room. She sets the teacup down in its saucer with a small staccato of clinking china and places her other hand on the dog’s head. She closes her eyes.

  Matiu sits perfectly still, his mouth dry, half-expecting Makere to whisper suddenly in his ear, startling him silly. But his unseen companion says nothing, even though Matiu can feel his presence, there in the shadows behind his eyes, watching, anticipating. He won’t show himself, Matiu knows. He can’t hide from Mārama. He fears Mārama. But he’s not too afraid to spy on them.

  She looks up, and her eyes are clear, bright with sadness. “You know?” she asks Matiu.

  He shrugs. “A little. Not enough.”

  Mārama releases the dog and sinks back into her chair, the shawl wrapping around her like a cloak to ward off bad spirits. She takes several long breaths, as if coming up from a deep place, hungry for air and light. “Every time I come back here,” she says, looking past his shoulder to the sunshine that glares across the windowsill, “all I see is more darkness. It follows us, clings to us, like a sickness, like…wild dogs. Wraps aro
und us and ties us to the world.”

  Matiu waits.

  “It’s the dark that keeps us, Matiu. The dark that owns us.” Mārama lifts her teacup, blows across the tannin surface of the liquid, inhales the steam. Sips at it reverently. “He couldn’t bear to see it die. You know that, right? He couldn’t sacrifice his friend.”

  Matiu nods. However cryptic, he had felt a hint of it in the warehouse, when the walls had screamed. “But something had to die. Something that mattered.”

  This was the way of all sacrifices.

  “This is not your fight, Matiu. The shadows grow long around you. You have no need to walk any deeper into them.”

  Matiu stares at his cup, trying to ignore the tiny ripples that flutter out and back, out and back, across the tea. He doesn’t even like tea, only drinks it because Mārama does, and she doesn’t have coffee in the house. Because it’s something they share which doesn’t terrify him. “Someone has to.”

  Mārama’s eyes flick up, scouring him like sudden flame. “I thought you would’ve learned by now when to walk away.”

  Matiu resists the urge to stand and leave. She doesn’t deserve that, not for caring about him. Not for wishing he could step out of the darkness, the danger, and put it behind him. Not when the darkness is such a part of him. “There was another dog. I’m pretty sure it came from Hanson. I thought he was out of the game, but it looks like he’s back at his old tricks. Need to shut him down for good.”

  “If this was just about Hanson, I’d have no issue with it. Hanson’s a soulless murderer, and I’d be as happy as you to see him fed to his own dogs. But it’s more than that. I can see it, you can feel it. There’s a tide coming up the beach, Matiu, a drowning flood. We should be running from it, as far and as fast as we can. Those who stand on the sand and watch it come, who try to hold it back…? They’ll be the first to be dragged under. I can’t bear to think that you’ll be on the beach, digging your toes into the sand, when the tide comes in.”

  “And what about the others?” Matiu asks. “What about those who are on the beach but can’t hear it coming?”

  “They’re not your concern.”

  “Some of them are.”

  “You’re too good, child. You will put yourself through this; you’ll be made to suffer, and no one will ever know. No one will care. The world doesn’t care for the likes of us.”

  “Where can I find Hanson?”

  The light seems to fall away from her, like a cloud drifting over the moon. “If you fall, Matiu…”

  “I won’t.”

  “Without you, I will be nothing.”

  “Where’s Hanson?”

  She tugs the shawl closer around her shoulders as if, despite the humidity and the sweat that crawls down Matiu’s spine, the room has just grown cold. Her voice, when it emerges from her small, bent shell, is a hollow whisper. “Woodhill Forest. The old ranger station up Tarawera Road, west of Helensville. He keeps them tied up in the storage sheds at the bottom of the valley.”

  Matiu nods, committing the address to memory, and trying as best he can to forget the way the light—and the hope—slide from her face as she tells him, like the information isn’t a tip-off so much as it’s a eulogy. Like they might be the last words she will ever share with her son, before the tide comes in, and sweeps away the world they know.

  CHAPTER 9

  - Pandora -

  Penny’s still eating when Matiu returns. With her toast in one hand and her coffee in the other, she buzzes him up with her elbow. Draining her coffee, she pops the mug in the sink. Then, the last of her toast still in her hand, she opens the door. Cerberus bounds in, leaping playfully on Penny, his paws reaching nearly to her shoulders. It’s just as well she’d finished her coffee.

  Laughing, Penny holds her toast out of reach. “Hey, you big oaf. I’m finally clean and you have to go and jump on me with these dirty great mitts. Come on, off me now. Sit.”

  Obediently, the dog drops to its haunches, his dark eyes fixed on Penny’s corner of toast. Penny waves the crust across her body. The dog’s eyes follow the movement.

  “Oh well, there’s the truth of it. And here I was thinking you were pleased to see me. Go on then. It’s all yours. No snatching now.”

  Penny opens her hand and Cerberus nibbles at the toast, picking it up in a movement delicate enough to pass at a duchess’ high tea, then settles down under the coffee table to enjoy his treat.

  Penny turns to find Matiu leaning on the door frame. “I thought you were going to wait downstairs,” she says.

  “And I thought you were going to be ready.”

  Penny looks up sharply at his tone. Something is off. This is getting to be a habit. He was off-kilter at the crime scene yesterday, and again later in Fletcher’s apartment, then he catapulted his coffee all over the floor at the lab this morning, and now this? Matiu’s not so much leaning on the door frame as propping himself up. It doesn’t take a gas-liquid chromatograph to detect when he’s masking something. His stationary phase may look solid enough, apart from those dark hollows under his eyes, but uneasiness is pouring off him in volatile waves. Like he’s just seen the Ghost of Christmas Past.

  “Yeah, sorry. I had some stuff to do,” Penny says. She crosses the living room and skirts around the kitchen island.

  Matiu steps into the room, part of Cerberus’ lead dangling from his back pocket, the chain clinking softly. Glancing pointedly at Penny’s satchel, still where she’d dumped it on her way in, Matiu takes a gander down the hall to where the last wisps of steam are leaking from the bathroom. He raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, so I see. Good shower was it?”

  “Shuddup,” Penny retorts. Pumping antibacterial soap into her palm, she rinses her hands and places them under the blower, cleaning off the dog slobber. And speaking of dog, Cerberus had been upset this morning, too. Was that the dog’s natural empathy making him susceptible to the anxiety of his human companion? Could Cerberus be that attached to her brother after just a day in his company?

  Penny turns her hands in the air blades. Normally, she’d do this to optimise drying, but she does it now to give her time to think.

  Plenty of historical studies support empathy in canines. Although, it’s probably too soon for the dog to exhibit that kind of rapport. More likely he was responding to an emotional contagion, the way one baby in the nursery cries and sets all the others off. With babies it’s not empathy—those feelings don’t typically kick in until a child is about two—just a kind of Mexican Wave effect. So when Matiu had been startled in the lab, he’d provided the stimulus, and Cerberus had simply responded in kind? Penny shakes her head, rejecting the theory. No, it wasn’t just that. Matiu had been shaken, so if it had been a simple case of emotional contagion Cerberus should have had his ears folded back and his tail tucked under his belly. Instead, the dog had shown all the signs of an animal set to attack: standing tall on his toes, hackles raised, and his lips pulled back to expose his teeth. She steals a sideways look at the dog. Under the table, Cerberus is gnawing away at the crust, struggling to anchor the tiny morsel between his front paws. He seems OK now…

  Penny removes her hands, the action automatically switching off the blower. “Look, Matiu, about this case, we really need to talk.”

  “Any coffee still in that pot?”

  Looks like some solid phase micro-extraction is going to be required. “Come on, Matiu. You’ve been acting really weird ever since I took this case. What’s going on?”

  “Caffeine deficiency.”

  “Matiu.”

  “OK, good idea, Pandora,” Matiu says, opening a cupboard and grabbing a mug. He slams the door shut. Penny gives a little jump. “Since you brought it up, let’s talk about what’s going on, shall we? Why don’t you tell me what the hell happened in the lab this morning?” He pours his coffee—black�
�then swings around to face her. “And don’t give me any smoke-and-mirrors bullshit about overcooked eggs.”

  “Oh, that,” Penny says, suddenly on the back foot.

  “Well?”

  “It was nothing. At first, I thought someone had rolled a Molotov cocktail into the lab—”

  “Because people do that regularly, do they?”

  “No, of course not.” Penny titters. “I thought it was Cordell, or maybe something to do with the case…”

  “Cordell? You mean Noah? What would your ex have to do with it?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. He’s just…the first person who came to mind.” Seeing Matiu’s frown, Penny rushes on. “Look, it turns out there are some teething problems with the Breadmaker—it’s a new machine and they’re highly sensitive. I didn’t want Clark to find out because I can’t risk him thinking my company is flaky. He’ll pass it up the line to Tanner. They’ll show me the door. I’ve only just managed to get my foot in.” Penny stops. Matiu, pensive, is off with the fairies somewhere.