by Rob Thurman
"You don't play fair," I grumbled.
"Have I ever.?" He dropped his hand and kept looking up at the window. "And there's nothing up there to see." He was probably right. Only freshly scrubbed tile floors and grout stained a bloody brown that wouldn't come clean again no matter how much bleach housekeeping used.
"Can you follow their scent? See where they left?"
"I'm not a supernatural Lassie." Hell, I wasn't even as good as your average beagle, much less bloodhound, but—"I'll give it a shot." Keeping an eye out for the guards, I moved across the grass. There was more than Sawney and the revenants to track; there was blood and lots of it. Soaked into the ground and the fading grass, it made itself known just as well. It led to the north side of the fence. Up at the top you could still see the mottled stains of blood on the concertina wire. "Up and over."
We went through, and from there I wavered. The slaughter had happened last night. A lot of people had come and gone since then. "Okay, you're going to have to offer me a Snausage or something, because I've lost it."
"Try harder."
"What?" I demanded. "No 'I know you've got it in you'? At least give me some sort of inspirational speech."
"I did." He repeated it: "Try harder."
Great. I scowled at him and did exactly that. I tried harder. To my surprise I picked up something … a faint spore. Blood, bone, and Sawney's coldly cheerful insanity. I only caught traces of it every fifteen or so feet for a block or so and then nothing. I stopped and looked down.
"Ah." Niko crouched and touched fingers to metal. "He's gone to ground."
More exactly, underground. It was a manhole cover.
More cold concrete, more water, more darkness. I exhaled, wished Sawney'd had a thing for tree houses instead of caves, and pulled the Eagle. Using the bolt cutters Niko pried up the cover, jumped several rungs down, and hung on the ladder for a split second, then kept climbing down. I followed, pulling the cover not quite in place, but enough to fool the casual eye.
It had rained a few days ago and I could hear the rush of water beneath us. It wasn't much better than the tunnels had been—NYC wasn't known for its pure mountain streams—and the only things I could smell didn't have anything to do with Sawney and everything to do with courtesy flushes. It was a storm sewer, not a waste one, but the things water swept off the streets weren't always lemony-fresh. I breathed through my mouth and kept moving down. When I hit the bottom, the water was cold, knee high, but it wasn't filled with floating dead body parts. In comparison to the SAS tunnels, we could grab a canoe and call this a vacation.
Still, dead body parts or not, Sawney might use the sewers as a home base. Cold, dank—it was a possibility, which was more than we had before. Now that we'd been at the Second Avenue Subway construction, he was bound to have left there. Sawney wanted his spider-hole secret. We didn't know whether he'd actually settled on that location or not before we'd shown up, but regardless we'd spoiled it for him.
Niko switched on his flashlight. "Do you remember when you were five and flushed your fish?"
"He was dead and that was in South Carolina." I sloshed through the water.
"Mmmm." The light dipped and I saw a sinuous shape beneath the surface of the water move past us. It was barely three feet long and it was not Freddy. Good thing too. Freddy had been a piranha.
We kept moving and truthfully I was surprised when we didn't come across any pieces of patients. Sawney wasn't the neatest of eaters. Unless he'd invested in a bib and a course in table manners, then this wasn't home or home was much farther down. I was really tired of tramping through tunnels and sewers, but it looked like this wasn't going to be an easy one. "Jesus. We might have days of this ahead of us," I said. "We'll have to get more help, bring paint to mark the off branches we cover, more lights." I turned and shot the revenant behind me in the stomach. "And get some rubber boots. My goddamn feet are freezing."
It fell in the water with a gurgle of blood and water rushing from its mouth. Its abdomen was pretty much gone—a bloody ruin of shredded flesh and the cartilage that passed for their bones. But there were still arms, a head and neck, part of a chest, and a frantically thrashing set of legs still joined, just barely, at the pelvis.
"I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to shoot it," Niko said, "or were thinking of giving it a piggyback ride instead."
I rolled my eyes. "Asshole. There's no pleasing you." I nudged the legs with my foot as the head went under water. "I think I should've used the Glock."
"It would've been more convenient for questioning purposes," Nik pointed out with mild exasperation as he dipped his hand under the water, grabbed the neck, and lifted the head up out of the water. "We would like to have a word with you, if you're not too occupied at the moment."
The head whipped back and forth, arms moved in jerky disjointed movements, the upper torso dripped fluid. Been seeing a lot of that lately. It was getting boring. "I can question the bottom half if you want, but unless it can do sign language with its toes, I think I'm out of luck."
An even more exasperated gray glance hit me, then turned back to the revenant. "Where is Sawney?" The gurgling turned to a scream, then a wheezing laugh. "Traveler."
There was another gurgle as the head went back under the water. Niko sighed as he held it under. "I'm a patient man, but this is all getting to be rather annoying." Corpse gray hands clawed at Niko's arms. He ignored them. "And if you can't use your explosive rounds responsibly, I'll have to take them away."
"It could've been Sawney," I defended. "I can't smell shit down here. Okay, that's not technically true. I can smell shit down here, but it really is sh…"
The gaze narrowed and I holstered the Eagle without finishing. "Yeah, anyway, he's looking a little more cooperative now," I said, nodding toward floating arms and a lack of air bubbles.
The head was jerked back up and shaken briskly by the neck. Water gushed from its mouth and over its chest. "Now"—Niko's fingers tightened around the neck—"you're obviously going to die. Regenerating is not much of an option for you, missing one-third of your body. However." He smiled, and even I felt the ice creep down my spine at the sight of it. "You can die now or you can die later. I think you'd much prefer now."
"Human." The word bubbled through the blood and water. "Worthless meat. I don't fear you."
That was all revenant there. A little bit arrogant and a whole lot stupid. He went back under. "I doubt that he knows anything," Niko said absently as he tossed me his light and used his other hand to draw his shorter sword—the tanto blade. "If he did, Sawney wouldn't have let him fall behind."
"Maybe the revenants are showing some more will now," I offered, catching the flashlight and holding it on the revenant. "They're not that bright and they've got an attention span …" I waggled my other hand back and forth.
"Much like yours, you mean," Niko suggested.
I glared but went on. "Sawney's feeding them some good stuff right now, but I doubt they're much into planning their future. He might be losing some of his control."
"Hmm. Interesting thought. Let us see."
It took a while.
I didn't think it was so much loyalty for Sawney as a hatred of humans. It'd be like a big-eyed lamb coming out of a field, kicking my ass, and making me its bitch. Revenant arrogance just couldn't believe it or give in to it. Not for a long time. Freddy and some friends showed up now and again to carry chunks of newly found fish food away in their mouths.
When it did talk, and with Niko it really was only a matter of time, it didn't have much to say. Yes, they'd taken the patients through here. We knew that. They were already dead when they'd been dropped into the water. It was the best that could be hoped for. As for the sewers and Sawney, it didn't know. Didn't know if he planned to stay or go. Didn't know if this was home or just another look at curb appeal.
It had wandered off from the others with a piece of flesh to gnaw on, gotten full and sleepy, and never followed the others on. Re
venants were the same as people. There were smart ones (relatively), average ones, and there was this guy. Dumb as a fucking rock. But to give it credit—posthumous, but credit all the same—even a smart revenant might not be on to whatever Sawney was up to. That twisted brain— he would give an Auphe a run for its money. Murder, mayhem, and madness, and that was just what he saw in his rearview mirror. What was ahead, I don't think any of us could know.
But when we came back to the sewers we might just find out.
18
The next morning—actually, the next sunup. Sunup is not morning. It's hell and not fit for any human being, but Niko, having ascended to a higher plane of existence beyond simple things like time, wasn't human when it came to exercise. He dragged my ass out of bed and off we were to run a thousand laps around Washington Square Park. Okay, maybe not a thousand, but it felt like it. Washington Square Park was the nearest park to our apartment, but it was not a very big park and we had to run a lot of laps for Niko to feel like we'd gotten a good workout.
There would always be things we couldn't outrun: vampires, the wolves…Delilah would catch me in five seconds easy, but Niko made damn sure I could outrun things like revenants. He ran me at least once a day; morning, afternoon, night—it varied. He ran all three times, which made him faster than me and less likely to have his lungs turn inside out. Good for him. Me? If I could've figured out a way to get out of the one run, I would've. That's why I had a gun. Shooting is easy; running with Niko was hard. He always ran me into the ground, until I was soaked in sweat and couldn't take another step without my legs folding beneath me to dump me on the ground. Because that was real life for us—running to save it.
I still hated it.
After that and a shower, Niko and I sat in the kitchen and tried to figure things out regarding Goodfellow. Finding Sawney was something we were leaving to the end of the discussion, friend before foe and a better subject than dwelling on the Psychiatric Center slaughter.
Niko started by grilling me on the guy who'd shot Robin. He grilled me yesterday after the attack, but between my job at the bar, hoping Robin didn't grope him when he took in ice packs, and the killings at the Psychiatric Center, we'd been a little busy for a repeat grilling. He was hoping I'd remember something new and I did.
"Black hair and dark eyes. Skin a little darker than yours. What I think was some kind of Arabic accent. Faint, though And he kept saying his task was done. That he was honored to die." Well, he got his wish there. "He also called Robin a betrayer. He didn't get into any specifics there. Wouldn't say if he was alone or not and I gave him plenty of reason to speak up." And I wasn't sorry for one damn bit of it. "Oh, wait. Hell, there is something else. The son of a bitch used some fancy move to throw me off of him—one that you've definitely never taught me," I said before popping the tab on the Coke and taking a swig. "Holding out on me, Cyrano?"
He frowned. "A move I've never shown you? Describe it." He had some soy, rice-powder, mud-colored drink he was nursing. He'd long ago learned not to offer me one. It was all I could do to keep my own down watching him drink his.
I got up and went ahead to illustrate the move a few times from the floor. He helped by assuming my role, straddling me with a finger pointed under my chin. Finally when he was satisfied, I returned to my chair. "Hmm. And an Arabic accent, you said." Niko moved over to the groaning bookshelf against the living room wall and scanned the contents. He chose a book, sat, and thumbed through it. After a few minutes of reading, he said with satisfaction, "Varzesh-e Pahlavani. An ancient form of Iranian martial arts, although in those days it would've been called Persian arts. It's well over two thousand years old."
"The accent, Persia, and Robin definitely twitched when you mentioned Babylon a few days ago." I wrung a note from the metal of the can. "I think we have a location pinned down." It was all right, this. Just me and Niko—like back in the old days. Research, learning crap I didn't care about, practicing obscure moves. Yeah, the old days…the days before I had to worry about an obstinate car salesman who couldn't be bothered to worry about himself.
Damn it.
Within seconds Nik was back with another book. Under his breath he was muttering names…Tammuz, Utukku. I drank my Coke and let it drift in one ear and out the other. When he hit on something, he would let me know. He didn't. Sighing, he closed the book. "We'll have to push Robin on it again, but now for Sawney." His eyes darkened to match the grim curl of his lips. "I think I have something."
"Yeah?" I said, surprised. "What?"
"I called the TA who shares the office with me while you were showering. I wanted her to pick up more classes for me until this is done. She had news."
"Good or bad?"
"Bad." He replaced the book on the shelf. "But informative. Students are disappearing at Columbia. Several. It hasn't hit the papers in a big way yet as they are students. Prone to wandering off after parties and not showing up for a day or two. But Shannon said she heard these students were reliable, not the kind to take off without telling someone."
"That could be anyone. Could be your average serial killer." I knocked the salt and pepper shakers together. "Sawney's not the only predator around."
"True. But I have a feeling about this. There's something about Columbia I can't put my finger on. Something I think I read once and have forgotten. We need to look into this."
"More so than the sewers?" I said skeptically and rapped the shakers again. I was equally skeptical that Niko forgot anything he ever read, but it was possible. He had a lot of information crammed in that head. "It's a college," I went on. "I doubt he's shacking up in the dorms."
He took the clanking shakers out of my hand and put them out of reach. "Trust me, and it'll certainly take less time than roaming more miles of sewers."
There was no doubt Niko was hell on wheels when it came to tracking and finding predators. That we hadn't found this one yet bugged the hell out of him…he'd gone from Zen to ice-cold and that didn't spell well for Sawney. "We'll need some sort of in. The police might not be there in full force, but the students will be on edge. Faculty too. I'm too young to pass for a cop." Although it'd be easy enough to get the fake ID. We'd been getting it since I was sixteen and Niko eighteen. Any Rom worth his salt could find a way easy enough and we had. Our clan might not accept us thanks to my Auphe half, but Sophia knew the tricks. And from watching her all those years we knew them too. "And you're too …" I shrugged.
"Too what?"
"Hell, you're like a James Bond villain. Cool, collected, lethal, and not a donut in sight. No one would buy you as a cop either." Besides, even though at twenty-two he could pass for twenty-six or twenty-seven easy, that was still too young for him to be convincing as a plainclothes detective. And his chin-length hair would immediately brand him as an imposter if he were in a uniform.
He snorted. "When I start drinking my soy-milk shaken, not stirred, then we'll talk. As for an in, if there is one, Promise will know."
And she did. Between her rich dead husbands and being a vampire, Promise was prominent on the social/charitable and nonhuman scene. If it was a fat, feebleminded rich guy you needed or a man-starved socialite, she just had to pick up a phone. The supernatural world was a little trickier to navigate because of trust issues, alliances, and creatures that didn't think there was a damn thing wrong with murder. But in the end she came through for us.
A long ride uptown on the A train later, we were at Columbia Presbyterian talking with a Japanese healing entity, O-Kuni-Nushi, known to his oblivious human colleagues as Ken Nushi, doctor and special seminar instructor for the premed upperclassmen at Columbia University.
A healing spirit, more powerful than a human healer by far, would've come in handy not so long ago, but he didn't know Promise at the time and vice versa. He knew of someone who knew someone who knew someone and so on. As it turned out, he could still do us a favor. First, he was actually willing to pay us. Second, he was able to confirm the students were missing and the co
llege was more concerned than the cops were at this point.
"You are correct. Two students have disappeared on campus over the past two days, also a maintenance man." Behind his desk, Dr. Nushi steepled long, thin fingers, two of which were banded with jade rings. One was white, one red. He had a face that was oddly monkeylike—large ears, black hair in a widow's peak, broad nose, and soulful eyes. Even more oddly, indifferent student that I was, I happened to remember a mythology lesson from years before. In the Japanese mythos, monkeys were thought to bring good fortune. If you needed a doctor, good fortune would be a nice bonus along with a cheerful bedside manner.
"I cannot say what has taken them," Dr. Nushi continued. "But there is something here. A predator, human or not, I can't say. But there is a stillness…an air…" He looked at me, then opened his hands in a "who knows?" gesture. I had an air about me too, he seemed to think, but he remained silent on that subject. Luckily. Niko cared for comments about my Auphe heritage even less than I did. "I cannot put a finger on it," he said, "but I know. Death is here. A good physician recognizes it. This is walking, talking Death and it is using our campus as a feeding ground. Human or non, I want it gone. This is a place of knowledge, not death. But I didn't know what to do with the police saying we must wait forty-eight hours. I didn't know who to contact, not until Mrs. Nottinger called with the offer of your services." He nodded his head toward Promise.