by Rhys Ford
“There wasn’t any Court left at Oighear Bhais, but I couldn’t tell you for certain.” His shrug was apologetic and his smile rueful. “We spent so much of our lives in a cold war with the unsidhe, avoiding one another as much as possible, the Dawn Court has little information about the Dusk. I know Oighear Bhais was sacred to the unsidhe. There were temples with priests, but I don’t know exactly where. The mountain range was long, stretching through several territories, but the black glass, that belonged to the unsidhe.”
“So what you’re telling me is….” I turned Ryder’s words over in my head. “That there could possibly be unsidhe monks living down there? Near the mountains?”
“Possibly,” he sighed. “Maybe even probably. I wish I could be more certain. I was not expecting… this part of Oighear Bhais to be here. Marshall’s notes were too unclear. Are you going to be okay with the unsidhe, if we find any?”
It was my turn to grimace, then mutter, “Why? Why would I need to be okay about the unsidhe?”
“Because if they want to return to a Court,” Ryder replied. “No elfin—other than you—wants to be alone. I’d be honor-bound to help them.”
“Of course you are,” I tossed back. “Well, let’s hope there aren’t any down there, because Oscar’s got a Hunt Master, and all we’ve got is a Malone, a pretty hibiki, and two elfin. Not a winning hand there, Your Lordship, no matter what card game you’re playing.”
Seventeen
WE FOUND the unsidhe ruins at the far end of the valley, broken elegant spires half buried under sheared-off obsidian flakes from Oighear Bhais’s glassy black face. It was also where we found the body.
Elfhaime made my skin crawl, but Oighear Bhais’s dead, nameless city was so much worse. My blood curdled in my veins, a bilious, anger-laced vomit flowing through me, filling my stomach with iron knots and clenching the scars on my back. It took everything I had in me to stand in the ice-flecked fog and keep my guts inside of me, but walking away wasn’t an option. Not now. Not ever, really, but if I had to choose one time I’d have loved to walk, it would have been standing there in the cold afternoon shadows of Oighear Bhais, contemplating the unsidhe horrors waiting for us in a dead city’s ruins.
There were echoes of beauty and elegance, spiderweb-thin bridges folded in over toppled turrets and crumpled-in chateaus. The ruins predated the Merge, possibly even most human civilizations, but it’d been a long time since feet touched the city’s broken cobblestoned walks or anyone looked through its arched windows. Bits of bright colors popped through the darkness and crawling vines, murals torn apart by time and the elements, but spots remained, glimpses of a past life.
We were awash in death’s echoes, its frigid fingers reaching through time to brush at our faces, reminding us nothing lived forever. Even if the ground sang with eons of steeped malevolence, we were listening to a dirge, and it was making me sick.
Ryder’s hand on my shoulder stilled the nausea, and I took a long, shuddering breath, hoping to chase away the stink of fear in my lungs.
“He’s human,” Cari remarked, hunkering down to examine the dead man. Placing her hand on the small of his back, she murmured, “Cold too, but this place is iced over. He’s stiff, so rigor mortis pretty much has him locked solid, but once again, last night dropped to almost freezing.”
“Yeah, that’ll prolong it.” I nudged the dead man’s bare foot, spotting a dirty, worn sneaker lying a few feet away. “Cold shortening—see how the muscles are contracted—so yeah, he was probably here from last night. Let’s flip him and see if we’re lucky enough for it to be Oscar.”
We weren’t.
“Oh God, his….”
Malone turned green, and I pointed to a small red bush at the edge of the salt flat rivulet. He almost made it, and Ryder stepped closer to the dead man as we all ignored Malone’s retching.
Stepping out of the way of the man’s unfurling damp intestines as they slithered free from a wide gash across his abdomen, I took out the sheet I’d downloaded at Dutch’s. The data I’d gotten from the Post on Bennett was sparse, hardly more than a picture and some contacts, most of whom were dead. Flicking through his known associates, I found one that came close to resembling the chewed-up man lying at my feet and angled the trans-sheet to compare. Cari and Ryder peeked over my shoulder to take a look.
“Definitely black dog. Guess the cockroach at Dutch’s was right. Oscar’s got himself a Hunt Master.” I studied the flickering screen. “Maybe it’s this guy? Henry? We’ll have to print him down to know for sure.”
“Hard to tell,” Cari muttered, squinting at the photo. “His face is kind of eaten up. I mean, we know there’s four of them—three now if you count this guy. I can do a reading on him if you want me to. He’s probably got enough juice left in him I could get something.”
“Assuming they didn’t pick any more up like we did, they’re down to three. And no, no reading. It’s not worth the risk or the time. They’re out there in this mess of a place,” I countered. “I’d rather get in, let Ryder get what he can, and get the hell out.”
“Still, dropping one of your men.” Cari tsked. “That’s kind of cocky or stupid. That leaves Oscar, the unsidhe, and one other guy. If I were that last guy, I’d be kind of worried. Oscar’s outnumbered now, and people aren’t going to stick around if you keep shaking them off like they’re nothing.”
“Outnumbered but probably not outgunned. My guess is Oscar and the spare guy can shoot, and the unsidhe’s got a pack. I’d say odds are good for him.” I nudged Cari’s shoulder with my arm. “And you know, some people are harder to shake off than ticks. Remind me to have a talk with Bryan about blabbing his mouth off at the sight of every pretty, puppy-dog-eyed chica.”
“Hey, it was easy to catch up with you at Dutch’s after Sparky rang me up.” Cari gave me a playful irritated hiss. “I was already at Aguanga, dropping chickens off for my mom. Short stop at Changa’s and I was right on your ass, which you should be happy about, considering I popped that asshole for you in the yard. If you’d answered your damned link, I would have met you at Bryan’s place instead of leaving my truck with Dutch.”
“Sure could have used your help at Changa’s,” I admitted softly. “Might have taken down the pack then, and this guy would go off stealing hubcaps in the lower city instead of being a chunk of frozen haggis in the middle of a salt flat.”
There was little remaining of his chest or torso, and his face hadn’t fared much better. His cheeks were marked with deep gouges, and a good chunk of his lower lip was gone. A piece of his scalp flapped forward when we turned him over, slopping blood over his forehead. His right hand was gone, and his left was missing several fingers, probably from holding them up to defend himself from the dogs’ attack.
I’d seen that kind of injury often enough to know the guy’d gone down fighting. Fingers and hands were usually missing after an attack, as well as noses and ears, but those seemed to be a favorite after-killing snack of the ainmhi dubh. Jonas reasoned the damned things liked cartilage, but I thought the dogs just liked the taste of snot and ear wax.
“Definitely black dog chow.” I handed the sheet to Cari to get a better look at the dead man’s wounds. “So this begs the question, did the Hunt Master lose control of his dogs and they killed this guy, or did he piss Oscar off and became a lesson for the guy that’s left?”
“While I’d like to applaud any joining of human and elfin efforts, I am vastly underwhelmed at this one,” Ryder said, glancing back at Malone. “Are you going to be all right? Do you need something from the truck?”
Malone answered with another round of sloppy regurgitation, and Ryder sighed.
“Let me get him some water and something for his stomach.”
“Antibiotics he’s on probably aren’t helping. There’s yogurt drops in the truck. And some ginger chews.” I called out after Ryder, “Make sure he gets something in him to calm his guts, because we’ve got to find that workshop of yours in all of this mess.
While you’re doing that, Cari and I are going get his prints and then see if we can’t give this poor bastard a halfway decent burial.”
“THE MAP Marshall got has only part of this place mapped out, so we’re going on half-shit information.” I spread out a trans-sheet on a broken pillar, then anchored one end with a small rock, laying out our position on the map Marshall’s courier sent her, and tried to figure out the legend from the glowing lines across the grid.
We’d gotten the transport as close to the ruins as we could, but I didn’t want to risk the ground falling in under it. Sparky’s instruments bounced back a hell of a lot of empty chambers beneath our feet, and while the bedrock looked solid enough, I wasn’t that trusting. The transport was as secured as it was going to get, but if need be, they’d be able to get inside quickly. Malone took time out from puking to key his handprint into the unlock pad on the side door, and we’d plunged into the dead city. I’d kept the packs as light as possible, but Malone struggled with the weight. A bit of reshuffling, some grumbles from both humans, and we’d been off to find Ryder’s holy grail of elfin fertility.
The walking went well enough among the candy-sweet scent of the Underhill trees. Faint whispers of birdsong filtered through the ripples of forest, but it was odd walking through the striped landscape. We went from salt flat to towering trees with the mountain range cutting into most of the steely sky.
Tapping a yellow blotch on the sheet, I tracked back to where our location blinked in blue. “It’s not far from here, but look at the fall line of the mountain.” Taking another look around, I mapped it out in my head and didn’t like what I came up with. “I think we’re going to be heading underground. Or at least under some rubble.”
“Great. You know what’s underground? Giant spiders,” Cari hissed at me, her eyebrows shoved in close over her nose. “Or worse, centipedes.”
“Centipedes?” Malone blanched. “I don’t know—”
“It will be fine. Just keep your boots laced tight and your pants tucked in. Cari, stop scaring the new guy,” I warned her. “There’s stories I could tell about you.”
“Like my brothers didn’t haze me,” she replied. “And I’m serious about the spiders. Keep your head covered, Robbie, or you’re going to get scalp-bit.”
“How large are these insects?” Ryder whispered at me, bending down to study the map. His hair tickled my cheek, and I brushed it away from my nose.
“Depends on how much they’ve had to eat and what kind they are. Tarantulas aren’t that bad, but I don’t know what the elfin brought with them.” I studied the wall of black mountain taking up most of the sky. “You got any idea about what’s waiting for us in there?”
“Not a one,” he confessed softly, his breath as light a touch on my cheek as his hair. “But if at any time you think we’re in trouble, we can leave.”
“So long as Malone doesn’t run screaming if he sees a centipede and Cari doesn’t set fire to every spider, we’ll be fine. Transport’s locked down, and if push comes to shove, you guys head back and throw the latch up behind you.”
“She doesn’t actually have a flamethrower, does she? Fire and cobwebs don’t go well together.” Ryder glanced at the youngest Brent then back at me, catching my grin. “You have a very sick sense of humor.”
“Last chance to back out,” I offered. “You know they’re going to be waiting for us, right? There’s something there Oscar wants, and we don’t know what that is. We could be walking into something a hell of a lot worse than spiders, Ryder. You’ve got to promise me that if things go ass up, you’ll grab Malone and Cari and get them out.”
“And what about you, Kai?” One saturnine eyebrow peaked on his forehead, and his smile gave me a flash of wicked fang. “Do you expect me to just leave you behind?”
“Yeah, I am.” I rolled the sheet up, dousing its lights. “Because I’m expendable and you’re not.”
“So you keep saying,” Ryder murmured, sliding his hand across the small of my back. “But I am going to disagree with you. I’ll get them out, but don’t think I’m going to leave you behind. I would sooner die than leave you behind like they did that man. Consider that my promise to you.”
I studied his face, firm, resolute, and pretty. He was growing on me, this sidhe. Useless as hell, but still, growing on me. My smirk was probably all the answer he needed from me because Ryder turned away, shaking his head.
“Thanks,” I said to his back, only loud enough for the two of us to hear. I wasn’t sure he caught it, not until I saw him stop and his spine stiffen.
“You’re going to be the death of me, Kai Gracen,” Ryder grumbled. “The very death of me.”
“You’ve got to understand something, Your Lordship,” I replied, stepping through the weeds to pass him. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”
“SPIDERS,” CARI grumbled behind me. “What’d I tell you? Fricking spiders.”
Underground, in a word, sucked. The vids always made venturing into a cave or dark recess as some magical experience where wonders unfolded at every turn. The reality of picking the way through a rocky enclosed environment left much to be desired. There was ambient light from the cracks in the buildings’ roofs, but for the most part, we were shuffling from one bit of darkness to the next, keeping the black away with link and pack lights. Spacing ourselves out by six feet, it gave us enough light to see where we were going, but barely.
“Not much farther,” I said, consulting the map again. “Ryder, hope you grab everything you need in one going, or we’ll have to do this again tomorrow noon.”
“We should have left it to the morning, maybe?” Malone slid on a loose rock, his light bobbling crazily across the walls. Cari caught him by the elbow, righting him.
“Thanks.”
“No problem,” she replied. “Morning’s no good for this. The way the mountains are, this place wouldn’t get any sun. It’d be harder to see.”
“And colder,” I reminded them. Not that it wasn’t cold now. A hundred feet in and we could see our breath in the air, but the path wound back around, bringing us closer to the valley floor. “No idea what Marshall’s contact was doing in here, but at least she was thorough. Paths are all clear and marked.”
“I wonder what led her here to begin with,” Ryder said, edging in to get a better look at the light-up map. “These were ruins before the Merge. There’s nothing to find here that would be of use to a human.”
“Hey, elfin stuff might make good money. You’ve got universities like the one in SD where Marshall taught. They’d gobble up anything someone brought out and pay you to go back for more.” I tilted the sheet so Ryder could make out our progress. “Artifacts are a great business if you’ve the stomach for it. Me? I’ll stick to bounties and pelts.”
“I’ll compromise on the dragons.” He nodded at the stacks of flattened buildings around us. “But I won’t be looking kindly on the pillaging of the dead.”
“I’m with you there.” I looked over the edge of the map to where Cari and Malone were resting.
She had him mesmerized with a story about her first takedown of a bounty, angling her hands in the air to demonstrate the run she had through the barrio. We’d stopped in a lighter section of the path, the ceiling mostly sky and a few black spires, but the crevice’s opening was completely blocked in by high stone walls. I wasn’t sure if the city had been built into the mountains or if Oighear Bhais simply decided to eat its young.
Whichever it was, the discomfort in my blood and skin hadn’t lessened, and with each step we took toward Ryder’s endgame, the more I disliked being there. My heart was pounding loud enough for my ears to throb, the notch itching furiously. I reached up to scratch at it then stopped short when the shadows ahead of us flashed with crimson spangles.
The ainmhi dubh folded out of the dark, long, heavy monsters run wet with sweat and ichors. Their dappled gray flesh sported patches of fur and scales, their squat, powerful legs straining to cross the rocky g
round to reach us. I counted three in the space of a blink, a male and two genderless pups. Most packs had a female—most wild packs, anyway—and usually a Hunt Master didn’t run their ainmhi dubh until there was an alpha bitch in the mix.
As bold as brass, the male stalked toward us, leaving the two pups to follow. I tracked them, skirting the break in the path, keeping to the far side of the crevice as the male stalked us. There was no seeing past them. The way curved back under the mountains’ weight, the shadows deepening their hold on the space. Even with the light coming through the openings above us, none of it touched the mountains’ entrails. It was impossible to see if the unsidhe Oscar brought with him was lurking behind the curve, but I knew he was there. Felt him tug on the ainmhi dubh, then let their leashes drop.
I had my shotgun out and in my hands before Ryder could gasp in alarm. Then the black echoed with the booming slams of iron pellets hitting damp, unnatural flesh. The ainmhi dubh screamed, a horrible echoing cry of rage, then feinted, his fangs glistening when they caught the light.
A piercing whine like the one I heard at Changa’s cut through Malone’s frightened shouting, and then Cari followed up my shotgun with a few blasts of her own. My reload was quick, a few slammed-in shells, and I had the muzzle nearly point blank to the male’s temple when the whistle curled up into my brain and yanked me down to my knees.
My shotgun fell from my hands, and my left elbow stung, gouged by a piece of rock. Oighear Bhais’s guts were as sharp as its exterior, slick knives with a keen edge and a thirst for blood. I slammed the heel of my hand into my temple, trying to rock loose the biting tickle eating away at my brain. Shaking, I rode the blunt pain, following it out of the sharpness in my ears. Another trill and I was on my hands and knees, retching at the unrelenting sound.
The ainmhi dubh sailed over me as I writhed, heading straight for the sidhe lord behind me.