Duma shot past me, running slowly and crazily, arms flailing, screaming like a lunatic. At first, I didn’t know if he’d lost his mind or if he had a plan as dumb as mine.
“Remember, I don’t have to be faster than that dog, just faster than you…” he screamed as he passed me.
Twenty yards out, the flying dog shot straight up then tucked its wings. It went into a dive like a falcon, aiming straight at Duma on a course that would lead it right over my spot. As it approached, I stood up and braced myself, swinging one sword in a wide overhead arc that traveled through the thing, almost cutting it in half nose to tail. The impact knocked me on my ass and into a backward roll. The dog’s momentum carried its bulk another fifty feet before it finally came to a rest in massive bloody mess in the grass.
I walked over to the remains and noticed a smelly, matted tangle of fur over its right shoulder, under its birdlike wing. Kneeling, I poked at the crusty mess and found two large inflamed and puckered wounds surrounded by crusty scabs. The injuries had the telltale wrinkle of bullet wounds, only much bigger than most standard hunting-rifle rounds. Indronivay was shot by a sniper at a very long distance, which would have required a substantial round, and as good as his shooter was, I doubted he could have gotten across the marsh and through the mountain pass without dealing with the winged dogs, too.
Hoping to find out exactly what had done the damage, I cut open the injured area with one of my knives.
“Nasty. Simargls. Man, I hate dogs, with or without wings, but not enough to mutilate them once they’re dead, D,” Duma said, walking up behind me. “And this one is pretty damned dead.”
“It was shot before I killed it. The wounds aren’t recent and might coincide with Indronivay’s death,” I said, digging at the holes until I found something. “This thing’s shoulder blade stopped the round from penetrating farther, but the wound was festering. Hmmm. That’s interesting…” The bullet was huge, and it appeared to have been made from some exotic alloy. It was barely deformed from the impact.
“Well, yeah, I guess, if you find winged dogs interesting,” Duma replied.
“Not the dog. This.” I held up the bullet. “Looks like a .338 Lapua Magnum round—a highly specialized bullet used for serious anti-personnel sniper work.”
“I’m familiar, dipstick. That round appears a little different than a standard .338 LP, though. Never seen one quite like it,” Duma said.
I forgot sometimes that despite being fae, Duma and his brother were intimately familiar with all weapons. “Sorry, fairy boy, but yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It actually held its shape pretty well. It’s definitely made from a unique alloy and likely wildcatted, which means it might come from a unique weapon.” I smiled at Duma while I pocketed the bullet. That would be what a proper detective calls a clue.
“Damned tough animal. Even a few ounces of metal in its side didn’t hurt it much,” Duma said in both awe and disgust, kicking at a paw the size of a catcher’s mitt. “By the way, that wasn’t infection. That’s its body trying to excrete the metal round combined with the simargl gnawing the wounds to try to get at them itself. Fae don’t get infections or disease. Bacteria specialize in the dominant life-form on this planet—namely mammals. Anyway, now it’s dead. Let’s go before we find out if Indronivay had cats that breathe fire, too.”
I stood there staring, bloody knife in hand, focusing on the deafening silence around us. I wondered what the hell everything had come to over the past few weeks and how much worse it was going to get if I didn’t find the assassin fast. The bullet was unique, and its manufacture would have required a highly skilled human armorer. I knew Sarah could help with information about who might have made it. With luck, I would find another lead at Goibniu’s place. Tracking down an assassin who was trying to frame someone else was one thing, but if Duma was right, ferreting out a myth like the Hanner Brid was something else altogether.
Chapter 15
I knew our path out of Russia would be purposely circuitous, making it difficult for anyone to track us, but I was still surprised when we walked out of the Ways into an arid, hot red-tinted desert at the foot of a massive mesa. We jumped from the Ural Mountains to Ayers Rock in Australia, which was also apparently a Nexus point for the Ways. That made sense. The way the Aborigines talked about the place, which they called Uluru, and described Songlines matched up pretty well with the Telluric Pathways.
After Ayers Rock, we passed through cold and forbidding mountain terrain, followed by another desert, a back alley in some big city, a jungle, a swamp, another alleyway, then someplace tropical. We couldn’t have walked more than half a mile in the process, though.
“Where are we now?” I took in the lush green foliage so thick that I couldn’t see the sky above or more than a few yards in any direction.
“Welcome to Vanuatu. The island of Gaua, to be specific,” Duma replied. “That was where Goibniu’s forge was, right?”
“Yeah, Sarah told me the information she got from the Metis Foundation only said Goibniu was killed somewhere in his smithy in the volcano on this island.”
As we walked through the dense tropical growth, my Maglite fell out of my vest and landed on my boot with a thunk. That was when I realized that my tactical vest over my cuirass was pretty much shredded. Ballistic nylon and Kevlar were great against bullets, but they sucked against blades. Checking what was left of my gear, I found that somewhere between getting slashed in Japan and playing tag with the flying dog, I’d managed to lose one magazine and all my loose ammo. On the upside, my knives were still in place, and I still had my Maglite.
“Just great,” I said, swatting at the heavy elephant-ear leaves in my path like an overtired child. “I’ve got three spare mags, and that’s it. I fired four rounds from the Glock, and the other still has a full magazine. That sucks.”
“You’re just gonna have to make ’em count, I guess,” Duma replied.
We were headed for the highest point on the island, a lonely, smoldering peak called Mount Gharat. After about forty minutes of shoving through vines and undergrowth that would have given Tarzan fits, we came to the edge of a large village composed of thirty small structures, most of wood and thatch alongside a few constructed of corrugated metal. All the buildings surrounded a larger low open-sided structure covered by thatch. My first instinct was to avoid it, but something was off.
There were no fires burning, no food cooking, no people working, no dogs running around, no kids screaming or playing. Nothing. Against Duma’s protestations, I got closer. At the edge of the village, the stench of death and decay hit us. I drew my Glock and entered the clearing cautiously.
Bodies were everywhere. Dozens of them. Most were hacked apart and otherwise destroyed so badly that their features were unrecognizable. Those bodies still intact were badly decomposed, and all of them were covered with flies, maggots, and other insects. The stains of dried blood covered nearly every surface of the village, from the ground to the houses. There were men, women, and children among dogs and chickens. Even the valuable pigs were in the carnage. Most of the people, including the children, had some form of bloody weapon near them, from knives, axes, and machetes to shovels, hoes, and even sticks. My breath caught in my chest as I tried to make sense of the grisly scene. There were no footprints around the edges of the village or any other signs that suggested a neighboring village or foreign group had invaded. It was as if they had all simply attacked one another until everybody was dead.
Everything was still, and there were no sounds beyond the overwhelming buzzing of flies. Then a whimpering cry rose from behind one of the small A-shaped huts on the edge of the village. I glanced at Duma, who pulled his two kukri knives. Then we each headed in different directions around the hut.
On the other side of the structure, Duma and I both saw the woman at the same time. She was emaciated, dressed in a bloody, tatter
ed skirt and a cartoon-character T-shirt. Dragging a blood-encrusted machete in one hand and a mangled severed arm in the other, she was oblivious even as we came into her field of view. Her eyes were wide but unfocused, and her dark, dirty skin was tight and gaunt over her bones. She could have been young, but her condition made her appear ancient. She kept mumbling incoherently until Duma approached. Her dead eyes suddenly opened impossibly wider as she saw his face, and she began screaming and swinging the machete wildly at him. I tackled her from behind, knocking the machete and the severed arm from her weakened grasp. She struggled so violently that I was afraid I would hurt her if I kept restraining her, so I let her go. She shot off into the jungle, screaming unintelligibly.
“What the hell happened here, and what was that all about?” I asked Duma, not really expecting an answer.
Duma’s expression was scarily somber. “I don’t know,” he said then heaved a heavy sigh. “I think she believed I was a threat, maybe a spirit or something—pale skin and hair and all. She called me Mosigsig and said I made them turn on each other.”
“What? Why would she think you’re the trickster spirit?”
“I’m telling you: it all fits. I’ll bet you anything these people killed each other. That’s how Bluds work,” he said, shaking his head.
With the toe of my boot, I poked at the severed arm the woman had dropped. I grimaced. It looked as though it had been chewed on.
“Blud have the ability to confuse, mislead, and trick people. Stories say this guy used to turn families against themselves for fun. Blud are not nice guys, not even by Peri standards—and we have low standards. But the Hanner Brid…” Duma loosed a low whistle.
Duma’s expression was as grim as I’d ever seen. It wasn’t fear—I’d never seen him afraid of anything. Instead, he was intense, and he absently spun his knives anxiously. He might be right about the cambion, but until I had further evidence, I couldn’t rule out any possibility.
“Okay, sure. But we have no real idea what happened here. Don’t start jumping at shadows on me now,” I said, trying not to sound too condescending.
Part of me was starting to buy into Duma’s theory. And his reaction gave me the willies—especially if the Hanner Brid was capable of making a village full of people kill each other. Possibly just for fun.
“Let’s keep moving,” I said, trying to push the ghastly sight of the slaughter out of my mind and focus on searching Goibniu’s place.
Whoever did this needs to die.
Duma was edgy the rest of the hike into the caldera, overreacting to almost every unusual noise. And in a tropical jungle, those were numerous. Still, we managed to make good time and reach the rim before nightfall. We headed toward the lake at its base, keeping an eye out for any lava tubes that might have been an entrance to Goibniu’s forge. Other than birds and the occasional wild pig, we encountered no life.
Having fished these islands many times over the years, I knew the caldera of Mount Gharat was atypical. Three-quarters of it was underwater, forming Lake Letas, but our path, approaching from the southwest, led us straight up to the peak. Thankfully, Gharat was not a lava producer like the volcanos in Hawaii, though it had spewed ash as recently as a few years before.
Lava tubes and old flows pockmarked the northeastern side of the peak inside the caldera overlooking the lake, like some sort of surreal moonscape, especially in the dark. Surprisingly, the inside of the crater was mostly covered in dense foliage, like the rest of the island. Lake Letas was massive, easily several miles across, but its hot, somewhat-acidic water was almost devoid of life.
As we explored the caldera, every lava tube we encountered billowed plumes of steam. I couldn’t imagine anything living inside a boiling-hot furnace, fae bladesmith or not. The more we explored, the more it seemed like we were on a wild-goose chase with no hope of finding a reasonable entrance.
“Okay, if you were Goibniu, which of these tubes would you hide down?” I asked Duma.
“If I were Goibniu, I’d be a tall, big-nosed, bald Sidhe who reeked of sulfur. All these holes would work for me,” he said. “You know he was a master of obsidian blades? Best in the world, hands down. They say he could make his own obsidian. All I know is that he could cut the rock so it was as durable as steel.”
“That’s nice,” I said, stopping at the top of the next large lava tube. “And if that’s the case, then we’re going to have to start heading into some of these things. We’ll split up and go every other one. I’ll take this one, you take the next. Then I’ll take the next, and so on. If you find something, wait outside the mouth till you see me. Break a branch off a bush or something to lay at the mouth once you’ve been down a tube so we know where each other is, okay?”
“Works for me. What if we encounter something?” he asked.
“Use your judgment—or the opposite, in your case. Try not to kill anything unless it attacks you. At least try to talk with it first,” I replied.
“Gotcha,” Duma said as he walked around me and toward another tube. “Talk first; stab later. See you on the other side.”
I had no idea how long these lava tubes were—for all I knew, they stretched all the way down to the beach, miles away. But the fact that they were almost all steaming meant they still had some sort of access to the active magma chamber below. As I entered the first one, I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to find the very gates of Hades themselves at the end of it. The dry air had to be close to a hundred and fifty degrees inside the tube.
The next four tubes I ventured down all ended in cracks and fissures less than a hundred feet down. From the branches left in front of every other tube, I could tell Duma was having no luck, either. In fact, it wasn’t until midnight that I emerged to see Duma sitting at the mouth of another tube a short distance away, a smoldering pile of something unidentifiable at his feet.
As I approached, he held his finger over his mouth. I pointed at the steaming mass at his feet, and he kicked at it gently. Once I got closer, I could see it was a broad lizard-like creature about four feet long, with heavy scales and a wide, flat head. It wasn’t a lizard, but a salamander—a fire elemental—but its presence in a volcano wasn’t exactly surprising.
Duma waved me away from the entrance of the tube and began whispering. “It’s crawling with ’em. Kinda freaky, really, but it’s the kind of thing Goibniu would have kept as pets. Also, I heard some talking. Sounded like Gnomes. Probably Goibniu’s underlings.”
“Wait here,” I told him then ran down to the next tube. I walked carefully inside and slowly worked my way fifty yards down until I began to hear soft sounds like steam escaping, only at different pitches—the voices Duma had mentioned. From what I could hear, it couldn’t have been more than two or three creatures. A few yards farther down the tube, I came to a series of cracks where the wispy voices came through more clearly. I couldn’t understand them, but they had to originate from somewhere close by.
I peered through the cracks and counted four tiny but stocky bearded humanoid creatures, each no more than eighteen inches tall, in an adjacent lava tube. They were dark skinned and filthy, covered in sweat and ash. Each wore only a cap and apron made from some scaly animal hide, likely salamander. They all had tiny welder’s goggles draped around their necks. None of them had any tools or weapons. They were definitely gnomes.
The four gnomes waddled out of my limited line of sight, chatting in their vaporous voices, and I quickly ducked up the tube and back toward Duma, eager to get to cooler air.
“Yep, gnomes. At least four,” I said quietly. “Probably a lot more down there.”
“More than likely, but they’re not really tough. We can take ’em, easy,” Duma said, mocking a soccer-style kick.
I grimaced at him. “Are you crazy? I’m trying to clear my name of murder, not add a legit charge to it.”
“Sorry, D, just an idea. What’s your plan then? We’re going to need to lure them up here, though. Goibniu’s forge is too far down that tube. The heat would bake your human lungs after ten minutes down there.”
“Good point. Still, it’d be nice to poke around down there.”
“Why?” he asked. “You think you’d find fingerprints? Maybe footprints? No human would survive long enough to have killed this guy down there. And if it was fae—the Hanner Brid, say—then you won’t find crap anyway.”
Duma was right. Everything pointed to a nonhuman killer, whether it was his boogeyman or not. Still, I wanted to know what the gnomes knew about the event.
“Okay, we need to grab one of the gnomes—quietly—and then ask a few questions. And then let it go. Alive and unharmed, got it?”
Duma sneered. “Gotcha. Did you have a plan for your plan, genius? Or are we winging it?”
“Actually, I do,” I replied, glaring back at him. “If I remember right, you always carry gold pieces on you. How many do you have?”
“A handful in case I need to grease a wheel or two. Why?” he asked.
“Gnomes are drawn to precious objects taken from the ground, right? Jewels, pure gold, silver, and the like, right? So, we’re going to leave a trail of gold for them to follow right back into these bushes, where we’ll grab one of them so we can chat.”
Duma stifled a laugh. “Oh, okay. You sure you don’t want to put a coin under an old box propped up by a twig with a string tied to it, Elmer Fudd?”
“Only if this doesn’t work. Gimme the gold, wiseass,” I said, holding out my hand. “And be vewy, vewy quiet.”
Chaos Unbound (The Metis Files Book 2) Page 12