The Whittier Trilogy

by Michael W. Layne

  The small, Jewish man behind the glass counter opened up the case and let him hold the knife. It felt solid in his hand, but Trent was smart enough to know that he was more likely than not to hurt himself with the knife since he wasn’t trained in how to fight with one. Still, it could come in handy for a hundred reasons other than self-defense.

  He didn’t even try to barter the man down, but agreed to pay the first price the shopkeeper offered.

  As he was getting out cash to pay for the knife, he saw a black cane in an umbrella stand behind the counter.

  He asked about it, and as he suspected, it turned out to be a sword cane. He wasn’t trained in swordplay either, but a blade that long would let him stay further away from his opponent, and it was easily concealed while walking around.

  He quickly paid for both items and ran back down the block to his car again.

  It was time for him to enter the tunnels and to find Zana’s friends. If he was lucky, she was with them and had some good explanation for leaving him back at the hotel.

  As Trent sped off to the alley where Zana and he had entered the tunnels the day before, he realized that he was not afraid.

  If anything, he was more exhilarated than anything—not happy by any means, but grimly focused and energized.

  And if he was completely honest with himself, although he hoped that Zana was back at her camp with her friends, a part of him wanted there to be an actual person who had taken her, if for no other reason, so that he could do that person harm.

  It wasn’t like Trent to have overtly violent thoughts, but as he drove along the strip looking for the correct side street to turn down, the fantasy of catching and hurting someone who had taken or harmed Zana comforted him in a way that made the civilized part of him shudder.

  Chapter 23

  THE HUNTER HAD made his first move, and everything was falling into place nicely.

  It was early Wednesday morning, and he had finally acquired the girl. With the woman as his captive, the Hunter kept his eyes open and had his men monitor the video feeds as closely as possible while he waited for the mentalist to show himself.

  He knew he would not have long to wait. Soon he would have Mr. Walker, and it would be just in time for the hunt tomorrow night on the evening of the full moon.

  He knew that his contemporaries scoffed at him for affiliating his hunt with the full moon—that it was ridiculous showmanship wasted on an underground game where the moon could not even be seen.

  However, the Hunter knew that animals did not have to see the full moon in order to respond to it. Any veterinarian or pet owner could tell you that. How many times had his own dogs changed their behavior before his very eyes when the moon was full?

  And he also knew that this same phenomenon applied equally to the animal known as man. Even the Hunter himself, arguably as far from being an animal as possible, could feel the influence and the draw of the full moon; he had first discovered this as a boy, hunting with this father.

  The Hunter would continue to host his monthly hunt on the night of the full moon, because he knew that it made the hunt that much better—that it gave his game a certain edginess, and most importantly, that it helped his prey make the mental shift from being a human to releasing their inner animals and behaving like the prey they were destined to be.

  Chapter 24

  TRENT PARKED three streets away from the manhole cover for fear of having his car towed from the alley. Before locking up the Prius, he retrieved the mag flashlight he had purchased the day before from the trunk of the car and looked up at the abnormally cloudy sky.

  Between the flashlight and the long black wooden cane he carried in his other hand, Trent didn’t exactly fit in with the regular Vegas crowd as he walked down the strip in the middle of the afternoon.

  Fortunately, Las Vegas was a town that was accustomed to odd people, and other than a few strange looks, no one paid any attention to him.

  Within a few minutes, he was standing over the manhole that led to Zana’s camp.

  As soon as he was certain that no one was watching, he used the tip of his sword cane to pry the manhole cover open, and then dragged the cover off the rest of the way with just one hand. Even as he did so, he wondered if his muscles were being powered by adrenaline or his mounting anger that someone might have kidnapped Zana. Either way, he was glad to have the strength.

  Trent straddled the open manhole and secured the sword cane and his flashlight by slipping them between his belt and his pants before entering the hole.

  Once inside, he hung from the steel rungs with one hand, reached up, and pulled the manhole cover back into place with his other hand.

  He was now shrouded in nearly complete darkness with only the light from the hole in the manhole cover to illuminate the scene.

  He carefully descended the rungs to the tunnel floor below. He flicked on his flashlight, bringing into clarity the man-made underground tunnel that already felt eerily familiar to him.

  It was nothing for Trent to recall the turns from the day before as he navigated through the tunnels with clear direction and purpose. This time, however, aside from the homeless people passed out here and there on the tunnel floors, he only passed two individuals and one couple on his way in. In comparison to the fast-moving Trent, the denizens of the tunnel he encountered seemed to be moving in slow motion as they shuffled along in the near pitch-black tunnels like they were real-life zombies.

  Trent barely looked at them as he passed, and after a half-hour journey, he arrived at Zana’s campsite. As soon as he saw the camp, he knew that Zana wasn’t there and that something was dreadfully wrong.

  The cardboard and wooden walls were torn down or slanting horribly. Items were strewn everywhere. Although the camp had been sad by normal definitions the day before, its had possessed a certain order to it. Today that order was gone, and only one of the kerosene lamps was still operational and illuminating the area.

  Trent switched off his flashlight and walked toward one of the main tents, careful to place his feet where they made as little noise as possible.

  When he approached within a yard of the structure, someone rushed out at him from behind one of the larger pieces of cardboard.

  Trent stepped back and pulled out the long blade from his cane in a single motion even as the lanky man flew past him and landed in a pile of crumpled boxes.

  Trent recognized the man as Bozo.

  “Where’s Zana?” Trent said, pointing his sword at Bozo as the man struggled to get to his feet.

  Bozo looked up at him with glassy eyes.

  “Everyone wants to know where Zana is, man,” Bozo said. “The guys who did this were looking for her, too. But I didn’t tell them anything.”

  Bozo turned away slightly from Trent’s intense gaze, and he knew that the addict was lying.

  Trent turned his flashlight back on and pointed it directly at Bozo’s face. His left cheek was swollen, his left eye was bruised, and he was missing a few more teeth than the last time Trent had seen him.

  “What did they look like?” Trent said.

  “I don’t know, man. Just two big guys in suits,” Bozo said. “Reminded me of bouncers from a casino. They snuck up on us when we were still sleeping. I thought it was the Troll at first, but it was just these two assholes. They really roughed us up when we didn’t tell them where Zana was, but it was nothing like the Troll would have done to us. It’s no big deal, man.”

  “Where are your friends?” Trent said.

  “Robby and J.J. are a bunch of pussies. They already left to go live somewhere else! I ain’t gonna let a couple assholes like that scare me off. Gonna clean this place up and stay right here, and so will Zana when she gets back. Unless you two are planning on shacking up or something...”

  Bozo smiled a little maniacally, but Trent remained stoic.

  “I’m just saying I think she likes you, dude,” Bozo said.

  “You said they were here early this morning?” Trent said.<
br />
  “Yeah. Not a cool way to wake up,” Bozo said.

  Two men in suits were looking for a homeless woman and somehow knew where she lived. When they had discovered that Zana wasn’t home, they went looking for her and somehow knew to look for her at the Lucky Imp. Bozo was obviously lying and had probably told them everything he knew about where Zana might be.

  At least Trent was now fairly certain that Zana had been abducted, and he knew that two big men in suits were the likely perpetrators. But he still didn’t know who they were or why they were looking for her.

  “Did they say anything at all, besides wanting to find her?” Trent said.

  Bozo stopped and looked like he was concentrating before giving his answer.

  “Did they mention my name?” Trent said.

  Bozo laughed a little and shook his head.

  “Nah, man,” Bozo said. “I don’t think so, at least. One of them called Zana a stupid whore, though. He was a serious dick. I think he was mad she brought you down here and showed you our camp. I told her not to bring an outsider down here. No offense, man.”

  Trent turned away from Bozo and re-sheathed his sword cane. Try to find the right two guys in suits was going to be tough—especially in a town filled with guys in suits. But how many guys in suits considered the tunnels their turf? Two men dressed that nicely would look even more out of place down here than Trent did.

  And then it struck him—the two men in suits at his show the night before.

  They didn’t looked like they belonged at his show any more than they would look at home in the tunnels. Trent turned around to face Bozo again.

  “Was one of them almost bald?” Trent said. “With a military cut? And did the other one have blonde hair parted on the side?”

  Bozo just stared at Trent and shrugged.

  “I don’t know, man. One of them was kinda bald, I guess, but I don’t remember the other dude.”

  That was enough for Trent. One thing he had learned in his life was that coincidences seldom were coincidences at all. Still, even assuming that the men from his show were the same ones who took Zana, Trent was no closer to knowing how to find them.

  The only thing he could think to do was to return to the Lucky Imp and ask Buddy a few questions—and maybe even the hotel owner. There was a slim chance that the front desk manager had seen the two men in suits before. It wasn’t much, but it was all that he had to go on.

  Trent wished Bozo good luck, then turned around and headed back the way he had come.

  He only made it ten minutes before the stench of rotting fish and dried blood permeated his nostrils again.

  Chapter 25

  JUST LIKE THE LAST time, Trent knew that he was being followed.

  But today, he was in no mood to be anyone’s prey.

  He curtailed his desire to turn around and face whoever or whatever was messing with him, and instead continued on as if he was completely unaware. He still wasn’t ready to believe that there was an actual Troll behind him, but he had to admit that the smell was like nothing he had ever encountered from a human before.

  Trent waited until he came to a tunnel where he was supposed to take a right, but he turned left instead and broke into a fast run. Just as he suspected, in fifteen seconds, he could hear the sound of fast-moving footsteps in the distance behind him. His abrupt change in direction had flushed out his pursuer, and Trent couldn’t help but notice that whoever was following him was either extremely light on his feet or he wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  As Trent continued his sprint, he tried to come up with some way to get the edge on whoever was chasing him. He noticed that in this part of the tunnel, there were openings every fifty yards or so in the walls that were wide enough for a single person to fit through. As he ran past one after another of them, his flashlight revealed that they opened to small, narrow tunnels—for what reason, Trent could only imagine. For all he knew, the tunnels didn’t lead anywhere at all and simply ended at concrete walls after only a short distance.

  But the footfalls behind him were getting closer, and he needed to do something quickly.

  After turning another corner, he ducked into the next opening he saw. He quickly shone his flashlight down the narrow tunnel but still couldn’t see to the end of it. He took out his knife and opened it half-way, then wedged it into the concrete seam where the two tunnels joined, with the blade facing up.

  As much as his instincts wanted him to run down the narrow tunnel to put some more distance between him and his pursuer, Trent forced himself to stay where he was, making sure that he was easily viewable.

  Within seconds, a figure burst forth from around the corner, and Trent immediately took off running down the narrow passageway, confident that whoever was following him had seen him duck into the side tunnel.

  As Trent continued running, he suddenly heard an unearthly scream, as his pursuer must have stepped on the blade of Trent’s knife. In the smaller tunnel there just weren’t many places to plant one’s feet, and Trent had gotten lucky that his booby trap had worked when the man had tried to follow him.

  Of course, now the man was not only injured, but he was probably also very irate.

  The best that Trent could think to do was to keep moving and hope that whoever was following him would either give up, or depending on how badly he was wounded, lose enough blood that he would be weakened and slow his pursuit. Either way, it would hopefully give Trent enough time to find another way out of the tunnels and back to the hotel.

  No sooner had he finished his thought than he saw a shaft of dim light ahead in the tunnel. After another five minutes of running, the small tunnel abruptly came to a dead end, just as he had feared. He squinted and looked up. The only way out was through a vertical concrete shaft that ran all the way to the surface. He cursed himself, remembering that these tunnels were made for water, not people. And the narrow passageway above him was probably one of the chutes that funneled flood water into the main tunnel system when it rained.

  Trent was feeling stronger than ever, but he was too big to even fit in the chimney, so instead, he turned around, shut off his flashlight, and drew his sword cane.

  There was nowhere for him to go—nothing for him to do but to wait for his injured pursuer to arrive.

  As he waited, Trent simmered with dark anticipation. For some unknown reason, he felt almost eager to take on whoever was chasing him and to teach him a lesson.

  All was silent for a few more moments, and then Trent heard the footsteps resume—this time accompanied by a dragging sound as if one foot was being pulled behind the other. Trent cursed under his breath as he realized that he was still standing under the chute that led to the sky. Even the sunlight from far above was enough to highlight him and to make him visible to his approaching enemy.

  Trent stepped forward out of the shaft of muted light several feet and stared hard into the darkness in front of him.

  Slowly, his vision adjusted to the dark. At first he couldn’t tell if it was just his imagination, but as his night vision returned, he could clearly see that no more than twenty feet away from him, far enough away from the shaft of light that it was shrouded in darkness, was a large, mostly naked, man-like creature, hunched over and staring directly at him.

  Even though Trent still wasn’t afraid, meeting a thing like this down in a tunnel so far beneath civilization did make him feel like he was seeing a creature from another planet for the first time.

  He clicked on his flashlight, and whatever the thing was, it recoiled, bringing up an enormous hand to shield its eyes.

  The creature had skin like white alabaster, and even though the creature was bent forward so that it could fit into the smaller tunnel, Trent could tell that it must have been close to seven feet tall when standing erect. With a jutting brow, overly squared jaw, and swollen joints, the creature reminded Trent of someone with acromegaly or gigantism. But he knew that those afflicted with that hormonal disease usually were as weak as they were huge,
and this overgrown creature with its long hair, beard, and obscene amounts of shoulder and back muscles looked to be anything but weak.

  Trent glanced down at its huge feet and saw that one of them was covered in blood and leaking red fluid even as it shuffled slowly forward.

  The creature’s right hand held on to the narrow end of what looked to be a wooden club that was stained at the thicker end with some kind of dark liquid.

  That was when Trent realized who and what he was facing.

  The creature in front of him slowly lowered its hand from its face, and Trent could finally see one of its crazed, milky white eyes. While Trent was still transfixed by the creature’s gaze, the thing bellowed loudly and rushed at Trent.

  Trent stood his ground and waited calmly for the thing to reach him. He was ready. Instead of instilling terror, the creature had awakened something primal and dark within Trent that he had been fighting to keep at bay since arriving in Las Vegas.

  He remembered Zana telling him about the dark gray presence supposedly attached to the back of his neck, because as the creature neared, Trent felt as if he were being filled with the power of something bigger, stronger, and much darker than himself.

  He also wondered for the first time whether Zana perhaps could see things that other people could not.

  Chapter 26

  AS THE GIANT charged toward him with gritted teeth, Trent was silently thankful that the tunnel was small enough to restrict the creature’s movements. If not, he would have been immediately crushed by the large club, which the creature was unable to wield properly in the confined space.

  Just before the creature was on top of him, Trent tossed his flashlight aside, dropped to one knee, and extended his sword in front of him, bracing it with both arms extended. He dropped his head down, mainly because a part of him didn’t want to watch what was about to happen.