Cunning Devil (Lost Falls Book 1)

by Chris Underwood

  My hands curled into fists.

  “Goblin,” I growled.

  21

  I advanced on the goblin, fists clenched at my side. He hissed and dropped into a crouch, lean muscles coiling beneath his green-gray skin.

  “Stop!” Early roared.

  The force of his voice stopped me in my tracks, but I didn’t turn my back on the goblin that’d once been Rhodes. It took all my willpower not to throw myself at the creature.

  I knew this goblin personally.

  Early stepped between us and stuck a finger in my face. “Ozzy, don’t.”

  I licked my lips, staring at the goblin over Early’s shoulder. “You knew? You knew this whole time?”

  “Yes,” Early said.

  My blood pounded in my temples. “He’s been living a hundred yards away from me for more than a year, and you knew? You let him?”

  “Yes.”

  I let out a roar of frustration at the calm in his voice. Behind Early, the goblin eyed me warily. The bastard was as ready for a fight as I was.

  A trickle of deglamouring potion still trailed from the corner of the creature’s mouth. Glamours—potions that allowed someone to change their form—were way above Early’s pay grade. The hag must have been supplying the creature with the potion to disguise his true nature. And more than likely, Early had been paying through the nose for it, since I doubted the goblin had the funds to spare.

  “Rhodes,” I said, seeing the name in new light. “Cute. Real cute.”

  Lilian came up behind me. She took my arm again, and this time she really dug her fingernails in. “Ozzy, what the hell are you doing? So he’s a goblin. So what?”

  I laughed bitterly. “He’s not just a goblin. Are you?” I said to him. “Are you?!”

  He hissed again, backing away. I ran into Early’s open palm and realized I’d taken another step forward.

  “This little bastard’s name isn’t Rhodes,” I said. “It’s Rodetk. He spent two years trying to kill me. All to defend the goblins who took my brother!”

  I shouted the last few words, unable to control myself any longer. I tried to shove past Early, but the old man was surprisingly stubborn, and with Lilian clinging to my arm I couldn’t get my balance.

  “I told you this was a bad idea!” the goblin said, jumping nimbly up onto the porch railing.

  “Osric!” Early said. “Be calm.”

  “Calm? I’m calm, Early. I’m very calm. You can watch while I calmly throttle this little fuck.”

  “You’re not going to hurt him. You’re not that person anymore.”

  I scowled, but I stayed where I was. Damn him.

  “Explain, Early,” I said. “Explain quickly.”

  “He’s not going to harm you. He left the Mines.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s his story to tell, not mine,” Early said. “I found him, gave him amnesty. I helped him arrange the glamour. I helped him get back on his feet. Just like I did for you, Ozzy.”

  I glared at Rodetk. How could Early talk like this? Like I was somehow comparable with this creature. I went to the Mines to try to get Teddy back. I didn’t start this.

  The goblin’s thin black hair hung down below his ears, but it didn’t cover the scar tissue across his cheek. A scar that I’d given him. I resisted the urge to rub my left forearm, where he’d once sunk his teeth into me.

  “He wants to help,” Early said.

  “Good for him.”

  “He can get you into the Mines.”

  “What?” I glanced at Early, then turned my glare back to the goblin. “No. No way. I can find my own damn way in. He’s not coming with me.”

  “Fool,” Rodetk spat. “They’ll catch you in five minutes.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” I looked at Early. “He’ll sell me out the instant he gets the chance. Or maybe he’ll just kill me himself.”

  “If I wanted you dead, I would’ve done it long ago,” the goblin said, and he gave me a vicious grin. “I know where the gardening tools are kept.”

  “That’s enough!” Early said. “Both of you. You’re on the same side now, whether you like it or not.” He looked at me. “You want to get into the Mines?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You want your revenge?”

  “I—”

  “You want to find the Mills boy, if he’s still alive?”

  “Of course I do,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Then you need to take whatever help you can get.” Early turned to Rodetk. “You’re still willing to help?”

  The goblin let out a low hiss, then nodded. “Yes. But not for him.”

  “That’s good enough.” Early gave me a look. “Ozzy?”

  I ran my tongue along the points of my teeth. This was madness. Bad enough trusting a goblin, but this goblin?

  “You know he hunted me, right?” I said to Early. “Did he tell you that?”

  “I told him everything,” the goblin snapped. “I told him I did my duty.”

  “And what the hell does a goblin know about duty?”

  Rodetk bared his teeth and snarled.

  “Ozzy,” Early said. “I trust him.”

  I met the old man’s eyes. They were hard, steady.

  “He’s not who he used to be,” Early said. “Neither are you.”

  I hesitated.

  “Come on, Ozzy,” Lilian said. “Don’t be a jackass. We need him.”

  I sighed. “All right, fine. But if he stabs me in the back, I want you all to remember I told you this was a bad idea.”

  “If I stab you,” Rodetk said, “it won’t be in the back.” He jumped down from the porch railing. “We’ll be taking the boat upriver. We leave at dawn.”

  He pushed past me, heading back inside. I stared at his back until he disappeared from sight.

  Early laid a hand on my shoulder. “This is as hard for him as it is for you. Go easy on him. He really is trying to help.”

  I just grunted.

  “Alcaraz is waiting in the car,” Lilian said. “I better take her home before she tears my head off. She is not going to be happy when I tell her what I’m doing tomorrow.” She paused. “See you at dawn, then?”

  I nodded. “Pack light.”

  She said goodbye, shared a look with Early, and went off to drive Alcaraz home. I turned away from Early and slowly unclenched my fists.

  “You should get some sleep while you can,” Early said. “I’ll head to Miss Lockhart’s library in the morning and see if I can shed any light on the nature of this curse. We have two possible ingredients at least: eye of roggenwolf and flesh of hobgoblin.” He paused. “And changeling as well, maybe.”

  “And silver,” I said. “The hobgoblin mentioned silver.”

  “With any luck, we’ll have an answer by the time you get back from the Mines.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I started down the porch steps, heading back to my cabin. My shoes crunched softly on the grass. Exhaustion pulled at my bones, but somehow I doubted I’d be getting much sleep tonight.

  “Ozzy,” Early called. I paused and looked back. “Rodetk is a lot like you, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  22

  I eased open the door of the boathouse to find I wasn’t the first one to arrive. Rodetk was lit by an electric lantern that hung from a nail on the wall. He paused at the sound of the creaking door, a red plastic fuel tank in his hands.

  He was covered from head to toe: gloves on his hands, a hoodie covering his long ears and stringy hair, a bandanna across his face, and a pair of dark glasses over his eyes. But he couldn’t do much to hide his long thin limbs and the slight inhuman hunch to his back.

  I closed the boathouse door behind me, shutting out the pre-dawn light. For a moment, the two of us just stared at each other as the river lapped at the boathouse’s foundations.

  Rodetk was the first to turn away. He clambered into the dinghy and fitted the f
uel tank to the outboard motor. I carried my backpack over and laid it next to the boat ramp.

  “They still use you to scare goblin children,” Rodetk said as he prepared the dinghy. “Work hard, do what you’re told, or the Natiz-Tuk will get you.” He raised his head, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark glasses. “The witch in the shadows. If you’re bad, he’ll come for you. He’ll boil your blood, carve out your spleen, and grind your bones to dust for his spells.”

  “Sounds like I need a new publicist,” I said.

  He grunted. Climbing out of the boat again, he fetched a small pack he’d left lying in the shadows below the electric lantern. By the look of it, he was taking even less than me. Guess he didn’t plan on being there long.

  I had a change of clothes and a little food in my backpack—most of the food you can find in the Mines is intended for goblins, and I’d had my fill of that four years ago.

  Everything else of importance I had on me. I was still wearing my coat loaded with vials and charms and fetishes. If this went bad, I wanted as much protection as possible.

  My truncheon of silver and iron and wood hung from my belt, and in my right coat pocket was the revolver the Dealer had given me. I’d brought the Dealer’s spirit bottle with me as well, though I figured if I needed to open that, we were already way past screwed.

  “So what’s this plan of yours for getting into the Mines?” I said.

  “There’s an old mine shaft on the west side of the mountain,” Rodetk said. “It caved in about eighty years ago, so it was never properly warded. It was cleared out by smugglers. That’s how I got out of the Mines. It’s how we’ll get back in.”

  “Since when was it so hard to get into the Mines?”

  “Since the sorcerer came.” He threw his pack into the dinghy with unnecessary force. “Khataz’s paranoia is worse than ever now. He doesn’t want anyone going in or out of the mountain without his knowledge.”

  Khataz was the ruler of the Mines, the Lord of the Deep. But I didn’t know about any sorcerer. There were always a few goblins who dabbled in dark magic—including the leader of the mob who’d stolen Teddy away. The way Rodetk had said it, though, this was something different.

  “What sorcerer? What are you talking about?”

  “The sorcerer you brought down on us.”

  “Me?”

  Rodetk pointed a long gloved finger at me. “You. It was your black magic that killed the boss of the Snatchers. He choked to death in front of his people. We couldn’t keep that secret. The witch in the shadows was no longer just a rumor.”

  “So?”

  He lifted his balaclava and spat. “So Khataz got scared. Decided to put his trust in a foreign sorcerer. After that the Guard was disbanded. Things just got worse from there. That’s why I had to leave. You’re the reason I had to leave my home.”

  I shrugged. “You never needed to get involved.”

  “You were hunting goblins,” he snapped. “Like a monster in the dark. I was Lieutenant of the Guard. It was my duty to stop you.”

  I scowled. “You were protecting the goblins who took my brother.”

  “I was protecting my home! I knew nothing about any changelings. I knew nothing about any of it!”

  The boathouse door creaked open. Rodetk and I spun at the sound, cutting our argument short.

  Lilian slipped inside, carrying a small duffel bag and wearing the same clothes she’d been in last night. She gave each of us a hard stare.

  “I could hear the two of you from outside,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be yelling about changelings for all to hear.”

  Rodetk turned away from me. “You’re late,” he said to Lilian.

  “Alcaraz had me out all night,” she said. “I’ve been busy setting traps in the forest, trying to recover our missing roggenwolf.”

  She looked remarkably well-rested for being awake all night. Unnaturally so. I filed that little tidbit of information away. Chances were I wouldn’t live to find out what she was, but old habits are hard to break.

  “Find any sign of it?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Poor beast is almost certainly dead by now.”

  “Your pity is misplaced,” Rodetk said while he unlocked the chain holding the dinghy in place. “Roggenwolves are dangerous beasts. Hunters of the weak. Whatever pain it suffered, it has inflicted worse.”

  “Even so,” Lilian said.

  I thought about the kind of person who’d be capable of separating a roggenwolf from its eyes. Someone clever, cold-blooded.

  I knew a few goblins who fit the bill.

  “Are you two just going to stand there?” Rodetk said. “Or are you going to help me get this boat in the water? We’ve got a long way to go yet.”

  The dinghy and the boathouse belonged to a friend of Early’s who had a house about a mile upriver. The guy knew we were taking the boat, but not why. We got out on the water before he could wander by and ask any awkward questions.

  I was a little concerned by how low the dinghy rode. There was water in the bottom of the boat, sloshing about our feet. Every few minutes I did a quick check to make sure it wasn’t getting any deeper.

  “Afraid of getting a little wet?” Rodetk scoffed, his hand on the motor.

  “I just know what lurks in this river,” I said.

  Lilian nodded her agreement. “Vodyanoys.”

  “And rusalki,” I said.

  “A kelpie hunts near here as well.”

  “More than one.”

  Rodetk stared at us for a moment from behind his dark glasses, trying to tell if we were joking. He shuffled away from the side of the boat and cast a wary eye at the water flowing past.

  The whine of the outboard motor accompanied us as we powered upriver. The water was murky and thick with algae. An early-morning fog hung over the river, at times nearly completely obscuring the shore. This was why Rodetk wanted to leave at dawn, I guessed. With the fog hiding us, neither human nor goblin would notice us.

  This far upriver we had the river almost to ourselves. Only once did we pass another boat: an old man in a wooden rowboat drifting slowly downriver. He was dressed in a blue coat, with a broad-brimmed hat hanging low over his eyes. His lips split in a wide smile as we passed.

  I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. Something told me he wasn’t entirely human. All three of us grew silent and kept our eyes on him until he disappeared back into the fog.

  You can never be too careful.

  After another fifteen minutes, Rodetk steered us toward a small tributary whose entrance was overgrown with the dangling fingers of a willow tree. We all ducked as we passed through, but a few dew-covered leaves still slid along the back of my neck.

  With the forest pressing in closer now, the air seemed thicker, the fog clinging tighter. The sun had broken the horizon, but it couldn’t penetrate the canopy here.

  Birds fluttered and sang but fell silent as we passed. Now that we were well away from town, Rodetk finally removed his dark glasses and pulled down his bandanna.

  “Not far now,” he said. “We’ll bring the boat ashore and travel the rest of the way on foot.”

  I nodded, looking up at the mountain before us. The thick forest reached right to the summit, an endless wall of green and brown. There was nothing to indicate that the mountain’s interior was crisscrossed with mine shafts. The gold had dried up in these hills nearly a century back, and the forest had retaken the dirt roads and railroads and mining settlements that’d littered the land.

  “You’re sure you can get us inside?” I said to Rodetk.

  “I haven’t been back in a year,” he said. “I’m not sure of anything. I can take us to the only hole in the wards that I know of. That’s all I can promise.”

  It would have to do. There were answers somewhere inside the mountain. I was sure of it.

  “All right,” I said. “Once we’re inside, we’ll have to act fast. Unfamiliar human faces will get noticed. We get the lay of the land,
ask around, find out what we need to know. We’re looking for any information about kidnapped hobgoblins or changeling children.”

  “And if we find out that the changeling boy is alive?” Lilian said quietly. “If we find out he’s there?”

  I paused. “We improvise.”

  Rodetk grunted. “The man with the plan,” he muttered.

  We traveled in silence another few minutes, then Lilian spoke again.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said. “Alcaraz has been making progress on identifying the creature you found.”

  So much had happened in the last few days, it took me a moment to work out what she was talking about.

  “You mean Lawrence?”

  “What?” she said.

  “That’s what I called him.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  I cleared my throat. “So what is he?”

  “Alcaraz still isn’t entirely sure. It’s been hard to figure out without the hag’s scrying potions. But she found a couple of references to similar creatures in an old reference book. And apparently there’s an interesting scar on the creature’s abdomen that she says is almost certainly made by—”

  “Quiet,” Rodetk hissed as we rounded a bend in the river. “Silence from now on. Khataz and his sorcerer have patrols in the area.”

  He cut the engine and we drifted toward the riverbank. As soon as we felt the dinghy’s bottom scrape the mud, Rodetk leapt overboard and started dragging the boat further ashore.

  With some reluctance, I lowered myself into the shallow water as well and trooped through the mud to help him get the boat out of the water. This was just how I wanted to be spending my last day on Earth: in the company of a goblin who’d once tried to kill me, and with wet socks to boot.

  We dragged the boat a few yards onto the bank, hiding it in the shelter of a gnarled, drooping tree. While Lilian grabbed our stuff, Rodetk and I found a few fallen branches and covered the dinghy as best we could.

  Pressing his finger to his lips, the goblin gestured for us to follow. The fog was burning off rapidly as the sun rose higher. For a couple of minutes we trudged along, following the riverbank upstream. Part of me began to wonder if Rodetk even knew where he was going.