Petrified City (Chronicles of the Wraith Book 1)

by S. C. Green

  “An astute deduction,” I replied with a smile. My stomach churned with its familiar queasiness.

  “What’s going on?” May murmured, her head still drooping.

  “We’re getting up.” I shifted my body, trying to slide out from between them. May’s weight against me made it rather awkward. My knee hit the edge of the table, and I winced.

  “Why?” Diana tried to hold me down. “It’s so nice right here.”

  “For one thing, my arms have fallen asleep.” I’d managed to wriggle down far enough to yank my arms out from between them. May slumped against Diana, her eyes still stubbornly shut. “And for another, it’s night time, which means we need to make a move to the Citadel, especially if Dorien might be looking for you.”

  “Shit.” May sat upright, now wide awake, and tucked her rumpled hair behind her ears. “You’re right. He could be closing in on us right now.”

  “We should’ve left already. You sure you weren’t followed?” I strode toward the window and peered out at the street below, but with no streetlights, I couldn’t see much beyond the sill. In the distance, a man screamed. The wraith were obviously out in force.

  My stomach heaved. As discreetly as I could, I threw up into the void below.

  “Positive. But he’ll figure I went to you. They’ll be searching the Rim for us, and Dorien will have ways of making people talk.”

  It would take a lot to make Joey talk, but I now knew what Dorien was capable of. My blood turned cold. “Then we’ve got to get out of here.” I reached for the satchel May had flung on the table. “What’s in here?”

  May opened the flap and tipped it over. Out fell knives, small handheld guns, and other weapons, as well as some cans of soda and chocolate bars.

  “Sorry.” May shrugged. “I didn’t know what was useful.”

  “How do you carry all this as a raven?” I wondered. “And Blackie, too?”

  May shrugged again, her fingers stroking Blackie and Princess under their tiny chins.. “Magic. Whatever is inside our coat becomes part of the shift. Even little Blackie here.”

  Diana snagged a soda. I picked up one of the daggers I’d used before in the training room, admiring the exquisite blade and the dab of discolouration where I’d thrust it into the stomach of one of Cory’s wraith simulations.

  “This will do,” I said.

  “I’m coming, too,” Diana declared, setting down her can of soda.

  “Uh, no.” I shook my head. “That’s not happening.”

  She posted her fists on her hips and fixed me with a glare. “So, I’m just supposed to wait here for Dorien to show up looking for you?”

  Damnit. She had a point. I didn’t want Diana anywhere near the Citadel, but at least she’d be with me, and I could protect her. I didn’t trust what would happen if Dorien got his hands on her.

  “Fine. But you have to listen to everything I say. And don’t touch anything unless I tell you to. And don’t—”

  Diana rolled her eyes. “Sure, Mom.”

  Despite the sarcasm, her calling me mom usually gave me a squirmy, happy feeling in my stomach. But today, hearing it made me feel ill.

  “I also brought you these.” May opened the flap of her coat. Three grenades clattered off the edge of the pellet and rolled across the floor.

  Diana reached for one, but I thrust out my arm to stop her.

  “Don’t touch those.” I gathered them carefully and shoved them to the far corner of the table. I didn’t like them being inside the apartment, but we couldn’t exactly hang them out the window. To May I said, “You’ve thought of everything.”

  “Not quite.” She picked a pistol from the stack and shoved it back into her coat pocket. “I still have no idea how to get back inside the Citadel. I don’t think you’re just going to be able to crawl through the wall like last time. And even if we destroy the wraith and stop them bringing down the dome, the city is nearly crumbling. There’s hardly any food, practically no water, and everyone that remains is trigger happy. Even without the wraith, things are going to erupt into violence before too long.”

  I shook my head at the epic odds stacked against us. We were probably screwed no matter what we did, but that wouldn’t keep me from trying.

  “Let’s deal with one problem at a time.” I patted her shoulder then turned to Diana. “Get me the roll of paper from the closet.”

  She trotted off, Blackie and Princess in tow, and returned with a document roll, which she handed to me. I pushed aside the weapons and rolled out the papers inside, searching through them until I found the one I was looking for.

  “Here we are.” I smoothed out the map and placed a grenade in each corner to keep it flat.

  Diana reached out to finger one of the grenades. I slapped her hand away and gave her a look that made her bow her head.

  May squinted at the mess of criss-crossing lines. “What is it?”

  “These are old maps of the city,” I explained. “I stole these from the city hall in the Hub. I was on a job for one of the gangs, looking for some old land titles, but I thought these looked useful, so I kept them.”

  “What for?”

  “This particular map shows the underground tunnels. The Council used them to move garbage from certain areas of the city, as well as perform maintenance on the sewers and other public works. Some of these tunnels are even older—sewage ducts and cellars from the time of the city’s founding. Originally, I was looking for tunnels that might lead under the dome, but all the ones I tried terminated with that same grey energy field. The dome stretches far underground. Even if we had a hundred years, we couldn’t tunnel a way out. But I kept the maps, just in case.”

  “Why do we need this?” May asked.

  “Because with Dorien looking for us, I don’t want to move around above ground. That leaves the tunnels. I already know of several that could take us into the Hub, but many of them are popular with the gangs, and we can’t trust them to be empty. If Dorien’s searching the Rim, he’ll have put his gang connections on my tail, so I don’t want to give them any chance to find me. We’d have to be extremely careful.”

  “Makes sense.” May swept her eyes over the map. “Show me where we are?”

  I pointed to a small city block on the left edge of the map. Then I located a conduit a block away from my building. “Here’s where we go in.”

  May and Diana nodded.

  “Now.” I followed a line of the map with my finger. “There’s a possibility that we’ll be spotted, so we need to account for that. They’re going to expect us to go this way, through these garbage tunnels. They’re wider, the air circulation is better, and there are more escape routes should we be attacked. Look at this.” I pointed to the garbage track entrances throughout the Hub. ”If Dorien’s smart, he will have already spoken to the Dimitri gang. They’ll have told him I know about these tunnels. I reckon they’ll be guarding these exits, here, here, and here. But they might not know about this one.” I jabbed my finger at a faint line running across the centre of the map. It was so thin it looked like a pencil mark.

  “What is that?” Diana asked.

  “It’s an old sewer, built during the Victorian period. It’s been out of use for over fifty years, except by some of the gangs in the Rim. I doubt even Dorien would know about it. And look.” I followed the line across the map, through a large area of unpopulated blocks marked with a cross. “It goes right underneath the edge of the Brookwood Hill Cemetery. I used to live near there, and I know for a fact that these tunnels weren’t discovered when the authorities built the first wall around Brookwood Hill. The wraith probably don’t know about them, either. That’s our way in.”

  “What do we do once we get inside?” Diana asked, her voice small.

  “Without some idea of exactly where they’re keeping the Mimir, we’re going to figure it out once we get there,” I said with more certainty than I felt. I folded up the map and stuffed it into the back pocket of my jeans, adding a pair of old black
sunglasses on top of it. I jabbed my finger at the pile of weapons at the end of the table. “Now, suit up, you two. We’re going into battle.”

  23

  We crept along the pitch-black street, trying to make as little noise as possible even as our knives clattered against each other under our jackets. I paused at the edge of a building, waiting for May and Diana to press themselves up against the wall behind me before I peered around the corner. Their shoes crunched loudly on the broken pavement. The drill and bolt cutters hanging from my belt scraped against the wall behind me. I felt about as inconspicuous as a man standing in the middle of a lake balancing a wooden duck on his head.

  “How much further?” May said to me, her voice so loud it echoed on the other side of the street.

  “Not far,” I whispered, although I had no idea at all. I was trying to count the number of blocks we’d passed, but in the darkness with the noise of our footsteps and clanking weapons, it was so hard to be sure. “This way.”

  I turned the corner onto the next block. Something moved on my left. I whirled around, expecting to see May or Diana jogging to keep up.

  But the girls weren’t there. They were on the other side of me. A dark shadow streaked behind me. “What the—”

  Something hissed against my ear.

  I leapt forward, grabbing at my belt for any of my weapons. Diana screamed. May flicked open one of the scanners she’d stolen from the Compound and aimed the screen’s light at me. In the dim glow, I could just make out the wraith’s features as it whipped toward us, dark mouth open, arms stretched out.

  The light didn’t go through its body, but outlined every feature, every inch of decaying skin clinging to ancient bones. It wore a red scarf around its neck, the knot decorated with a pin that read Get me coffee or give me death.

  It swiped at my face. I ducked as its fingers scraped thin air, only inches from me.

  I lashed out with my fist and connected with its ribcage. My knuckles hit brittle bone, which cracked and crumbled under the impact. The creature’s hiss turned to a groan, and it lowered its hands to protect its ribcage from further blows.

  May’s black coat whipped around her body. Her blade glimmered in the air as she thrust it toward the wraith. Its moan turned into a dry scream as she she sliced at its corporeal body. One of its arms fell to the ground, severed by her blade.

  Flames licked from the sleeves of May’s coat, lighting the street in an orange glow. The fire swirled around her as the wraith ducked under her blade and grabbed her shoulder with its remaining hand. Her flames tore at its skin, trying to consume it. But the wraith didn’t react. It wrapped its fingers around May’s neck, lifting her off the ground and squeezing her.

  May’s mouth opened in a silent scream, her hands clawing at her throat as she fought for breath.

  I raised my gun and aimed, but there was no way to shoot without endangering May.

  Suddenly, the wraith’s face crumpled. Its body listed to the side. May’s feet landed on the ground as the creature toppled backward, crashing against the broken concrete with a heavy crack.

  Behind it, Diana stood with a shocked expression on her face, a long metal pipe in her hands. She dropped the pipe, her eyes dazed.

  May stumbled toward Diana while she scratched at her neck, wracking coughs shuddering her whole body.

  “Run!’ I hissed.

  May grabbed Diana around the shoulders, and they raced across the alley.

  I aimed the gun. On the ground, the wraith turned to face me, its blackened mouth hanging open with defiance and hunger. It clawed at the ground in an attempt to pull itself upright, propping itself up on its hands and knees, but it was having trouble balancing itself and working its arms at the same time. Diana had really hurt it with that blow.

  I squeezed the trigger. The wraith’s head exploded on its shoulders. Dirt and gore and splinters of bone splattered against the alley wall. The headless body swayed gently like a sapling in the breeze, before falling over with a crash.

  One thing about becoming corporeal: You could be destroyed by corporeal fucking weapons.

  I kicked the body aside and followed the girls into the darkness. Behind me, hissing sounds flowed into the alley. More wraith were coming.

  “Diana?” I yelled out, my fingers clamped on the gun. “May?”

  “Down here, Syd,” May called from out of sight.

  I spun around, following her voice. The thin beam of light from the scanner illuminated a dark hole in the ground. The manhole! May had found it. I could just make out the tips of her fingers waving to me from within.

  I leapt down into the gaping black hole, and my stomach jumped into my throat. Finally, my feet slammed against cold stone, and I collapsed onto my knees, skinning my hands on the hard ground.

  “Close it up!” I yelled.

  From above, the hissing intensified like a swarm of gnats circling.

  Diana knitted her fingers into a step, boosting May up so she could pull over the cover. Just as she was dragging it into place, a skeletal hand thrust through the gap, clawing blindly for her face. She pulled the knife from her belt and jabbed it through its forearm. The wraith howled and yanked its hand back out. May dragged the manhole cover shut.

  “Quickly.” I tossed May the drill, and she used it to refasten the screws around the cover so that this time they were upside down. There would be no getting in without something to cut through metal.

  While May worked, I pulled a lighter-fluid-soaked rag from my back pocket and wrapped it around a broken broom handle from my belt. When May had both her feet on the ground again, she made a trail of flame appear down her arm, and I used that to light the torch. The light illuminated May’s drawn features and Diana’s terrified face. That was a narrow miss, but they were both fine, for now.

  “Come on,” I whispered, pushing Diana ahead of me in the tunnel so I could see her.

  We hurried along the long corridors, taking the junctions I had marked on the map. My light barely penetrated the darkness, showing us only the curving walls a few feet in front of us. After a time, the constant darkness appeared no longer empty but full of shadows and secrets. The narrow walls sagged inward, pressing against my sweat-soaked skin. I lost all sense of direction and location. Were we heading toward the Citadel, or at any moment would we crash into the hazy barrier of the dome?

  “It’s hard to believe this tunnel runs right under the entire city, and hardly anyone knows about it,” May said, the end of her sentence trailing off in the darkness.

  “People can live their whole lives oblivious to what’s right in front of their noses,” I said. Then, realising that sounded more like a declaration of love than a musing on human behaviour, I added, “That was an observation about tunnels and was not meant to have any deeper philosophical meaning.”

  May laughed. “If you say so, Syd.”

  Diana giggled, and I couldn’t help but smile, too.

  We came to another junction, and I consulted the map again. “I think we’re here now.” I pointed to a street corner on the edge of the Hub, only a few blocks from the Compound. “So from here, we go left.”

  After another two hundred steps, it was evident that either I was a dumbass or the map wasn’t accurate. We found ourselves at another junction where we should have had only a right turn.

  My heart plummeted into my boots. We’d tracked our path so carefully, but if I had taken a wrong turn somewhere, we could be anywhere. There was no way to gain our bearings under the streets. We’d have to go back up, which meant exposing ourselves to the wraith or Dorien’s Reapers.

  “There could be junctions in the tunnel that aren’t marked,” May suggested.

  “You may be right, but that doesn’t help us now.” I slammed my hand against the wall. “Fuck!”

  My curse bounced along the tunnel and reverberated back as though the walls were mocking me. Behind us, something clattered against the stone.

  “What’s that?” I spun around, directi
ng my light back into the tunnel. “Diana, did you drop something?”

  She shook her head. Her skin was bone white. “I think … I think it came from behind us,” she whispered, pointing back the way we’d come.

  “Double fuck.” I tossed the map away. It was useless to us now. I picked up my knife, feeling the familiar weight of it against my palm. Why was I so much better at killing than at finding answers? “May, hold Diana’s hand and take the torch and drill. Walk straight down this passage. You’re getting out at the next manhole you see. If for any reason I don’t follow you—”

  “No, Sydney—” Diana’s voice sounded dangerously close to tears.

  “Then take Diana back to the Rim,” I continued. “Do you understand?”

  May nodded. She picked up Diana’s hand and tucked it under her arm. I swapped my torch for her scanner and jammed the drill into her belt. With one last pleading look to me, May dragged Diana down the passage.

  I didn’t follow them. It took all of my willpower to press my back against the wall in front of the junction, planting my feet firmly and raising my knife. I waited in the darkness for whoever was following.

  As Diana and May drew further away, their light becoming a flickering firefly in the distance, the sounds in the other passage drew nearer. They were definitely footsteps, moving carefully, but quickly. I counted at least two people, maybe three. They weren’t carrying a light. Wraith? I wasn’t sure. Wraith usually didn’t create footsteps, but now that they were corporeal ...

  I pressed my body harder against the wall, wishing I could sink into it. Sweat rolled down my sides. The scanner threatened to slip from my grasp, but I gripped it tighter. The footsteps were close … almost right on top of me. I felt the presence of someone emerging into the tunnel beside me.

  I leapt into the middle of the passage and raised my light, ready to skewer my assailant—

  “Holy fuck, Sydney!”

  “Harriet!” I lowered my weapon. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?” She, too, lowered her weapon, a rather unpleasant and extremely-heavy looking assault rifle. Her piercing eyes swept over my face with an expression of curiosity and disgust while her golden halo of hair bounced across her shoulders.