The Stars Were Right

by Alexander, K. M.

  It was impossible to do anything but stare at the two pinpricks of red light—any light was glorious to me. Something beyond the murk.

  I couldn't look away from the eyes of the umbra. The eyes of the killer. I shifted back as they drew closer, drawing yet more laughter from my captors.

  "Look how our Guardian cowers," came a voice from somewhere over my shoulder.

  The glowing red eyes stopped a few feet away, hovering like stab wound slits in the blackness as they leered.

  "Lights." Another voice. Male. Deep. Like an earthquake. "Lights."

  The sound of filaments bursting and hissing within their glass globes overwhelmed the muffled quiet of the space. Lanterns. My dilated eyes burned, and I was forced to close them despite my hunger for light.

  Eventually—I don't know how long—my eyes slowly opened. I did my best, following my habit of taking in my surroundings while my eyes grew accustomed to the influx of light.

  What had once been a black, lightless void became an enormous run-down tunnel. The place was huge, vast, and overwhelming. The ceiling disappeared above us, obscured by darkness the meager pool of light failed to penetrate. Chunks of concrete had collapsed from its roof in eons past and squatted like rubbled cairns across the floor. Each was the size of a cargowain but looked minuscule in comparison to the tunnel's structure. The walls I could see were caked with grime, dirt, and mud. Black moss and pale, almost translucent vines crawled up the side nearest us. I looked down, my knees deep in cold, wet mud. A sickly mist hung above the floor like a death shroud, slowly creeping away from the light of the lanterns.

  Breathing out, I looked up into the faces of my captors.

  They continued to circle me like a pack of hungry wolves. Eyes wild with that die-for-the-cause stare I had seen on the few I had encountered before. The marks were recognizable: patches, tattoos, jewelry, scars; all in the shape of the flute. Pan's flute. Peter Black's flute.

  These were the Children.

  "I thought there'd be more of you," I managed to gasp out.

  A few sneered, but none chose to respond directly. Instead they just laughed. More mocking laughter. They reminded me of Detective Muffie's cocksure arrogance while I was behind the bars of the cell.

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I watched the pack. Careful to follow faces with my eyes but not to turn my head. It was an old habit when facing down a wild animal. Never show fear, stay calm.

  Hagen moaned and slumped to one side, causing me to look over. I was horrified; his face was a mess. Blood dribbled from his nose and mouth, both his eyes were swollen shut, the single wild horn that grew from the side of his temple had been snapped off, leaving a broken spur surrounded by inflamed flesh.

  "Was that a growl?" chuckled a feminine voice. Not the umbra. Another.

  I started counting. One. Two. Both humans, one of them a woman with an underbite. Three. A maero, huge, muscular, bigger in every way than Wensem, his massive seven-fingered hands splaying and clenching. Four and Five were dauger, their masks painted black, heresy in the dauger community. Six, Seven, and Eight rounded out the pack and all were dimanian. Six was rail thin with large spurs along his arms. The one whom I numbered Seven was enormous, a heavy pendulum of a gut moving before him and two thick horns sprouting from his head. He had been the one who spoke with the deep earthquake voice. Eight was ugly, with squat features and heavy brows that hung above dark, violent eyes.

  "Zilla ain't happy," said the big dimanian. He nodded to the umbra.

  It all made sense. Zilla! The gate! Peter Black's gate! I wanted to respond. Say something harsh and snappy, but the pain that currently danced through my body prevented me from doing anything more than wheeze out a guttural grunt. I might have even drooled a bit.

  Time passed. The pack circled. The umbra—Zilla—stood like a statue.

  "The gate," I finally forced out.

  The umbra grimaced. She was as naked as she had been when we tussled in Doctor Inox's office. Her feminine shape edged with an eye-maddening softness that made me mistrust my senses. Her body was like some bleeding wound in reality. A shadow. A form. Yet I had stabbed her. Felt her skin—or whatever her equivalent of skin was—break before the surgical instrument I had wielded. I could see my handiwork through a bandage around her thigh. A spot of dark blue where her blood had seeped through. My mark.

  "The gate," I repeated, more forceful this time. She grimaced a second time. It was something in her eyes. The murky ink of her face was unreadable, but her eyes...they gave her away.

  "August mentioned your name. Said he'd put me in touch with you. I telephoned. You never answered." My throat hurt as I spoke.

  Zilla, the umbra, stood silently.

  "You proud of this? This barbarity?" I spat.

  She never answered. Just looked at me with those red eyes and blank, faceless expression. More laughter ruptured around me.

  "Is this it? Is this how it ends? All these weeks. All this time? Just to kill me here?" It sounded so stupid. What you'd expect a frightened victim to say. I was buying time. She knew it. I knew it. In disgust at my own behavior, I spat at the Umbra's feet, missing by inches. My saliva was tinged red with my blood.

  "Here in the tunnel? No, of course not...but soon. Yes, soon," the big dimanian promised. "We are building toward the crescendo. Yes. The crescendo. The end for you, and yet the beginning for us all. It's what we have been working toward all these weeks, these months, these long years. All pieces are in place. All parts gathered," he paused and looked over at the umbra, watching Zilla shift slightly.

  Hagen coughed next to me. The sound was painful. Blood trickled from his swollen lips.

  I tried to shuffle close to him, but before I could move one of the humans stepped around behind me.

  "Let's remain where we are, sound good?"

  Ignoring him, I looked over at Hagen. "Hey, Hagen. Hagen!"

  He stirred, his face turning in my direction. His wild hair caked with mud, his face half covered by blood. He looked awful.

  "You okay?" I asked.

  Hagen nodded, painfully. I hoped he still carried his gun.

  I looked back at Zilla, the umbra, Peter Black's gate. She stared right back at me.

  It was the earthquake who spoke: "We have the maero, your partner. The lanky fellow. We have his shit kid too. Took them right after you left. We were wonderin' where they had gone. Nice of you to lead our siblings there."

  His stomach quaked with laughter.

  My heart sank. Wensem. Little Waldo. I glared knives at the umbra expecting a reaction. Zilla remained silent, passive. The red craters in the shadow of her face watched me. I tried to read them as I had before. Tried to catch a glimpse of emotion. They remained apathetic.

  I hoped Kitasha was okay.

  My nervous shifting got me a slap across the back of the head from the human behind me. Zilla stepped back, drawing her straight razor from somewhere and holding it casually at her side, the blade still folded in the handle.

  We stared at each other like ancient gunfighters, each trying to get a read off the other. She tilted her head to one side, the motion oddly innocent for someone whose hands dripped with the blood of my friends. Shadows rolled lazily off her shoulders like inky black smoke.

  The razor clicked open, the edge reflecting the lantern light around me.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chanting started up from somewhere behind our captors. Too low to make out and droning like the buzz of an angry nest of wasps. For some reason it comforted me, even in that moment. It was something else, some other noise. As if Lovat had gone silent and was suddenly waking back up.

  My head was wrenched backward by someone, and I felt a knee jam into my spine. I arched back in pain, feeling my ribs protest, making me want to double over. There was no way to escape. The hold secured me in place and my neck became a tight arc.

  Staring down the length of my face, I could still see Zilla. She didn't say a thing, she just watched me like some alph
a predator waiting for the right moment to strike. She casually held the razor at her side. Her hateful red gaze focused on my face, her eyes meeting my own. After a moment, she began to approach in a slow, methodical saunter.

  The chanting droned on.

  This is it, I thought. This is how it ends.

  Time ticked by in laden seconds, every moment feeling like an hour. I wondered how close I was to Wensem and his son. I hoped Wensem would find a way to escape, and if not I hoped their own deaths would be painless. My mind raced with thoughts of Thad, of August, of the other victims. Was this how they died? Under the hellish gaze of Zilla with some thug holding them down, necks arced, waiting for the bite of a straight razor?

  Zilla squatted down, straddling my extended thighs. Her eyes focused intently on my face, and the shadowy cloud of her form seemed to suck the warmth from my body like a mosquito. I felt the cool blade touch my neck. I shivered and she grinned.

  We stared at one another for a moment. My heart hammered with adrenaline. I wanted to kick out, claw out those glowing eyes, and knee the bitch in the crotch. Fighting was what my body wanted, but at the same time in its current condition, I knew it couldn't. I was trapped. I hated being trapped.

  This is it.

  I screamed. Closing my eyes I belted out a powerful, lung-splitting scream that rose from my stomach and exploded from my lips like a geyser. I shouted with as much force as I could muster in my final moment. It filled my ears, covered my world. It drowned out the snickers from my captors and the drone of chanting from deeper down the tunnel. My shout of defiance.

  It would be my last act.

  Never let it be said that Waldo Emerson Bell went down quietly.

  The razor bucked and I felt it bite into my neck.

  The end, I thought.

  It didn't come.

  I opened my eyes as Zilla slumped. Her weight settled heavily on my lap. She stared at me, dumbly, her face inches from my own. Her head tilted to one side, as if she was studying me again, before slumping further askew. Her eyes began to fade, the coal-hot red becoming the burgundy of blood and then congealing to blackness. The straight razor tumbled down my chest, settling on my crotch.

  Inky shadow spilled out from a bullet hole in the side of her head, drifting away.

  Zilla was dead.

  Shot.

  The tunnel crashed as more gun shots rang out. The grip that had held me in place released, and my captor fell in the mud to my left, an exit wound in his chest where his heart had been. Panic struck the survivors. They turned and sprinted into the darkness behind them. More shots followed their retreat, driving one of the fleeing dimanians to the ground.

  Zilla's body was arching backwards as gravity pulled her down. The stream of shadow rose from the bullet hole like smoke from a campfire. I tried to roll her off, but with my hands bound behind me and the mud pulling at me the process was next to impossible.

  "Wal! Hagen!" echoed Samantha's voice. My heart jumped with recognition. She knelt down in the mud between the two of us: our rescuer. One of the Judges was grasped in her hand. "Thank God. Thank God you're alive."

  "Samantha! By the Firsts, Sam!" I declared in surprise. "Where'd you get the gun?"

  "Hagen left it, before you set out for your partner's," she explained. "He insisted I keep it in case the Children snuck past Saint Mark's security."

  "Carter's cross, I'm glad you're here. You saved our lives. You saved my life. Here, untie us." I gestured with my head towards Hagen's bonds. I couldn't stop smiling. My heart sang. I looked at the weapon gripped in her hand. "I thought you didn't like guns?"

  She dropped the firearm in my lap untying her brother and I before responding, "I don't."

  Freed from my bonds, I shoved Zilla off my lap, and then struggled to get my legs under me. My knee protested the bending, but, after a little pain, I was able to pull myself into a crouch, my hurt leg extended to one side. Sam had gathered Hagen next to her, laying his head in her lap. He was making noises but wasn't fully conscious yet. She looked worried.

  "How's he?"

  "He'll live."

  "Will that horn of his grow back?" I asked.

  "Let's hope not." She smiled a weak smile up at me.

  I checked the gun for ammunition. The cylinder was empty. I held it up and Samantha tossed me a half-empty box of shells she pulled from inside her coat. I reloaded the pistol and slipped the box into a jacket pocket.

  "You need to get out of here," I insisted.

  Samantha opened her mouth to protest, but I shook my head. "Hagen is hurt; if you leave him here, one of them could find him. We can't have that. Not again. No more deaths on me. Get yourselves out of here."

  Sam closed her mouth, but her eyes stayed with mine.

  "How'd you find us?" I asked, shoving the Judge into another jacket pocket and putting all my weight on my good leg. I tried not to think of the pain in the rest of my body.

  "I waited for a while. Worried about Hagen..." she said, pausing and looking at her brother before looking up at me and adding, "...and you.

  "I waited two hours, then I made up my mind. I took the gun and a box of shells, and went to look for you. I didn't know where to start so I headed to the monorail. I saw you two disembark and was going to call out, but I realized how stupid that would be, with you wanted by Lovat Central. So I followed you. You don't move fast, so I figured I'd eventually catch you. They jumped you before I could catch up."

  "By the Firsts," I swore. "I'm glad we were delayed. If they caught us before you were out and about, we would both be dead right now." I looked around the tunnel and rubbed at my neck absently; my fingers came away bloody. "Where are we?"

  "An old tunnel. We're below the Sunk. The old Humes tunnel, I think."

  "The Humes tunnel? I thought parts of this had collapsed eons ago and the rest had flooded. Last I heard, it was home to cephel gangs, maybe a couple of angry bok."

  "The elevator they took is old as dirt, built right above the Sunk between two empty abandoned buildings. I was surprised it still worked. The sign above it said "Tunnel Access," and they didn't seem concerned about drowning, so I followed." She waved her hand, indicating the tunnel we were now in. "Elevator is the opposite way those Children ran."

  Hagen stirred, the less swollen of his eyes widening slightly. "Uhghhh."

  "Take it easy, big brother," said Samantha, patting back some of his wild hair.

  "Get him out of here. They have Wensem and his kid; time has to be running out. I have to go," I said.

  Sam nodded, and Hagen looked up at me. His lips moved but no sound came out.

  I leaned close and looked at him. "Hang in there, Hagen. Sam has you, she's going to get you out."

  He reached up and touched my face, his lips still moving.

  "I'll see you when I see you, buddy," I added, pushing up into a standing position with my good leg and turning to head deeper into the tunnel.

  "Wal," called Sam, her voice stopping me. I turned and looked over my shoulder at her.

  "Be careful," she said, her dark eyes flashing. "Please."

  Words didn't come, so I just nodded, allowing myself one last look at Samantha's face. Her eyes. Her smile. The way her hair fell across her forehead. The nubs of horns that sprouted along her cheeks. I memorized them.

  Turning, I hobbled off into the darkness leaving Samantha and Hagen behind me, and wondering if I'd ever see the two of them again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Pierogi.

  My stomach rumbled. It was absurd that—now of all times—I was back to craving pierogi. I stifled a laugh. The darkness had quickly swallowed me up as I followed the footsteps of the frightened, fleeing Children. I didn't know who could be lurking.

  Here I was, hobbling down a slimy tunnel below the Sunk in an abandoned corner of Lovat with several bruised ribs, a damaged arm, a bum knee, and having just barely missed getting killed; yet all my mind could focus on was stuffed dumplings?

  It was probably f
or the best. I think better when I'm hungry.

  In an effort to keep my mind occupied I tried to remember my last meal and came up short. That's odd for me. I played through the meals I had eaten since arriving in Lovat. Chicken skewers. The disastrous bao yu. Mrs. Sardini's pasta. Random snacks from carts. Then it hit me. Meatloaf in Samantha's office, that had been the most recent, but how recently was that? Hours? A day? It was before the guns, before Hagen and I went to Reservoir and met up with Wensem, before this tunnel.

  Would things have turned out differently if I hadn't given away the other gun? If I had been armed, would I have been able to stop the Children when they came to take Hagen and me?

  The thought vanished.

  I really wanted pierogi.

  Darkness was my constant companion. After some time I looked over my shoulder and realized I couldn't make out even a subtle glow from the puddle of light. The tunnel began a soft slope upwards and I shuffled my feet, hoping the motion would avoid snags. It didn't work. I tripped over something low and hard in the darkness and caught myself just in time. The floor was dry. Gone was the muck and the mud. I ran my fingers over the surface and it felt like sandstone or smooth granite.

  The less rational part of me wished I had brought along one of the lamps. It would have made this whole ordeal a bit easier—easier, yes, but it would also give me away.

  The fleeing Children Samantha had scared off had undoubtedly reunited with their chanting companions. For all I knew I'd be meeting a fresh gang of them halfway, armed to the teeth and looking for blood...and my heart.

  Before pushing myself upwards again, I felt around, my fingers bumping into the object that had tripped me. A cold metal rail was built into the floor of the tunnel, not one but a pair. The metal was rough and rusted from the centuries, but still recognizable by touch as tracks.

  I kept my bad leg along the inside of one rail to give me some guidance. I continued this way for a while. Listening for the chanting and yearning to see some light.