“Take it or leave it,” Pax said. Letty did not look up, investigating the food and raising her middle finger once more.
Pax finished the bowl of Chinese, which was close to being too old to consume, then left the abusive fairy sealed in the box while she freshened up in the shower. The sun had gone down by the time she was done, and Letty had gone quiet again. After a few more fruitless questions, Pax settled back onto her bed to continue reading Apothel’s book.
She read about munfle, a toxic fungus that grew in the tunnels. Touching it could cause you to shit and vomit for two days straight. Somewhat paradoxically, it could also be boiled for a nutritious soup which could supply your whole day’s energy in one bowl. How that worked, and how Apothel had come by that information, was not explained. Perhaps just rumours from the inexplicable Blue Angel.
Pax returned to the large chunk of Layer Fae text. There was a little more about Retcho, the previous Fae leader, who had been a titan of Fae industry as well as a benevolent dictator. His dethroning had led to the closure of many manufacturing plants, and many Fae technologists had been killed. Pax carried the book to the closet and looked at the canister from Rufaizu’s apartment. She said, “That’s why this is so important? The means of production were lost when Retcho was overthrown.”
Letty did not answer. The fairy was lying in the folds of the t-shirt, eyes closed. Asleep and uncombative, she looked harmless, almost sweet. She may have been difficult and foul-mouthed, but however you looked at it there was nothing right in killing her.
Casaria would want to finish the job, though, given the chance.
Pax needed to squash his suspicions and placate him long enough to figure this thing out.
8
Casaria was waiting outside Pax’s converted church long before 8pm. He had nowhere else to be, so he parked there and sat motionless. Her curtains were drawn, cutting off any hope of seeing what she was up to, so he occupied himself thinking over the things he could do to the Fae when he caught up to them. Burn their city, crush them, chop them in two. Nothing would be too harsh, not when they’d had the audacity to come after him, one of Her Majesty’s finest agents. He was so engrossed in imagining his vengeance that he didn’t notice Pax approach. She rapped on his window, snapping him out of the trance. She got in and said, “Looked like you were off chasing bears.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” She held up a hand. “Got something for you.”
Casaria frowned, not seeing anything, but put out his hand anyway. She opened her fingers and a metal object a few millimetres wide dropped into his palm. A pistol.
“From my bowels with love,” Pax said, and Casaria cringed, almost dropping it. He took a tissue from his jacket and placed the pistol in it, then stuffed it in the cup-holder.
“Can’t be good for you,” he muttered. “Did you check...?”
“I’m not talking about it.”
“As far as anyone else is concerned, it never happened, okay? We incinerated that body.”
Pax grunted agreement. She said, “You look like warmed up crap. Sure you want to go out?”
“I’ve got responsibilities,” he told her, and started the car. As he pulled out, she started checking the vehicle over, and Casaria sneaked glances at her, hoping she’d be impressed. It was government issue, the Mercedes, but he treated it like his own, washed it and polished it once a week, carpets spotless, nothing she could – oh no. Her eyes fell on an empty can of Monster Energy in the passenger side door and his heart sank a little. He said, in all but a whisper, “Sorry about the mess.”
Pax raised an eyebrow at him and he looked away, not sure if she was judging his tatty car, his choice in energy drink or the fact that he’d apologised. To stop her reading too much into it, he quickly took an envelope from his pocket. “This is for you. We didn’t discuss any terms last night, so I want to be clear. Three evenings, we agreed to that much – leaving today and tomorrow. You can have half now.”
Pax took the cash and flicked through the notes without a word. There was close to £1,200 in there and she barely blinked at it. She really was like him, wasn’t she? The money didn’t matter – not now. Casaria smiled. She wiped that smile off with a question: “How’s Rufaizu?”
Casaria mumbled the answer. “Fine. Recovering. You’re not going to ask to see him again, are you? You know that was a one-off. I shouldn’t have brought you there.”
Pax didn’t respond, and looked away from him.
There was still work to do, he could see. He said, “He was lucky I was there, you know. He’s unstable, he would’ve run right into the gunfire. If he’d been out on the streets alone, he’d be in a gutter right now. People like him, they have no idea how much we do for them.”
She didn’t say anything to that either, but he imagined she was starting to get the idea.
They’d been driving for half an hour with no conversation, which suited Pax fine. Casaria made a few false starts, like he wanted to say something and failed, and she preferred to let him stew in that awkwardness than give him a hand. It was the least she could do to soften her bitterness at having her own money doled back to her in instalments, to say nothing of how far she felt from being able to do anything for Rufaizu. Casaria had given her enough to fix that window and pay rent, though, so she consoled herself that getting through this night might at least keep a roof over her head. The rest was the difference between her getting into the World Poker Tour or not, which didn’t seem so important now. Given the mess of the night before and the promise of increasingly threatening monsters, she might even be willing to let that final payment go if the opportunity presented itself. There’d be more tournaments in the future, and anyway skipping it would keep her name from getting too well known.
Casaria pulled up at a derelict building complex with a faded sign, only a few letters remaining of the original FRITZ DRYERS. There were massive ventilation ducts rising from one of the low buildings, and dented metal sheet doors closing off a wall, corroded and discoloured from years of neglect. Casaria cut the engine and pointed past a handful of abandoned cars.
“Over there,” he said, “is an entrance to the Sunken City. When they built this place, they put in an underground storage room and knocked through to the tunnels. The site was fined for encroaching on government property, a PO-13 violation, and the storage room made off limits.”
“Did you close the place down?” Pax asked, imagining Fritz, a plucky business owner with a simple dream of industrial-scale laundry services, thwarted by government fines and regulations. Where was he now, stacking shelves in Aldi?
“This business is still open,” Casaria told her. “Contrary to what you imagine, Pax, we’re here to help, not ruin, this city. There are dozens of entrances like this across Ordshaw, surrounded by fully functioning civilian operations. We monitor them 24/7, mostly through motion detectors and cameras, but it pays to have people on the ground too. Especially when there’ve been recent vibrations.”
“Which you’ve had here,” Pax concluded.
“Yes,” Casaria said. “Something has been circling around this entrance. We might get a glimpse.”
“What’d happen if it got out?”
“We’d deal with it.”
“Right. And it is?” Pax pressed.
“Something medium-sized,” Casaria said. “And fast. Could be a hound; it had a strong heat signature last time it came close.”
“Like, a stray dog?”
“No, a helluvian hound. They set fire to things.”
“Charming.” It wasn’t one she’d come across in the book. She had been hoping that some of them would turn out to be fictitious, that maybe it was just the sickle Apothel had got right. But no, the opposite was true: there were nightmarish things she hadn’t even heard of yet.
Casaria leant over to open the glove compartment and Pax shrank back into the seat to avoid him. He took out a gun with a half-exposed cartridge, filled with long-needled darts. “This neutr
alises helluvian fire glands. Stops them destroying everything.”
“Noted.”
“But this will knock it out.” He patted the pistol under his jacket. “Permanently.”
“And you’re allowed to shoot it?”
“Not with bullets. It would explode. No, this has a projectile that’s more reliable.”
Pax glared at the bulge of his pistol. “A projectile of what? Wizard cum?”
“You can joke,” Casaria said simply. She waited for more, but it seemed that was his full response. He indicated the tissue containing the fairy’s gun and said, “Before we begin, I want to thank you for this. I didn’t like to pressure you, but you understand why it was necessary.”
Pax shrugged, not wanting to say anything to suggest she condoned his behaviour.
“I knew you could handle it. The rewards will be great, you’ll see. This work gives meaning to this meaningless world. Makes you feel like you have a purpose.” He picked up speed, rushing it out like he’d been waiting to say this throughout their quiet journey. “It helps you understand the ignorance of the people around us. Those that walk blindly through life during the day. How could they be anything more than they are, without even knowing there are things they don’t know? People like you and me, we know there’s more, we know the importance of living that experience. I’ve had recruits who didn’t get it, who wanted to study this like it was some academic project – but I can see you’re different. We herd the beasts, and we protect the populace, because they don’t understand.”
Pax barely took in his soliloquy. From the first words she got the overall gist: we’re better than other people, and fighting these monsters proves it. However he’d ended up in this position, as a glorified night watchman, he seemed to have gone to great lengths to convince himself it was by choice.
“It’s us, the ones who dare to get close, who form the front line of defence for the praelucente,” he finished, piquing her attention again.
Pax deliberately misinterpreted: “Sorry, did you say something about a placenta?”
Casaria gave her a sideways look. Serious. “The praelucente. The force down there. The power base I told you about. Maybe a natural phenomenon, might be a little bit of God, no one knows. Whatever it is, it helps us. The aberrations it creates are necessary for a greater good.”
“A fuck the estates to bolster the banks kind of thing?”
Casaria gave Pax a sympathetic grin. She gave him an insincere smile in return. He said, “The praelucente doesn’t discriminate. It moves, constantly, affecting a few blocks at a time.”
“You know how nuts this sounds?”
“After what you saw yesterday, you’re not willing to open your mind?” Casaria paused. “No, that’s a good thing. You think for yourself, I respect that. The praelucente is real, though. Look at any great achievement in the city, say an inspired sporting event, or a day that a composer produced a masterpiece. The data around that event will show reports of tiredness, weariness, declines in work. But the focal point, the epicentre, that’s where the real difference is made. Great things are achieved through this power, even if people suffer on the peripheries.”
“If I’m honest,” Pax said, “that sounds like an unreliable source of energy.”
“We need it.” Staring ahead into the unmoving night, Casaria wrung his hands over the steering wheel. “This city is rotten. All the world is. The praelucente gives us hope. Gives us something worth fighting for. You’ll see.”
He rose from the car, swung the door shut and started pacing away. He was not waiting, not even looking back, with his usual tactic of leaving her to make her own choice. It was basic reverse psychology, acting like he didn’t care, and she had no desire to play his game. But he still seemed determinedly on Team Pax. He’d given her some space, and returned some of her money; he might be trusted to give back the rest and leave her alone. As if. His interest at least kept the Ministry part of this equation from destroying her life, though, and might take her closer to understanding how to get out from under all this.
Pax caught up to Casaria as he rounded the rusted husk of an old van. Behind it was a knee-high brick structure with doors on the top, like the outside entrance to a cellar. A chain ran through the door handles, locked with ancient padlocks. Casaria took a set of keys from a pocket and started trying one after another. The pause gave Pax a chance to inspect the shadows. She thought back to the sickle. There were tuckles and wormbirds and God knew what else down there, weren’t there? Actual, real monsters. Pax said, “How long are we going down for?”
“As long as it takes,” Casaria said. “Believe me, this thing will be worth seeing.”
Pax bit her lip. “Is it sensible, going down there? Aren’t you supposed to be an observer?”
“I never said that.”
“Is it really necessary?” Pax continued, warily, “Maybe you could just tell me more about this stuff, I don’t actually have to see it, now, do I?” Casaria paused with a look of worry. She’d hit a chord, so before he could dwell on it Pax hurriedly continued, “I mean, what if – what if there’s still Fae in me? You said the things down there could sense them? Isn’t this risky?”
His worry turned to confusion as he tried to recall if he’d actually said that. He shook his head. “I’ve got the detector on, Pax. You’re clean. And we’re going in.”
9
After a day spent fighting down the memories of the Sunken City, blocking out thoughts of the dangers Rufaizu and Pax might be facing, Barton became gripped with anxiety when he realised his daughter had not come home for dinner. No flying visit to stock up on food, no hour in front of the bathroom mirror. She was a growing girl, increasingly independent, and he’d allowed her to spend a whole day out with a party in the night in the past, once or twice, but they always at least caught sight of her, or received a message. She always replied to messages.
She was off the radar, and, though he was staving off panicking, he sensed that the minotaur and its myriad creatures were responsible. Staring into empty space, he imagined her being dragged into a government vehicle for ruthless interrogation. Worse, being tricked into entering one of the Sunken City’s gateways. He had no rational explanation for it, but somehow, something had happened. Rufaizu had come stumbling back into his life. That roguish girl was creating waves, too. His family weren’t safe.
During dinner, he sensed Holly watching him coldly, neither of them talking beyond monosyllabic courtesies. She hadn’t been satisfied when he told her he had tied things off with Pax, and her face said she was waiting for him to slip up again. Trying to detect his longing to return to his night-time activities. He was careful not to show her where his mind was going, and waited until she was taking a shower to put his fears about Grace to rest. She had lost her phone, or run out of battery, and was eating dinner at a friend’s, that had to be it. He called Kylie Taylor. She answered chirpily, “Hi, Mr Barton!”
After a few pleasantries, striving to sound casual, he said, “I was wondering if Grace is with you? She didn’t answer her phone.”
“Oh? We thought she’d gone home?” Kylie replied with a hint of worry. “I haven’t seen her since the park, she left without telling us. She hasn’t messaged me – do you think she’s upset with me?”
Barton swallowed his tension. What was wrong with her, she’d just let Grace disappear? “When was that?”
“Just after lunch.”
“Where?”
“Ten Gardens. Heenway Park, I think. The one with the little fountain, you know?”
“Did you see where she went?”
“No, sorry Mr Barton – we were hanging out on the grass. We – I’m sorry Mr Barton – I wasn’t totally –”
“Sober?” Barton asked, carefully. Of course. They were kids, it was so easy to accept random shit when you were drinking for the first time.
“She’s not in trouble, is she?” Kylie asked it meaning in trouble with her parents. Oblivious to the idea that
some other trouble might exist. “Does it mean she’s not coming to the party? I don’t want to go with Jenni With An I on my own.”
“I’ll get her to call you,” Barton told her, then hung up. He ran a hand over his head and tried another number. Pax’s phone went straight to voicemail.
Barton grabbed his coat and headed to the car, not letting himself think until he was sat with the engine purring. Looking at the road ahead, deciding between turning left or right, he realised he had no plan. It could be the Ministry, it could be Rufaizu’s people, it could be something completely unrelated. Maybe Grace lost her phone and was with another friend. Maybe she met a boy and they were making out behind a carwash. Was that any better?
Maybe Pax was a plant. She’d used what he’d told her to get in favour with some other group. Some group that wanted Grace. Or him.
It didn’t make any sense.
He punched the steering wheel.
There was one option. He hated it, but he couldn’t waste time if his fears were true. He had to get in touch with the Blue Angel. He braced himself and, about to pull out, checked his mirrors. A shape was quickly approaching. His wife. There was still time, she was a few metres away, he could pull out and pretend he hadn’t seen her. He hesitated, picturing how mad it would make her, then she was upon him, no way to make it look accidental now.
“Wherever you’re going” – Holly dropped into the passenger seat – “I’m coming too.”
Her eyes burnt with bottled fury. Barton was speechless.
“So what is it?” Holly snapped. “A pub? A gang meeting? A park rendezvous? Where are we going?”
“I can’t tell you,” Barton muttered.
Her expression faltered. The sternness and anger weren’t enough to hide her strongest emotion: fear. Barton saw it in her trembling eyes, desperately trying to stay strong, to believe he was in control.
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 14
