The Sunken City Trilogy

by Phil Williams

  Grace started with surprise. Pax held her tighter.

  “Not a sound,” Pax whispered. “Not a movement. They sense vibrations.”

  It scratched closer, claws dragging against the brick. They held their breath and watched the room’s opening with unblinking eyes. Another tapping sound signalled it was just outside. Even though she knew what was coming, the sight of it made Pax cringe.

  The sickle moved into view slowly, its smooth head twitching from side to side as its vertical jawline snapped open and shut with another chirp. One of its gangly claws traced along the wall with a chalkboard screech as its canine body moved into the open. Pax felt Grace swelling in fear, and could almost hear her eyes bulging.

  The beast paused in the doorway, its claw dragging to find the entrance. It tapped with its clawed feet, feeling for the steps.

  Keep going keep going keep going, Pax prayed.

  The monster reached a claw in towards them. It ventured up the steps. In the tight space, with it closing in on them, there was zero chance it wouldn’t feel them sitting there. Pax and Grace were rigid, as the ungodly animal rose into the shadow of their room, mantis arms reaching around them. The claws rose over their heads, scratching the wall above, just missing their hair. Its wrinkled face tilted towards them, jaw opening and closing as though tasting the air. It stopped and let out another chirp.

  Something in the pause told Pax it had found them.

  “Run!” she screamed, and as the sickle reeled onto its hind legs she followed her instincts, same as facing any late-night predator. She drove both her fists into the creature’s groin. Grace scrambled past, rolling out of the way of a flailing claw, as Pax punched and clawed at what felt like some kind of thick genitalia towards the base of the beast’s torso. Whatever she got a hold of, it had the desired effect, as the sickle let out an ear-splitting shriek and fell to the side, arms curling around its face.

  Pax followed Grace through the doorway. The teenager was already running, headlong down the tunnel, the wrong way.

  “Grace! Here!” Pax shouted after her, waving a hand. In the room behind them, the monster was quickly recovering, its claws tapping against every wall as it tried to steady itself. Pax took a few steps in the opposite direction to Grace, seeing Holly’s first scratch on the wall, but Grace was pelting away, shrieking, “No! No no no!”

  The sickle emerged into the tunnel, turning towards Grace’s yells. Without thinking, seeing its back was turned to her, Pax jumped onto it before it could give chase. She brought it to the floor, its stumpy dog legs unable to hold her weight, and as she slammed a hand onto the back of its head she saw that its claw arms couldn’t pivot to the rear. It scratched around her, slicing at the bricks and gnashing its teeth, but for all the strength of its splayed limbs and bucking torso it couldn’t reach her. She held on tight, pinning it down, and rammed its head into the floor. With sheer animal drive, she shoved its head into the floor again, momentarily weakening it. It stopped bucking long enough for her to adjust her grip, and with both hands she clutched the thing’s twitching skull.

  Grace had stopped, far down the tunnel, and she turned back to watch. No helping it, Pax thought – let her see, as she cracked the beast’s head open against the floor.

  20

  “Take out your phone,” Letty instructed as she glided down in front of Casaria. He looked at her uncertainly. “Take our your fucking phone so these prats watching don’t think you’re talking to dragonflies.” He reached into his pocket, but Letty waved her pistol. “Ah ah, slowly.”

  He slowed down but continued, lifting the phone to his ear before responding. He put on a smile but spoke with a hint of aggression. “You’re the ones that shot at me, aren’t you?”

  He turned back towards the couple in the nearby house, back inside, looking worriedly out through the front window. Whatever they were seeing, it wasn’t the little people he saw, else they’d be doing more than watching. That was how the Fae worked, wasn’t it? Shrouding themselves from onlookers. Casaria was better than that, though. He saw. He gave the couple a friendly everything’s okay wave.

  “You’re the one who tore off my fucking wing,” Letty snarled. She looked over her shoulder to Fresko, lingering in the air nearby. “Amazing how much damage you’ve managed to do without harming this greaseball.”

  Fresko did not respond. Being stripped of his weapons had left him grumpy and mute.

  “How’d you know to come here?” Letty asked.

  “Pax messaged me,” Casaria said. “I take it things didn’t work out between you. No surprise.”

  “Seriously?” Letty shot another look to Fresko. “You let her bring the Ministry to you, too, you prick.”

  “What did you do to her?” Casaria asked.

  “Not me.” Letty shook her head and pointed at Fresko. “Him. She’s down there. And you’re going to help us get her out. Where are your goons?”

  Casaria looked to his empty car. “I work better without them. They’ll follow me soon enough, though. What direction did she go in?”

  Letty paused, studying him. “I don’t even need to persuade you, do I? You’re so sweet on her, you’ve run off from work to find her.”

  Casaria’s smiling eyes suggested there was truth in it, but he didn’t admit it. “The situation’s complicated. Let’s say we’ve got unfinished business.”

  “Then you can help me out.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “My people put her down there,” Letty told him. “And they’re not gonna let her back out. I don’t see you being much use against my people on your own.”

  “And you’re not going down there to get her out yourself,” Casaria said, completing her thought. “This won’t end well for you, you realise that? Even putting our differences aside for the moment.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Letty said. “It’s the way it is.”

  Casaria nodded slowly. He gestured to his car. “There’s something I want from you, first.”

  “This is hardly the time for a fucking negotiation – we –”

  “It’s important.” He was already walking to the car. Letty shot Fresko an uncertain look, but he shrugged. The pair hovered above Casaria’s head as he pointed through the passenger window to the device lying on the seat. The metal and glass canister was instantly recognisable to them.

  “How the hell did you get that?” Fresko asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. I need you to tell me how it works. And why it’s never been used.”

  “Spin on it,” Letty said.

  “Do you even know the answer?” Casaria said, patiently.

  Letty met his eyes angrily, but resisted the urge to insult him as his words hit her. His smug, knowing expression. He wasn’t saying it like he knew, though. Letty thought of Valoria and her indifferent attitude to the device, and realised that the question Casaria was asking was the same one she had. Not the what of the machine, but the why. There was confusion on both sides of the divide. Pax had said it, hadn’t she? Talking to these assholes might fill in the bigger picture.

  “That was designed to destroy the berserker,” Letty said. “Do you know that much?” Fresko opened his mouth to protest, but she flapped a hand at him and continued, “Not a word. Apothel stole this thing. All we needed was some electric weed to fuel it, and he took it away.”

  “All you needed was some electric weed?” Casaria replied sceptically.

  “What’d I just say, Agent Orange?”

  “Right.” Casaria was smiling again. This time genuinely pleased, as though everything had been answered. He moved to get in the car. “Let’s deal with it after saving Pax, shall we?”

  “What? What the fuck are you smiling for? You think this is funny?”

  “No.” Casaria’s smile spread. “I just get the idea that your people have been about as honest with you as mine.”

  Letty and Fresko flew in silence above Casaria’s car as he left Dalford for the heart of the city. The next entrances to
the Sunken City, their only hope, were the ones to the south. If the girls headed north, where the population got sparser and the City less developed, the nearest exit was over three miles away. It would be impossible for them to find it, let alone reach it, before the monsters caught up to them. The exits to the south were a mile at best, three of them with a network of winding tunnels that rose up and down between them. Then, whatever direction they went in, it would be perfectly possible to go by all the exits without ever seeing one, continuing towards the caverns of central Ordshaw.

  Passing into a more built-up area, Letty shot Fresko disappointed, angry glares. He was trying to avoid eye contact, but eventually he responded, raising his voice above the sound of the wind. “Why are you doing this?”

  Letty gave him a look to say the question itself was insulting.

  “You know as well as me,” Fresko said, “that everything we’ve done, ever since Apothel, has been to mend this rift. Leave them down there, ice this fool and take the Dispenser back, and it’s done. We’re done. You wanna throw that away for some fucking human? What happened to you?”

  “It’s not about some fucking human,” Letty said. She paused, thinking it wasn’t just about some fucking human. “Something major is off with Val. She isn’t interested in stopping the berserker.”

  “So what?”

  Letty slowed down to give him a severe look. “So what?”

  “It’s not our job to care,” Fresko said. “We’re tying up loose ends. We were supposed to recover the Dispenser, not use it. Wasted all our damned time drawing the Citizen back into this, just to dot all the Is – if Val isn’t interested then we wasted time, that’s all.”

  “Well, shit.” Letty spat at him. “Sounds like you’re okay with the Fae Transitional City being transitional forever? Leave the whole Sunken City to the abominations?”

  “Why not?” Fresko said. “They feed off the humans, not us. What do we need the Sunken City for? We’re good as we are. Or were.”

  Letty glided closer to him and swiped out, cuffing a hand across the back of his neck. She kept close, face near his as he tried to move away. She shouted, “That human down there, she got it. You don’t leave the world to rot when you can do something about it. And she’s my friend, and she fucking matters, okay?”

  Fresko’s eyes were fixed with shock. “You’ve lost it, Letty. Listen to yourself. The Council, the Dispenser, the berserker – none of that’s our problem. None of it was ever our problem, not until you made it our problem.”

  It was hopeless. Him and the rest of them.

  Letty picked up speed, moving ahead, just to put some distance between them.

  “Casaria.”

  “Where are you?” Landon demanded through the phone. Casaria checked his mirrors, in case he was being followed. Didn’t look like it.

  “I’m driving,” he said. “Not the best time.”

  “Yeah, I can hear that,” Landon said, actually sounding annoyed. Good for you, Casaria smiled, finally emoting. “You were supposed to hand in the car. And why am I hearing reports that you’ve turned the power on across the Dalford sector? I’m assuming it was you that breached the Dalford entrance?”

  Casaria considered channelling Pax’s spirit for the correct response of fuck and you. Resisting long enough to think of the task ahead, he decided there was a better way. “There’s some civilians in the Sunken City. The Dalford entrance has been destroyed.”

  “What?” Landon gasped.

  “It’s the Fae, Landon,” Casaria continued, almost singing the words in a delighted I-told-you-so. “They went after Darren Barton’s family and dropped half the road on him. Now there’s three people down there, four if Barton’s alive. If any of them are alive, they’re running from the praelucente.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “You want to know what you need to do?”

  Landon said nothing for a moment. “Where are you?”

  “I’m heading for the entrance on Pestfax Road. I’ve got a couple of fairies with me – Sam Ward would be happy to hear that. But there’s likely to be some Fae ordinance on the other entrances, one of the Fae is going Rambo on them. You want to know what you need to do?”

  Landon paused again. In a small voice, he answered, “What?”

  “Send people to Dalford, see if you can dig out Barton. Send people to Old Fairbrook and Pointing Avenue, check if those entrances are safe. Watch out for Fae traps. Send people in if you can. I’ll take care of Pestfax. In the meantime, get Mathers, tell him to get me some electric weed, whatever it takes, and ship it up to Pestfax Road. If it comes to it, I want to have a fighting chance.”

  More silence.

  Casaria waited, then said, “Landon, you still with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You gonna do all that?”

  “Yeah.”

  The sun had ducked behind the buildings by the time Casaria pulled up near Pestfax Road. He left the car a block away and approached the entrance painfully unarmed. It had been easy enough to steal back his own car, activate power switches and take the Fae device under the guise of courier work, but there’d been no way to get his weapons back.

  This entrance was at the back of a dive bar; a heavy door sunk four feet below the street, like a tunnel for deliveries. All the neighbours assumed it belonged to someone else. Casaria entered the alleyway, shining his torch along the walls that flanked it. The problem with this city, he reflected, was that there were countless places that a two-inch fairy could hide. Especially with the dusk light casting shadows. And it looked like he’d lost the pair that were supposed to be supporting him. Flakes.

  He shone his torch up and down the cracks of the entrance, over the hinges, around the handle. It was an old door, metal mottled in places that had taken on too much water, green paint cracked all over. Infinite possibilities for a tiny trace of Fae explosives to be hidden.

  “Back off,” a rough voice said, somewhere above. Casaria turned to face the man. Of course, a miniature thug in the denim guise of a biker, sitting on the alley’s rear fence. Mix had a pistol in each hand, pointed his way. “It’s not meant for you.”

  “I’m guessing this isn’t the only one you’ve rigged,” Casaria said. “You realise the night patrols will be starting soon. Did you intend to warn everyone not to go in?”

  “Consider yourself the lucky one. Walk away, Ministry man. Quickly and permanently.”

  Casaria didn’t move. The gunman was too far away for him to do anything, but he was damned if he was going to back down and do what he was told.

  Mix looked away, though, eyes or ears picking out something that Casaria had not sensed. The other Fae, somewhere in the sky. Casaria looked up too. It was too dark to make anything out. The buzz of that odd machine on Letty’s back got closer, louder.

  “Never had any goddamned sense, did you!” Letty shouted.

  “Letty?” Mix said. “You’re alive?”

  She dropped down next to him, her pistols raised, and he understood the threat immediately. Mix jumped off the fence, wings carrying him up and along the wall. Casaria watched as the pair squared off, spinning through the air like tiny fighter planes.

  “Take the explosives off the damned door!” Letty commanded.

  “What for?” Mix shot back, spiralling above Casaria’s head, keeping his distance.

  “If she’s hurt I’m gonna gut you!”

  Mix made an angry noise from somewhere deep in his gut. “Soft on a human? You’re a disgrace, Letty. Would’ve been better if you had died.”

  Letty opened fire without warning. Mix twirled to the side, the bullets missing, and he started firing back. The pair of them flitted from side to side, four pistols blazing as they avoided the shots. At about two metres apart, it seemed neither could get a good shot on the other in flight. Following them with his eyes, Casaria sidestepped to the bins against the opposite wall and took off a large circular lid. When the two fairies had gone through the first clip in their pist
ols, they each threw a weapon aside to reload the other, never slowing down. Mix flew into a wall and used his legs to spring back off it. Letty somersaulted through the air to avoid his counter-attack. They started shooting again, flying in zig-zags. The chase had reversed, Mix going after Letty now, and she led him down, skating towards the ground.

  Mix flew head on into the bin lid, the force of the blow sending him slamming into the wall, pistol flying away. He slid to the floor, wings twitching, as Letty doubled back. She fired at his almost motionless body. The shots glanced off the concrete next to him and her gun clicked empty as she sped towards him. Reaching Mix, she skirted suddenly to the side. Stepping over them, Casaria saw he had drawn another pistol, which he fired straight up. Casaria dropped back as the bullet glanced off his chin, shooting up the full length of his face along the cheek and catching his eyebrow. Casaria yelled, clutching a hand to his face, as Letty jumped onto Mix and kicked the gun from his hand.

  The fairies grappled on the floor, exchanging punches. With the height advantage, Letty used her wing to rise above Mix’s flailing fists. Then she sank back down to punch his face, again and again, and he finally fell back. She grabbed a knife from his leg sheath and twisted it back to stab him.

  Fresko pushed between them.

  Letty was thrown sideways, spinning again. She stopped, furious. Fresko had Mix up under an arm. He growled, “You’ve lost it, Letty. He’s one of us!”

  Letty panted, looking back at him angrily, but the fight was over. With Mix barely conscious, Fresko was shaking his head, disappointed. He carried Mix’s weight, beating his wings to propel himself up towards the darkening sky. He shouted, “Enjoy your life with the fucking humans, you’ve earnt it!”

  Casaria edged away from the wall, one hand supporting himself and the other applying pressure to his bleeding wound. He watched the fairy glide down to retrieve her guns, apparently not interested in pursuing her colleagues. He said, “You should’ve killed them.”

  21

  Barton’s ankle was stuck under a chunk of concrete, his left arm hurt all the way up and the impact from the fall had potentially shattered something. He reflected that he had otherwise been fortunate. His ears were ringing and his head throbbed worse than a hangover, but the rest of his body was apparently unscathed, other than a few surface wounds. The bulk of the blood was coming from a reopened wound on his head. It had bled enough for one day without killing him – not worth worrying about.