How to Wake an Undead City
Page 21
“You’re my son.” She frowned back at him. “Do you honestly think I wouldn’t give it up to keep you safe?”
Rather than answer, Linus embraced her. “Thank you, Mother.”
“I assume there’s more to this visit than a confession?” She pulled back and straightened her clothes then fixed me with a stare. “I hope, given the trouble your shenanigans have caused, you accomplished what you set out to do?”
“I did.”
“Then all that’s left is gaining access to Lacroix in order to implement your plan.” The Grande Dame wasted no time getting to the point. “You want me to lower the protections on the Lyceum so you can enter beneath city hall.”
“I do.”
“You understand that if you fail, the Lyceum will fall.”
Like mother, like son. “This is our best chance of regaining control of the city.”
With a dramatic sigh, she flicked a wrist. “I suppose we can always burn it to the ground if that fails.”
“I would prefer not to set Savannah on fire, but yeah. That’s always an option.”
Older vampires, ancients in particular, being flammable and all.
“Oh.” Cruel interest sparked in her eyes. “I do have one spot of bright news.”
Linus inclined his head in an invitation to share.
“Sentinel Rue has been relieved of duty. She was interrogated on the Volkov situation, and she is now being held pending a formal hearing. She admitted to acting on Lacroix’s orders, which she received through her vampire boyfriend.” She gave her son a resigned look. “I believe he was killed during the altercation outside the facility.”
Linus gave nothing away with his placid expression.
“This incident highlights the need for the sentinels’ handbook, particularly the chapters on fraternization, to be revised.”
Vampires are not our enemies.
Necromancer children learned that at their mothers’ knees. But Lacroix’s actions would condemn his species to censure and distrust. It wasn’t right, and the Grande Dame would see that when this standoff ended. She was too politically savvy to wallow in ignorance for long, but any condemnation on her part would send ripples throughout the Society. For everyone’s sake, I hoped her temper cooled sooner rather than later.
“Lacroix must not be done with Volkov.” I got queasy just thinking about it. “Why else protect him?”
Our old pals, the vampire assassins, must have showed up late to the party. We had already gone in, so they got stuck waiting. Hood found them before they got a chance to take aim at me. But the brawlers? Gramps must have worried the Society would transfer its inmates out of the city until we restored order, and he didn’t want to lose track of him. They must have been positioned in the yard, behind the wards, or they would have been Hood’s meal instead of the assassins.
“I’ll have Sentinel Rue questioned again,” the Grande Dame decided. “If Lacroix wants Volkov, we must ensure he doesn’t get him.” Her focus homed in on Linus. “Will you two go alone?”
“Lethe and Hood will be accompanying us.” He stuck his hands into his pockets. “Boaz will, I’m certain, attempt to come as well.”
“Good.” The Grande Dame tapped a finger against her lower lip. “Muzzle him until I can speak with him. Don’t allow his sudden plague of conscience to ruin us.” Satisfied that was one more loose end snipped, she gestured toward the sigils on the door. “Smudge those, please. Let’s find paper and a pen.” She shot Linus a look over her shoulder. “I can show you how to bring down the wards surrounding the Lyceum. How you get from there into city hall is up to you.”
There was only one way—up. The elevator shaft was the sole connection between the two.
As I was preparing to remove the wards, the Grande Dame hugged me from behind.
“You and I have never seen eye to eye, but you are family.” She released me. “I do love you.”
Shock zapped my brain like a lightning bolt. She had spoken the words to me many times over the years, with varying degrees of affection, but just now, she appeared to mean them.
“Take care of each other” was the last thing she said before smudging the sigil and striding into the control room like she owned it.
The sentinels relaxed with her back among them, when they once would have snapped to attention.
Lacroix might be the worst disaster to strike Savannah, but he was doing wonders for the Grande Dame. She had the sentinels eating out of the palm of her hand. One even handed her the notebook and pen she sought before she could ask for them.
“Here is the list of streets waiting on their supply delivery,” she said, loud enough for her voice to carry. Her hand, however, drew sigils followed by careful instructions in the margin. “There you go.” She passed it to Linus with reluctance. “Be careful out there.” She glanced at me. “Both of you.”
Linus kissed her cheek. “We’ll be in contact soon.”
A sentinel waited behind her, a printout in hand. Dismissing us, she turned to hear his report.
We left the barracks and rejoined the Kinases in the van.
“We good?” Lethe gnawed on a round jerky stick that almost brushed the ceiling. “Did she have an alternate way in?”
“We’re good,” I confirmed. “We can access the Lyceum and bring down the wards.”
Hood met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “What did she say about the rest?”
“She told us she would handle it.” I gusted out an exhale. “Now we wait and see if she can.”
Thanks to her championing my release, from Atramentous no less, her reign as Grande Dame had begun in controversy. Clarice hadn’t held the title for long, and she had crossed Abayomi Balewa to get there. There were those, both High Society and Low, who believed she had freed me because of our familial connection. Soon those same grumblers would have fresh ammunition.
Clarice had freed me after discovering I was goddess-touched. She had extended to me the first pardon in the history of Atramentous. The fact my grandfather was holding the city and the American seat of the Society hostage on her watch painted an ugly picture of gross incompetence at best and rampant corruption at worst.
“We will if she can’t,” Hood promised. “We have the resources to make you vanish, both of you.”
Gwyllgi had kept Taz a step ahead of the Marchands. They could do the same for us. I believed that. But it would cost me Woolly and Keet and all my non-gwyllgi friends. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“What about Boaz?” Massaging my temples, I was reminded of Clarice’s favor. “We have to bring him with us, by the way. The Grande Dame wants him isolated until she wraps up damage control.”
Assuming they didn’t clamp her in irons and then come straight for Linus, Boaz, and me.
“We can always use the cannon fodder,” Lethe said as she bit off a mouthful. “We’ll let him go first.”
Linus attempted to hide his smile, but honestly? He didn’t try all that hard.
* * *
Boaz was easy to spot when we rolled up to the barricade. The other sentinels gravitated toward him. His larger-than-life personality had that effect on people. He made friends easily. Keeping them was the problem. And right now, he was shaking hands and checking in with each individual so they felt valued and their sacrifice respected. They were looking to him as a figurehead, and he was stepping into the role with both feet.
The others waited in the van while I went to collect him, and when I got close enough to overhear their conversations, I realized these were sentinels and Elite from neighboring cities, volunteers who came to offer aid when they heard what happened to Commander Roark and so many of Savannah’s finest.
And it hit me then, not all of it was bluster. Some of it—no, most of it—were condolences for Becky.
“Boaz,” I called when I grew tired of fighting against the current. “Boaz.”
“Grier?” He spotted me and waded in, and the others got out of his way. “What’s up?”
“Got it.” He patted my shoulder, letting me off the hook, then waved to the new guys. “I’ll be back.”
With Lethe riding shotgun, he was forced into the back with Linus and me. I climbed in first next to Linus, leaving Boaz to take my preferred seat across from us. Once he got in, he couldn’t stop laughing.
“It wasn’t that funny,” I grumbled. “I didn’t expect you to be shaking hands and kissing babies when I arrived.”
“You’re a crap liar,” he countered, ignoring the dig. “That’s why you always let Amelie do the heavy lifting when we were kids.”
Annoyed he was right, I glowered at him. “Aren’t you the least bit curious why we circled back for you?”
“We’re breaking into the Lyceum.” He shrugged. “What else could it be?” He pointed to the gwyllgi in the front seats. “You’ve got your crack team, and me. I’m guessing this must have something to do with our earlier adventure. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made the cut.”
“Huh.” I pretended to consider him. “You’re smarter than you look.”
The flat look he shot me was ruined by the way the corner of his mouth twitched.
“This is where the joyride ends,” Hood announced. “We go in on foot from here.”
He parked in front of a pet store promising freshly baked dog treats and slung on a backpack that caused me to quirk an eyebrow at him that he ignored.
“The tunnel starts beneath a restaurant off Bay Street.” Linus held the paper in front of him like he was reading a treasure map, and it struck me how much Oscar would have loved to be a part of this. Too bad it wasn’t a kid-friendly adventure. “There’s a cellar with access.”
The gwyllgi ranged ahead and behind, making certain we didn’t have any company. Given how easy we had been to find lately, I wasn’t holding my breath. There was a tracking sigil fixed on Linus or me, or both of us. What else could it be?
The shops were closed because of the “storm.” There was no one to let us in, so we had to do the honors ourselves. About to use a sigil to pop the lock, Boaz stepped up and pulled a few pieces of metal from his pocket.
“I got this.” He knelt and started to work. “Elite know all the fun tricks.”
The ones who didn’t would have to learn them. Most had no magic. A few, like Boaz, had a little juice. Or so I had heard from one of his fellow sentinels. Other than his ability to perceive Cletus, he had never shown the slightest indication of having more power than the average Low Society necromancer.
A few clicks later, and he pushed open the door to let us pass.
We flowed in, and he locked up behind us, pausing to check out the window.
“The cellar is in the back.” Linus indicated the kitchen. “The entry point is a metal panel inset into the floor.”
Sure enough, a large and ancient-looking square of metal sat in the center of the room like a drain minus the slats. The kitchen staff had arranged a few prep stations over the top, so we put our backs into moving them aside.
“I don’t see a handle.” I walked the edges, about four feet down either side, and kicked at it. “How does it open?”
“There’s a ward protecting it.” Linus crouched with a brush and a pot of ink, a must for uneven surfaces, and painted on a few sigils that dissolved into a flaky mess upon completion. The edge opposite him shimmered, and I crossed to it in time to watch as a large ring of hinged metal appeared. “Good thing there are five of us.”
“Look.” Lethe pointed to the far wall. “It’s a pulley system.”
Behind Linus, on a wall that had been bare when we arrived, now hung a massive hook of the right scale to fit the ring. A wench the size of a beer keg had been mounted at waist height, its handle rusted and pitted with age.
“Okay then.” I did the honors of dragging the hook on its hefty chain, threading it through the ring and securing it back onto itself. “Let ’er rip.”
Lethe started cranking the handle while Linus checked the mechanism to ensure it was sound. Boaz and Hood stood at the opening, primed to act if this entrance had been compromised, and I stood there with my pocketknife in hand, ready for whatever came next.
A shimmer down the chain caught my eye. “Linus, did you see that?”
“The sigil must be time-delayed. We disrupted it, not disabled it.” He peered into the opening. “Mother must not have known. Otherwise, she would have warned us we were on the clock.” He squatted to get a better look. “I can see the stairs. They’re clear. Hood?”
“Mold and water. There’s nothing alive down there.”
Mold and water. Two of my least favorite things.
“Good.” Linus straightened. “We should go now before the sigil times out.”
Hood and Lethe bumped him aside and descended together. Linus and I did the same. No sooner had Boaz cleared the steps, than the door slammed shut over our heads with a reverberation that jarred my back teeth.
The dank smells, the absolute darkness, conspired to fling me back into my nightmares, but I had faced Atramentous, and this was nothing compared to that. The water here smelled stagnant, not fouled. The mold struck me as richer, more verdant, but there might just be more of it since there were no inmates to lick it clean.
I can do this.
Piece of cake.
Thank the goddess I didn’t say cake out loud…
With Lethe, I might as well yell stampede. Except, of course, we would be the ones getting trampled. By her. And when she found out there was no cake? Pfft. Fake cake got people killed.
“I hope your mother wasn’t misinformed about anything else.” I allowed myself a moment to rearrange my features, to steady my pulse. We had bigger worries than burgeoning panic attacks. We had to stay alert. “It would suck to die in a tunnel the city filled in a few years ago without the Society noticing.”
“We need light.” Lethe rested her hand on my shoulder. “Our night vision is excellent, but we still need a light source.”
“She’s right.” I was losing the shape of things as my eyes adjusted to the complete darkness. “Hang on.”
I tugged the turtleneck over my head and then cursed. The glow from the stake had subsided to a faint shine.
“I’m glad you’re cooler,” Lethe said dryly, “but that didn’t help with the whole seeing-where-we’re-going thing.”
I growled at her softly, but she just laughed. Even Linus, who knew the reason for the long-sleeve top, smiled. I might not have seen it, but I felt it.
“Here.” Boaz pressed a pencil-length piece of metal into my hand then guided my thumb to press the button on top. “And here.” He did the same for Lethe. “And here.” Hood grunted a thanks. “I only have one more.” He addressed Linus when he said, “You’ll have to share with Grier.”
There was a time when he would have tossed Linus the penlight and claimed his spot next to me. He would have seen it as his right, and he would have known it not-so-secretly delighted me. But those days were gone for both of us, and that was a good, if melancholy, thing.
With our four thin beams of light, we had no trouble navigating the tunnel using the map the Grande Dame had drawn for Linus.
The slightly uneven shapes of handmade bricks fanned out around us. They were beautiful, a throwback to the birth of Savannah.
Lethe turned a slow circle. “How has no one noticed there are tunnels crisscrossing the entire city?”
“Oh, they’ve noticed.” I shared a look with Boaz, the only other product of a public-school education present. “They blame pirate captains who ordered their crews to round up drunk bar patrons and dump them on their ships to save time on recruitment speeches, runaway slaves waiting to punch their ticket for the Underground Railroad, burial grounds for Yellow Fever patients, cisterns for drinking water, cisterns for sewage, storm drains.” I shrugged. “I’m probably forgetting a few.”
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Clicking her tongue, she started down the tunnel. “How have humans survived for so long?”
“There are a lot more of them than there are of us,” Linus said, “and they breed faster.”
“Like rabbits,” Hood agreed.
“Don’t talk about rabbits.” Lethe rubbed her stomach. “I’m hungry.”
“I brought trail mix.” Hood trotted to her side and pulled a sandwich baggie out of his backpack. “That ought to tide you over.”
All at once his decision to bring a backpack made sense. “You packed nothing but snacks, didn’t you?”
“I don’t ask you about the contents of your bag,” he said primly. “Don’t ask about the contents of mine.”
“That’s right, baby.” Lethe made crunching noises. “You tell her.”
“Good grief.” I kept pace with Linus. “We came down here willingly with these two?”
“No.” Lethe twisted, tossing a peanut at my head. “I didn’t give you a choice.”
Only training with her gave me reflexes quick enough to avoid taking it in the eye.
“You didn’t catch it!”
“You mean with my pupil?”
“What a waste.” She stood over it like a mourner at a funeral. “Food, Grier. That was food.”
“Here.” Hood passed her a stick of jerky. “Will this make it better?”
“Depends.” She sniffled. “Do you have more than one?”
“How long have we been mated?” He held out three more. “Better?”
“Much.” She ripped into the first one. “Now hush. I like to pretend I can hear the jerky begging for mercy as I chomp it to pulp.”
A red sheen covered Hood’s eyes. “That’s my girl.”
“So,” I said too loudly, and my voice echoed back to me. “Should we have brought a ball of yarn to unroll as we go? Breadcrumbs to scatter? Or is this a straight shot?”
“Mother’s notation calls this the catacombs. I assume that means it’s a network that fans out from a central hub somewhere within the city.”
I whipped my head toward him. “You didn’t know it existed?”