Perv and Iron Rod dropped to the floor in a tangle of red-soaked bodies, jerking and twitching as they died, while the tantō’s owner and the remaining fireheads clashed in a three-way battle to see who could slaughter the others in the most expedient manner. The shortest of the men didn’t need a weapon. He used his fist in a single strike to another’s throat that sent that man reeling backward into the living room wall, where he slid to the floor in a heap. A horrendous rattle escaped his throat, and his head lolled to the side. His attacker didn’t hesitate. Arm cocking back, fist clenched, he stepped up to deal a death blow to his fallen opponent’s temple area, when Tantō guy stuck his blade into his kidney, wrenched it upward with a fierce grunt and sliced from right to left through the man’s spine and belly, in effect gutting him seppuku-style from behind.
Dead instantaneously, the short man dropped to the floor just as the one slumped against the wall drew the only firearm among the five from a pocket, hand trembling from the exertion, and fired. Instead of shooting the man who’d fallen between them, he nailed the man wielding the Japanese short sword. The bullet bored through Tantō’s cheek and exited through the top of his head with a splash of brain matter against the ceiling. A second later, the gun clattered to the floor, and the last of the fireheads stopped breathing.
Only twenty seconds had elapsed from the beginning to the end of the massacre.
Flickering and then dissolving, the dream seizure ended abruptly at the same moment my ears rang from the gunshot. Not used to a floor that didn’t tilt and rock beneath me, my feet stuttered, as they would if I’d jumped to the quay from a boat deck after an hour on the rolling waters of the nearby Venetian lagoon. All was silent except for my shocked gasp. I could not believe what I saw.
Five dead. Each killed at the hands of their fellow fireheads, but I couldn’t kid myself. I’d done this. Me.
I’d just earned the public execution I’d been falsely accused of deserving.
3
Turning away from the carnage, I squatted down next to Whisper. Her attempts to stand were over. The fight had left her. Her front paws and legs splayed out in front of her, the front half of her body twisted to the side in the opposite direction from the back half. She did not have the strength to lift her head. Her mouth opened and she struggled to vocalize her pain, but no sound came out.
I touched the top of her head with my fingers, stroking her softly between the ears.
“Hold on, baby. Just hold on. Mommy’s going to help. You wait here, and I’ll be right back.”
We had a minute, two minutes, tops before the council guards returned from hunting me on the other side of the canal. They had to have heard the gunshot. I scooped up the one knife on the floor that hadn’t had a chance to score blood before its owner died, darted into the bathroom, and wedged the blade into the crack between the baseboard and the wall behind the door.
Blood made the knife slippery in my grasp.
I hesitated, confused. I’d swear the knife had been clean when I’d grabbed it. Was I…? Had one of them hurt me and I didn’t notice…?
Splinters. My hands were full of them from the ladder in the chapel, several jabbing deep enough to draw blood.
Yet I didn’t feel a thing.
Later. Worry about it then.
After leaning into the blade, the baseboard trim popped off and I reached into the small space I’d chiseled from the wood used to frame the wall, grabbing a slender package that contained emergency money and antique tech devices I could barter or sell. This went into my backpack, along with the knife. I already had one of my own, but an extra could be handy. A few trampled pieces of my dirty clothing lay scattered on the floor. I’d had them stored in a hamper next to the tub and had planned to wash them in the morning.
Had Panty Perv sniffed them all?
Suck it up. You can’t be choosy. You need clothes.
I stashed what was left of my wardrobe into my pack and thrust my arms through the straps, shouldering the bag. A bath sheet hung exactly where I’d left it early that evening. Amazingly no one had touched it. I tore the towel down from the shower rod and raced back to Whisper.
Wrapping the towel around her, I did my best to ease her rear half back into rough alignment so I could pick her up with the minimum amount of pain. Her broken back and crushed spine weren’t her only injuries. Shattered bones in her rib cage on her right side crackled delicately when I handled her.
She cried as I gathered her into my arms.
“I know, little one. I know it hurts. I’m sorry.”
It would have been kinder not to move her, but I wouldn’t leave her behind while she was still alive for the guards to find. Who knew what the fuck those bastards would do to her?
Fae cats had a set of two claws in each toe. One claw closely resembled those the before-cats had possessed, short and good for snatching up small prey or scratching someone they didn’t like. These smaller claws, however, were nothing compared to the ones fae magic had gifted them when the worlds had merged and the old cats had transformed into an entirely new species. Wicked and sickle-shaped, Whisper’s fae claws protruded almost five centimeters from the ends of her tufted toes. She no longer had the ability to retract them. Beads of amber liquid glistened on the ends of some of the claws. Poison.
In the fifteen years I’d known her, I’d never seen poison or the second set of claws. I’d only known they existed.
Careful to avoid coming into contact with the poison, I turned toward the exit hidden in the closet with her cradled in my arms.
As we passed the Risurrezione I’d named Iron Rod, I saw the deep claw marks in his forearm. Skin and muscle hung in ribbons, the flesh bloated and discolored, partially burned away. Iron Rod’s lips and fingernail beds were blue. I remembered how he’d slurred his words and kept coughing during the fight. Panty Perv’s machete to the man’s neck had only sped up the inevitable. Iron Rod would have died of poisoning in minutes either way.
“Good for you, Whisper,” I said. “You got him.”
One last check of my apartment at the closet door showed me a few bits and pieces of my life I might still take with me, minor possessions. I wanted none of it. I didn’t want to see this place ever again. If I could have afforded to burn the clothes in my pack, I would have. I double-checked that I hadn’t tracked through any blood on my way to the door. Last thing I wanted was guards chasing me through underground Venice.
I stepped into the stairwell with Whisper and then shoved the faux wall shut. Prying out a loose shard of brick from the wall where mortar had rotted a century ago, I held Whisper one-armed and jammed the shard into the latch on this side of the panel. Even if the guards figured out where we’d gone, they’d have a bitch of a time getting the panel open.
We started down the steps. Whisper shivered. Her body was no longer able to regulate its own temperature. I lowered my lips to the top of her head and kissed her.
“Just a couple minutes more before you can rest,” I told her. “We’ll be there soon.”
I knew time was running out. At the bottom of the staircase, I took out my flashlight again, juggling it and Whisper simultaneously and pushed my strides as long and fast as I could without jarring her. We crossed under the canal and then, reaching the intersecting tunnel I’d passed on my way over here, I turned to the right, away from the chapel and my apartment.
Half a minute down the other tunnel and the fine hairs on the back of my neck suddenly rose up. We were being followed. I glanced back over my shoulder at the tunnel behind me but saw nothing. No footsteps echoed along the passage.
I was sure, though. Someone pursued us. He or she didn’t want to be heard or seen doing it, either. Why the secrecy? Why not shout to others that they’d spotted the fugitive?
Few people used this network of tunnels in Santa Croce. No one lived or spent considerable time down here. It was too damp, the danger of drowning when a tunnel flooded at high tide too great. Up ahead, the tunnel zig-zagged for
several meters before straightening out again. A load-bearing wall for a palazzo above us jutted halfway into the corridor. Circling around it, I slipped into shadow, thumbed off the light in my hand, and pushed sideways into a gap in the tunnel’s main wall. I’d traveled this tunnel for a year before I’d first noticed the thirty-five-centimeter space between two palazzo’s foundations was there. It was a tight fit, but I hoped hiding in the gap would conceal us from the person tracking us.
I closed my eyes and fought to still my anxious breathing. Prayed Whisper wouldn’t let out a yowl of pain at the wrong moment. She’d been extremely quiet for the last few minutes but now stirred slightly. We waited, and I tensed, fearing discovery. I devoted every bit of my focus to detecting the slightest sound, a breath, a sigh, the brush of a shoe sole in the dirt. Utter quiet. I knew he was still out there. I could feel him. You didn’t survive growing up on the streets of Venice without a well-honed sense of self-preservation. Why hold back? Why didn’t he get it over with and pass our hiding place, moving farther up the tunnel?
Will you hurry up! Leave us alone. Whoever you are, just go.
Silence. I wanted to scream.
What do you want? What are you waiting for?
His tactics reminded me of an animal stalking its prey.
Oh, shit. Fae hunter.
We didn’t see many in Santa Croce, but it was a decent guess. As a target marked for death, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had attracted the notice of several hunters looking for an easy victim they could suck dry just like a frickin’ vampire. Yes, the council might be a tad miffed when my lifeless body turned up before they could make it lifeless themselves, but realistically, no one would care.
Enough.
We couldn’t wait for him to decide to move. Reentering the tunnel wasn’t an option, either. I took a deep, hopefully soundless breath, and crept further along the stone-lined cavity between the two foundation walls. So narrow was this non-passage, I couldn’t walk facing forward. Nor, carrying Whisper in front of me and with a backpack hanging off my shoulders, could I turn completely sideways. My body ended up scraping the walls on both sides as the path angled sharply downward. Brackish air chilled my skin. Up ahead, waves crashed and sucked back, crashed and sucked back. Another ten or so meters, and we’d get dumped out into Santa Croce’s second largest storm drain.
Damp worked its way through my clothes, and the roar of water grew louder. Slime underfoot made the going treacherous. A couple of meters later, I unexpectedly stepped off into nothing and had to throw my shoulders hard at the corners of the two palazzos to brace my body between them and keep us from falling. Whisper gave a weak cry of protest at being jostled. Though her condition worsened by the minute, I was aware of her impatience. She was tired of being held. She wanted down and to be let go.
“Soon.” My voice trembled.
Physically, she couldn’t take much more. I had to get her somewhere quiet and secure.
But should I keep going? Did it matter where I let her rest?
It did.
The hunter was on the move again. He’d found the gap. He was coming this way.
Fuck you. Whoever you are.
Why couldn’t we be left alone?
I didn’t remember what this part of the storm drain looked like and had no choice other than to switch on my pen light, potentially revealing our location. It sounded more cavernous in the dark. One sweep back and forth with my flashlight told me the cylindrically-shaped tunnel was smaller than others I regularly used and a death-trap for anyone stupid enough to venture into it at high tide. Though the curved ceiling at this particular entry point could accommodate someone six-foot tall or more, a few meters in either direction the tube constricted down to a channel measuring barely a meter in diameter with the water currently one-third of the way up.
I skidded carefully down the side of the enclosed channel into the icy surf and rather than doing the expected, fleeing from the incoming tide, I embraced it, wading against the rising waves. I dialed down the light in my hand as low as it could go and still help me pick out the way. If we were lucky, the person following wouldn’t see us and assume we took the easier route, heading away from the tide.
I slogged against the flood’s increasing force. Wiry seaweed collected around my boot toes. I stepped on and slid off the corpse of a large branzino rolling over and over in the polluted surf. At first, the water reached my ankles, then mid-calf, then my knees. Incoming waves pushed me back one step for every two. Where was all this water coming from? I’d been sure we were at low tide.
I passed a gap between foundations similar to the one that had brought us here. Too narrow. I visualized us getting stuck and drowning, shook my head, and pushed on. Next, a shallow set of steps led up to an ancient basement door, but going by the watermarks corroded into the iron hinges, the stoop wasn’t high enough to evade the tide. Plus, the door appeared rusted shut. Another dozen strides further on, water lapped at the bottom of my backpack. I had to lift Whisper higher to keep her dry.
She wailed brokenly, her keening soft and pleading. I loathed myself for putting her through this, but there was no good place to set her down.
Another gap came and went, this one a crevice just fifteen centimeters wide. Where was the next tunnel? The next door? Sea water dragged me back by the hips. More rushed in than was sucked out. It was one thing for me to drown down here due to a bad decision, but to bring Whisper along to suffer the same fate? All I’d wanted was to rescue her and bring her up somewhere into the fresh air and light. Hold her and tell her everything would be okay. Instead, we would end our lives in a glorified sewer.
My flashlight beam caught a recess in the drain wall.
Steps!
Rising sharply, stairs led up through a narrow archway out of sight. I pushed through the water in that direction. Another swell surged toward us, deadly as a rip current. There would be no more room to breathe in the pipe after it washed through. I was too far from the entrance. We weren’t going to make it. Water rose, already lifting me off my feet. I used my last contact with solid ground to jump up as high as I could and threw myself into the stairwell.
We landed hard. My breath was knocked out of me by the impact. I gasped and floundered like a swimmer coming up for air after minutes without it. Whisper offered no complaint. Her body jiggled limply in the towel when I moved. Time was running out. My arms wanted to cling to her forever. Every beat of her heart required effort.
Though I still struggled to catch my breath, the flood wouldn’t wait. I shimmied up and back, climbing step to step backward on my ass. Whisper’s towel was wet, my clothes from my chest down, sopping. Salt water stung the splinter wounds in my hands. Rising surf cut off the opening to the tunnel below us, which in seconds was completely underwater. Still, the water poured in.
Where was it all coming from? This wasn’t a normal tide. Not even Acqua alta, one of the infamous floods that plagued Venice several times a year, would cause it rise so high so fast.
La Luna Fae. The backward moon.
Damn. I’d forgotten. The fae were out tonight, altering the course of nature, if only for a few hours. And who needed hours when minutes to send the sea rushing in would be all it took?
I looked up over my shoulder at how much dry stairway we had left. Predictably, the stairwell ended at a closed door, rusted like most others along the tunnel. Six more steps and then a small landing in front of the door. That was all that would prevent us from drowning.
I scrambled up and back another step with the water following. Another step and it didn’t seem to be rising as fast. Another step and we left the water further below. One more step to the landing, and then I sat there, daring the sea to come any closer.
It quit rising. Water, plus a host of mysterious, half-glimpsed things snarled in the tide, swirled a hand’s width from my dangling boots, but we were safe.
For now.
I no longer felt that presence I’d sensed earlier, following us. Had t
he sea surprised the hunter, too?
I could hope. If Fortuna was good to us, he was more than gone. Dead.
Scooting back against the door, I settled Whisper in my lap and propped the pen light up against the scarred wood to provide illumination for the landing. My backpack made the position uncomfortable, but I’d wasted so much time getting us here. I wouldn’t steal another second away from doing what I could for her. Whisper had always been there for me. Always. Patient. Funny. Understanding. Tolerant.
Okay, perhaps not tolerant, but willing to overlook my gross deficiencies. And what more could I really ask? I’d never had anyone in my life who could be counted on for that. I’d never known one who gave as much as she did.
I smoothed and shaped the towel into a more comfortable bed for her. Her eyes were closed. It took me almost a minute to be certain she still breathed. She looked crumpled, like something already discarded.
“Whisper?”
I petted her unresponsive head.
“Whisper?”
Her eyes opened a fraction, but only for a moment before drifting shut.
“I’m so sorry, my little one. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. This is my fault. All my fault.”
Had I been one of the privileged or wealthy of Venice—and, yes, there were those who lived like princes here in this crumbling, ruined city—I might have been able to call a doctor to heal me if sick or injured.
But doctors for animals? I wasn’t sure they existed anymore. Who would need them? Dogs, affected by the magic, had lost their desire to bond with humans, gone wild and formed dangerous packs that roamed Venice, tearing into anything that moved until they had been hunted to extinction. Cats had turned feral and fae like Whisper, and though they were skilled at evasion, generally wanting nothing to do with people, their numbers, too, had dwindled.
There are times when I hate life, when I despise it beyond comprehension. How could I be given such a beautiful creature to love with no way to make her well again? The torn, twisted spine. The chest crushed beyond recognition. How could I not find a way to make this better?
Wayward Moon: Dark Fae Hollow 6: (Dark Fae Hollows) Page 3
