Hounds of the Underworld (The Path of Ra Book 1)

by Dan Rabarts

  Penny follows their escort into the apartment beyond, firing Matiu a dark glance that unequivocally says Don’t you screw this up for me, brother.

  He grins, not really feeling it. The smile, as ever, is as much a sword as it is a shield. It keeps people out, cuts down their defences. Sometimes, it just cuts. But he wears it all the same. Ignoring the burble of chatter that flows from Rose Fletcher like effluent from a sewer pipe, he moves into the apartment. His first surprise is that the loyal Cerberus hasn’t come bounding to the door to meet his newest best friend and to warn away the intruders. Even a sleeping dog should’ve roused at the sound of unfamiliar footsteps, the waft of new smells. Rose is turning on lights and calling for the dog as she goes, leaving Matiu to scan the penthouse’s front hall. It’s wide, sparsely furnished with an occasional table on one side, old-fashioned coatrack near the door and a bookshelf that looks like a kid’s building-block experiment gone wrong fixed to the other wall. There are no books on it, just a random selection of junk that Matiu supposes is meant to be art. His lip curls. How much money does this guy have to blow, and what else does he waste it on? Even the dog’s probably some docile pure breed with what little brains its massively inbred genes can scrape together. And seriously, what idiot calls a dog Cerberus? Do people have any idea what they’re opening themselves up to with bullshit like that? Dude is missing, probably dead. The dog might as well be guarding his road to the underworld. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t roused, because it knows its master is dead. Gone, and the dog left behind to mark his passing.

  He carries on down the hall, past a guest bathroom on his left and a spare bedroom on his right, the doors ajar but everything tidy, orderly, as if the cleaner had just been through. Less like a home, more like a hotel. Yet with every step, the air grows heavier. The oppressiveness settles on his shoulders. Nothing looks out of place (which in itself might be part of what crawls along Matiu’s spine), nothing smells wrong, nor is there anything eerie about the sound in the building. No false bells chiming silently, like the calls of lost ghosts. Just a tickling, crawling sense of dread.

  “You feel it now, don’t you? It’s here, bro. You know it.”

  Matiu casts his eyes both ways, avoiding the lights that throw their spidery shadows from the living room across the hallway. “If you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Then shut the fuck up. I don’t need you on my case.”

  “Oh, you need me, bro. You need me now more than ever.”

  “Given that I’ve never needed you in the least, that’s not saying much. Now get out of my headspace. I’m trying to concentrate.”

  Matiu stops at the door of what appears to be the master bedroom. The blinds are drawn, backlit bars of sunshine the only light, since Rose and Penny went the other way. Something rank flows through the open door, pressing against Matiu’s chest, pushing the air from his lungs. His eyes water and there comes, in the back of his skull, a resonating thrum. Like the missing echoes from the fake bells at the elevator, a sound he can’t hear but which wraps itself around his brain and squeezes.

  Makere is at his back, looking over his shoulder. It isn’t reassuring. He half-expects the apparition to push him into the room.

  “What are you waiting for, bro? It’s all there for you. Go take a look.”

  Matiu’s chest is tight, almost too tight to breathe. The room, or its presence, or the awful withering spirit of whatever took place beyond this door sits on his shoulders, on his skull, threatening to drive him to his knees or to send him running from the apartment, screaming. But like hell will he give Makere that satisfaction.

  He steps into the room.

  - Pandora -

  Penny follows Rose through Darius’ cavernous penthouse reception room to an equally cavernous open-plan kitchen decked out like an operating theatre with stainless steel countertops, scalpel edged lines and a surgical light-head chandelier.

  “Gorgeous apartment,” Penny says.

  Rose shrugs. “Darius sometimes entertains for work,” she replies. “Now, where is that damned dog? It’s typical, isn’t it? The silly animal whines all hours of the day and the minute we turn up, it disappears. Cerberus! Where are you? Let me check the laundry.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll just look around.”

  Penny clucks her tongue. The place is as sterile as its décor. Normally, kitchens are great places to get fingerprint samples. There’ll be a smudge on a wine glass, a solid thumbprint on the taps, a complete set of prints on the handle of the fridge. Not this kitchen. Every surface gleams as if it’s been swabbed with alcohol, the sleek lines and reflective materials making it more abattoir than kitchen. The only ornament on display is a surgical cotton ball holder in pride of place on the counter. Coffee? Sugar? Penny lifts the lid and peeks inside. She’s rewarded with a waft of liver. Dog treats in a solid silver container? Darius must have money to burn. Broken down and incorporated into antibiotics, the ionic silver contained in that receptacle could treat a pandemic.

  Penny replaces the lid and opens the fridge. There’s a tub of tarasamalata and half a bottle of wine—a pricey Canterbury chardonnay—but otherwise the shelves are empty. Had Darius been deliberately emptying the fridge? Preparing to go away? But would he forget to make arrangements for his dog? A man who keeps his dog treats in a silver container? Penny’s spine tingles. She ignores it. It isn’t relevant. Scientists operate on fact, not feeling. Instead, she checks the use-by date on the pink fish paste. It expired two days ago.

  “Come on you, out!” Rose trills.

  Penny closes the fridge, turning as the dog bounds over, its nails clicking on Darius Fletcher’s tiled floors.

  “Hello, boy,” Penny says, giving him a scratch under his chin. The dog’s tail is a blur, wagging faster than an oscillating sifter. “Aren’t you beautiful?”

  “Spoiled more like,” Rose says. “Cerberus is Darius’ baby.” She glances down the hall as she approaches Penny.

  Stealing peeks at Matiu.

  “Is your colleague okay?” Rose says, tilting her head in Matiu’s direction. “I’m only asking because he looks kind of peaky. He isn’t allergic to nuts, is he? Because there were almonds in my slice, and your colleague ate two.”

  Penny ducks her head around the corner, following Rose’s gaze. Matiu’s at the far end of the hall, his hand gripping a door frame. The muscles of his neck are bunched. Something has him uptight. What has he found?

  Time to gather your samples and get out of here.

  Looking back at Rose, Penny gives her a wide smile. “Oh, he’s just a sucker for good home baking. The thing is, he’s also gluten intolerant.”

  “Really?”

  Penny hides her mouth with her hand and whispers conspiratorially in the spinster’s ear. “I expect he’s paying for it now he’s gone and got himself a stomach ache.”

  Rose’s eyes widen. “I could get him something,” she says a little too quickly. “The bathroom’s this way.” Before Penny can stop her, she bustles away. Penny gives the dog a treat from the silver cotton ball container and hurries after her.

  Off the hall, the bathroom’s a marble masterpiece: a double shower across one wall, and twin vanities under a wall-to-wall mirror opposite. Rose is flicking through the left hand cupboard under the vanity. “There should be some paracetamol in here somewhere.”

  “Perhaps it’s on this side,” Penny says. Crouching, she opens the adjacent cupboard where she finds a purple toothbrush, a roll of dental floss and a dozen or so bottles of designer perfume for men: Yves St Laurent. Boss. Aztec. Zac. Samuel Jones…

  Hang on, what’s this one?

  Snapping on her gloves, Penny lifts the bottle out by its cap.

  Cerberus growls, a low grumble deep in his throat.

  “Is
your brother a fan of Felicity Jones, by any chance?” she asks. She holds the dewdrop bottle containing the pop singer’s signature scent above the cupboard door so Rose can see it.

  Rose snorts. “It’ll be hers. That Sandi woman’s. All bra-cup and no brains, that one. She tried very hard to weasel her way into Darius’ affections. Had designs to move in here with him too, but Darius didn’t come down in the last shower of rain. He saw her for what she was.”

  “And what was that?” Penny asks, using her other hand to slip the toothbrush into a sample bag.

  “A manky, manipulative gold digging cow.”

  Oh.

  “Did Darius say that?”

  “Not in so many words, but I knew because he stopped bringing her here, didn’t he?”

  “Hmmm.” Penny examines the dewdrop-shaped bottle, noticing a tiny smudge in the glass near its apex. She rummages in her satchel again, this time for her sampling tape. “Ms Fletcher—Rose—would you mind if I lifted a fingerprint off this bottle? If we can find this Sandi person, she might be able to tell us where Darius is.”

  Rose cackles. “Do the police keep a file of gold diggers, then?”

  “Just a database of criminals and their associates.”

  Rose’s eyes widened. “A criminal! Now, that wouldn’t surprise me. If you find her on that database, do you think you could let me know?”

  “Uuum…” Penny says, drawing out the word.

  Rose sighs, sitting back on her haunches. “It’s okay. I know you can’t say anything. Confidentiality and all that. I doubt that trumped up floosie will be able to tell you anything, anyway. Like I said, Darius gave her the short shrift ages ago.”

  Penny presses her sampling tape to the smudge, drops it in a plastic sample bag, and returns the dewdrop to the cupboard. Cerberus growls again and she soothes him with a quick pet with her elbow.

  Buried in the cupboard up to her waist now, Rose says, “I think I can see the paracetamol!”

  “You know, Ms Fletcher, while I’m at it, perhaps I should take a sample from Darius’ cologne, too.”

  “Darius isn’t a criminal.” Even coming from inside the cupboard, Rose’s voice is indignant.

  “Oh, I mean for the missing person file,” Penny says, backtracking. “In case we find Darius and he isn’t able to speak for himself.”

  Rose’s gasp echoes inside the cabinet. “You mean if he’s dead?”

  “Well…”

  “Yes!” Rose cries. She emerges from the cupboard clasping a crumpled box of tablets. “I found them!”

  Rose said ‘yes’. She’d definitely said yes.

  Still hidden from view behind the cupboard door, Penny’s hands are frantic: choosing a bottle of cologne, pressing the tape to the bottle, bagging it, and making a tear in the edge of the plastic bag so she can tell this sample from the dewdrop.

  Not that there’s any need. Penny had definitely heard her say ‘yes’.

  Getting to her feet, Penny closes the cupboard with her bottom. She peeks around the door into the hall. Matiu is no longer there. “Actually, come to think of it, Rose, perhaps we shouldn’t say anything about my colleague’s stomach ache,” she says, giving the paracetamol box in Rose’s hand a tap with her finger. “You know how sensitive men can be about their little flaws.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought about that,” Rose says.

  Penny raises her shoulders, dropping them again in an overdramatic shrug. “You know how it is. It’s the loss of face.”

  “No, no, you’re right,” Rose says, slipping the box onto the vanity. “We don’t want to embarrass him.”

  Penny smiles. “I knew you’d understand.”

  - Matiu -

  The room tastes of fear, pain, despair, and—perhaps worst of all—determination. There aren’t many places that taste that way, though Matiu can think of a few. Prison, for one. The fight ring, for another. He imagines that’s how the trenches must have tasted, back when wars were fought on the ground, with men and guns and mud and steel. Whatever had taken place within these walls, it had been a fight. Lives had been at stake. Something had won, and something had lost. Such is the way of all fights.

  “Officer?”

  Matiu jerks around, his heart thundering. Rose is there, her smile as gluey and vapid as before. Penny is beside her, her eyes blazing in silent warning. “Ah…” he stammers, more flustered by being ripped out of the moment than he’d like to be.

  “This is Cerberus,” Rose says, stepping aside so Matiu can see the dog.

  It’s a Golden Labrador, and looks about as unlikely a dog as any to bear a name as ominous as Cerberus. Matiu wonders if Darius Fletcher even knows what Cerberus was—or who the ancient Greeks were, for that matter. Smart guy, maybe, but his classical education is lacking. Taking a breath to calm his nerves, Matiu steps into the hallway and kneels by the dog, who lies prone on the carpet, paws folded one atop the other, muzzle settled on top of these, ears drooping. “Hey, boy.” He reaches out to rub the top of the dog’s head.

  Something sharp lances into his hand, through his arm, cascades down his spine. If not for the two women watching him, he might’ve yelped in pain and snatched his hand away, might’ve crumpled as the wave slices down his legs, exploding anew as it hits his knees. As it is, he maintains his stance by sheer force of pride, only withdrawing his hand as the dog leaps back, suddenly animated, and starts to bark.

  Matiu wants to get to his feet, get above Cerberus and make sure the dog knows who’s in charge, but this pain won’t allow it. Instead, he hunkers on one knee, eyes locked with the retriever as Rose calls shrilly for the dog to heel—the woman clearly knows nothing about dogs—and stretches his hand out again. This time, when he touches Cerberus’ head, there’s nothing, except, perhaps, the fading memory of a pain now buried. The dog quiets instantly, settles back onto his hind legs, and lifts a paw to Matiu.

  “Oh my,” Rose breathes behind him. “I didn’t know it could do tricks.”

  “We need to take the dog,” Matiu says, still focused on Cerberus’ huge dark eyes, seeing in them a hint of what his master saw when he chose the name—a dark river, slow, deep and persistent. And calling the dog Styx would’ve just been stupid. Right, I’m going to take Styx out and throw him a few sticks. So maybe Darius isn’t the douche Matiu put him down for.

  “Oh, I’m not sure,” Rose is saying, but Penny slips in smoothly with some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo about evidence relevant to the ongoing investigation, and blah blah blah. Matiu tunes it out, getting to his feet now that the shock and pain have subsided. Cerberus holds his gaze. Matiu reaches down and rubs a hand across the dog’s shoulders, through the thick pelt at his neck. Feels good to have a dog at his side again, one that isn’t slated for a fighting pit. The dog walks past Matiu and settles at Penny’s side. His sister looks from the dog to him in muted horror. Matiu flicks her a surreptitious thumbs-up, ignoring the animal’s rebuff.

  “He certainly seems to like you,” Rose effuses, clearly sold on both Penny’s reasoning and the dog’s obvious affection for her.

  “Maybe,” Matiu agrees quietly, though he suspects that’s not all there is to it. Cerberus is pining for a lost master, and Rose can never fill that role. Rose is below Cerberus in the pack, as far as the dog is concerned. She is a bringer of food, a cleaner of shit, and nothing more. Had Cerberus been left too much longer, she would no doubt have found this out the hard way. But it’s not just about the pack, which is something Matiu knows only too well. Finding your place in the pack is a matter of life and death in some of the places he’s been, which is perhaps why he so enjoys tormenting Penny about her own struggles to do so. He’ll always be the pack leader, loner or not, and it’s bred into him to keep things that way. So at least the dog thinks Penny belongs in the pack.

  Whatever happened to D
arius Fletcher at the warehouse is inextricably tied up with what happened in this bedroom, between the man and his dog, and Matiu might have an inkling of what that was. It wasn’t a fight, at least not how he thought it might’ve been. There was no violence. This was a fight that took place inside.

  A decision was made. Something to win, something to lose.

  Matiu turns back to the master bedroom, its rotten presence leeching into the hall, the weight of sorrow clustered in the shadows. “We’re going to need his laptop too,” he says, gesturing to the computer satchel sitting on the side table in Darius’ room. “For the investigation.” He flicks a look at Penny who rolls her eyes, makes a throat-slashing motion behind Rose’s back, then puts on her most professional face as the spinster turns to her, no doubt to quibble fruitlessly again. What Matiu wants, Matiu gets, but clearly the woman needs to give the impression of protecting her brother’s interests to the bitter end.

  Matiu ignores them both, hovering on the edge of the room, as if poised on a precipice. When he touched Cerberus, did he feel the final lingering traces of bad energy the dog still carried from that moment? It was a bitter triumph, a hollow victory of sorts, and not the dog’s, but the man’s. However, it wasn’t without cost. A choice was made, and the resonance of that choice haunts this place. Darius Fletcher cut out a piece of his soul when he made that decision.

  Matiu waits as Rose retrieves the laptop case, handing it to him with a fat-lipped grin which she might think is flirtatious, but which strikes him as merely salacious. He represses a shudder, and in return treats her to his winning smile. Then they head for the lift, Cerberus trotting at Penny’s heels while she juggles a bag of dog biscuits and a blanket. The lift dings, and Matiu wishes everything could be as hollow as that false bell, as empty as the shaft beneath his feet. The lift drops, and he knows they are falling into hell.