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

by Dan Rabarts

  Matiu points to a service road on the left that snakes down the hill into the cover of old-growth pines, towards the coast. “You head that way. Try not to be seen.”

  “What? You can’t expect me to go off on my own? Are you nuts?”

  “If I turn up with someone Hanson doesn’t know, he’ll be suspicious. While I’ve got him talking, you sneak around the other side. Get a look in through a window, record everything on your phone. We’re going to need evidence.”

  “We’re not actors in some thriller show, you know. This guy is dangerous. What if he has guards?”

  Matiu shrugs in exaggerated exasperation. “I said try not to be seen. Given what he’s into, if I show up at his door he’ll assume I’ve brought something I’d like to sell him.” Matiu clips Cerberus’ leash to his collar. “Would you rather be the bait?”

  “This is crazy.”

  “No,” Matiu says, shaking his head only slightly at how dense his sister can sometimes be, for such a clever girl. He sets off towards the old ranger station beyond the rise and the stand of twisted pōhutukawa. “This is what lies beneath our veneer of civilisation. This is the first circle of hell.”

  “Thanks,” Penny mutters as he leads the dog up the road. “That’s really reassuring.”

  He keeps walking. Part of him wants to turn and run, get in the car and keep driving, not even back to Auckland but further, down to the lake, maybe to East Cape, or the Wairarapa. Plenty of places a guy could lose himself out that way. Somewhere he can hole up, hide from the world, hide from what’s coming. But he’s not that guy. He can’t run and hide. Because what’s coming won’t leave him alone. What’s coming is coming to find him.

  “What’s your plan, e toa?”

  Matiu flinches at the suddenness of the voice at his shoulder, but chokes back a cry of surprise. Damn it all if he’s going to let Makere see that just under his leather-and-sunshades exterior there’s a frightened boy, the same boy who had more than once cowered in a crying heap in the basement, terrified of the voices in his head, of the things he saw that nobody else did. “Like I’m going to share with you.” His fists clench and flex. He doesn’t appreciate the mocking tone Makere has taken with him of late, nor of his choice to call him e toa—warrior. Matiu doesn’t want to be a warrior. He doesn’t want this to be his war. But it has to be, or else it’ll be everyone’s.

  “You’re just going to march on up to old Hanson’s place, him with all his boys around, and probably a few you won’t be able to see, more than one of them packing, and do what? Tell him you want to sell him a Golden Lab as a fighting dog? Penny’s right, you’re nuts.”

  “Cerberus isn’t a fighting dog. That doesn’t mean Hanson won’t see him as useful or valuable.”

  Matiu can almost hear Makere’s face split into a cruel grin. “Oh, pitbait? You are a vicious bastard. I won’t tell Penny what you’ve got planned, I promise. You can live with that guilt all by yourself.”

  Matiu glances back. Of Makere, of course, there’s no sign, just a shadow on the back of his eyes, a chill on his spine. More surprisingly though, he can’t see Penny. He’d half-expected her to still be standing there in the rutted mud, wringing her hands together and shifting her weight from one foot to the other in a paroxysm of indecision. He’s pretty sure she won’t have gone back to the car. She’s too deep in this thing now, just like he is. She has to know what’s going on, too. She’s determined like that; it’s the scientist in her. “You just believe what you like, bro. Always have, always will,” he says, into the salty air, to Makere, gone but always listening. To himself.

  He tops the rise, and the dilapidated station reveals itself, hunkered like a withered old man under the looming pōhutukawa. Not much more than a cabin, really, with a double garage at one end, its roller doors rusting quietly in the steady sea breeze. Only four rooms inside; an office, a bunkroom, bathroom and a kitchenette, a pantry for dry stores. On the outside of the building there’s a little storeroom where the DoC rangers used to keep the possum-baits and the rat-poison. Stinks in there, and if the wind’s blowing from the right direction you can smell it inside the house. For a guy like Hanson to hole up in a dive like this, things must’ve got pretty hot with the five-oh back in the city. Nothing like the luxury he’s used to.

  Now in full view of the house, Matiu tries to mentally scope out the floor-plan, guess where the old man will be sitting, how many thugs with shotguns will be standing by the windows, watching him come. There’s no one on the porch. He doesn’t see the curtains twitch. He tries to walk with a calm certainty, the sort of walk that says he’s meant to be there, nothing furtive in his step, no cause for concern here. Cerberus strains at the leash, and Matiu ignores the fact that the dog is not pulling forward, but off to the side, as if trying to get away.

  “I know, boy. I can feel it too.”

  The closer they get, the more Matiu can taste the wrongness of the place. It’s not just the neglect and decay that hang in the air, the soft rotting of old timber and the acidic tang of salting rust. It’s a bitter reek of despair, and something more, something deeper, older. He’s almost at the porch step now, and he knows that when he reaches out and grabs the rail, he’ll learn a whole lot more—more than he wants to. So he keeps his hands close, one in his jacket pocket, where a cold, comfortable weight rests against his fingers, and the other wrapped around the leash, tight to his stomach so that Cerberus can’t strain too far. Even so, as he climbs the steps, a coldness seeps up his legs, through the soles of his shoes. A heaviness, like grave-dirt sucking at his feet.

  He reaches the porch, and the two steps that bring him to the door are the longest he’s ever taken, like stepping out across a vast void and arriving somewhere alien, haunted. Letting the jack-knife fall from his fingers back into the bottom of his pocket, he reaches for the door handle. The sea breeze moans through the branches of the pōhutukawa, the cries of lost souls fleeing to Rēinga. His hand freezes before he grabs the handle, suddenly aware his brash advance may be a little too bold. Familiar face or not, he’s still not expected. Still might not be welcome. The door will surely be locked and barred, after all. Hanson’s a long way from home, but he’ll be no less careful. Paranoid, some would call it.

  He raps his knuckles on the door. The sound echoes hollowly, but no voices, no footsteps, no gunshots rouse to greet him. He waits. Trying his best to look nonchalant, he glances at the sky.

  Grey clouds swarm and coil on the horizon. Matiu frowns. He could’ve sworn it was clear, blue, stifling hot before he stepped onto the porch. He distinctly remembers sweating in his leather jacket under the sun, yet now a rivulet of cold creeps down his back. He fights the urge to tug his jacket across his chest. Refuses to feel the sudden chill pooling around him.

  He knocks again. This time, when no one answers, he reaches out, wraps a hand around the door handle. It’s cold as death in his grip. He turns it. With a soft crack, like the sound of the thin ice in the centre of a pond surrendering to some brave and foolish child’s weight on a frosty winter morning, the door swings in.

  - Pandora -

  Penny picks her way down the track, half-crouched and half-running, making for the cover of the pines. The path is deeply pugged and although the real heat of summer is still more than a month away, the clay ruts are baked hard, making it tricky to negotiate without breaking an ankle. It doesn’t help that she’s wearing these summer sandals. Strappy and heeled, they’re not the best choice for gallivanting about the countryside pretending she’s an FBI field agent. Penny zig-zags from one side of the track to the other, side-stepping another pile of dried dung and praying she doesn’t run smack into one of Hanson’s men.

  She glances back up the hill at her brother. Closing in on the top of the rise, Matiu is channelling his inner James Dean, wearing his sunnies and his old faithful black leather jacket. He’s heading out to play with th
e gangsters, so he puts on his leathers? Does he think if he dresses himself like a thug and swaggers up the front path, the nasty lowlifes in there will recognise him as one of their own? This isn’t a bloody costume party to go traipsing up to the front door without an invitation! Penny shivers. Matiu better know what he’s doing.

  Suddenly, the theme from Star Wars blares.

  Da duh, da da da da duh…

  Her phone.

  Now she gets reception?

  Quickly, Penny digs it out of her pocket. “Hello?” she whispers.

  “Pandora.” Her heart sinks. “Mum, this isn’t a very good time…”

  “When is ever a good time with you? You left in such a hurry last night, before the meal was over. We didn’t raise you to behave like that in front of guests.”

  “Craig Tong, you mean,” Penny hisses.

  “You won’t take that tone after I tell you the good news.”

  “Good news?”

  “Wonderful news, actually. Craig says he might be able to get you a government job in science policy. Isn’t that great? Of course, he can’t promise anything, but you’d be out of the lab—”

  The track curves like a natural skateboard bowl, and in the dip, Penny spies the roof of the house. Ignoring her mother on the phone, she ducks down. There could be sentries. Penny needs to get out of the open. She puts on a little spurt to cover the distance to the pines and has only just made it to the craggy grey canopy of the trees when she kicks up a stone. Chattering loudly, it skitters down the hill and into the natural bowl in the landscape, exacerbating the noise. Penny freezes, her pulse galloping, her heart about to explode. Is this how the last flightless takahē felt in the seconds before the dog killed it? She waits, not breathing, for a shout from one of Hanson’s men. But the sound of the stone Dopplers away, and Penny relaxes. She waits a moment longer, then hazards a quick look back through the tree trunks. Matiu and Cerberus have vanished beyond the rise. She needs to get a wriggle on. Matiu will be knocking on the front door before she’s had a chance to scope out the back.

  She puts the phone back to her ear. Her mother is still talking. “Just imagine the doors a job like that could open…”

  Speaking of doors, why is Matiu the one waltzing up to the front door? Why is he the frontperson? It should be Penny standing there on the porch. She’s the consultant for the police: it’s her job to collect evidence relevant to the case. Except Hanson would’ve told her to piss off back to town and get a warrant, and in the time it would take her to get Clark out here with one, Hanson would have the place wiped cleaner than the inside of an autoclave. That’s why she’s the one skirting round the back. There isn’t time for a warrant, not if there’s any hope of finding Fletcher alive, and Matiu knows that.

  “Mum, sorry. I have to go. I’ll call you back.”

  “Pandora, really, is Matiu there—?”

  Penny turns her phone off and puts it back in her pocket. A niggle sticks under her ribs. Maybe collecting evidence on the quiet isn’t the only reason she’s picking her way through these radiata. Maybe Matiu’s plan isn’t so hot after all, and Penny’s little detour is meant to keep her out of harm’s way.

  Shit.

  It takes only minutes for Penny to reach the far side of the pines and the rear of the farmlet. Huffing from the exertion, she hunkers behind a rusted sheet of corrugated iron. Heading in from the coast, the breeze is a welcome relief. Penny takes a moment to catch her breath and study the outbuildings.

  Closest to her, and on an angle, is a line of pens sufficient to house perhaps thirty dogs, but with the kennels blocking her view she can’t tell how many of the cages are occupied. A chorus of barks tells her they aren’t empty: the dogs are picking up her scent and warning her off. Penny watches for a corresponding sign of alarm from the house, but there’s no movement, no short-tempered handler bellowing at them to shut up.

  Clearly, Hanson’s people are used to a bit of a ruckus.

  Between the pens and the house is a low-roofed shed, probably for storage, and beyond the shed is the back wall of the house, its length broken by a long, high window. A farm bike has been abandoned near the back door. No other vehicles to be seen, but there must be something about. Penny’s pretty certain Hanson doesn’t get around on a farm bike, and they must have some way of moving the dogs.

  Keeping an eye on the road, Penny runs across the space to the pens. Rounding the corner, the stench of neglect hits her full in the face. At a glance, there must be a couple of dozen dogs, the near pens housing big aggressive breeds, stocky barrel-chested animals with thick necks and muscled shoulders: Rottweilers, American Pitbulls, Pinschers. Good family pets if they’ve been well-treated. But these dogs have not. They’ve been abused: whipped and kicked and starved to a frenzy, all the better to tear each other’s throats out. These dogs are good at that. They know how to sink their teeth into the soft fur at the base of the neck and grind and rip until the throat is laid bare and tendons and muscles shredded. They’ve tasted blood. Penny knows they have, because these dogs are still alive. The survivors. To them, everyone is a threat, including her. Slowly, Penny takes a step back from the pens, putting some space between her and the pack. But a grim-faced Chow Chow emits a low snarl, setting the others off.

  The noise! Matiu said to be quiet.

  Panicked, Penny drops to a crouch and swings her eyes back to the house. But again, there’s no response to the dogs’ barking.

  “Shh,” Penny murmurs, in an attempt to soothe the dogs. She drops her eyes to show them she’s not interested in confrontation, and inches her way along the front of the pens. “It’s OK. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  When it’s clear she’s not about to kick them, nor is she going to feed them, the dogs start to settle. By the time she reaches the end of the line, the noise has largely died away. But at the end, in a cage low to the ground, a little Staffie leans forward and pushes his ruined muzzle through the wire. Stooping for a better look, Penny’s breath catches in her throat. Desperately thin, the poor creature’s in a pitiful condition. It looks at Penny with soulful, solemn eyes. This is no killer. It’s been used as a punching bag, a ragdoll for the others to toss between their teeth. Old lacerations show through the animal’s coat, its short hair growing at odd angles where the scars have puckered. Its nose is torn, and one of its ears is missing a chunk, leaving behind a ragged hanging tuft, like yellowed kapok pulled out of an old pillow. Pus leaks from the corners of its eyes.

  How can people be so cruel?

  Penny can’t bear it. To hell with the risk, she’s going to free this one. She has to. She yanks at the cage door. It won’t open. She tugs again. That’s weird. From this side, it should just click open. Frowning, she checks the mechanism. Her shoulders slump. Electronic locking. Hanson obviously isn’t planning on letting any of his staff make off in the night with his cash cows. So much for honour among thieves.

  Well, even if she could open the cage, this one isn’t going anywhere. There’s no mistaking the inflammation in the dog’s hind leg. The limb is swollen and puffy. An infected nip left untreated, most likely. If neglected much longer, septicaemia will take hold and the dog will die. Penny can’t help thinking that for this little fellow, it might be the kindest outcome. Fighting tears, she places the back of her hand against the wires, introducing herself.

  “Hey there, Staffy,” she breathes. The dog lets out a whine, the sound pitiful and defeated. “I know it hurts, sweetheart.”

  Staffy opens his mouth, and a little pink tongue licks at her skin, its touch comforting, like the weft of an old bath towel.

  Penny squeezes her fingers through the gap in the wire and tickles the dog under his chin. She thinks of Cerberus: exuberant, bounding Cerberus with his bear paws and goopy dog slobber. There’s a dog who’s been well-treated. Darius Fletcher had adored his dog. So why wo
uld such a man be involved with Hanson? It doesn’t add up.

  On cue, Penny recognises a bark which can only be Cerberus’ coming from the other side of the house.

  Please don’t do anything stupid, Matiu. If Hanson can do this to a dog…

  Penny pulls her fingers out of the cage and whispers to Staffy, “Back soon.”

  - Matiu -

  Tikau is staring right at Matiu. He’s sitting on a chair in the main room, the kitchenette, his hand resting lightly on a shotgun which lies on the table beside him. It’s a Benelli M4, US military semi-automatic. Nothing but the best for Hanson’s boys, right? A shit-eating grin covers Tikau’s face, like he’s having some fine joke at Matiu’s expense, but if he’s laughing, it’s all on the inside. He’s also wearing sunshades, so Matiu can’t tell if the mirth on his face is mirrored in his eyes. He dares a glance at the surveillance monitor on the wall. Nothing. Not even the paddock, just a slab of digital blue. Could be the sky, if the sky hadn’t turned grey. If the camera hadn’t been pointing straight down.

  “Tikau, bro,” Matiu says, relieved that at least here’s someone he knows, and who knows him. Tikau won’t blow his head off and ask his corpse questions later. Hopefully. “Where’s Hanson at?”

  Tikau says nothing, doesn’t even nod.

  “Yeah yeah, you’re fucking hilarious. Killing me. What’s going on?”

  He tries to step through the door, but something holds him back. Cerberus is still on the top step, pulling against him, but the dog could be a thousand miles away. Looks like he’s sitting in a spot of sunlight shining only on him, not on the steps, not on the house. The longer Matiu looks at the dog, the more he feels he’s falling further from him, the space between them unchanged but their worlds torn apart atom by atom. Cerberus presses with all his strength against the step, muscles straining and tongue lolling as his collar bites deeper into his neck.