Graham had never been kneed in the balls so hard in his entire life. Stars filled his vision. He didn’t even remember dropping to the ground. His stomach began retching on its own, causing fresh waves of absolute agony to come crashing down around him. He sputtered for breath as he looked out across the stone floor through water blurred eyes. Molly was reaching for his weapon. He tried to straighten up, to get out of the fetal position he had found himself in, but that was impossible. Molly took his shotgun. She searched around in his pack, taking other things as well.
Her face suddenly filled his vision.
Fucking bitch!
“I really have always kind of liked you Graham,” Molly’s voice was sweet. “No lie. It’s just unfortunate that you would be the one to have caught on to me.”
He tried again to straighten and reached up to grab her. She overpowered him easily in his weakened state, batting his hands away. The pain quickly became too much for him, and he curled back up into a ball.
“Don’t worry sweetie,” Molly’s voice came down on him from above. “Hell heals all wounds. They’ll grow back.”
He heard a splash of water, and just like that, Molly was gone.
Graham still couldn’t stand by the time Michael arrived with Father Klein and Chelsea. He’d managed to crawl into a corner, however.
“What happened?” Michael demanded. “Where’s she gone?”
“We found her hiding place,” Graham managed, trying to focus his eyes. “We think she was in contact with Cris. We think she was feeding him.”
“I know that,” Michael sounded exasperated. “Where is she now?”
“In the river, wherever that goes.”
Michael stepped back suddenly. “God damn. What the hell were you doing? Interrogating her without the Fore’s permission?”
“Michael—” Klein began.
“I know. Sorry, Father.”
Graham managed to sit up and lean back against the wall. “I’ll be good in a minute. I’ll lead a party to search for her. Where’s this branch of the river go?”
“Nowhere,” Michael said.
“What?”
“The ceiling is too low, Graham,” Father Klein explained. “We’ve spent days going down it with ropes, holding our breath. There’s no air in that tunnel.”
“What?” Graham couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“She’s dead Graham,” Michael said. “The river goes nowhere. You let her die.”
Fuck. I was just getting to like her too.
Arturus understood why Galen ordered everyone to hold their breath for sixty second intervals. They were less likely to be spotted underwater, making it less likely for them to pick up any pursuit—whether from La’Ferve or the devils. It made sense, but the task simply wasn’t possible.
The water pulled him along at terrific speeds, slamming him against stone banks and occasionally against the river’s floor. Arturus did his best to keep his count going.
Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three.
He struggled upward, fighting the pull, searching for air. He broke through to the surface and took a breath. That breath was interrupted as the current suddenly pulled him down. Water caught in his lungs. He was coughing beneath the river’s surface and had to ignore his instinct to inhale. He worked his way upward again.
A rock wall hit him, knocking away what little breath he had left. Dazed, he could not figure out which direction was up. He hit another stone wall.
Not the wall, the floor.
He re-orientated himself and swam towards his new up. Wrong again. His chest was convulsing on its own. There were only a few directions left. He tried another, kicking off of the wall he’d just hit. His face broke the surface, and he was suddenly able to feel the air, but that was no relief. His lungs were on fire. He wanted to breathe more but all he could do was cough water out of his lungs.
Desperately, he tried to remember what count he was on.
Forty-five? Forty-six? Forty-seven. Forty-eight.
The river took him again.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. Sixty.
The river had smoothed out after a small waterfall. Arturus’ heart was pounding in his chest, and his vision was shaky. He wanted to take in deep breaths, but the pain was so severe, his need to cough so strong, that he could only manage to inhale shallowly. He struggled towards the bank, surprised at how heavy his limbs were. The room was huge, over a mile across, and it reminded him somewhat of the chamber that housed the Hungerleaf Grove back home. Further down along the river he saw Johnny.
Galen was near him in the beginning. Where’s Galen?
His father had taken more than a few bullets. He could well be dead. The body armor could not have protected him against an entire clip.
Arturus grabbed hold of the bank and was about to cough when his eyes focused on Johnny. The man had a finger held up to his lips. Arturus let go of the bank and allowed himself drift towards the hunter, winning an internal battle between his need to cough and his need to stay silent. The chamber’s ceiling was mostly natural, giving way in only a few places to brickwork laid out by Hell’s architect. Huge veins of ruby ran along the ceiling, shining down onto the river with their red light. This had the unsettling effect of making the river look like it was a river of blood.
He caught onto the ledge beside Johnny. The hunter was terrified. He pointed at his own eyes, and then out across the chamber. Arturus looked, trying to see what had frightened Johnny so badly. He was expecting to see a pack of dyitzu, maybe some hounds, or even a group of Carrion soldiers. At worst, he feared there would be an Icanitzu. He wasn’t prepared to see a Nephilim.
The urge to cough was now so bad that he could feel blood rushing to his face. His chest convulsed, but naked fear kept him quiet.
At such a distance it was difficult to judge how big the thing was. Certainly it was larger than a human. Arturus’ best guess was that it was about fifteen feet tall. It was masculine in nature, with terrifically broad shoulders and long locks of dirty grey hair which obscured its face from view. The hair was the same color as its wings, which were folded behind its back. The dark grey wings gave it an air of authority, as if they were a cape. It walked as a man might, except with softer and more balanced steps.
Has anyone in Harpsborough ever seen one before? Maybe Klein?
Arturus helped Johnny slide into the water. Together they let the river take them into the next chamber.
Aaron, Avery and the priestess lay in the next room. Avery had no weapons on him at all, and Aaron, though he had his rifle, was missing his pack.
I have no pack or weapon either.
“Did you see that?” Avery whispered harshly.
Avery’s eyes were wide with fear. His nostrils flared with his breathing. Arturus nodded as he helped Johnny onto the bank. Aaron helped pull Johnny out of the water and then offered a hand to Arturus. Arturus let himself be dragged out of the river before finally being overcome by a fit of coughing. He coughed so hard and for so long that he almost blacked out. When he recovered, he noticed that he was sitting unnaturally close to the priestess, but he didn’t have the energy to care.
Looking at her, she seemed unable to hurt anyone. She was curled into a ball, shivering with cold and in horrific agony. Arturus could tell that only fear kept her from screaming out.
Is she even on our side?
“Where’s everybody?” Arturus asked.
“Galen’s gone further down to see if we missed anyone,” Aaron answered.
“Is he okay?” Arturus asked.
Avery nodded.
“I think his body armor took most of it,” Aaron said. “He was bleeding a little, but he said a bullet didn’t get him. He said some of his vest was ceramic, and that a few of the pieces got forced into his body.”
Arturus swallowed deeply.
“Don’t worry,” Aaron said, “he’ll be fine.” Then he looked upstream towards the room where they’d seen the Nephilim. “As fine as any of us.
”
Arturus nearly leapt to his feet when he heard the water ripple at the far end of the room. Galen surfaced, coming out of the water with surprising energy. He still had his MP5 and his pack, though both had been thoroughly soaked.
Galen walked briskly up the stone bank. “No sign of Duncan.”
“Jesus,” Aaron whispered harshly.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Galen said.
Arturus’ father stopped next to the priestess. He knelt down beside her and put her head in his lap. He reached into his pack and pulled out a flask.
“What’s that?” Avery asked.
Galen smiled. “Bloodwater.”
He fed some of it to the priestess, who drank it gratefully. It made her cough, though, which made tears stream from her eyes and snot pour from her nose. Galen, being thoughtful, tossed the rest of the flask to Avery. He promptly drained it.
“Don’t worry,” Galen told the priestess, “the pain will recede quickly.”
The priestess looked up at him, grimacing.
“Now, we just saw that Nephilim back there,” Galen said to her softly while running a hand through her hair, “and for us to live, I need to know what’s going on. What’s happening to the Carrion, milady?”
Arturus was struck by how exquisitely beautiful she was. He found himself entranced by the sharp angles of her face. In Galen’s arms, she seemed like only a little girl. Harmless. Completely incapable of the horrors he knew she must have inflicted upon her own people.
“I’m barely more than a Little Lady,” she said, her voice shaky. “Maab doesn’t tell me much. I do know that our western tribes have been coming back, seeking Maab’s protection and asking for places to hide. We’re not able to harvest a lot of the food caches that are farther out in that direction either. Maab’s had some of her best architects come by to advise us. She’s given some us and some of our neighbors serf labor to help shore up their defenses and better camouflage their hiding holes.”
Avery snorted. “I don’t know that we should trust a damn thing this whore says.”
“She speaks the truth,” Galen said.
“When she says west, what way does she mean?” Aaron asked.
Galen frowned and looked up at the stone ceiling. “Assuming that this river is indeed running with the vein, downstream along this river is west. Upstream would be east. Harpsborough is to the east.”
“Curse the Devil,” Avery sputtered.
“We could consider ourselves lucky,” Galen said, laying the priestess’s head down gently upon the stone. “If whatever is building up out here gets too bad, Maab may be forced into action. She may try to migrate her people to the other side of the barrier.”
“Let her,” Avery said, “for all I care.”
“How is that lucky?” Aaron asked.
“Lucky that Harpsborough may get a warning. It’s doubtful Maab will want to find her own resources,” Galen said. “More likely, she’ll want to take yours. The Pole, Macon’s Bend, Harpsborough, Kingsport, Tucumcari, they’re all in danger. None of those settlements have enough men or firepower to resist her, but now you all may at least have warning.”
Aaron nodded. “We’ve got to make it home.”
“Are you up for a swim, priestess?” Galen asked.
“Yes. Can I tell you my name, sir?”
“You may.”
“Kelly.”
“Nice to meet you.” Arturus said.
Avery gave him an angry glance.
“Sir, may I ask for a weapon?” Kelly sat up. “I will use it only as you direct.”
Galen shook his head. “I have not even enough weapons for my own people, Kelly. You may ask again, though, when we get more rifles.”
“The hell she’ll get one!” Avery shouted.
“Shhh,” Aaron warned.
Arturus tore his eyes away from the beautiful girl. “What about Duncan?”
No one answered.
Rick stared thoughtlessly at his half-empty water cup until he was interrupted by the sound of heavy boots on the woodstone bridge outside his home.
Well that’s certainly not Ellen.
Rick’s right hand dropped to his holstered pistol as he stood. The gravel crunched under his soft footsteps as he made his way to the entrance of his home.
“Rick, you in there?” a deep scratchy voice called.
The voice was familiar.
Rick stepped out of his home, right hand ready at his hip.
A tall man, lanky, yet full of muscle, stood on the bridge. The man’s posture was stooped, but not badly enough to be hunchbacked. His hair was dark brown, long and pulled into dreadlocks. Some of the dreadlocks were adorned with beads, others with what looked to be—or at least Rick hoped them to be—the bones of devils. The shirt he wore was so covered in the caked remains of dirt and sweat that Rick could not guess what its original color was. The sleeves had been torn off. The man’s long arms were a mess of scarifications. Odd symbols, perhaps artistic, or maybe in the form of some superstitious totems of protection, were raised on his flesh. A bow, short and recurved, along with a quiver of arrows, was set across his back. At his belt was a tomahawk, made out of hellstone and tied together with what was probably devilgut.
The fellow smiled, an expression perhaps meant for reassurance, but the sight of the man’s teeth, which were filed into sharp points, brought bile up into the back of Rick’s throat. The man’s pants were made of devil-hide which had been poorly scraped and probably improperly cured. Rick could smell the pants from here. Almost everything the man wore seemed to have been made from Hell itself, except for his shoes. Those shoes were black with red trim and were adorned with a Nike swoosh and a logo meant to represent Michael Jordan in flight.
“Hidalgo,” Rick said. “I don’t see much of you these days.”
The man picked a huge flake of dried skin off of his scalp and looked at it. For a second, Rick was horrified by the thought that Hidalgo might eat it, but the man mercifully flicked it over the side of the bridge. The huge piece of dandruff fluttered like a snowflake into the Thames.
“Yes,” the man’s scratchy voice replied. “Since the Fore, they be claiming my portion of the Kingsriver for their peoples, I be hunting on the far side, way downriver of where you be.”
“It wasn’t right of them to move you,” Rick said, sympathetically.
Hidalgo shrugged. “Me, I be not caring which way the wind be blowing. I be not liking to see them starving ladies. I like them fatter, no? So the Fore, they be getting my hunting grounds, and I be getting fatter ladies.”
Rick laughed. “I see your point.”
“I not be coming to banter, or even to be talking about thick-thighed women . . . though I be liking banter and thick-thighed women. I come to show you something. But if you want to see it, you must follow your friend, Hidalgo. Do you have the time?”
“Lead on, my friend.”
Even if Rick had been blind, he was pretty sure he could have followed Hidalgo by smell alone. Why Hidalgo would wear such rank pants bothered him, though.
Oh. He wants to be found. There’s so little to hunt, he’s been using himself as bait.
Hidalgo stopped in a corridor, looking at the bricks, getting his bearings. Rick walked up next to him and got a solid whiff of the man’s pants.
Well, no dyitzu is going to be able to miss him, that’s for sure.
Rick was grateful when Hidalgo continued on. The man brought them across the Kingsriver at Michael’s Crossing, which was about a half mile south of the Bordonelles. They continued on at a fast trot, occasionally coming close to some Carrion barriers. Then they met back up with the Kingsriver in a large chamber which Rick hadn’t been in for about a decade. There was a small room off to the side of this one, and he remembered it having a waterfall. He could hear that waterfall now.
Hidalgo led him towards the sound of the rushing water.
It was as if that room had once been a single, perfectly smooth and cylindric
al tunnel which had then been partially filled with earth. The ceiling itself, the top half of the cylinder, was supported by what appeared to be a series of arches running diagonally along the tunnel. As Rick studied it further, he guessed that the arches were actually a single support structure, and that if the floor were removed, he would be able to see it running in a spiral all the way down the tunnel. For a moment, Rick felt as if he were inside a giant slinky.
A small branch of the Kingsriver ran down the middle of the slinky tunnel for about a hundred feet or so. Hidalgo led him to where the waterfall began. The ceiling continued on, but the floor fell away. Here Rick could see that his guess about the arches actually being a single continuously spiraling stone buttress was correct. The river fell, perhaps fifty feet, as a thin waterfall to the ground below. The impact of the water had carved out a small pool into the rock before continuing on as a trickle that ran down the center of the tunnel. Lying there by that pool at the base of the cliff was a slain corpse.
Hidalgo began climbing down the cliff. “This way!” he shouted over the water.
Rick considered trying to slide down that supporting buttress, but thought better of it, and followed Hidalgo down the cliff.
Hidalgo leapt the last few feet, landing in a crouch next to the fallen body. Rick jumped as well, stumbling slightly as he landed. He checked to make sure he hadn’t sprained his ankle, and when confident that it would support his weight, he turned his attention to the body.
Intuitively, he could tell that something was wrong. He tried to analyze the corpse to find out what that something might be.
It had been hit with two arrows. One of those wounds must have come earlier than the other. The first arrow was still imbedded in the body, but its back half had been broken off. The woodstone it was made out of had become badly rotten, probably from corpsedust. The second arrow seemed fresher, and it had not been broken. Not even the odd fletching—made out of toothpick-like wood slivers—was disturbed.
But there were more wounds than just these. The body’s skull had been cracked open, probably after it had become a corpse, because otherwise, while the head was misshapen, some hematomas should have formed and remained, frozen by the thing’s undeath.
Knight of Gehenna (Hellsong Book 2) Page 6
