by Tim Waggoner
Looking relieved to still be alive, the satyr turned away from the door and hurried to rejoin his fellow soldiers.
"What kind of weapon is that?" Bogdan asked.
I didn't have an answer for him, for I'd never seen anything quite like it before. There was an underlying metal framework that formed a pyramid shape, and into this framework demons slid metal panels with mouths attached to them. They were real mouths, not artificial constructs, surgically removed and affixed to the panels. It didn't take a genius to sense the maniacal hand of Victor Baron behind the device.
"It's a Blastphemer," Shamika said. "It's built from the bodies of dead sinners and focuses their negative energy for use as an offensive weapon."
We looked at her, and she smiled. "I know a lot of stuff, remember?"
Once the mouth panels were all in place, another demon came forward carrying a black sphere the size of an overinflated basketball, which he placed atop the point of the pyramid. Though there was no obvious parts to connect the sphere to the pyramid, it balanced on the point perfectly and remained there.
"That sphere contains distilled negative energy from the sinners' black hearts," Shamika said. "It's what gives the Blastphemer its power." I turned to Bogdan. "Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
"No. It's Demonkin magic, not Arcane, and it looks to have been technologically augmented as well."
"Do you think they'll be able to breach the Midnight Watch's defenses with it?" I asked.
"I have no idea," Bogdan said. "The building is old, and its stonework was suffused with magic long before Devona bought the place, and she's improved the defenses since then. But if Klamm – I mean Gregor – is as smart as you say he is, I doubt he'd send the demons to fetch you unless he knew the Blastphemer would allow them to break through our defenses."
"We need to assume they'll be able to get in then," I said. "There's no point in trying to stop them." "You can't give yourself up!" Shamika said.
"But if Matt goes along with them, maybe he can reach Varvara and tell her who and what Klamm really is…" Bogdan began.
Varney shook his head. "Whatever Gregor does, he won't take Matt to Demon's Roost. He won't risk Varvara discovering the truth."
"I can use my magic to conceal us all," Bogdan said. "I'll conjure an object that will make us invisible, then as long as we remain very still, the demons won't be able to find us once they break in."
"They'll have devices both magical and technological to help them search the place," I said. "If we're here, they'll find us."
"So we need to leave," Shamika said.
"Right. But we can't take Tavi with us. He's not up to traveling yet, and frankly, he'd just slow us down." I turned to Bogdan. "Go to Tavi's room and use your magic to conceal both of you. I'll draw the demons away from the Midnight Watch, and with any luck, they won't even come inside. After all, it's me they want. If I'm not here, they should have no reason to come in."
Bogdan looked as if he wanted to protest, but I added, "Tavi's our friend. We have to take care of him." Bogdan didn't look happy about it, but he nodded. "Good luck, Matt." He then hurried off to Tavi's room.
I didn't know how much time remained before the demons would start firing the Blastphemer, but I figured we didn't have long.
I turned to Varney. "Devona and I added a secret passage to the building not too long ago. It leads to…" I was under a geis not to speak directly about the Underwalk, and so I said, "- an alternate travel route that few people in Nekropolis know about. Shamika should, though." I looked at her and she nodded. "Good. Shamika, I want you to take Varney and-"
The video feed from the front security camera was still playing on the Mind's Eye set, and I saw a figure step out of the alley across the street. A figure that looked remarkably like me.
He waved the stump of his right wrist and called out cheerfully to the demons, "You guys looking for me?"
The demons all turned to look in "my" direction, and one standing next to the Blastphemer spoke a command and pointed at "me." The devices' mouths began speaking words that were so unholy that the Mind's Eye refused to transmit them as anything other than harsh static. The black sphere atop the Blastphemer began to pulse with dark energy, and then a beam of power shot forth, streaked across the street toward the alley, and struck my doppelganger in the chest. He stiffened, let out an agonized cry as if his very soul was in pain, and then collapsed into a puddle of black goo.
The Blastphemer's beam winked out, and for a moment the demons simply stood and stared. Then one of the braver ones stepped forward and examined the ebon puddle that my doppelganger had been reduced to. He leaned down, sniffed the goo several times, then stood, turned back to his fellow soldiers, and gave them a thumbs-up. The squad then broke into cheers, and their work done, they set about dismantling the Blastphemer.
"Did I overdo it?" Shamika asked. "I was afraid the death-cry was a bit much, but I couldn't resist."
I remembered what Shamika had told us about how she could make herself look like whatever she wished. She'd created a decoy resembling me and had sacrificed it to throw the demons off my trail.
"I thought your component pieces had to touch each other to communicate," I said.
"That's the easiest way, but we can communicate by low-level telepathy if we're close enough," she said. "Good thing I did that. The Blastphemer packs quite a punch. That stung like hell!"
I couldn't help smiling at her choice of words. "I think that's the general idea."
Devona and I had built the entrance to the Underwalk in one of the storage rooms, so after checking on Tavi one last time and saying goodbye to Bogdan, then Shamika, Varney, and I went into the storage room, through the trapdoor, and down the ladder into the Underwalk. An electric cart was parked by the ladder, a ramshackle device cobbled together from cast-off odds and ends, some mechanical, some organic, and some indeterminate.
Varney eyed the cart skeptically, but once he saw it held together when Shamika and I got on, he climbed in after us and took a seat in the back. I started the cart, turned on the headlights, and we headed down the tunnel. It wasn't very wide or tall, but there was room enough for two carts to pass by one another, if only just.
"The cart may not look like much, but it works just fine," I said. "Its makers abhor waste, and they recycle everything. Their tech may not be pretty – and its smell may leave something to be desired – but it's always functional."
"What makers?" Varney asked. "And what is this place?"
"I can't tell you," I said. "I've been magically sworn to secrecy. If I even try to tell you, my tongue will explode and take my head with it – quite literally."
"But I can tell you," Shamika said. "These tunnels are called the Underwalk, and they were created by the Dominari so that they could move throughout the city undetected. The Underwalk exists in all five Dominions, but you can't use it to cross from one Dominion to the other because Phlegethon blocks the way. You still have to use the bridges for that. The Dominari tried to dig under Phlegethon, but its fire extends downward for so many miles that eventually they gave up."
Varney's eyebrows rose. "The Dominari? I didn't know you associated with criminals, Matt. Then again, you were imprisoned in Tenebrus for a time." His tone clearly indicated his disapproval.
"I was imprisoned on a false charge, and I received a full pardon," I said. "But don't worry that Galm is going to be upset that his future son-in-law has ties to the Dominari. All the Darklords know about them. Dis too. They couldn't do business in the city without the Lords' approval, tacit though it might be. The Dominari operate a literal underground economy, and whatever you or I might think about their activities, they're necessary for the city's survival."
Most people know the Dominari as Nekropolis' version of the mob, and that's true enough as it goes, but there's more to it than that. Nekropolis is as self-sustaining as a city can be, producing its own goods and services for the most part, and importing anything else it might need from Ear
th. But the Dominari fill in the cracks in the city's economy, and without them, Nekropolis couldn't go on. As a former cop, I'm uncomfortable with the situation, to say the least, but as a pragmatist, I understand it.
"And your connection to them is…" Varney asked.
"Something I can't talk about. The tongue thing again, remember? But I'm no criminal, if that's what you're asking."
He thought about this for a moment and finally nodded. "Very well. I've observed you long enough to believe you're a trustworthy man. I'll accept your word on that matter."
"What about you?" I said. "How did you get to be a secret agent for Lord Galm?"
He shrugged. "There's little to tell. As you might imagine, Galm has many servants, and he uses us as he sees fit. I have a talent for pretending to be someone I'm not. Centuries ago, when I was human, I dreamed about being an actor, and in a way, I suppose I've become one."
"I'm no theatre critic, but as far as I'm concerned, you played the part of an annoying airheaded cameraman to perfection."
He smiled, showing a hint of fang. "Thank you."
"Where are we going?" Shamika said, sounding more like a kid eager to get on with the next fun activity than an ancient alien entity struggling to defeat the darker half of her personality. Maybe in a way this was fun for her. I wondered what it was like, observing the Darkfolk for four hundred years, getting to know them in intimate detail, but never actually being part of their lives. Never actually living. I couldn't imagine how lonely it must've been.
"I've been thinking about that," I said. "If we're going to find Devona, we need to confront Gregor. And since he's masquerading as General Klamm right now, that means we need to get into Demon's Roost. But we have to do so on our terms, not his."
"And there's the little matter of a demon army standing between us and him," Varney pointed out.
"Correct. Which means that we're going to need help. The kind of help that specializes in dealing with Darkfolk in general, and demons in particular."
Varney's organic eye widened in surprise. "You can't mean…"
I smiled. "Yep. We're going to pay a visit on the Hidden Light."
FIFTEEN
But first we had a stop to make.
We drove through tunnels for the better part of twenty minutes, taking turns as necessary, and passing other carts as we traveled. The other carts were usually laden with cargo of one sort or another, almost always packed away in anonymous brown cardboard boxes. The carts were driven by vermen – human-sized bipedal rats – though they were patchwork Frankenstein versions of the creatures, dead who'd been returned to life so they could keep on working. Like I said, the Dominari loathe waste.
The "repurposed dead" ignored us as we passed. I had no idea if they recognized me or if they simply assumed that anyone traveling the Underwalk belonged there because the Dominari were so careful about whom they revealed their subterranean tunnel system to. All I know is that ever since I accepted the geis that makes it impossible for me to talk about the Underwalk, I can travel it without anyone challenging me.
As I steered the cart with my one remaining hand, I tried not to worry about Devona. I reminded myself that she was more than capable of taking care of herself. She was intelligent, strong, emotionally resilient, and she had her psychic abilities to draw on. Gregor might be a powerful adversary, but he wouldn't harm Devona if he needed her, and the longer she remained alive, the more chance she'd have to find a way to escape or, at the very least, contact me. It helped that several times during the trip I felt the weird phantom sensation of my missing right hand moving. I knew the sensations were just my imagination, but since my hand was with Devona, feeling them was like sharing a connection with her and it was a comfort, strange though it might be.
Eventually we came to a ladder, and I stopped the cart and turned it off. A light in the ceiling came on to illuminate the ladder for us, and we climbed up and opened the trapdoor. The door opened easily for me, though the security spells on it would've stopped Shamika and Varney, and probably reduced them to ashes in the process. We entered a basement filled with crates and barrels, and shelves containing bottles of wine and various other types of alcohol.
"Where are we?" Varney asked.
Shamika answered for me. "This is Skully's basement," she said.
Varney thought for a moment. "Isn't Skully's a dive bar on the western edge of the Sprawl? I've never been there, of course," he added, as if it was important to make that point. A lot of the older Bloodborn tend to put on aristocratic airs, and I found myself actually missing Varney's hippy cameraman persona. That Varney might have been irritating, but at least he wasn't a snob.
"Well, you won't be able to say that after today," I told him. I turned to Shamika. "Do you know if Gregor is aware of what we're doing?" I wasn't sure how the split personality thing worked with Shamika and Gregor, but I gathered that one side of their group mind didn't know what the other side was thinking. So while that meant Shamika couldn't tell us what Gregor's ultimate plan was, it also meant he couldn't read Shamika's thoughts and automatically know what we were up to. But that didn't mean he couldn't simply observe us, and I knew from experience that Gregor had eyes and ears everywhere in Nekropolis.
"Gregor has trouble getting his insects into the Underwalk," Shamika said. "As do I. The Dominari work very hard to keep us out. We always manage to get a few in, but I didn't sense Gregor's presence in any of the carts we passed." She paused and looked around Skully's basement. "He's not down here, either." She looked up at the ceiling. "Nor is he upstairs. I'm doing my best to keep him busy throughout the city by creating other copies of you for him to follow. Right now, there are several dozen Matts running around the Sprawl, and they all have Shamikas and Varneys with them." She grinned. "I made them right after the first duplicate was destroyed by the Blastphemer. I knew Gregor was watching, and he wouldn't be fooled by my duplicate. He could sense what I'd done. So I decided to distract him with even more duplicates." She paused. "Is that OK? Should I have asked first?"
Maybe there was a reason she'd chosen the form of a young girl beyond trying to pose as Papa Chatha's niece, I thought. The more I got to know Shamika, the more childlike she seemed. Maybe in a sense she was a child. The Watchers might be ancient as a race, but the personality that called itself Shamika had only recently emerged. And like a child, she was eager for an adult's approval.
"You did great," I said, and she beamed.
We headed upstairs and entered the bar proper. Skully doesn't believe in wasting money on decor. The nine-foot-high front door is solid iron, and there are no windows for customers to break – not because Skully cares about his patrons' safety, but because it's a pain in the ass to keep replacing glass all the time. The walls are brick and the floor concrete, which makes mopping up bloodstains less of a chore. The solid oak tables are bolted to the floor, and the wooden chairs are cheap and easy to replace. Darkfolk tend to get more than a little rowdy when they overindulge, and Skully has learned from experience that the best way to protect his place is to make it hard to destroy.
Beyond beating the shit out of your fellow bargoers, the only entertainment at Skully's comes from a jukebox sitting in the corner. As we entered, the three heads bolted to the top of the machine saw me and started singing a rendition of Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party." The scars, fresh cuts, and bruises on the singing heads showed that Skully's customers enjoyed their potential as targets more than they appreciated their musical offerings.
Skully's clientele glanced our way as we entered, either out of curiosity or to size us up as possible threats. I recognized a few of them – Suicide King, Patchwork the Living Voodoo Doll, and Sally O'Sorrows – and nodded a curt greeting, but I didn't head over to anyone's table to chat. I was looking for someone who might be able to tell me what I needed to know, and I found him sitting at the bar, talking with a young woman I also knew.
Before we could start toward them, the front door opened and a teenage boy with
mussed hair and a pouty expression walked in. He had the elongated canines of the Bloodborn, but his skin gave off a glimmering sheen.
A couple of bald, overly muscled, heavily tattooed vampires clad in scuffed leather snarled at the sight of the luminous teen. They rose from their chairs, stalked toward him, flanked him on either side, grabbed hold of his arms, lifted him off the floor, and started escorting him back toward the door.
"Hey, take it easy, guys!" the teen whined. "It's not my fault I sparkle!"
The biker vampires laughed as they left the bar, and the iron door slammed shut ominously behind them.
The three of us then headed over to the bar, and I took the empty seat next to Carl, leaving Varney and Shamika to stand. The seat on the other side of me was occupied by a gill man wearing a diving helmet with rubber hoses attached to a humming machine he wore like a backpack. The helmet was filled with murkish, vaguely luminescent water, and I knew the gill man's H2O was laced with tangleglow, a Darkfolk-created drug too strong for human consumption. The gill man looked a little wobbly on his chair, and I knew if he didn't dial back the amount of tangleglow his device was pumping out, he'd end up in a coma before the night was over.
I ignored the gill man and turned to the older man sitting on the other side of me. His thinning reddish hair was covered by a straw porkpie hat, and he wore an ancient wrinkled seersucker suit that he claimed was white but was really more on the yellowish side.
"Hey, Carl. How are things?"
Carl didn't look from his beer. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket, removed a small folded newspaper, and tossed it down on the counter in front of me. I unfolded and smoothed it out. It was the latest edition of the Night Stalker News, the alternative paper of which Carl is the sole owner, reporter, photographer, printer, and distributor. Today's headline read: RICHTER AND KANTI STOP HYDE PLAGUE. Accompanying the story were photos of Devona, Darius, and me battling Hydes as we fought to reach the House of Dark Delights.
