Charlaine Harris

by Must Love Hellhounds

  “You’re telling us this conjuring ball is eternal?” Clovache said, her voice almost a growl.

  “Yes.” Crick looked rather proud.

  “Did you make it?”

  “No, of course not. I stole it on commission.”

  “You mean you stole it from the Lord of Hell because someone had asked you to get it?”

  Crick nodded, looking pleased with her acumen.

  “Who?” Batanya had a creeping feeling along her arms. This was getting worse and worse. “Who commissioned the theft?”

  “Belshazzar.”

  “And you went back to Pardua without the ball? Having taken his money?”

  “Taken it and spent it,” Crick said, his foolish face looking rather downcast.

  “We are so fucked,” Clovache said.

  There was a moment of silence while they all considered the truth of this. Belshazzar, a warlord of Pardua, was actually a glorified gangster. (Perhaps all warlords are.) Belshazzar was ruthless, drastic, and notoriously indirect in his punishments. He would enjoy amputating your hand if you stole from him, but he enjoyed even more kidnapping your mother, say, and forcing you to watch as he amputated her hand. Then yours.

  “Hey, we’re Britlingens,” Batanya said bracingly. “Not only are we made of tough stuff, but we can hardly be blamed for what our client has done. Britlingens are hired hands, not the responsible parties.”

  “True,” Clovache said. “Our Collective would intervene, if they had any notion of where we were. Trovis wouldn’t pay ransom for us, but Flechette might. I’m not so very partial to my left hand, anyway. And maybe we can buy some time by persuading Belshazzar to kill Crick here, first.”

  “Thanks, bodyguards-sworn-to-protect-me,” said Crick, somewhat coldly, “but let’s leave the discussion of my possible demise for later. Right now, we’ve got a conjuring ball to retrieve.”

  “Did you hide it or was it captured?” Batanya asked.

  “I hid it,” Crick said. “I seized a moment of solitude.”

  “Where?”

  He peered at the map. “Here,” he said, and indicated a tunnel to the north of the one where they crouched. There was a fair amount of walking in between.

  “If you had given the witches this map, they could have landed us right there,” Clovache muttered.

  “Yes, but then we would have landed in the barracks. So that seemed like a poor choice to me.”

  “You hid the ball in the barracks of the soldiers of the King of Hell?”

  He shrugged. “It was where I was.”

  “How’d . . . No. Let’s focus. Unless you have a better idea, we’ll work our way closer and see what our chances are.” It was obvious from Batanya’s tone that she considered those chances slim to nil. “Lucky for you I don’t have children, Crick, or I’d be cursing you in their names.”

  “Oh my goodness, that’s hard to believe,” Crick said blandly. “That you don’t have children, I mean. What could the men of Spauling be thinking of?”

  “Slitting your throat, most likely,” Batanya said. “I know that’s crossed my mind.”

  “What is the law?” Crick didn’t sound at all worried.

  “The client’s word,” Clovache said, but Batanya could tell it hurt her to say it.

  “Let’s get moving. Stop the jawing.” Batanya wanted to correct Clovache’s attitude. That was her job.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Clovache muttered, by way of apology. “This is a very bad mission.”

  In a few seconds, Clovache’s dark outlook was validated. Just as they were edging forward to take a gander out the mouth of their tunnel, they heard something moving in the darkness behind them.

  It was something that was dragging itself along.

  “It’s a slug,” Crick said urgently. “We must move now or be stuck to the tunnel walls in a coat of slug goo. Or we’ll be absorbed.”

  They hadn’t the faintest idea what Crick was talking about, but he’d been there before and they hadn’t. Also, the smell that preceded the dragging sound was strong enough to make even the hardened bodyguards gag. Batanya checked to make sure the passage was clear, and the three darted out into the main tunnel, turning left; Batanya figured that was north. They left the dragging noise and the awful smell behind them, so evidently the slugs didn’t move very swiftly. But after a few minutes, Batanya heard footsteps coming at a fast clip. At her hand gesture, the three leaped into a very small side tunnel, much narrower than the one that had been their first refuge.

  This tunnel turned out to be occupied by three soldiers doing the nasty, and in this instance that was no euphemism. Since they were from different species, this was an unattractive and complicated undertaking. Before Crick’s involuntary sound of disgust had cleared his throat, before Clovache had quite figured out how they’d all hooked up, Batanya had silenced the soldiers permanently with her short sword.

  It was hard to say in the dim lighting that was only a step above darkness, but Batanya, cleaning her sword on the trousers of one deceased soldier, felt Crick might even look a bit green.

  “Thank you,” he said, after a moment.

  “Don’t mention it,” she said.

  They crouched in the gloom with the corpses, Clovache glancing at the bodies from time to time in curiosity. “Have you ever seen that?” she asked Batanya, pointing to the conjunction of a greenish brown snake-headed humanoid creature and a wolfwoman. Batanya shook her head. “This job is always an education,” she said.

  After a few minutes, it seemed apparent no one had heard the muted groans and gurgles of the dying soldiers; or perhaps if any passerby had, the noises had been perceived as arising from their activity. At any rate, no one came to investigate.

  Batanya knew it was only a matter of time before they came face-to-face with someone who would challenge them. The traffic in the tunnel made it obvious that they were getting closer to the hub of Hell’s activities. Several times various beings passed the mouth of their little hidey-hole, and each time the three held their breath until the footsteps had passed (if the creatures had feet). One of the slugs oozed by, and Clovache and Batanya got to observe firsthand how the creatures undulated through the tunnels, the slime oozing from their underbellies and sides to grease their passage. This slime hardened within seconds. Now Clovache understood why the floor of the tunnel was so smooth and even; the passage of the slugs, the largest of which was perhaps ten feet long and as big around as a medium barrel, had led to a gradual buildup of the substance. There was a coating on the bottom half of the walls, too, but it wasn’t as thick and glassy as the layer on the floor.

  “If we’d known, we could have brought metal cleats,” Batanya said practically. “Perhaps someone should have told us.”

  Crick was wise enough to keep his response to himself. He just grinned at Batanya in a foolish way. “There’ll be less traffic at nighttime,” he whispered. “We’ll have to wait it out.”

  Some hours passed, and the activity in the tunnels died down. The three spent the passing time trying to ignore the smell of both the heaped bodies and the dark area beyond them at the end of the tunnel, perhaps five yards farther. The area had evidently been used as a latrine in the recent past, and though the functional amenity was handy, it was also unpleasant to be around for any length of time—and all they had was lengthy time. Very lengthy. The two Britlingens dozed, ate a couple of energy bars, gave Crick another, and drank sparingly. Presumably there were underground springs somewhere; almost all living beings needed fluid. But they hadn’t seen one, and the map showed only the tunnels.

  “At least we haven’t seen any animals,” Clovache said in a bright whisper. “I wonder how they supply themselves with meat?”

  “There are pens of cows and other edible creatures, kept pretty far distant from the rest of Lucifer’s palace,” Crick said. “Why are you glad we haven’t seen animals?”

  “They might bark,” Clovache said quickly. In the dim light that pervaded the tun
nels, which varied quite a bit from one tunnel to the next, she looked as if she wished she hadn’t spoken.

  Crick looked curious, which was probably his natural condition. “You wanted to avoid dogs in particular?” he said. “Why?”

  There was an awful moment of silence.

  “Because this large scar on my face was caused by a dog. I got it on my first mission,” Batanya said, with no inflection at all. “We were protecting a guy who bred attack dogs. His breeding and training methods were famous. A rival of his, as a practical joke, bribed one of our client’s kennel boys to feed the dogs an irritant that acted on their nervous system.”

  “How did that turn out?”

  Batanya shrugged and looked away.

  “Not very well,” Clovache said. “I hadn’t finished training. A man named Damon was Batanya’s junior. This alleged practical joke cost him his life.”

  “Did your client live?” Crick asked Batanya directly.

  She met his eyes. “Yes,” she said. “He lived, though he lost a leg and one hand. Damon died after four hours. I got the scar.”

  That was end of all conversation for a long time.

  Batanya gradually became convinced that it was night. It was hard to tell with no change in the light, but it felt like night to her. She gave Clovache a hand signal. After a quick check of all their accoutrements, the bodyguards prepared to move. According to the legend on Crick’s handy-dandy map, they were about a mile from their objective as a crow flies, if a crow would be demented enough to navigate the tunnels of Hell.

  Clovache glared at the map, which in some ways was a godsend, in other ways completely useless. Fumbling their way ignorantly would have been nearly suicidal, but the map would have been so much more valuable if it had shown the rooms that must be lying somewhere. Presumably, in this huge underground empire, there was a throne room for the king, a refectory of some kind, a prison, an audience chamber, and so on. As it was, they knew where they had to go in order to retrieve Crick’s left-behind treasure, but they had no idea what they might encounter on the way there.

  “It’s not like we ever knew what to expect anyway,” Clovache said to Batanya, who nodded. They’d been partners long enough to have abbreviated conversations.

  As if her words had been a self-fulfilling prophecy, they rounded the next bend to find two armed guards blocking the way.

  “We heard you coming a mile away,” said the one who was least humanoid. He was a not a demon. In fact, Batanya had no idea what his origin was. He was quadrupedal, gray, and clothed in a material like cobwebs. He had a device in his hand that looked like the frame for a tennis racket. With a dexterous motion, he swung the thing toward them, and a large-weave net flowed out of the frame to land over Batanya and Crick, who was right behind her.

  Clovache fled, rightly figuring that someone needed to stay free. To the hoots and jeers of the two guards, Batanya unsheathed her short sword and began sweeping the blade from side to side. To her vast irritation, the strands of the net stuck to the sword and moved with it. The net was so elastic that it didn’t provide enough resistance to be severed.

  “Shit!” she said. From the corner of her eye she saw that Crick had adapted and was working with his dagger. He was having better luck with his smaller blade than she was with her sword, so she pulled out her own knife and began cutting. The second guard, a human who looked quite a bit like Trovis, had drawn some kind of handgun, a hazardous decision in a rock tunnel. Since a ricochet was just as likely to wound her or her client as it was to hit the one who deserved it, Batanya threw her dagger through a rent she’d just made in the net and killed the Trovis-like human, who gurgled dramatically before he crumpled to the floor of the tunnel. There was a certain flash of satisfaction in the moment.

  The net-thrower seemed startled that things weren’t going his way, and he wasn’t keeping the net mended quickly enough to contain Crick and Batanya. Crick was working very quickly, which was good, since Batanya had been forced to return to using her sword. She’d changed her technique to the more effective one of stabbing through the net in short jabs, rather than trying to sweep a large cut through the strands.

  Batanya was startled to see something long and dark slide past her on the tunnel floor. By the time she realized it was Clovache, the other woman was on her feet and plunging her neotaser into the mass of the net-throwing thing’s body. A good jolt of electricity will interrupt almost any being’s thought processes, and it had a dramatic effect on their gray enemy. All four legs shot out and began skidding around on the slippery surface of the tunnel. The effect was weirdly like dancing, but when Clovache delivered another jolt, it became evident that the creature was in its death throes. It collapsed in a spidery heap, twitched a couple of times, and lay still.

  “That was brilliant,” Batanya said, trying not to pant.

  “I took a running start, threw myself down, and away I went. It was just like sliding over ice.” Clovache looked rather pleased at the compliment. “Especially at the sides of the floor where no one walks.”

  Crick was staring at them wild-eyed while Batanya cut the remnants of the tattered net away from their limbs.

  “You all right?” Clovache asked him, clapping him on the shoulder by way of encouragement.

  “Yes,” Crick said. He took off the idiotic goggles. He had quite sharp blue eyes underneath them. Without the sparkly distraction, his face was bony and agreeable and intelligent. “I want to say right now, you two are worth every penny I paid.”

  “Say that after you get back alive,” Batanya advised him, as Clovache deposited the neotaser into the pocket designed for it. After the slide across the slug slick, her summer armor was a little grubby, but completely intact. Clovache’s hood had come off in the fracas, and she tugged it back over her matted hair. (“If you have an iota of vanity, this is not the job for you,” the sergeant who’d recruited her from her home village had said. Clovache, like all the young recruits, had lied.)

  “We have to get out of here fast,” Batanya said, and without another word, they all stepped over the bodies and hurried down the tunnel. With a glance at the map, Crick indicated a dark opening to the side, again to the left, and they ducked into it, none too soon. Howling, another gray quadrupedal creature loped across the spot they’d just vacated.

  Batanya wondered if the gray creatures had some kind of mind-link. Perhaps the dead one had sent some kind of signal when he was wounded.

  After a long moment, they heard an eerie wailing. The second soldier had found his dead buddy. This was going to draw all kinds of attention to the area, and the faster they relocated, the better.

  Batanya made the punching gesture with her fist that meant “move out,” and they hurried away from the wailing. This time they were going west, following Crick’s gestures. This tunnel was particularly slick, and they had to pick their way very carefully to avoid landing on their asses. The unpitted glassiness of the slugs’ hardened secretions argued that this passage was not much traveled by the minions of Lucifer; that was the good part. It also argued that the slugs used it a lot. That, of course, was the bad part. Batanya had a momentary image of being beneath one of the slugs as it moved with its slow, sure, rippling motion. She could feel the goo clogging her nose and mouth until she couldn’t breathe. She would harden to the floor after the slug had passed.

  Then she shook herself vigorously. Letting one’s imagination take over was an indulgence that sapped the energy of a warrior. She glanced over her shoulder at Crick, who was shuddering. Maybe he’d had the same mental image.

  From behind him, Clovache hissed, “Hurry up!”

  Their luck held for ten frantic minutes. Then they heard the dragging sound of an approaching slug, and there was no handy escape hatch. In fact, there was not an intersecting tunnel opening as far as the eye could see. If there was one around the next bend, they simply couldn’t count on reaching it before they met the oncoming slug.

  “Back,” Batanya ordered. Abrup
tly, they were hurrying as fast retracing their steps as they had been going forward. The first tunnel mouth they spotted also contained an approaching slug; it was so close to issuing forth into their main tunnel that its antennae were waving in their direction. They kept on going, hearing the relentless progress of the larger creature behind them, until they spotted another opening, a much smaller one.

  It was like a baby tunnel, but it represented safety at that moment, and they dove into it with all haste. They had to crawl in on their knees. At least it was extensive enough to hold all three of them.

  “The slugs don’t seem to be sentient,” Batanya said, keeping her voice low. “That is, I don’t think they’re smart enough to be working for the King of Hell. I think the slugs made the tunnels.”

  Crick said, “Lucifer adapted the idea from the slugs. When the surface planet was growing uninhabitable, he began exploring down here; or at least, he sent his creatures and hirelings down here. Many of them died because they underestimated the sheer power of the slugs. The nasty things don’t think much, but they’ve got very strong instincts, and they can attack with surprising speed when they’re angry.”

  This was a flood of information. “What makes them angry?” Clovache asked.

  “Anything blocking their way,” Crick said.

  “What do they eat?”

  “Anything blocking their way.” Crick looked apologetic. “They seem to take nutrients from the soil. But when they run over someone, they generally pause on top of them, and suck up everything they can.”

  That was much worse than Batanya’s mental image, and she felt quite sick for just a moment. “Then we’d better not get under them,” she said, in the toughest voice she could manage. “Why don’t Lucifer’s warriors clear them out of the tunnels? Surely they’re the ones in the greatest danger?”