Some of them were Goodwell. Some, even worse. Those few times when the light caught an outstretched branch, all the twigs and leaves fluttering spastically like the needle-thin legs of some colossal chittering insect...
But this time, it was just the car waiting at the far end of the street. She squinted into the black as the homeless person moaned at her feet. "Fitch..."
Fitch was at her back, rucksack hiked up on his shoulders. "What's buggin' you?"
"Look at that car."
"Empty. But won't be for long."
By their feet, the homeless figure mumbled, "I'm cold." Bare fingers, blue with the chill, grasped at Fitch's pants. "I need a dollar-"
"Get inside." Fitch held the door open long enough for the hobo to crawl on hands and knees into the Mission. "This town eats up just about everyone, doesn't it?"
"But not you."
"Difference is, I keep moving." Fitch stepped into the street, grimacing at the first splash of rain on his face. "You'd better too."
She took the hint, sprinting into the rain with her coat pulled up over her head. She risked a glance left at the car as she reached the safety of the alley and the stolen Audi. Fitch was right - the car was empty. Thank God.
Glass clinked in the trunk as she slammed the door. Her hands trembled on the seatbelt. The clock on the dash read just before ten. Four hours until she was home. Four hours to New York. Her entire life waiting. Her mother who'd be mad with worry, her father with his nails gnawed down to bloody meat.
New York. The smell of it, the churning traffic, the cracked sidewalks and the homeless banging their plastic cups. A hand around her waist, the weight of the ring on her finger. Whose hand, whose ring?
It didn't matter. She'd be home again. Safe.
But there was something weighing on her. As Fitch climbed behind the wheel she asked, "What did you mean, what happened last time?"
"Huh?"
"With Rosenfeld. You said, remember what happened last time."
Fitch hesitated, but only for a moment. "When you got taken by that man, Bo. I asked Rosenfeld to help. She didn't. Almost got you killed."
"That so?"
"It wasn't her fault. She was scared. Thought it'd bounce back on her."
"She doesn't seem the sort to get scared."
"Everyone has a breaking point."
Kimberly didn't push the issue. She could tell a lie when she heard it, even when it came from practised lips. There'd be time to drill down to the truth later... Or hell, if Fitch's plan worked, there'd be no need. She'd be home and Fitch would stay behind, a million miles away for all she cared.
She snapped the seatbelt closed. "Let's get the hell out of here."
The Audi 5000 pulled out cautiously, nosing free of the alley, rain spattering off the hood. The lights were off, like the driver was trying to stay invisible against the sheeting storm. The rear lights blinked. Tires squealed on wet asphalt.
They were gone.
Behind them, the door to the Rosenfeld Mission eased closed.
They followed the map.
There were seven distinct entry points into the tangled mine shafts - five in the quarry on the north side of the Pentacost river and two more in the surrounding hills. Fitch had picked one of those seven seemingly at random. When Kimberly asked why, all he'd offered was that he'd passed the area before. That it felt right in a way the quarry didn't.
It was easier not to ask questions. She got the impression she wouldn't be satisfied with the answers anyway.
A low wooden bridge, canting as its supports rotted into the earth, took them across the Pentacost River. "Mind you don't get your feet wet," Fitch whispered, and Kimberly shied away from the sunken places where the beams had sagged below the waterline. The moors on the far side of the river were more puddle than earth. What little grass had found a foothold was stiff and sharp, scraping red lines across Kimberly's calves.
Far to the west, a spot of orange light twinkled against the hills. "That's the convent," Fitch said.
"It looks... friendly."
"Funny, isn't it? A little candlelight always lures them in." Fitch spat between his feet. "Past midnight already. Double-time, soldier."
The slow sweep of the flashlight beam across the muddy earth was steady, metronomic. Fitch was silent, his gaze on the path ahead. The moor was so quiet that Kimberly could hear the bubbling of the Pentecost River behind them. A bird passed overhead, invisible but for the slap of wings on air. Kimberly closed her eyes. She could almost have imagined she was out hiking with her father, wriggling their way through a low valley, boots sinking deep into the muck as morning mist settled on the sod.
Almost. Some things she couldn't ignore. The smell growing stronger with every step, a thick sour smell like food left to spoil in an old refrigerator. The way the mud grasped at her boots like it was trying to suck her down. The squirming in her chest as she remembered what Goodwell had told her in the Department of Records. You're not the first and you won't be the last.
Not the first... what? Friend? Companion? Dupe? Or was Goodwell just messing with her head? He knew he couldn't drag her back to Peter in cuffs, so he'd make her doubt herself. Walk away from the only people who had half a clue what was going on.
That had to be it. Goodwell was screwing with her. She had to believe that much. Because if he was telling the truth-
"Hold up."
It'd come out of the darkness without warning: a hillock where tufts of stringy brown grass bowed in the muck, roots barely deep enough to hold against the wind. In the centre of the hillock was a black patch a few yards across - a hole dug into the earth, tall enough for a man to squeeze into if he stooped, framed by stout wooden beams and boarded over with old planks turned spongy by the rain.
"This is it." Fitch passed Kimberly the flashlight and hefted his crowbar. "Once more unto the breach, or something like that."
Wood splintered easily beneath the weight of iron. With every plank came a cloud of mould, spores thick in Kimberly's nose until the rain washed her face clean.
She wiped her eyes with her free hand. The flashlight beam bounced, picking out a cairn of white stones by the entrance, a teetering pile as high as Kimberly's waist. "Is this a..." She licked her lips. "A holy place?"
"Maybe." Fitch grunted as he levered another board free, exposing a hole big enough for a child to crawl through. Through the gap she could make out sloped dirt walls reinforced with iron, worming onward into darkness. "Holy is different things to different people. Holy to the beast, maybe. To us..."
He dropped the crowbar and put his boot into the rest of the beams, shattering them beneath his weight. "Might as well make some noise," he said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Betcha a dollar they know we're coming."
"Way to think positive."
"I do think positive! Every day I wake up with my limbs attached is a good day. You want me to dance and click my heels?"
Kimberly set the molotovs down long enough to pry back one final board. The hole was still only just large enough for an adult to creep through with their head brushing the dirt ceiling, but it still seemed far too big, too... hungry. Like if she stumbled in that mineshaft she'd be swept along by the flexing of throaty muscles, borne down into the belly of the beast like Jonah or Pinocchio.
And the wind was driving her crazy. It barely stirred the hem of her coat but it moaned in her ears like a graveyard dirge. There wasn't a square inch of her skin that wasn't pebbled with goosebumps.
This whole place was wrong. The moor, the mineshaft, the hillock, everything. But all she could bear to say was, "Not the nicest place you've taken me."
Fitch nodded. "Wishing I'd brought a bigger army."
"I wasn't the one who wanted to come." She hiked the sack of molotovs higher on her back, wincing as the bottles clinked together. She knew there was no way they could ignite without the touch of Fitch's lighter, but even so, it was deeply unsettling to be carrying what was essentially a tub of napalm on her
shoulder. No wonder Fitch hadn't volunteered. "Why here?"
"Say again?"
"I mean... why this shaft? Any kid could've busted through that. You said all the other entrances were closed by rockfalls, so..." She swallowed her own rising panic. "It was like they wanted us to come in."
"Maybe," said Fitch. "Or maybe they wanted an easy way out."
That wasn't what Kimberly wanted to hear. She felt drunk, the whole world pivoting around her as she tried to keep on her feet. It was the stink of peat, the way the stars shone like knife blades, and the wind, God, the way it mourned between the peaks...
No. It wasn't the wind at all. It was deeper, below the rock, vibrating between her feet. A scream building beneath the earth.
"Fitch," she whispered. "You hear that?"
Fitch cocked his head. His brow furrowed.
"It's nothing," he said. "Come on, will you? I don't like looking at that thing."
He pressed on into the dark before Kimberly had a chance to protest. She watched him shrink into the tunnel, the point of his flashlight fading by degrees, blurring into a mirage. She looked over her shoulder at the moor, the rotten grass, the river burbling in the distance. Beyond that, the silhouette of the Pentacost Convent. The orange light had vanished, leaving the convent so black against the stars that it was as if a patch had been torn from the sky, a cursed square of space snipped neatly from the world and buried beyond the reach of men.
She shivered. Melodramatic bullshit. But she could still run, could ignore the convent entirely. Get to the road, thumb a lift, leave Fitch to his ridiculous plans. Let him burrow around in the dirt while she phoned Goodwell. This was all too crazy. Pills and rest, that was what she needed. Keller wouldn't lie...
The earth thrummed beneath her feet. The wailing had changed. It was louder now, not mournful but high and gloating.
The moor didn't seem half so inviting any more.
Fitch was a tiny point of light, deep in the throat of the mine. He was waiting, flashlight aimed back up the tunnel. "You coming?"
She ran to catch up, and the mineshaft swallowed her whole.
Chapter 16
The woman slipped through the door to the Rosenfeld Mission moments before it clicked shut. She waited for a count of twenty before throwing off her robes of oil-stained rags and cardboard sheeting. She wore heavy denim underneath, the sort that could absorb a beating, and boots with bulging steel caps. No more suits, no more cute cocktail dresses. No need, with Snow twisted around her little finger.
Right now, she had bones to break.
She'd painted her face with dirt to hide her corpse-pale skin, but Fitch hadn't even looked down as he'd stepped across her on his way to the car. She supposed he thought that when he'd left her corpse in the coastal caves the threat had died with her. That made him cocky, self-assured.
It was useful, sometimes, being dead.
The last step was to fish her new sunglasses out of her breast pocket and hide her face behind the massive lenses. There were mirrors in the Mission, and she didn't like catching glimpses of her reflection when her eyes weren't hidden. Too big a reminder of what she'd been. Everything looked better dark, anyway.
Now all she needed was Rosenfeld.
Fitch and his friend had already peeled off into the night, thinking they were so damn suave in their stolen Audi. A regular crime fighting duo, off to save Rustwood from a monster they didn't even understand. Well, they'd learn soon enough. They'd have the surprise of their lives once they got inside the convent.
For a moment, the woman wondered if she should've grabbed Fitch the second he stepped out of the safety of the Mission. Slammed him to the floor, cracked his skull open before the Archer woman could protest, dig her fingers into the soft meat...
No. This was better. A more subtle, long term approach, the sort her master would appreciate. Killing Fitch without a fight would be taking the low-hanging fruit. But this was forward thinking. Examining every avenue.
Because if Fitch got out of the convent alive... and God, she hoped he did, just to see the look on his face... then he'd come crawling back to Rosenfeld for a hug and a cup of tea. And when he arrived...
Someone clattered in the back of the Mission, and the woman in glasses dropped into a crouch, fingers splayed like claws. She prowled across the open hall, footsteps almost silent on the linoleum.
Not silent enough. From the rear of the building came a hesitant call. "Hello?"
An old, wavering voice. Rosenfeld.
Perfect.
She straightened her sunglasses and moved to the middle of the dining hall, slouching against the end of one of the long trestle tables. First impressions were everything. She'd learned that back when...
Back when? Before she'd died, yes, before she'd worn the suit and the glasses, before she'd lost her name. But how long ago? And that name, her name, it was right on her lips but she couldn't quite hold it long enough to spit it out...
Footsteps, coming closer. She pushed those thoughts away - bad thoughts, not the sort of thing her master would like her entertaining - and forced a predatory smile.
"Hello?" Rosenfeld emerged from a back room, broom clenched tight in her skinny fists. "Kitchen's closed, but I've got bread and cheese and some yoghurt pots if you..."
The woman in glasses nodded by way of greeting. "Busy night?"
Not much to her, after all the anticipation. The name Rosenfeld was almost a curse, but this woman was barely four foot eight, shrunken inside her shawl and faded overalls. A tiny Afro-American lady, cheeks spotted with moles, warped and bowed by age. The most threatening thing about her was the broom.
Rosenfeld stopped. Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Who let you in?"
"Someone with authority." The woman grinned beneath her disguise of dirt and ash. "You recognised me."
"Hard not to. You've still got the same smell."
"As do you."
"Head in the clouds, that boy. Knew that'd come back to bite me." Rosenfeld dragged a chair our from beneath the nearest table and eased down, old bones clicking. "What do you want, anyway? I know Fitch hurt you, but where he's heading... Thinks he's so clever, lying to me. Boy intends to burn your convent. Might never come back."
"You'd be surprised. He fought me and won. I'd give him even odds." The woman in glasses cocked her head. It was hard, reading Rosenfeld. There was a barrier there, a sheet thrown up across her emotions like frosted glass. More effective than a pair of bug-eye sunglasses, that was for sure. The old woman had training, the sort that the woman in glasses had only seen a few times before. The sort of gift only the old, faded Queen... or the new Queen... could bestow.
For the first time since she'd entered the Rosenfeld Mission, the woman was afraid.
But if Rosenfeld could lock down her emotions, so could she. Besides, what threat was a little old lady?
"You want to talk?" Rosenfeld said. "I sent the girls away. We're alone."
"Came to do more than talk," she replied. "Rustwood's changing hands. New Queen is ready to take the throne. Those who stand in her way won't be standing for long."
"You tellin' me to give up?"
"Too late for that. Moment you helped those two, you put your name on the list. My master won't let that slide."
"Your master is going to bring this town down around her ears." Rosenfeld whispered. "If you think she'll favour you when it's all done, you're dreaming. Old Queen kept this town stable for a dozen lifetimes. Your new Queen will burn everything and everyone."
"She's the true-"
"All pretenders say they're the one true King or Queen or Duchess or what-have-you until they take the throne. Don't you see? Only choice you've got is between safety and fire. Nothing left from horizon to horizon. No need for servants or acolytes. No need for you. Just cinders. You think she's blessed you? You think she cares? She made you and she'll unmake you, so you just keep on walking if you think your little tough-girl act is going to turn me from the path-"
; Rosenfeld was on her feet, the broom clenched against her chest like a staff, every line of her body radiating something more than strength. It was like there was someone else standing behind her, a shadow barely visible, a shadow twice as wide as the little old woman and three times as tall, pooling not just across the linoleum floor but across the walls and the ceiling, big enough to envelop them both whole.
"Enough!" The woman clenched her hands by her sides, screaming between her teeth. "Enough, you salty old bitch! No more!" She stalked across the room and Rosenfeld backed up against the wall, the broom clattering away. One hand wrapped around Rosenfeld's throat, squeezing tight enough that the woman's eyes bulged from the sockets. Her other hand rose up to her sunglasses. "You want to see what she gave me? You want to see how much she loves me? Look!"
She whipped her bug-eye sunglasses away, expecting Rosenfeld to scream. But the old woman looked more curious than afraid.
"That's... new..." Rosenfeld gasped. "She make... you thank her... when she put... them in?"
"Shut up!"
"Make you... thank her... on your knees?"
"Shut up!" She hurled Rosenfeld to the floor. The old woman grunted. There was a high cracking noise, like a skateboard snapping in half after a bad bail.
"No more jokes. I've got a message for you." She crouched over Rosenfeld as the old woman squirmed on the floor. "Now, you listen close. Deliver this word for word."
She whispered in Rosenfeld's ear even as she went to work with her fingers. No need for knives, not with what she had hidden inside her.
She waited a long time for the old woman to scream, but she never did.
Chapter 17
For the first five steps Kimberly took into the mineshaft, she could make out the floor beneath her feet. Soft earth, smelling faintly of rain and moss. A good smell. Honest. She almost felt at ease.
Almost. Steps six, seven and eight led her quickly into the gloom, the light eking through the mineshaft entrance fading fast. The earth turned muddy, sucking at her shoes. That trustworthy aroma of straw and pig-muck turned sour in the back of her throat. She couldn't see the path any more and stumbled, barking her knuckles against the rock wall.
Rust: Two Page 14
