His beard flowing over his shoulder, Ned walked with long strides in the direction of the Cu Sith. He waved me on without making eye contact, urging me to keep moving. Almost instantly, the smell of rotting seaweed overwhelmed me. The fetid odor was rife with the watery smell of vegetation mixed with putrefying meat.
I gagged but continued walking quickly toward my truck while Ned distracted it. My primary concern was getting away from whatever might be controlling the fairy dog while I was unarmed and ill prepared. Once I reached my truck, I could see Ned standing at the top of the boat ramp. Hands on hips, he watched the barrow hound try to relocate my scent amid the rotting seaweed smell that Ned produced. Screams erupted from the tackle shop as well as the hotel across the marina, followed by the sounds of glass shattering and something tossing around heavy objects on cement. As the hound swung its enormous head along the ground, occasionally lifting its nose to sniff the air, a second Cu Sith, just as large, bounded into the lot through the hotel’s outdoor restaurant as people scrambled in every direction.
I got to my truck and took off down Ingraham Street toward my house without paying attention to the traffic lights. My home wasn’t the safest place, but at least there, I had weapons and armor to defend myself. I wasn’t worried about leaving Ned with those hounds. They weren’t after him. I kept glancing in my rearview mirrors to see if I was being followed but saw nothing other than cars behind me by the time I got to the bridge over the San Diego River less than a mile down the road.
That was when I hit sudden traffic. Nothing was moving. Traffic around three or four in the afternoon on Point Loma was bad, but I had never seen anything this bad before. People were starting to get out of their cars to see what was going on. The traffic lights up ahead were out, but I didn’t see any accidents or hear any sirens. In fact, I wasn’t hearing any noises other than the cars around me—not even jets at the downtown airport on the other side of Point Loma.
I switched on the radio and found out that the electricity had gone out in some parts of San Diego for some unknown reason, and lucky me, I just happened to be in one of those parts. Of all freakin’ days for the power to go out in San Diego.
I opened my door and stood on the running board to get a better view, turning to check behind me in case the hounds had picked up my scent. The only smell was the riverbanks below me, during the falling tide. I still couldn’t see the hounds, but it didn’t appear as if I was going anywhere in my truck any time soon. I sat back in the cab and listened to the radio while trying to think up a plan. I kept getting hung up on why someone would think I killed Lord Indronivay, but I couldn’t afford to dwell on it. I needed to be in motion. Somehow.
The radio began reporting that the blackouts covered a far larger area than originally estimated. Callers were reporting in from around San Diego County that they were also without power. Holy crap. I got a bounty on my head from the Unseelie Court, and I’m stuck in traffic in the biggest blackout San Diego has ever seen.
Three loud barks from someplace behind me shattered the relative silence like a barrage of artillery fire. I, along with hundreds of stranded motorists, was a sitting duck, and I was putting everybody around me in mortal danger with no way to defend them. Everyone I could see searched around to see what had caused the noise. People stuck in traffic near me asked if they were explosions, and that was followed quickly by the supposition that the whole blackout was probably the result of a terrorist attack. That led to people frantically honking their horns and shouting, while others began pulling out onto the road’s shoulder in an attempt to move, gumming up the traffic even more. I reached for my cell phone, hoping to check the map for traffic, and it dawned on me that I had left it on the console of my boat. Perfect. Even so, I could only imagine that cell phone reception was crappy, too, as everyone in the entire city tried desperately to contact someone else. The only thing I could think to do was keep moving so that the Cu Sith would focus on tracking me rather than all the innocent people stuck in their way. But how?
Over the growing confusion, I heard a motorcycle making its way up the street through the stopped cars behind me. Bingo. I was going to feel really bad about what I was about to do for a while, but I figured being well adjusted and an otherwise reasonably upstanding guy, I would get over it.
Thanks to a crazy driver on my left trying to create a third lane down the middle of a two-lane street, the motorcyclist would have to pass my truck to the right, along the narrow shoulder. I scooted through my truck’s cab to the passenger side and threw open the door as the motorcyclist approached. He was dressed in that bizarre computer-generated blue camouflage the Navy used and was driving a blue Aprilla RSV 1000 R motorcycle that cost as much as my truck —something I knew thanks to my vehicle-crazy friend, Duma. The rider slid to a stop, turning the bike almost completely sideways without dumping it.
As the driver began gesturing and reaching to take his helmet off so he could scream at me face-to-face, I grabbed the handrail above my passenger door and threw my legs out at the rider as hard as I could. The maneuver caught him square in the chest and totally off guard. The person went flying over the side of the bridge, and the bike fell to rest partially against my truck door. I hopped on it, backed it up, and reached out to close my door before glancing over the side of the bridge. It was only a few yards over the San Diego River, and the rider, probably on his way to report to duty down on Point Loma, had landed in the slow-moving water at low tide. He was already dragging himself ashore on the muddy banks. Boy, am I gonna feel bad. At some point. If I live long enough.
I gunned the bike and took off up the shoulder, trying to put as much distance between me and the Cu Sith as I could. I was trying to formulate my next move and not crash at the same time, and I was only doing one with any real success. Weaving through stopped vehicles mostly by pushing the bike along with my legs, I made it to the Interstate 5/8 interchange without dumping the bike or hitting anyone. There was no way I would make it to my house through some of the most crowded streets and neighborhoods in San Diego. So my pathetic plan revolved around the fact that my only weapon was the fishermen’s multi-tool I still happened to have in my pocket. I hoped I could draw the creatures and whatever controlled them away from the heavily populated areas. At least if their handler has beer, I’ll be able to open their bottles for them.
Trying to head east to the less densely populated areas of San Diego, I followed the flow of traffic the best I could, eventually merging onto the 163 North. The only sign of the hounds was steady but distant barking.
Then everything completely bogged down. Three lanes of traffic had been expanded to anywhere between six and eight cars wide, and multiple cars were pulled onto both shoulders, blocking the road completely. One vehicle in the mess clearly had mechanical issues, and several other drivers had stopped to help the waylaid motorist. Bully for good Samaritans. Don’t these people realize I need to move?
I decided to take the next off-ramp and get onto surface streets. To avoid becoming further mired in the stalled traffic on the ramp, I tried to hop the median, but my attempt at Evel Knieveling the bump didn’t work out too well. I hit the divider so squarely that I couldn’t stop the front wheel from cutting hard to the left, jerking the handlebar and throttle from my grasp as the bike went one way and I went another.
Chapter 3
The dump wasn’t even spectacular. I flew up and off. The bike bounced over, then I landed hard on my butt. The bike wobbled off a short distance, where it fell under a brown delivery truck.
I picked myself up, trying to recover any dignity I might find scattered among the ice plants along the way, while the delivery guy jumped out to see what had happened.
“You okay?” he asked, eyes wide as he stared at the motorcycle under the back of his truck. I didn’t know what was hanging him up more—me crashing a motorcycle into his truck while dressed as if I’d just walked off a bo
at or the blackout thing.
“Yeah, I’m fine, but the bike is shot,” I said, brushing at the dirt on my rear.
Realizing that the only thing really injured was my pride, I quickly forgot about the delivery guy and the growing crowd of looky-loos and surveyed my surroundings to figure out where to go now that my daredevil days were behind me. Not only did I have some nasty members of the Unseelie Court on my ass, but my ass actually hurt, too.
Several of the gathered motorists began to approach me, asking questions, while others examined the bike. I power-walked toward an industrial area at the end of the off ramp while shouts erupted from the gawkers behind me. I needed to get out of there before somebody whipped out a camera phone if they hadn’t already.
I crossed the street, darting around the stopped vehicles, and rounded a few of the buildings, leaving the wrecked bike and gathered mob behind. I had to be careful not to run so fast that I drew any more attention to myself. As I reached the far side of the buildings, I could see the edge of a large construction site a bit farther up the street. It was a multi-story apartment complex still in the early stages of framing. I headed directly toward the site, hoping to find a temporary hiding place and maybe a weapon or two.
I checked my watch as I approached the massive dirt lot dominated by two separate cement and stick-frame structures. It was a little after five in the afternoon, which meant that what normally should have taken fifteen minutes had taken over an hour. Part of me was relieved that I hadn’t seen or even heard the Cu Sith in a while, but that meant those things were running amok through San Diego somewhere. Thankfully, the construction site appeared entirely empty of people, most likely due to the blackout. A line of cars blocked the streets along both the north and south sides of the site, making it impossible to hop the fence from either street without being seen. Along the property’s west side was a parking lot crowded with vehicles trying to merge onto the already-jammed streets, but the east side butted against several large condominium complexes.
I jogged down the sidewalk toward the condos to a walking entrance into the complex and found it much more secluded than the street and practically mazelike. I continued around several more buildings, running along the fence line to make sure no one would see me jump it. The last thing I needed was police chasing me, too.
As I walked among the earthy green and tan condos, I could hear people chatting and laughing nearby, probably using the blackout as an excuse to gather with neighbors and empty their currently thawing freezers onto grills. While I didn’t see any of the gatherings around the buildings I was between, as I continued farther along, the smells of barbequing meat carrying through the early-evening air made my stomach growl. I made a habit of not eating while out on a charter, so I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner last night.
Over the sounds of my now-awakened stomach, I heard a radio somewhere broadcasting the opening game of the football season. Dammit. I completely forgot about that. My original plans for the evening involved my being ensconced in my leather chair, with a bag of cheese puffs, watching the game. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen.
I fought through the disappointment and hunger like the warrior I am and made it to the six-foot-high chain-link fence that separated the construction from the complex. Some sort of heavy green cloth used to prevent construction debris from blowing off the site covered the fence. Since I couldn’t see through it, I grabbed the top rail and pulled myself up to check if the coast was clear then vaulted over. The soles of my stupid rubber deck boots landed hard and flat on the compacted dirt, and I crouched, cursing the pain in my feet under my breath. Grinding my teeth, I crept to the edge of the nearest building under construction.
The site was huge for Southern California, easily seven hundred feet long between the bordering streets and half as wide. It was dominated by a sea of concrete forming a massive, enclosed underground parking garage that spanned almost the entire length of the lot. The structure also formed the foundation for two distinct sets of wooden framework buildings. I had jumped the fence at a spot between the two skeletal buildings. The nearest entrance into the subterranean parking levels was less than ten yards to my left.
With only the occasional and faint sounds of barks from the Cu Sith, I figured I was safe in the structure for the moment. Woefully unarmed, but safe. I needed a weapon. Searching in the darkness for anything I could swing, I found a few stray pieces of rebar lying around—as good a weapon as any when you don’t have a real one. Rebar in hand, I made my way across the skeletal structure and took in my surroundings. In the odd darkness of the blackout, the evening air was eerily still and quiet. There were no sounds of cars on the nearby highway or jet noise from the Marine Corp Air Station to the north. Nothing. I knew the Cu Sith would still be searching for me, and not at least hearing them—at any distance—was unnerving.
In the failing light, I thought I noticed movement on the top of a fifty-foot-tall mound of fill dirt next to a big dump truck parked at the plateau a hundred fifty feet away. It could have easily been birds or rabbits, but I decided not to take any chances. Members of the Unseelie Court chasing me—they thrived in the cold, dark places of the world.
I tried to remind myself that not all fae were that bad and that some members of the Seelie, or Light Fae, had proven helpful to me over the years. When it came to the fae, though, I would have loved to have my Peri friend, Duma, and his brother, Abraxos, around to help. But I’d left my cell phone on my boat, and I didn’t have any other way to contact them or anyone else, so I went back to staring at the area where I was sure I detected movement, pissed at my stupidity.
I watched so intently for the next few minutes, I thought my eyes would pop out of my head. But just before I gave up, ready to chalk my sighting up to what we call “happy eyes” in fishing, I saw it again. Something was definitely down there, only now it was underneath a front-end loader on the same hill of dirt. Then something else moved near the dump truck’s wheel again. Whatever they were, they were human sized—too small to be the Cu Sith. Unfortunately, in the fairy world, size has no correlation to dangerousness. Something the size of a rat could rip my head off as easily as something the size of an elephant could.
The pair of shadowy figures creeping around the heavy machinery finally crossed into the open. After thirty-two hundred some odd years, I’d witnessed a lot of things, but I had no idea what I was seeing. They were around seven feet tall, solidly built, and covered in shaggy dark fur or hair. The first thing that popped into my head was Bigfoot, but these things were much more compact, and their stubby arms ended in hands—for lack of a better term—that bore four massive claws that Wolverine would have envied.
It was a moonless night, and the lack of power to the area made it even darker, but as the creatures faced each other, I could see a massive set of tusks protruding upward from what I could only guess was a mouth. They paused for a second, then one took a few steps, bent over, and began burrowing at the edge of the dirt mound. It quickly disappeared into the ground. The other creature began to scrabble down the side of the mound on two legs in a gangly loping manner that demonstrated dexterity but not grace. Whatever they were, they were apparently not completely comfortable walking upright.
My hands tightened around the piece of rebar as I scanned the area for an easy exit. The place was a warren rife with dead ends, pitfalls, and stacks of wood and sheetrock, while the fences were across open ground. Even if I made it out of there, I was still on foot. I was going to have to make a stand.
Sneaking through the unfinished interior, around piles of construction materials and debris within the superstructure, I made my way over to the base of an I-beam that connected the building to the one next to it. I tried to keep an eye on the one creature still above ground, but I lost sight of it once the furry thing made it to the cement foundation almost directly below me. I leaned out and noticed it was hunched over rig
ht under my position, its head tilted up in my direction. I jerked back, bumping into a pile of wood and cut sheetrock. The impact jarred a large box of nails on top of the pile and knocked it to the wooden subfloor with a hollow metallic clatter that echoed forever through the empty belly of the structure. A quick rasping growl emanated from below. Good job, Mr. Stealthy.
My concern for my clumsy mistake was short-lived. As I chided myself, it dawned on me that the shaggy beasts were likely fae, and no fairy, Unseelie or otherwise, could tolerate iron or even an alloy of iron, including steel. Nails are steel. Rebar is steel. And it would all burn them—not like acid, but instead like a base chemical: Their skin blisters and then sloughs off, causing intense, freezing pain. I’m standing in what amounts to a fairy House of Horrors. Hot damn!
I grabbed the remaining box of nails and my rebar and decided to go on the offensive.
“Hey, Shaggy!” I screamed. The sound echoed through the wooden structure. “You lookin’ for me? ’Cause I’m right here!”
Suddenly, the floor began to shake. Wood snapped below me like a rifle shot, then the floor began to tilt. The creature had to be using those massive claws to rip apart the wooden structure below me. Sonofabitch.
I jumped farther back into the construction to more stable footing, dropping the nails, but I managed to hang onto the heavy piece of rebar as I landed on my side. The floor that I’d occupied collapsed, bringing with it the floor above. Within the din, I could hear the nails and other metallic objects fall, raining down below, followed by an ear-splitting bellow of pure agony.
“Eat cold steel, furball!” I shouted as I got to my feet.
I could hear the thing shifting under the rubble, along with labored breathing mixed with an occasional gurgle. I carefully crept over to the edge of the structure that collapsed, rebar in hand, and peered over the edge. Not much was visible, but the plywood flooring formed a sort of slide down to the first floor, and I decided to risk the splinters. From the lower level, I jumped to a clear spot on the cement and whirled around to face the woodpile and the creature I assumed was trapped within it.
Chaos Unbound (The Metis Files Book 2) Page 2
