“I see that look on your face, little missy,” said the old woman. “You’re thinking you can just do what you want, and I won’t be able to stop you.”
Well, that had been what Janey had thought. Or at least pretty close. She frowned up at Lula.
“Scowl all you want,” she said. “If the others are down there, I think they should be seeking out professional help, to be honest with you. But at least they’re adults.”
Janey had to get down there. That was where all the answers were. Down there, Darc and Mala and Trey were trying to find the killer. But they didn’t have all the information that they needed.
And Janey did.
So, rather than stand there in front of Lula and just stare at her, Janey grabbed the woman’s hand and started pulling her toward the manhole. If Lula wouldn’t let Janey go down by herself, maybe her new friend would come along for the ride.
“Are you touched?” Lula asked, pulling back. “I’m too old to climb down into the sewers.”
Janey had no idea what she meant by touched, but it sounded like it was supposed to mean crazy. Why didn’t Lula just say crazy, then? Grown ups were so weird sometimes. But whatever she had meant by that first statement, her second one was clear enough. Lula didn’t want to climb down the ladder.
This was getting ridiculous. Janey planted her feet, thrust out her hip, and put her fists on her waist. Mala had struck that pose once or twice when Janey had done something wrong, and it was scary. Maybe it would work with Lula.
But the old woman just chuckled.
Janey felt her heart sink. Darc and Trey and Mala. They needed her.
There was a long pause, then Lula sighed.
“All right. I can see that you’re not going to budge on this.” She peered down into the hole. “Just wish I had worn a pair of trousers.” She winked at Janey.
Janey grinned back.
It was time to go down and rescue the grown ups.
* * *
Left. Right. Straight ahead 20 meters. Left once more.
The lines splayed out in front of Darc, a roadmap in the dark that seemed to almost create its own illumination. That was a trick of his imagination, however. A juxtaposition of his knowledge of the underground sewer system with the real world information coming in from his vision reduced by a lack of light.
He knew with precision where their destination lay. A short distance down the narrow tunnel in which they were moving, then off to the right. There, they would encounter something not on the maps.
The symbols and pictograms left by the killer pointed them here. To a place that didn’t exist. The convergence of both the pathways of logic and the dimly glowing remnants of distorted passion, two types of illumination that ended here in darkness.
But as they took the right turn, Darc could sense a disturbance in the air, a shifting that warned him an instant before the beam of his flashlight was reflected off a shiny metal surface. A surface that was slicing toward Darc’s neck.
“Down,” he spoke into the blackness, his words repeating back to him in a thousand shattered fragments.
Trey dropped to the floor, cursing as he splashed in the water there. “What…?”
And then there was the ring of metal against concrete as a naked figure stepped into the slash of illumination from Darc’s flashlight. The sexless form seemed to flex every muscle, the tendons standing out in the neck as the castrated man screamed without sound. The warrior rushed toward them, and Darc spun left, avoiding the slicing blade.
But Darc’s body had not been the target. The short sword lashed out in an arc, catching first Darc’s and then Trey’s guns. The weapons skittered away from them, landing in the water with a splash.
“That wasn’t good,” Trey groaned.
To add to the chaos, a piercing scream sounded from behind the attacker. It was a high-pitched wail, the kind caused by intense pain.
The bands of light swirled around, taking on the wavelength of the echoes of that cry, molding to form the information that they then passed along. Information that Darc would rather not have right now.
The voice was Carly’s.
* * *
Janey scurried down the darkened tunnel toward the sound of the screams, pulling at Lula’s arm to try to get the old woman to move faster. The voice sounded like it was her sister’s, but that couldn’t be, could it?
When she’d heard it, Janey had wanted to throw up. The sound had twisted something up inside of her, and Lula just wasn’t moving fast enough.
Popeye grumbled something about not expecting an old nag to run like a racehorse, but he was just being mean. Dark spaces did that to him. Or maybe he was just trying to distract Janey from what she had heard.
The only light they had was from Lula’s tiny reading light that was attached to her keychain. Not the best way to see in the pitch black around them, but it was better than nothing at all.
That was what Mommy had always told her, back before she had died. Be grateful for what you have, because tomorrow you might have even less.
Janey wasn’t sure how far down that path she would be able to go. It sometimes felt like she had lost so much and kept losing more and more with every passing day.
But then she thought about Mala and Darc and Trey and Maggie… and Carly. Of the many wonderful times she’d had with her new family, even along with all the other stuff that had been hard.
None of that would have happened if her life had been like other girl’s lives.
“All right, little missy,” came Lula’s whispered voice. “Where are we going from here?”
Popeye said something rude about toilet water and what kind of tunnel they were in right now. Janey ignored him, turned and was about to point down one of the tunnels, in the same direction where she’d heard the screams.
But the strands in her head jangled. They hadn’t ever done that before.
She started to point again, but once more the lines jiggled and danced. For some reason, she wasn’t supposed to go down there.
Some of the symbols from underneath the desk swirled about in Janey’s mind, pointing her in a different direction. She pointed down another passage. It was smaller, darker and it smelled much worse.
Popeye made a rude noise and said that if he had wanted to play in poop water, he would have taken a bath in the toilet back at home. Sometimes he was so gross.
But even with all the grumbling, they started moving down the tunnel, the walls closing in around them. It was creepy, but it was also kind of cool.
Then, as they were just about to get to another place where the tunnels joined together, Janey felt Lula’s hand grip hers tight. The older woman yanked back on Janey’s arm hard enough that it hurt.
Lula was so much stronger than she seemed. Janey felt Lula’s other hand clamp itself over Janey’s mouth, and there was a sharp whisper in her ear.
“Don’t move, little girl. Don’t move, or so help me…”
Janey felt her heart pump faster. Fear crept up her spine, lodging itself in the back of her brain. Lula had never sounded like that before, and her fingers were digging into Janey’s arm so much that she couldn’t feel her fingers any more.
This was not what was supposed to happen.
* * *
“What is that?” Trey asked, pointing at the blade in the naked dude’s fist.
This was not what he’d signed up for today. This battle royale down here was all kinds of wrong fixings, wrapped up in a nice tortilla of no thank you.
There was a sharp click with the sound of metal sliding against metal, and the single blade that was waving back and forth in front of his eyes slid apart to reveal three sharp points. Three blades where there had only been one a second ago.
If they weren’t pointed at Trey right now, he would have thought they were so freaking cool. As it was, their cool factor was diminished by the chance that they might all end up in Trey’s guts.
“What the freak is that?” he hissed at his partner.
>
He hadn’t expected an answer, but once again, Darc surprised him.
“A katar, an ancient Indian weapon designed to shock the enemy and pierce through armor.”
Fantastic.
At least shock was never an issue with Darc.
Ducking under the slicing blade, Darc rushed the opponent, catching him in the sternum. There was the sound of the man’s breath forcibly exhaled, then a thud and a cracking as the enemy’s torso was slammed up against the side of the tunnel, his ribs breaking. A soft groan escaped his lips, but Darc was already moving on to the next assailant, this one wielding a long rod with a clawed hand at the end.
And then Trey had no more attention to dedicate to the bizarre weapon that bore down on Darc, as another naked assassin popped out of the shadows. Was it a man or a woman? Trey couldn’t tell for sure, and he didn’t really want to check right now. The figure’s arms were stretched out in front, with the fingers extended.
And from each of those fingers, spikes protruded.
“Guess you’re not here to give me a prostate exam, yeah?” Trey asked.
Then the naked person turned into a whirlwind of arms and legs, and all thought of jokes flew out of Trey’s mind.
* * *
The long metal rod with the clawed hand advanced on Darc, as colors swarmed about in his head. He knew this weapon.
A Chinese zhua, used to pull down an opponent’s shield, and then to claw and shred their flesh. The information flowed through Darc’s mind, the pathways tracing the origins, uses and weaknesses of the weapon.
Trey cried out from behind him, locked in combat with another assailant. The wider hips and slight curvature of the breast indicated a woman. The strength with which she threw Darc’s partner across the tunnel gave lie to any misconception that her sex would make her less formidable.
In the gleam of Darc’s fallen flashlight, he could see the woman’s thumbs, index and middle fingers encompassed by Japanese kakutes. Spiked rings with the spikes turned inward, they were the weapons of choice for female ninjas. Those spikes were more than likely tipped with poison.
But Darc had no time to call out a warning, as the zhua slashed toward him. Pushing himself to the side, he managed to escape the main force of the attack, but the claws managed to rake down his side with a burning fire.
Going against instinct, Darc leaned into the attack, trapping the long rod against the concrete with his injured torso. The wounds flared up in agony, but Darc’s streaming style of awareness allowed him to compartmentalize the pain, wrapping it up in threads of colored logic.
The weapon fell to the floor with a clang that reverberated throughout the tunnel’s length, but Darc ignored all, focused on the task at hand. His arm reached up past the hand that had gripped the zhua, finding purchase on the attacker’s neck.
The man’s strong arms beat against Darc’s head, shoulders and arms, trying to force the grip to loosen. But Darc continued to squeeze, feeling the trachea begin to collapse under the weight of the pressure he exterted.
A final flurry of weakening blows, and the form in front of him sank to the ground. There would be no more getting up for this warped creature.
At Darc’s side, Trey appeared with flashlight in hand, panting and groaning, but with no apparent puncture wounds that might indicate a successful poisoning. He glanced at Darc, eyes wide and staring.
“Well, that was the most fun I’ve ever had.”
The words seemed illogical, as Darc knew of his partner’s extreme dislike of hand-to-hand combat. A white pulse inside of him spoke of sarcasm, but he pushed the response down with a savagery that surprised even him.
Then there was a sound behind them. Darc and Trey spun around, the light from their flashlights illuminating four figures.
One carried a huge two-handed blade, with two smaller blades like horns extruding from the shaft close to the hilt. A German Zweihaender.
Two of others held weapons in each hand. One was armed with two haladies, a weapon used by India’s equivalent of the Japanese samurai, the Rajput. Double-bladed daggers flashed in each hand, gleaming in the low light. The other held a long lance or spear with something odd about its tip.
The information flashed through Darc’s mind. But as the threads unraveled the secrets of each weapon, he noticed that their final opponent seemed unarmed.
But in seconds, that consideration was pushed from his mind, as the three other naked forms surged toward them. Darc took up a position beside Trey. They would face these foes together.
As he did so, once more Carly’s screams echoed through the tunnels, adding urgency to the conflict. They had to reach her, and soon.
The attacker holding the long lance advanced on Darc, the strange tip revealing itself for a moment in the beam of the flashlight. As he identified what was strange about the spear, the colored threads coalesced, telling him to duck.
Right above his head, a gout of flame erupted from the end of the lance, illuminating the tunnel for a moment. The afterimage of the fire remained on Darc’s retinas, obscuring everything around him.
It was a fire lance. Another ancient innovation from China.
And now Darc was blind, fighting for his life… and Trey and Carly’s… in subterranean tunnels deep below Seattle. The sound of metal scraping against concrete told him that the weapon was being pulled into striking position.
Darc prepared for the impact, hoping the blow would not be fatal.
* * *
Mala’s cry echoed through the tunnels as Templeton lunged for her. But just as she was prepared for the social worker’s attack to land, there was a clanking noise. Richard’s arms were yanked back behind him at what looked to be a painful angle.
The man appeared to be chained to the wall of the tunnel.
What was going on here?
Recognition seemed to spark in Richard’s eyes as he gazed upon Mala’s face. He blinked several times, looking like some kind of underground owl.
“Ms. Charan?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“Dr. Charan,” Mala answered out of habit, then shook her head. “What are you doing down here?”
“I have no idea,” the man gushed, tears welling up in his eyes. “I was just working along in my office, when I got a call…” His voice trailed off and his eyes seemed to glaze over. “I don’t remember anything after that.”
As Mala stared at this man she had loathed for so long, she noticed that there was something off about his gaze. The pupils weren’t contracting in the way they should while under the beam of her flashlight. And his focus appeared to wander.
Richard Templeton had been drugged. And then chained up in a sewer.
This was all kinds of strange.
But rather than puzzle that out now, Mala grabbed the chains that were attached to Richard’s wrists and followed them back to the wall. There she found large bolts that had been driven into the concrete, with many other similar bolts in rows along the side passage into which Mala had ventured.
This was like a holding area for prisoners.
“I don’t see anything to get you out of this,” Mala muttered as she shone her flashlight around the narrow tunnel.
Her attention snapped back to Richard as a sob broke from his lips. “Please help me, Mala. I don’t want to die.”
Somehow the use of her first name, which would have made her want to claw his eyes out in any other circumstance, now made the man’s appeal almost touching. She wracked her brain, trying to come up with a solution.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a cry from the captive social worker.
“Look out!”
Mala ducked and felt the disturbance of air above her as something passed over her head. A loud clang sounded as sparks flew from the concrete.
Spinning around, Mala came face to face with a naked woman wielding a short sword. Throwing herself backward, Mala managed to evade the next swipe of the blade.
That was a tactic that would only work once. Mala’s fear told
her to run, to get as far away as possible. But her head told a different story.
She followed her brain.
Rushing in, Mala lashed out with her forehead at the woman’s face, catching her on the bridge of her nose. Feeling the woman’s nose break under the blow, Mala continued her forward movement, taking her opponent down to the ground.
Mala watched as the woman fell, her head striking the ground with massive force. The body underneath Mala fell still.
Fearing a feint, she watched the form behind her with eagle eyes, lifting her fingers to press against the woman’s bare neck. There was no pulse.
Scrabbling away from what was now a corpse, Mala tried to still the shudder that coursed through her. It didn’t matter how many times she had been forced to examine dead bodies, being that close to one was never pleasant.
But as she moved back, the beam of her flashlight caught the woman’s blade. An idea formed in Mala’s mind as she bent down to retrieve the dagger.
Gripping the hilt, she turned to face Richard Templeton, weasel, the incompetent social worker, the man who had kept her from adopting Janey. The man shrank back as Mala approached.
“Don’t move a muscle,” she grated through clenched teeth.
There would be only one chance to get this right.
* * *
Trey had no idea how he was still alive. He’d managed to scoop up the weird three-bladed thingy from earlier, and that had kept the freak with the two-bladed daggers at bay. But he’d seen the ginormous sword that one guy was wielding, and he wasn’t looking to tangle with that dude any time fast.
And then Darc had gone down, and there had been a huge flash of light.
It just so happened that Trey’s eyes had been watching the four blades that were whipping around in front of him, so the flames didn’t completely blind him. But his attacker stepped back blinking.
Trey took the opportunity to take the guy out, thrusting his weapon deep into the man’s gut, jerking the hilt up and then twisting the three blades. The attacker shuddered and stopped moving. Yanking his arm back, Trey pulled out his three-pronged dagger, dripping in blood and viscera.
Then, as Darc’s opponent reared back, ready to stab the bald detective through the heart, Trey threw his weapon at the man’s head. His hope was just to distract the assailant long enough for Darc to get his feet back under him.
The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin) Page 49
