At first I lost him and was momentarily frustrated, but once we were out of the giant cavern and back into a tunnel, my little LED Maglite provided plenty of light, and I could follow him. For such stubby legs, the guy could fly. Flat out, thanks to Athena, I could run a forty-yard dash in just over a second, and I could keep that speed up for ten minutes without collapsing, but I was just barely keeping up with the little guy. Although we ran for less than two minutes, we must have covered at least a mile by the time he stopped. The goblin pointed at a wide crack in the wall of the tunnel off to the left.
“Kalku go dis way, through here.” He bobbed up and down and bared most of his pointy little teeth in what was probably a grin. Those guys could give a shark dental envy. “Don’t know after dat.” The little guy was so ugly he was almost cute.
“Thank you,” I said. “I will bring him back.”
To call the crack in the wall a tunnel was generous, but apparently it was the path I needed to take. If that Wekufe could make it, as broad as he was, so could I. I ducked through and squeezed along for just a second, having to unfoul the swords on my back from the craggy rock twice in the tight passage before it opened up.
The air on the other side was cooler, though more metallic and oily and tinged with the distinct odor of rotting flesh. The ground was also flatter. I swung my light around and found I was standing on a carved stone ledge alongside a pile of unused subway tracks.
As I tried to figure out which way to head, gravel crunched heavily to my right, followed by a grunt that could have come from a rhinoceros. I wheeled my light in the direction of the sound, and a long, dark shape swung right at me.
CHAPTER 11
As fast as I was, I never stood a chance. The blow caught me straight across the chest with a metal-on-metal thunk that echoed through the area like a gong and sent me flying backward through the air. I landed on my butt on the rough, uneven, rocky ground, but other than dropping my flashlight, I was okay. Thank Athena for that cuirass. I was now in total blackness except for a tiny area, fifteen feet away, illuminated by my dropped light.
I didn’t have time to take stock of what had just happened. On instincts honed by more than three thousand years of combat, I rose to a crouch and began moving to my left through the darkness. Not knowing what or how many I was facing, I pulled the Sig from my hip. I trained the gun on the area where the anonymous creature’s blow had come from and fired twice at about head height, hoping the muzzle flash might blind it temporarily. The gun’s report echoed like thunder and, for the briefest of moments, lit the area around me like lightning.
The flash revealed a massive, upright, humanoid creature with a thick arm wielding what I thought was a very long stick. The thing bellowed an inhuman roar that rattled on and on as it reverberated off the rock walls, rendering me nearly deaf for a moment. Fortunately, the flash—and possibly the shots—threw it off enough that its next swing sailed high and missed me, but it was close enough that I could feel the breeze across my scalp. I tucked and rolled farther to my left, trying to circle wide to avoid being cornered, desperately trying to hear over the ringing in my ears in the darkness. To make matters worse, that thing could clearly see in the dark, and I couldn’t, and I only had the one flare. Plus, I had no concept of my surroundings other than an assumption of size that was based on the echoes.
I crept along, unable to see and hear, as I dug into my vest for my halogen Maglite. Switching it on, I aimed where I’d last seen my attacker. The intense light surprised it, and it dropped its weapon—a ten-foot-long section of subway rail—with an explosive, metallic clang, threw its right arm up over its face, and let loose another deafening roar.
It was a troll, and judging by its bellows and the fact that it instantly attacked me rather than simply trying to catch me, it was pissed. As I circled, it was hard to miss the fact that its left arm was missing just below its elbow, and its right leg was badly burned and damaged below the knee with a jagged bone jutting through the flesh of its calf. The injuries were fresh, probably inflicted by the Kalku the day before. For all the troll knew, I was the same intruder, coming back to finish it off.
Just great. Despite its injuries, the dull black creature was easily twice my height and built like a linebacker. Its freakin’ legs were thicker than my chest, and given time, it would heal completely, including regenerating its missing arm. In the meantime, it was seriously injured and trying to defend its territory from a threat.
Without hesitation, I fired three rounds into the center of its mass just below its raised arm. I would have aimed for the head, but it consisted of a relatively small cranium and a thick skull and was currently shielded by that log of an arm.
The nine-millimeter rounds hit the troll’s chest in a tight cluster but didn’t even penetrate its skin or even faze the creature, so I slid the gun back into its holster and worked on my next brilliant idea. Trolls had hides as thick as a walrus’s, covering a mass of even denser muscle. I would have had to use armor-piercing rounds and a high-powered rifle to do any real damage with a gun.
To make the situation even worse, my bright halogen lamp was not only making the troll angrier but was also forcing it to keep its arm up to protect its one and only weak spot—the eyes. Keeping low, I crept sideways, trying to get a feeling for the space we were in. I knew the cavern was broad, but I couldn’t risk taking my light off the troll to look around. Twice the troll blindly swung out at me, trying to connect, but I was too far back and too low.
I feigned a quick juke to the left, screamed to get its attention, and then dived back to the right to get around it. As I pushed off, my footing gave way on loose rocks, and I skidded on my back right into the troll’s feet.
The troll immediately raised its injured leg and stepped on me. Its gigantic foot caught me square in the chest, pinning me to the ground. Even with a healthy leg and all of its weight behind it, the troll could never have bent my cuirass, let alone crush it, but I was still stuck. I dropped my flashlight, grasped its heel with one hand and its toes with the other, and lifted and twisted the injured limb until the troll let loose a high-pitched screech and lost its balance, falling to the ground with a crash.
I grabbed at my flashlight as I rolled free and got my feet under me. Without caring about the direction, I scrambled to get out of the troll’s reach. Once I was out of range, I noticed two stacks of wooden rail ties and rails up against the cavern walls and a pile of pea stone, for leveling the ties, a few feet away. I was now at the dead end of some sort of abandoned storage chamber for the building of the original subway system. The old underground rail line I sought had to run somewhere nearby. I just needed to find my way out of this cavern.
As the troll clumsily got back to its feet, I saw the crack I’d come through just over my shoulder. Above us, the ceiling disappeared into the darkness, and all manner of loose stones littered the uneven, rocky ground. The oblong chamber was no wider than twenty feet at its center. The cavern’s mouth lay some sixty feet away—fifty feet beyond the troll that currently blocked my path to it. Now back on its feet, the beast formed a perfect roadblock, stumbling around trying to avoid my light as it swung its arm blindly trying to find me.
At least I had a better sense of my surroundings. I pulled out one of my swords and kept the flashlight aimed at the troll’s face. It continued to swing wildly at me but never came close to landing another blow.
Trolls were bloodthirsty, violent, and indiscriminate in the carnage they created, but this would hardly be a fair fight. I’d never had an issue with killing, but I didn’t relish killing an opponent that was simply defending itself, not to mention severely injured.
I crouched and waited until it took another wild swing, and then I jumped, spinning my sword around to plunge it into the creature’s unprotected chest. I connected solidly right at the neck, ramming the sword to its hilt and slicing down as I fell to the
ground. Given that the troll was probably twelve feet tall, I had a good four feet to drop, which cut the poor creature in half, neck to groin. Its entrails slid out onto the stone floor into a rank and steamy mass around my feet, up to my knees.
Fortunately, the force of my attack made the troll fall backward, away from me. It was dead before it fell to the ground with a jarring thud, its badly broken leg twisted awkwardly underneath its bulk. The metallic, rotted smell of troll offal at my feet filled the chamber, nearly gagging me. Knowing it would have eventually healed from its injuries, I felt bad for killing it, but I just didn’t have any other choice.
I pulled the sword free from the troll’s gut and then wiped it off on the pile of old wooden rail ties before returning it to its sheath on my back. I found the light I’d lost when the troll hammered me with the subway rail, and I picked it up. I glanced back at the troll’s missing arm and damaged leg and then headed out through the cavern’s mouth, wondering how strong the Kalku was to have done that kind of damage.
CHAPTER 12
I quickly found the old abandoned subway line just outside the troll’s cavern and then switched back to the smaller light and fitted it with a red filter as I progressed. I didn’t want a blazing torch giving me away fifty yards up the tunnel. Plus, the filter helped preserve my night vision. I didn’t bring night-vision gear because I knew there wouldn’t be enough ambient light to magnify.
The old subway tunnel continued unobstructed for quite some time. The uniformly carved circular passage was about ten feet in diameter with narrow gauge track laid along the floor, probably to accommodate the hand trucks used to cart people, tools, and debris from the dig sites. This was definitely not one of the working lines.
After an hour of creeping across level ground, the tunnel sloped upward somewhat, and the air soured and warmed. It was a foul combination of sweat, fire, and rotting food, and I could make out random noises, too. The sounds were indistinct—the odd cough and metal scraping metal—but there were no voices. I had to be getting close to one of the areas inhabited by the mole people, where hopefully, I could at least find out if the Kalku had passed through. I began to hear the faint but distinct reverberation of the subway through the walls. The closer I got to the source of the sounds and smells, the more the ambient light increased. It got bright enough that I didn’t need my flashlight anymore, so I switched it off and returned it to its pouch. I made it to the end of the tunnel and found a spot where part of the wall had collapsed, forming an opening with the source of light coming from the other side. I ducked behind the left edge of the fissure then crouched down and stuck my head out just far enough to peer out.
The crack opened onto a massive cavern with warm, fetid air reeking of human waste. Pits, drums, and an old barbeque grill held bonfires that were each surrounded by a few people. At least I was hoping they were people. They were all sitting remarkably still, and each one had an odd black haze around his or her head. My first thought was that it was some kind of magic, but it was greasier and somewhat sloppier than my previous experiences with enchantments.
I counted twenty people around six fires, none closer than forty feet to one another, and the closest one to me was easily seventy-five feet away. I could make out three other exits from the giant cavern. I sat and watched for a few minutes, taking stock of the situation. Absolutely no one shifted more than to cough, not even when a high-pitched, metallic clatter began rattling up a tunnel to my left about a hundred feet away.
I lowered myself to the ground and began lizard-crawling slowly toward the nearest group, staying as low as I could and close to the cavern wall. This back part of the cavern was pretty dark, but I didn’t want to start a panic—if that was even possible. I had little doubt that these folks had seen more bizarre stuff than me come through the crack I’d emerged from, but if they were under some sort of spell, they still might attack an intruder on sight. Given the surroundings, even if they just panicked, some of them could get seriously hurt, too.
As I crept closer, my suspicions were confirmed. Each person—and they were definitely people—had a variety of implements within reach: axes, wrenches, hammers, and all manner of old railway tools. I crawled up to a fifty-five-gallon drum lying on its side about thirty feet from where three men and one woman were seated on crates and pallets around a small fire. A makeshift spit spanning the flames held a variety of burnt lumps. From my vantage point, I could see all the people had matted and tangled hair and were dressed in tattered and dirty clothing and covered in sweat, dirt, and soot, but no one moved or talked—they all just stared blankly into the fires. Every single one of them was sallow and malnourished. This close, I could also see that the greasy haze that covered their heads oozed instead of flowing the way normal magic did. I had the impression it was amateurish—powerful but still unpracticed. That feeling was reinforced by the fact that the fog was very loosely connected to the individuals, moving and warping around them rather than secure and tight to the head.
At one point, a lone figure pushing a cart shuffled into the cavern from the tunnel—the source of the racket. No one cared; they just kept their gazes fixed on the fire pits. It was as if they were all stoned. I was sure it was some kind of magic, but I wasn’t sure how to help them or even if I could.
Of course, the guy had to steal a cart with a loose wheel. Its rattle on the stone floor reverberated off the cavern walls like a train. I couldn’t see what was in the cart, but the man pushing it—with his matted beard, torn and dirty jeans, plaid shirt, and ratty, drab-olive government-issue jacket—had the same thousand-yard stare and dark halo as the others. He shuffled past everyone toward a tunnel directly across from me and disappeared down the passageway. Seconds later, the deafening clatter stopped.
I could hear a voice echo up the passageway the cart guy had disappeared down, though I couldn’t make out what it was saying. Given the total lack of response from the cavern’s residents so far, I decided to risk it and get up and make a move. I slowly rose from my prone position and just stood there, waiting for some reaction. No one flinched. I took a few steps toward the passageway across from me. No one noticed. I did a little jig. No one even blinked.
What the hell? I walked to the group closest to me and approached an old woman. I stood behind her and cleared my throat. I waved my hand in front of her face. Still, no one budged.
Her eyes were completely milky white and opaque. All three of her companions were the same. This close, I could definitely tell that the quasi-nebulous greasy black haze around their heads was ill formed. Still, it had to be magic, and the miasma was the residue of the spell.
A spell suggested a magic user, and that likely meant the Kalku had come through here at some point. Either that, or it was a total coincidence that these people ran into another sorcerer. Granted, group mind control wasn’t usually part of a shaman’s magical repertoire. They mostly focused on divining or healing or communicating with spirits, but then, this situation had the feel of someone who wasn’t that familiar with mind-control spells.
I hurried after the cart pusher and stopped at the entrance of the tunnel when I heard a low chanting. The cart pusher reappeared in the passage, without the cart this time, and began to approach me. Like the others, his eyes were clouded over, the haze surrounded his head, and he shuffled right past me without concern.
The dogleg in the tunnel he’d emerged from was illuminated by flickering light from somewhere farther down. I could smell the fire, and it was fragrant, almost pleasant, like burning herbs or incense. The chanting was mostly unintelligible, and the few sounds I could make out as words were in a dialect I didn’t understand. It sounded vaguely Spanish.
My mind raced. Could the Kalku still be here a day after stealing the Cup? Why would he have remained in New York? I pulled my Sig, ejected the clip, and replaced it with a fresh one as quietly as I could. I’d only used a few rounds, but even one extra
bullet could be vital in a fight.
The problem was I had no idea how far back this pathway extended or what it opened onto. Plus, if that was the Kalku, the Wekufe had to be very close. I wasn’t familiar enough with either to be in a position to have to take them both on at the same time in a close-quarter battle. And I had no idea if he had hostages or more of those zombiis with him or even if it was the Kalku at all.
My only option was to draw out whatever was in there. I surveyed the main cavern for a position that provided good cover and a full view of this lighted passageway. To my far left, about thirty-five feet away, was the last entrance into the cavern, obscured slightly by a partially collapsed ceiling. The crack I’d come through was directly across from me while the path the noisy cart guy had used was far off to my right, more than a hundred feet away and on the other side of all the bonfires and zombiis.
The wall between the partially collapsed passageway and the lighted passage was curved just enough that I’d still have direct line of sight between the two positions. If I took up a position just behind the fallen rocks at the mouth of that cave, the bonfires would be behind anyone or anything that came out from the lighted passageway.
I ran to the mouth of the collapsed tunnel and ducked behind the rocks. I couldn’t hear or smell anything odd down the passageway behind me, so I figured I’d take my chances. I got into a combat kneeling position and pulled my Sig.
“Hey!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, hoping the entranced people wouldn’t suddenly decide to come to life. I waited for a few seconds, and the chanting from the tunnel abruptly stopped. The chanter knew I was there.
CHAPTER 13
“You in the cave, stop what you’re doing, and come out with your hands over your head!” I shouted. What the heck—it works for cops on TV.
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