A Glimpse of Darkness

by Lara Adrian

  “Now,” Munira said.

  The blue flame of Munira’s fire exploded from her chest—more heat and energy than actual flame—and it twisted into a spiral of shimmering, blazing air that Arielle manipulated with her own sylph magic, sending it straight to the rafters. The smell was horrendous—burned leather, charring skin, sizzling fat—and the sound soul-rending. “Thief!” turned to wails of agony, and extra-crispy carrion carriers fell from the ceiling.

  Munira ceased the energy burn, her entire body suddenly chilled to the core. Trembling fingers fumbled the Light and nearly dropped it. She slid her backpack off her shoulders, yanked out the Blur and as many undead packets as she could reasonably hold, then shoved the Light into the pack. A quick check of her front found a faintly darkened spot on her chameleon suit just above her breasts, courtesy of her fire, and six deep gouges in her abdomen. They oozed blood, but they weren’t gushing. Running around Below bleeding was so not on the itinerary. Too bad she hadn’t thought to pack bandages.

  Not to mention how expensive repairing the suit was going to be—one more thing to worry about later. The “Thief!” chant couldn’t possibly have gone unnoticed.

  She zipped up the backpack, shouldered it, and gathered up the undead packets. Time to get out of Soledad’s lair.

  Arielle was struggling to sit up, her already pale skin seeming translucent, stretched too tight. Whatever she’d been given was still in her system.

  “We have to run right now,” Munira said. She slid an arm around Arielle’s shoulders and helped her sit up. Munira’s wounds protested, and she winced.

  “You didn’t come for me,” the sylph said matter-of-factly. “Take your Retrieval and go. I’ll get out.”

  The memory of Tariq’s bloody corpse made Munira believe otherwise. “I can’t leave you.”

  “Yes, you can. I’d leave you.” For all of Arielle’s faults, the sylph was no liar. Whether they were discussing magic, men, or whether her new miniskirt turned the corner from sexy to slutty, Arielle told Munira the truth.

  Arielle was awake and capable. Munira’s father was not; he needed her more.

  “Don’t be late tomorrow,” Munira said, giving her partner’s shoulders a squeeze.

  “See you at the office.”

  She thrust a couple of undead packets at Arielle, then turned and fled the laboratory before she changed her mind.

  #

  Munira raced through the underground tunnels, exhaustion pulling at her muscles, stomach cramping, her heart heavy over leaving Arielle behind. She shoved that out of her mind. Once this job was over, she was out from Below, and her father was safe, she could dwell on her partner. Now wasn’t the time, not if she wanted to escape El Sótano in one piece.

  Somewhere behind her, a nightmare growled. She didn’t stop, vaguely aware of the direction she’d chosen. If her memories of the maps were correct, she had two exit points coming up. Illumination was almost nonexistent here, and she paused long enough to pull her Maglite out of a side pocket of the backpack. The strong beam cut through the inky blackness ahead of her, but could do nothing for the strong, suffocating odors of rot and tepid water. It couldn’t touch the chill that had settled deep in her bones.

  Ahead the tunnel seemed to widen, and very soon Munira skidded to an ungraceful stop at a junction of sorts. It was roughly fifteen feet in diameter, with a five-foot-wide hole in the very center. Water trickled down from straight above, and the nauseating odor of human waste somehow rose above the rotten medley of stink she’d been breathing since coming Below. This was some type of drain. More liquid ran down from the lips of two different tunnels that angled off to her right and left.

  Something clattered in the pipe above her, and Munira shrank back. She didn’t allow shock and disgust at the creature slithering out of the pipe to distract her from throwing a packet right at its crow-like head. The packet burst, and the undead thing fell straight down the drain, barely allowing her a glance at a long, snake-like body.

  A second appeared, and it hissed a furious warning at her before she could throw another packet. Two more followed in quick succession, until Munira snorted at the ridiculousness of her situation. She’d disturbed a nest of undead crow-snakes, and she was wasting her packets. She was also wounded, sweating, and just a little bit woozy. She had to pick an exit and go.

  The tunnel on the right went west, toward the underground grotto beneath Pier 12. She wasn’t entirely sure of the dangers lurking there, only that Alvara had made her promise to not go that way. The tunnel to the left went south, and would take her to the old paper mill and El Sótano’s official front door—and the place where Tariq had been killed.

  Indecision rooted her again.

  And then from the tunnel behind her came a menacing jangle that sent terror shooting through her heart: the shaking warning of a rattlesnake’s tail.

  Chapter 5

  by Stacia Kane

  Of course, it would be foolish to expect what followed her to be a regular rattlesnake. This was El Sótano; the odds of a normal snake, one she could reasonably stomp on or use her fast Retriever reflexes to grab behind the head and throw away, were slim to none. Munira could only imagine the sort of snake-beast she would face, a revolting fusion of gods-only-knew how many once-living creatures. The only thing she knew for sure was that every one of its mismatched parts would want to kill her. Which meant she needed to get the hell out of there before it had a chance.

  A scraping noise like a blade on stone to her left drove the point home. No matter what she’d promised Alvara, she had to go right … and toward Pier 12. Fear choked her throat, sharpening the horrible stench of decay, of forgotten things rotting in the dank crypt of the dead-world. Fear also kicked in her a burst of extra speed. Useful. Not as good—or as easy, or as pleasurable—as the spirit booster, but hey, it wasn’t like she had any other options. Not unless she happened to come across a bottle of potion there in the tunnel.

  And was stupid enough to actually drink it.

  Resigned, she gripped the Blur potion, then waited until the rattles were as close as she dared and she saw a separation in the shadows that told her the snake-thing would appear any second. She squeezed her eyes shut and smashed the bottle onto the wet cement.

  Fierce blue-white light flashed in the tunnel, but she’d already started running. The Blur would give her a few seconds, but not enough to escape completely; she could only hope it might scare or confuse the snake-thing. Her boots pounded the cement, filthy corpse-water splashing her legs with every step. Her suit was going to need some serious work when she got out of this. If she got out of this …

  A slight bend in the tunnel, another desultory waterfall, and a faint gleam of light at the end. Almost there. Almost there, and the rattles sounding again behind her. Damn it! It had the scent of her blood, and it wasn’t going to give up. She didn’t dare look back, even as she wasted a few seconds she couldn’t spare to tuck all of the packets into her backpack. She couldn’t let that thing get close enough to use one on it.

  The water deepened with every step. Whether by accident or design—probably the latter—Temesis had sent her down as the tide came in. If she didn’t get out fast, she’d be in for some serious breath holding.

  More waves, more water. The rattles closing in behind her. Could that thing swim?

  Ick.

  One last wave hit her as she threw her body forward, and she rode it as best she could, out into the grotto itself, until she knocked against the legs of the pier like a piece of driftwood. Cautious relief touched the edges of her mind. At least she’d gotten out of the tunnel, and it would be easy to scale the leg. Even a half-ifrit like herself had special skills in that area.

  Splinters buried themselves in her hands as she half climbed, half shimmied her way up one of the legs, tugging at the skin of her suit and sending fresh tremors of pain through her from the wound on her stomach. Great. How wonderful to leave a nice handy trail of blood for Soledad’s violent pets.<
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  Light filtered onto the pier itself, a reluctant sooty light, like water used to wash moldy clothing. Above her, the gunmetal sky glowered and shifted, clouds racing past the fading sun. She readjusted her backpack on her shoulders and started to move, shivering in the threatening breeze with the hair on the back of her neck prickling and itching.

  Shadows lurked on the shore, along the crumbling walls of what had once been vacation homes and luxury office buildings and beneath the rusted exoskeletons of long-discarded cars. Empty windows stared at her; more shadows draped over the broken concrete, over the chunks of rock and garbage that made up the street back toward the center of town. Toward the tower where Temesis held her father.

  Those shadows were what disturbed her. They weren’t just shadows; they looked wrong, felt wrong. Heavy somehow, as if they were full to the top with every sort of darkness and evil and cold, as if any second they would burst and spill greedy malevolence over everything. Including her.

  No time to worry about that. She forced her legs to move, her every sense waiting for something to jump out at her.

  Sure enough, something did. Not just one something: a lot of somethings, and the undead packets still buried in her backpack. Damn. What Munira saw didn’t make sense—these things shouldn’t have been on the pier, shouldn’t have been able to withstand even the thin light Above. Their spiny, crooked legs trembled, both the human ones and the … extras. Bloody eyes centered in misshapen heads, hands on too-long arms reached out to grab her. They scuttled toward her like bilious crabs, their clawed toes clicking on the pier, a wretched battalion of gruesome butchery eager to make her one of their own.

  But the worst thing had to be the rows of razor-edged teeth, like sharks’ mouths—hell, that was probably where Soledad got the parts—gleaming with thick whitish saliva, tinged with traces of pink from blood. When the tallest one of them—it seemed to manage its rotting collection of limbs with greater skill than its siblings—spoke, its voice dragged sharp black ice over her skin. “You steeeeal. Isssss bad to steeeeal. Missstressss sssays no steeealing.”

  She thought about answering, but didn’t bother. Didn’t want to, anyway. Even if she were the sort of person who could toss out witty one-liners for every situation, she wouldn’t. Instead she let heat boil in her mouth, in her chest; whispers of steam rose from her still-damp salamander suit. She’d rather not waste the energy, but she needed to be prepared.

  Escape would be the best plan. She ducked and darted to their right. The stench of them! Bile rose in her throat; she forced it back down, along with what little remained of her faith in the division between Above and Below.

  Cold fingers like tendrils of icy slime on her arms, in her hair. She’d have to use her power after all. The air around her froze; those grasping hands disappeared, but she knew they’d be back. It would take more than a little heat to deter those things. She needed those undead packets.

  She wheeled around, sliding the backpack to the right and tugging the zipper down. More humanoid flesh-eaters spilled from doorways, scrambled down walls from blind windows. The alleys coughed up two-headed dog-things, barking furiously and running on what looked like crocodile legs. The patchwork stitches binding their parts together were visible even from where she was, and the sick crawling magic of them weighed on the air around her.

  She didn’t have enough packets. She had barely enough time to use the last item in her kit, the item she’d counted on saving until her father was safe in her hands: a Relocation potion, which would enable her to dematerialize and rematerialize anywhere within a one-mile radius of where she stood. It was the only way she could imagine escaping Temesis’s tower alive. But if she didn’t manage to reach the tower, that potion was moot anyway. Weariness overwhelmed her; such a long way to go, a never-ending trial from which she was starting to think there was no way she could emerge victorious. Fire began to build in her chest.

  She managed to grab a handful of packets—maybe four or five—before a crab-thing yanked her arm back. One of the packets flew backward; a thud and the sharp herb-ash smell told her that one of the creatures, at least, was dead.

  Too bad there were so many of them.

  And not just the crab-monsters. As they lifted her off the ground, she saw actual humans—or things that still looked like humans. Their parts didn’t match, but they possessed the standard sets. Worse than that. These were the magical undead, Talents whose bodies had given out on them. Through the sea of arms and teeth around her, through the swarm of unnatural beings, she caught a glimpse of Tariq el Sabueso, the werehound who’d lost his life Below only a few days before. Now his eyes gleamed red in his wolfish face.

  Her left arm shrieked in pain, knocking out the heat building inside her with a wash of agony. One of the crab-things had torn through her suit, ripped into her flesh, and peeled off a long strip of it. The others squealed. Their needle-like, bloodstained claws reached for the chunk and tried to grab it for themselves. More claws on her skin, trying to get their own piece. If she didn’t do something fast, she was going to be dinner.

  Ignoring the pain, ignoring the clicking sound of their numerous teeth, she managed to toss one of the packets, then another. The things holding her dropped.

  Too bad it meant she dropped, too, but she could handle that. It was also too bad more of them reached for her—at least the ones that hadn’t given up on eating her and gone for their dead cousins instead. Murky blood spilled onto the pier; bits of rancid flesh flew everywhere. She used another packet to kill the one whose teeth were positioned in just the right place to bite her arm off, but the one by her head was too quick for her. The packet fell on the wood beneath her.

  Son of a …

  In desperation, she kicked as hard as she could at the one about to eat her leg, the heel of her boot connecting solidly with its misshapen head. It exploded with a horrible gooey splurch. Munira knew she’d be hearing that sound in her nightmares for a good long time. Chunks of sour meaty tissue rained down on the pier; its blood, like cold oil, soaked her boots and her suit. Worse was the way some of the dog-things fell on the carcass, the way even the magical undead tried to shove whatever they could into their mouths.

  “Misssstressss ssssayssss no sssssstealing,” another hissed. Its claws bit her shoulders; she felt her blood begin to flow. “No ssssstealing.”

  It pulled her close to its mouth, dropping its jaw obscenely low. So low she could have counted every one of those vile teeth if she’d had time. She didn’t. Instead she spat at it. It screamed and fell back, a patch of skin above its eye sizzling and bubbling horribly, but didn’t release its grip.

  She was still close, though. The hands grabbing her—the claws still trying to steal her skin or scratching at the blood on her stomach with repugnant avarice—grew colder and colder as her skin heated. She could only hope she’d be able to build enough after everything she’d been through.

  The sizzle-skinned one stepped on the fallen undead packet and collapsed. The sight gave Munira the burst of energy she needed. The air around her shimmered for one glorious second before heat exploded on her body, the splinters in her hands bursting into flame. She grabbed two of the beasts with those hands and took a grim satisfaction in seeing the fire catch and start devouring the dry, dead skin.

  The crab-things screamed. They weren’t smart enough not to keep trying for her, but their hesitation gave her what she needed. Her feet hit the ground; she threw herself forward, out of reach of those germ-ridden claws.

  And landed a foot away from the snake, now slither-crawling up the pier, the flabby, blistered seam it probably used as a mouth stained reddish with blood. Its tail—or whatever that thing was called—rose high above its back, stabbing at the low-hanging sky: a cluster of smaller rattles like flesh-colored grapes that terminated in the stinger of a scorpion. Lizard legs in the back, human hands in the front. Oozing sores covered its crusty greenish black skin, and its eyes glowed dead-beast orange, illuminating the flat nose
and making the rest of the head appear even more hideous.

  Damn!

  The crab-beasts seemed to disagree with her sentiments. They left their half-eaten friends and surged toward her, their bodies lurching and bobbing on their unnatural legs.

  The snake-thing hesitated for a second. Munira could almost read its thoughts: grab her and take her back Below, or kill the crab-things?

  She knew which choice she preferred. Let it see they had so much more meat than she did. Crab legs were a delicacy, right? Not that the snake-thing looked like much of a gourmand, but who knew what hidden qualities it may have?

  The crab-beasts made the decision for it. Their claws reached out, gouging and tearing at its skin. Its bellow split the air and vibrated down her spine. Its tail soared over its back, impaling one, two crab-things. Piercing several of the dog-beasts and the magical undead.

  Those beings, at least, hadn’t completely forgotten about her. More pain coursed through her as one of them pulled her hair, attempting to throw her to the ground. It was almost pleasant to be attacked by something that actually looked mostly human. She still had enough heat to discourage it, but not enough to do any real damage; she was exhausted.

  The fight turned into a melee. The barking and howling, the roar and rattle, the screams and squeals. The rattler’s tail knocked her down, and she hit the edge of the pier with a bone-cracking thud.

  No bones broken, though. Luckily. Cuts everywhere, missing skin, searing pain, but no broken bones. Through the confusion of legs and disconnected body parts being tossed around she saw the snake tear off the torso of a crab-thing, saw crab-things climb onto its back like deadly spiders and try to bite off its head, its tail. The smell of fetid blood hung thick in the air, so heavy it made her gag.

  This was her chance. She dragged herself to her feet. Only a few steps between herself and the shadows. Only a few stumbles and then she could merge into the darkness and flee. Once she escaped from the pier, she’d be safe—or as safe as one could be in Port Nightfall. Munira was pretty sure that if she could just get into the city proper, she would be able to lose any of Soledad’s monsters easily if they decided to follow. Hell, she could even lead them right to Temesis and let his pretentious ass deal with them. Protecting him from undead minions was not part of their deal; she’d happily drag hell itself into his living room at that moment.