The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy)

by Chris Strange

  I took a shaky breath. “No.”

  “Make the Tunnel,” she said. “Then go into the pool. We’ll get you back safe. I can manage the pain. It won’t be like last time.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  She sighed and shifted her aim.

  Ffump.

  I didn’t feel it at first. The flash of the pistol had left an afterimage on my goggles, a little flower-shaped light in a world of darkness. Then the burn started. It was in my left thigh, just above the knee and a little to the left. Like someone had pressed a soldering iron against my skin. My leg quivered.

  “It’s going to be okay,” McCaffrey said through a fog. “Sit down.”

  It seemed like a good idea. I sat.

  “Aran,” she said. “Bind his wound, then get a stone and help Miles while he scratches a Tunnel back to Earth. He’ll get the Kemia when it’s drawn, and not before.”

  The fire was spreading up my leg. Aran moved beside me. Goddamn it. She’s got me.

  “Franco.” It took me a moment to recognize the voice. Detective Wade. “Hey, asswipe. Look over here. Look at me.”

  I tried to focus on him. He was still sitting. He had no chance of rushing McCaffrey.

  “What the hell do you want?” I said.

  “How bad are you bleeding?”

  “How should I know? I can’t see shit.” I patted my leg, the pain searing me with every brush of fabric against the skin. “Somewhere between a trickle and a fire hose.”

  Aran appeared next to me. He tore up the leg of my pants and worked on the bullet wound like he’d done it before. He packed fabric against the wound while white flashes of pain went off my head. By the time he was done I was sweating so much I needed a scuba tank. While I panted, Aran shoved a sharp rock the size of a fist into my hand. I tried to push it away, but Aran wouldn’t let up.

  “Don’t do what she wants,” Wade said from somewhere far away.

  “Hey, Detective,” I said. “How many cops does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one, but he’s never around when you need him.”

  I laughed my ass off. No one else seemed to find it funny.

  “Miles,” McCaffrey said. “The Tunnel, please.”

  I stopped laughing and sat there looking at the rock, trying to work out whether to scream or pass out from the pain or do what I was told. I was never good at doing what I was told, but her sitting idea had been a good one, so maybe this would be too. Then again, this whole thing was too funny, and no one had gotten the joke yet. I dropped the rock next to me. Aran tried to force it back into my hand.

  “Do what she says,” he said in Vei.

  “You in a hurry to get back to Earth?” I said.

  “I want my family back.” He paused and lowered his voice, hissing at me in Vei. “Please. I need your help. You saw my sister in the hospital. You can do the same with your friend. We can still get back at McCaffrey. I promise you we’ll do it. We’ll kill her. But not today.”

  I started laughing again. I laughed so hard tears rolled down my cheeks. It felt like someone was jamming a screwdriver into my bullet wound. I laughed harder.

  “Why aren’t you all laughing?” I said, gasping for breath. “Don’t you get it yet?”

  “Get what?” McCaffrey said. For the first time there was doubt in her voice, and that made it all the funnier.

  “They don’t work,” I said. “The crystals. It’s all bullshit. You think I didn’t already try to use them? You think that wasn’t the first thing I did? I want everything back the way it was. But it never will be. Your research was all flawed. Tartarus wants you to think you can make them work because it wants you to feed it more victims. That’s all this place is. Empty temptation. Everything you’ve done has been a waste. It was all for nothing. Now you see why it’s so fucking funny?”

  Aran bared his teeth and pulled the jar of crystals from his pocket. “They’re useless?”

  “He’s lying,” McCaffrey said. “He’s trying to play us. I saw them work. The wallet, and the money…”

  “A trick,” I said. “I had a Tunneler friend in the alley near us. That’s why I had to get Bohr’s Tunneler to piss off, otherwise he’d sense the trick. Tania just temporarily changed the receipts in my wallet into cash.”

  “You’re lying,” she said again.

  I rolled onto my side, pulled out my wallet, tossed it into Aran’s hands. The Vei opened it. Nothing but receipts.

  He shouted something raw and pained and incomprehensible. And then he was on his feet. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but it was too late. He turned to McCaffrey, snarling in Vei.

  Ffump. Ffump.

  He went down next to me, a hole in his chest, another in his stomach. He faced me, his mouth opening and closing, a low groan escaping his throat. I could hear Wade shouting and swearing.

  “It’s not true,” McCaffrey said. “It…our research…”

  I stretched out to put pressure on Aran’s wounds. His blood trickled downhill and into the pool.

  “Give it up!” Wade was shouting. “Put down the gun. It’s over, McCaffrey.”

  “Be quiet.” She swung the gun toward him. “It works! It has to work.”

  “It doesn’t,” I said, tearing my eyes from Aran’s writhing form. “It’s just as fucked up as you and me.”

  “Be quiet!” She turned the gat on me and pulled the trigger.

  I rolled. The gun barked. The bullet struck the ground next to me, kicking up fragments of stone. I didn’t stop rolling. My leg stung like it was filled with hornets every time it struck stone. My ears pounded with blood and music.

  And then I ran out of ground. My legs went into the pool first, numbing the pain. Everything felt better now. My body slipped into the fluid, spreading warmth outward from my chest. I still had my goggles on, but that didn’t help. I could hear the colors swirling around me.

  My head slipped under the surface. I didn’t even make a splash as I sank.

  THIRTY-TWO

  A phone was ringing.

  Consciousness came slowly. I opened my eyes, waited for the room to stop spinning. My mouth tasted like someone had pissed in it, and my clothes were starting to itch since I’d worn them for three days straight. Slowly, my apartment resolved itself around me. There was something wet and sticky on my shirt. I prodded it with a clumsy finger. I was still clutching a bottle of no-brand whiskey in my hand. I must’ve fallen asleep on the couch and spilled it all over myself.

  Heh. The bottle couldn’t hold its liquor. Heh.

  The phone rang again, driving nails through my skull. I tossed the empty bottle to the ground with the others and rubbed my eyes with the back of my sleeve. What time was it? I reached for the curtains, realized my arms were about three feet too short, and gave up. I was dry as hell, and my stomach was moving around like an accordion. I could do with a good long piss as well.

  Ring ring.

  “All right, fuckin’ all right,” I yelled in the phone’s general direction. I tried to determine precisely where up was, made a guess, and shoved myself in that direction. I got to my feet without falling. How about that? I was doing all right.

  I staggered across my apartment. The carpet was strangely sticky beneath my bare feet. I should get that sorted out. Must be a leak again. I’d only been out on bail a couple of months, and already the place was falling to pieces around me. Maybe it was my lawyer calling me, telling me I’d missed court. Nah, they’d send cops around to haul me down, wouldn’t they? The phone let out another screeching ring like it was trying to find the resonant frequency to make my skull shatter.

  I jerked the phone off the cradle before it could ring again and jammed it against my ear. “Yeah?”

  “Miles. I thought you must be out.” It took me a moment to translate the woman’s accent.

  I squeezed one eye shut tight to try to focus on the clock on the wall. No good. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Claudia,” she said. “I’m not doing so good.”

/>   I stopped squinting and gripped the phone a little tighter. “Claudia. Are you okay? Do you need help? I can be there in…” I tried the clock again, but I swear the numbers weren’t where they were supposed to be. “…soon. Where are you?”

  “No, it’s all right. I don’t need help. I just wanted to talk.”

  I rubbed my stubble. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved. “What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to say sorry.”

  “Sorry? The hell for?”

  “You were right,” she said. “I didn’t take your advice. I did the drug trial. It was a bad idea.”

  She could’ve slipped back into German for all I could tell. “Drug trial? Advice? Help me out here, Claudia.”

  “Last week, remember? I called you to talk about the drug trial I’d heard about. It would’ve paid for my visa to Heaven. The guy who talked to me seemed nervous, though, and I wasn’t sure, so I wanted to talk to you.”

  “You did?”

  For a few minutes, the phone was only filled with the sound of wet coughing. Was she sick? Finally, she came back on the line. “You’re the only one who’s always been there for me without wanting anything in return. You had a lot on with the trial and everything, and I think you’d had a lot to drink, but you told me not to do it. You said it sounded shady, and you were right. But I wanted that money.”

  “I could’ve got you to Heaven,” I said. “I’ve told you that before.”

  “I know.” She sounded sad. “I thought I could do everything by myself. Look how that turned out.”

  Something about the way she was talking was making me nervous, but I couldn’t puzzle it out with all the booze swimming between my ears. “Where are you? We’ll go grab a bite.”

  “I’m not very hungry,” she said. She coughed again. “My stomach is upset. I think the drug doesn’t agree with me.”

  “What drug? Who gave you it?”

  “I…I don’t remember. I think I blacked out. I woke up back in my bed last night.”

  Even drunk, my mind skipped straight to the darkest theories. Claudia going alone to a shady drug trial and blacking out? My stomach churned. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make the words come out.

  “I’m going to the hospital now,” she said, sounding remarkably calm.

  I nodded into the phone. “Good. Yeah, that’s good. Make sure they call the cops, huh? Just…just in case, you know? In fact, I’ll come with you.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve ordered a taxi. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. And I should have been there more for you the last few months. You’ve always been there for me. With all this Chroma stuff, I should have—”

  “Hey, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. You did everything you could. I’m just stubborn.” There was the sound of a car horn. “The taxi’s here. Look after yourself, Miles. And let others look after you too. I know you don’t think you need it, but trust me, you do. I learned that too.”

  “I’ll visit you,” I said.

  “Goodbye, Miles. And thank you.”

  “See you round.”

  It took me three tries to get the phone back on the cradle. I swayed in place, trying to decide whether to get a taxi myself and meet her at the hospital. But she sounded like she wanted a bit of alone time first. I’d visit her in the morning. Whenever that was.

  I staggered back to the couch, snagging another bottle of some unidentifiable substance on the way. It smelled like booze, so that was good enough. The alcohol kept the visions of the gangsters I’d killed away, made it easier to get through the days in court. I collapsed into the creaking cushions of the couch, took a swig, and closed my eyes.

  Maybe I should write myself a note, remind me to go visit Claudia in hospital. I glanced around, but I couldn’t find a pen in my immediate vicinity. Ah, to hell with it.

  Imagine that, Claudia being worried about me, apologizing to me. She was a good kid. I hoped she’d be okay.

  Darkness took me.

  I opened my eyes. I’d only been out a few seconds, but it felt like I’d been reincarnated. The goggles turned the swirling colors of the Tartaran fluid into streaks of black and white. The liquid pressed against my mouth, my nose, my skin, trying to get in. Trying to use my body. But it wasn’t inside me yet.

  The dream—memory—played inside my head. I’d thought Claudia had called me to ask for help. But that wasn’t it at all. McCaffrey and her goons had already knocked her out and brought her to Tartarus. Injected her with fluid, probably from this very pool. And then they’d returned her to her home, to wait until she died. To draw me out.

  It wasn’t my fault. I felt Claudia next to me, her hands keeping the fluid out of my mouth, her whispers in my ear telling me to stay alive. I sunk to the bottom of the pool, my body coming to rest on the smooth stone bottom. My hand touched something that felt like plastic.

  Claudia was dead. That was irreversible. I was a fuck-up, a drunk, a loser. But I could forgive myself. I’d done everything I could.

  Well, almost everything. There’s still one more thing to do. My hand wrapped around the grip of the machine pistol that Aran had tossed in the pool. I planted my feet on the pool floor and pushed off, swimming back toward the surface.

  Though my lungs were burning, I forced myself to come up slowly, just breaching the surface with the top of my head. When my nose came clear of the fluid, I sucked in air and let the fluid drip out of my ears. I could hear shouting. As quietly as possible, I stroked forward and rested my arm on the edge of the pool before raising the gun out of the fluid and shaking it dry.

  The fluid on my goggles obscured things, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. McCaffrey was pacing back and forth, the gun gripped in her bound hands. Wade tried to get to his feet, but McCaffrey pointed the tiny pistol at him, yelling at him to be still.

  “You have to help me get him out,” Wade shouted. “You want to live, we need a Tunneler. Put down the gun.”

  “Be quiet,” she said. “Miles has Tunneler friends. They’ll know he’s here. When he doesn’t come back, they’ll open a Tunnel to get here. I just have to wait.”

  “Even if you’re right, you’re still screwed. You think they’ll let you walk out of here free?”

  She stopped pacing and turned toward him. “Do you think your police force will risk one of their own getting killed? You, Detective, are my pass out of here.”

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Aran was turned toward me a few feet away, his arm stretched out. The rise and fall of his chest was quick and shallow. Without medical care he wouldn’t be sticking around much longer. He met my eyes and opened his mouth. I pressed a finger to my lips, and he nodded slowly.

  McCaffrey turned her back to me, still shouting at Wade. I dug my fingers into a crack in the ground and slipped out of the water. The fluid drained off me instantly, sucked back into the pool. The pain roared again in my leg. I hoped Aran’s makeshift bandage had kept most of the fluid out of the wound. But right now I had more pressing concerns.

  I tried to stand, failed. Fine. I dragged myself along the ground, the stone scraping me with every movement.

  Bohr’s body lay fallen and twisted between me and McCaffrey, his jacket open, his head facing away from me. I dragged myself toward him, gripping the machine pistol and gritting my teeth. I could shoot McCaffrey from here. It’d be hard to miss. But there were enough bodies already, and a burst from the gun would be too clean, too easy for her. I pulled myself along until I was alongside Bohr. The sleeve of his outstretched arm touched against my side, along with something cold and sharp.

  Then McCaffrey turned back toward me and froze. Damn it. I guess a bit of luck was too much to ask for.

  “Miles,” she said, pointing the tiny pistol at me. “You are a survivor, aren’t you?”

  Heart hammering, I carefully moved forward so my b
ody covered the machine pistol. I prayed that with Bohr’s body in the way, she hadn’t spotted it.

  “This makes things much easier,” she said, striding toward me and Bohr’s body. “I’m sorry for shooting at you before. But now we can get back to making that Tunnel out of here. Take us somewhere away from AISOR, where the police won’t look for us right away.”

  “Jesus, don’t I even get a minute to catch my breath?” I said. I inched my fingers back toward Bohr’s hand and looked past McCaffrey at Wade. “Hey, Detective. You’re not in a rush to get home, are you?”

  “No more stalling,” McCaffrey said. She stopped on the other side of Bohr’s body, barely three feet from me, and pointed her pistol at my head. “The crystals may not work, but I’m not going down. You make the Tunnel now, or I kill you and take my chances.”

  Her voice had lost all hint of softness. I froze, one hand wrapped around Bohr’s cool fingers, the other shielding the machine pistol from her view.

  “I heard you talking before,” I said. “You were wrong. My friends aren’t coming. They don’t even know how to make a Tunnel to Tartarus. I didn’t want to give you any more chances for escape than I had to. You’re screwed, Doc. Kill me, and you’re stuck here.”

  Her fingers twitched over the trigger. “Well, in that case, I’ll kill the detective.”

  She turned toward Wade. He raised his hands in front of his face, like he could stop the bullet.

  I ripped the ivory-handled spike from Bohr’s hand. At the same time, I shoved myself up onto my good knee and hurled the machine pistol across the cavern toward Wade.

  “Do something stupid,” I said.

  McCaffrey seemed to hesitate, her head tracking the gun as it clattered across the ground. Then she aimed her pistol at Wade’s head. Too slow.

  I drove the spike into the back of her leg. The Heaven-derived metal pierced her skin and bone like water. She screamed. I kept pushing, putting all my weight into it. Her gun went off as she fell, killing an innocent bit of rock. The spike went out the other side of her leg and kept going through the stone of the cavern floor. I drove it to the hilt and shoved her down, pinning her by the leg to the ground.