Critical Failures V (Caverns and Creatures Book 5)

by Robert Bevan

  “That is Shava.”

  “Do you know that Lady Vivia is looking for you right now?”

  Alessandro suddenly appeared a more appropriate level of concerned for his well being. “It would be best if she did not hear of this.”

  Katherine shook her head. “That’s what I thought. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “I have needs! She and I have not shared the pleasures of the flesh since her cat died.”

  “She’s in mourning, Alessandro! Mittens wasn’t just any cat. That was her familiar! You couldn’t give her a couple of weeks to grieve for her loss without poking your dick into some bimbo?”

  “Hey!” said the bimbo.

  “I’m sorry,” said Alessandro. “Who are you, exactly?”

  “I’m the one who killed Mittens, asshole. So I think I know what she’s going through. Do you know why she’s looking for you?”

  “No, I –”

  “She wants to share the pleasures of the flesh with you right now.”

  “She does?”

  “You bet she does. She got all horned up by the thought of starving my wolf and having him devour me alive. Stavros put the moves on her, but she only wanted to share the pleasures of the flesh with you.”

  “She –”

  “And here you are, having your fleshy pleasures with this strumpet. What have you got to say for yourself?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Fuck your sorry!”

  Alessandro waited for a moment before speaking again. “Did you come here just to reprimand me for my indiscretions?”

  “No,” said Katherine. “I need directions to the kennels. I’ve got to spring my wolf and get the fuck out of here.”

  Alessandro’s eyes shifted to his sword again, then back at Katherine. “I cannot help you. Lady Vivia may forgive my lack of fidelity. We’ve been through that before. But if I willingly assist Mittens’s killer, it will be I who gets fed to the deathhounds.”

  Katherine couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Do you think I’m fucking around?” She reached into the Bag of Holding. “Stavros!” The dead Drow body spilled out onto the floor, crossbow bolt still poking out of one eye socket, and cold dead hand still firmly wrapped around cold dead dick.

  Shava screamed.

  “By the Dark Gods!” cried Alessandro.

  “Now where the fuck are the goddamn kennels?”

  “Up the hall a ways and down the spiral staircase.”

  Katherine turned to Captain Righteous, not bothering to hide her smugness. “You see? I told you it would come in handy.”

  Captain Righteous grimaced at the body on the floor, then looked at Katherine. “And what shall we do with these two?”

  Katherine thought about it for a moment. She didn’t have it in her to straight up order anyone’s death, but she also couldn’t leave them alone. She turned to Alessandro. “Are the kennels guarded?”

  “No,” said Alessandro. “The hounds are all kept in uncomfortably small cages, deprived of food and light to the constant brink of starvation and madness. Even the cruelest Drow would soon be driven mad as well by their constant howling.”

  Katherine felt a little less queasy about murdering these people, but Captain Righteous might have moral qualms about it. She was already in enough hot water with him as it was.

  “You stay here and keep an eye on them. I’ll run and get Butterbean, then meet you back here.”

  “It could be dangerous,” said the Captain. “Would you like Bingam to accompany you?”

  “Fuck no.”

  Katherine let Bingam hold onto the torch so that they’d be able to see. She produced a Light Stone from her Bag of Holding, opened the door, and peeked left and right. The coast seemed clear enough.

  She ran on her toes and the balls of her feet past a dozen more doors, some closed and some open, until she found a doorway with no door. Sure enough, though, there was a spiral staircase leading down.

  Tiptoeing down the stairs, she found that there was a door at the bottom. She tested the handle. It was unlocked. As soon as the door opened outward just a crack, a cacophony of barks and snarls bellowed out from the room on the other side.

  “Shit!” said Katherine, pushing the door shut. The barking stopped instantaneously. It was perfectly silent. This door must be soundproofed like a motherfucker. Concerned that someone may have heard the noise, she tucked the Light Stone into an inner pocket of her cloak.

  In one quick motion, she opened the door just wide enough to slip inside and shut it behind her.

  The barking was indeed maddening, as was the powerful stench of shit and scorched hair. The complete and utter darkness didn’t help. She pulled the Light Stone back out.

  Being able to see didn’t make the place any less horrific. More than two dozen emaciated wolves growled and snarled at her, pawing the doors of their tiny cages lined up along the perimeter of a black iron circular floor about half the size of the Whore’s Head Inn’s common room. The bottoms of the cages were matted with the wolves’ filth. Only poor Butterbean, lying down in his relatively clean cage, didn’t look as though he wanted to tear Katherine’s body to ribbons with tooth and claw. Through the bars of an iron gate on the right side of the circular room, Katherine saw a stone stairway that led along the wall to a larger cage, about the size of the Chicken Hut’s bathroom, standing behind and above the wolves’ cages. The big cage was unoccupied, much to Katherine’s relief. She didn’t even want to know what kind of beast the Drow normally kept in there.

  Katherine undid the latch on Butterbean’s cage to the howling protests of the other wolves. He leaped out of his cage and licked her like she was made out of heroin-flavored ice cream. The other wolves stopped their snarling and growling. They stared at Katherine and Butterbean with what seemed like bewilderment. Had they never seen this kind of affection between a person and a wolf before?

  Katherine felt sorry for the rest of the wolves, but didn’t trust that they wouldn’t kill and eat her if she opened the cages.

  “Sorry guys,” she said, and stepped toward the door.

  Butterbean whined, and Katherine realized that he wasn’t following her. He sat in front of the other cages and continued to whine.

  Shit.

  Katherine knelt in front of Butterbean and spoke her Speak With Animals incantation. “Speak.”

  “I’m sorry, Katherine,” said the wolf. “I beg you to set these wolves free. The stories they’ve told me. It’s beyond cruel.”

  “I just don’t know if I can trust them,” said Katherine. “They’re starved out of their minds. Who’s to say they wouldn’t kill and eat us as soon as we open the cages?”

  Butterbean barked and growled at the other wolves, who all turned toward the large black wolf Katherine assumed must be the alpha. The alpha responded to Butterbean with a short series of barks.

  Butterbean turned to Katherine. “He says they promise not to eat us.”

  “That’s just not good enough. They’d probably say anything to get me to open their cages.” Then Katherine had an idea. “I’ve got some chopped up dead horses in my bag.”

  “Since when?”

  “It’s a long story, and this spell isn’t going to last forever. Ask them if they’ll agree to spare me in exchange for horse meat.”

  Butterbean relayed her proposal and translated the alpha’s reply. “He says they’ll spare you, but the other denizens of this place are fair game.”

  The alpha wolf’s counter-offer convinced Katherine that he wasn’t just agreeing to anything she asked, and would likely honor his part of the bargain.

  “That’s between them and the Drow. But I’m traveling with a couple of friends, so tell them not to kill any non-Drow.”

  Butterbean wagged his tail excitedly. “Excellent. But who are the Drow?”

  “They’re the black-skinned elves with the white hair. They’re the ones who live down here and are keeping them prisoner.”

  “So you want me
to tell them to only hunt down black people.”

  Katherine grimaced. “Could you possibly word it any differently than that?”

  Butterbean cocked his head to the side and barked at her.

  Shit. The spell had timed out.

  Against every moral impulse in her being, Katherine nodded, hoping that Butterbean would understand. “Yes.”

  Butterbean seemed to understand. He exchanged some barks with the alpha wolf, then barked sharply back at Katherine as he wagged his tail.

  Katherine wasn’t thrilled about gambling her life on a tail wag, and the more she thought about serving the Drow up unaware, however much they may deserve it, the more it felt like straight up mass murder. But a deal was a deal, and Butterbean would certainly hold his ground if she tried to ditch them all now.

  She reached into her Bag of Holding. “Horse.” Nothing happened.

  She thought for a moment, then concluded that since the horses were all chopped up, they no longer qualified as horses. She tried again.

  “Horsemeat.” Something slick and fleshy materialized in her hand. She pulled out a long thin slab of what she assumed to be leg muscle and let it flop on the floor.

  The wolves barked and yipped at the bloody scrap on the floor. Though Butterbean was free, and almost certainly hungry, he dared not eat in front of the other caged wolves.

  Katherine put the tips of her fingers into the bag. “All the horsemeat.” As soon as she felt the first sticky bit of flesh, she yanked her hand out of the bag, which proceeded to vomit out chunks of meat, organs, and two horse’s worth of everything aside from skin, bone, and hoof. A massive pile of gore piled up at her feet while the wolves watched, tongues hanging out of their open mouths.

  Now came the question of how to release them. Should she release the alpha first or last? Should she just start on one end and work her way around? Each cage was about the same distance from the exit, so there was no clear advantage in starting from one side or the other.

  How did the Drow open the cages when they fed prisoners to the wolves without getting attacked themselves?

  Katherine’s eyes drifted up to the larger cage above the rest, then it clicked. That was no holding cell. It was an observation platform.

  Butterbean whined at her, no doubt wondering what was taking so long. The other wolves started to growl.

  “Follow me,” Katherine said to Butterbean. She opened the gate to the staircase, closed it behind her and Butterbean, and latched it. As she suspected, the floor of the big cage was completely clean of monster shit, and had a nice view of the floor below.

  Three chains with engraved wooden handles hung from the ceiling at the front of the cage. The engravings read from left to right:

  OPEN

  CLOSE

  HEAT

  The first two seemed obvious enough. They would open or close all of the cages simultaneously. HEAT was more of a mystery. Katherine supposed it might get uncomfortably cold down here in the winter months, but having the climate control switch here next to the kennel controls seemed stylistically off. She pulled the chain to see what would happen. It came down about a foot lower, then raised up an inch, leaving the handle nearly a foot below the other two.

  The wolves’ barks and growls grew in intensity, and Katherine felt like a jerk for letting them continue to starve while she screwed around experimenting with chains.

  “Sorry guys!” she called down to the cages below. “Here you go. Dig in.” She pulled the OPEN chain, which came as far down as the HEAT chain had, but retracted to its original position when she let go of it. She could barely make out the squeal of rusty cage doors swinging open over the noise the wolves were making. To her surprise, not a single wolf jumped out. They just kept on barking and growling.

  Katherine peered down at the cages to make sure the doors were open. Every single one of them had swung out. There was nothing between these stupid wolves and a mountain of horsemeat, but not a single one of them moved.

  “What are you waiting for?” Katherine said, but she couldn’t even hear herself over their noise. “Stop barking and go eat already!”

  Then she caught a whiff of something other than horse entrails and wolf shit, and dots tried to connect in her head, but she couldn’t even hear herself think for all the goddamn barking.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” she shouted. The wolves became silent.

  “What is that?” She sniffed the air. “Is someone cooking something?” On the floor she could see tendrils of steam rising out of the pile of horsemeat, and some of the more liquid parts were beginning to bubble.

  The floor was a giant skillet. What the hell was that for? Did they routinely cook piles of horsemeat down here? Then it hit her, and she yanked again on the HEAT chain. It retracted to its former position, aligning with the other two handles.

  Those evil sons of bitches. The floor wasn’t for cooking. It was for forcing the wolves back into their cages once feeding time was over.

  “Sorry about that!” Katherine called down to the wolves.

  The wolves poked their heads out the front of their cages, fixated on all of the semi-cooked meat in front of them. Drool dripped from their mouths and sizzled on the still-hot floor. Some of the more impatient wolves tested the floor with their paws, only to jerk them back with a yelp.

  Finally, the alpha wolf made a break for it. He bounded out of his cage, leaving little sizzling paw prints as he touched the floor, then dove straight into the pile of gore. He tore into the horsemeat like it had personally killed his mother.

  The other wolves soon followed, yelping as they ran, but seemingly delirious with joy once they dove into the pile of horse innards.

  “We should go now,” Katherine said to Butterbean.

  Butterbean stared longingly at the other wolves as they ripped apart and rolled around in horse gore. Katherine didn’t know if he was hungry, or just longed to be with his own kind. But they could talk that out later. Right now, they had to get out of there.

  “Come on.”

  Butterbean snapped out of his funk and followed her down the stairs. Katherine was wary about opening the gate, but none of the wolves gave her or Butterbean so much as a passing glance as she slowly opened it and inched along the curved wall to the spiral staircase leading out of the kennel chamber.

  They’d made it to the top of the stairs and out into the hallway when Katherine had another hard decision to make. Should she shut the door and keep the noise inside? Or should she leave it open so that the wolves could roam free once they finished their meal.

  She didn’t have time for hard decisions right now. Safety was her primary concern. Some poor unsuspecting sap would be along soon enough to let them out. She closed the door, and the hallway was suddenly dead silent.

  Somewhere far in the distance, a door slammed shut. Shit. Had Alessandro escaped?

  Katherine cupped the light stone in her hands, allowing only enough light to peek through so that she could see where she was going. Just before she and Butterbean reached Alessandro’s door, she heard another door slam. This one was closer, but still a good ways off.

  “Keep looking!” Lady Vivia’s voice echoed out from one of the side corridors perpendicular to this one. “He’s around here somewhere, and may the Dark Gods have mercy on his soul if I find him in the company of another one of the kitchen staff.”

  Katherine took that as an indication that Alessandro had not escaped, but it also meant that the clock was ticking. She thought about doubling back and releasing the hounds, but there was a fair chance that they were still so preoccupied with rolling around in horse guts that they wouldn’t respond. Besides, the exit she knew of wasn’t far from the cell they’d been locked in.

  Katherine opened the door, slipped inside after Butterbean, and closed it behind them.

  Alessandro and Shava sat up in bed, covered by the sheets from the waist down. The latter had her arms crossed over her breasts, and the former rubbed what appeared to be some swelling
on the side of his face.

  Captain Righteous sat in the chair next to the bed, rubbing Alessandro’s sword with Alessandro’s clothes. The little bit he’d shined was no longer black, but shone like normal steel. “You were gone too long. I feared the worst.”

  “I was fine,” said Katherine. She was still distracted by the sword blade. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m rubbing the bladeblack off this blade.”

  “Bladeblack?”

  “A tool for cowards and criminals. They smear it on their blades to keep them from reflecting light. It helps them to sneak up on unsuspecting people in the dark.”

  “Neat,” said Katherine. Her curiosity sated, she focused on more important matters. “What happened here? Where’s Bingam?”

  The captain glanced annoyedly at the bathroom door. “Bingam needed to answer Nature’s call.” He nodded at Alessandro. “Then this one decided to take his chance while the numbers were more in his favor. But numbers mean little compared to training and experience. A lesson he learned the hard way.”

  “That’s fantastic,” said Katherine. “But we really need to move. Lady Vivia is on her way here right now.” She knocked on the bathroom door. “Pinch it off, Bingam. It’s time to bounce.”

  “I’ll be out in a minute!” Bingam called back at her.

  “We don’t have a minute. We need to go now!”

  “Alessandro!” called Lady Vivia from out in the hall. She was closer than Katherine had expected. Interestingly enough, Alessandro didn’t look any less frightened.

  “We’re too late,” said Katherine. “They’’re checking the rooms pretty hastily. If we hide in the bathroom, they might pass us by. Help me get Stavros back in the bag.”

  Captain Righteous gave the two Drow in the bed a warning glare, then helped Katherine shove the dead one back into the Bag of Holding.

  Katherine grabbed Alessandro’s and Shava’s clothes and turned to Captain Righteous. “They’re coming with us.”

  All it took was another look from the captain for Alessandro and Shava to fall in line behind Katherine.

  “Oh, Shava... Oh, Shava... Oh SHIT!” said Bingam when he turned his head back and found Katherine, Shava, and Alessandro watching him choke the bishop in the corner. He jerked his hand out of his pants, but remained facing the wall. “It’s not what it... I couldn’t help... I was enchanted by her bosom.”