Phoebe Harkness Omnibus

by James Fahy

There was a sharp noise, and soft green light suddenly bloomed in the blackness. He had cracked open a glow-stick and by its light, shielding my eyes with a raised hand, I saw we were in a long, low tunnel, which seemed to stretch off in both directions, far out of the light’s reach. The grille leading to the Camera’s basement was above us, like an air vent.

  In the sickly green glow, which still seemed obscenely bright to me after my flight through the dark basement, I saw Chase grinning at me like a merry schoolboy. He looked quite, quite demented. He stood, with just enough room to do so in the circular brick tunnel, his crossbow slung nonchalantly over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing here?” I breathed shakily. “Why did you save me?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. He held up a large, old book. “I saved this. You just happened to be attached.”

  “The Voynich manuscript?”

  “Questions later,” he said, as a loud animal roar of fury erupted above us. My murderous beast had recovered it seemed. “Right now, we need to run. That thing will get in here, if it has to tear the bricks out of the wall to do so.”

  He turned and without waiting for me, scuttled off along the tunnel.

  I opened and closed my mouth wordlessly a few times, before realising he had both the manuscript and the only source of light. I stumbled after him.

  “Wait, I can’t just leave…my…there’s someone else up there.”

  “The vampire?” Chase called, without looking back, his voice echoing off the low long tunnel. “Oh screw him, darling. If he can’t handle a couple of big pussycats, he’s not worth the trouble. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Vampires are hardy, unlike us mere…mortals. For want of a better word.”

  The growl of fury came above us again. I could hear the tearing scrabble as the Tribal struggled to force itself through the grille and give chase. I picked up the pace.

  I didn’t want to leave Allesandro. I didn’t understand what Chase Pargate was doing here, but, to my shame and above all else, I mostly didn’t want to die in a sewer under a basement.

  “What…”I gasped, out of breath as I struggled to keep up with Chase, my feet sloshing and dragging through the ankle deep water. He scurried ahead like a rat, back bent to avoid concussing himself on the low roof. The smoke from his flare rolling across the ceiling. “…What is this place?”

  “Don’t you know, my dear?” he finally bothered to give me a backward glance. “This is Marlin Scott’s true great work.” He smiled at me, ghoulish green in the glow-stick’s light. “Welcome to the Labyrinth.”

  23.

  The tunnel, so low and narrow it was impossible to stand straight, weaved onward endlessly as we ran, my palms running along both narrow walls of slippery stone to keep my balance, my frantic eyes fixed on the back of Chase Pargate’s muddy red coat as he hurried ahead of me, his glow-stick bobbing in the dark, an eldritch jack-o-lantern.

  Other, smaller tunnels branched off into the underground blackness either side of us as we fled. Twice we came to larger junctions, unmarked, and at each of these, my unlikely rescuer stopped a moment, seeming to gain his bearings… I don’t know how, they looked identical to me…before plunging us left or right. I followed him deeper into darkness, utterly lost. What choice did I have?

  “We’re in the Labyrinth?” I panted breathlessly. “I didn’t even know about this place until the other day. These tunnels run all under New Oxford?”

  Chase didn’t look back. “Sweetness, you could fill this ancient and enigmatic manuscript I carry with the things you don’t know,” he said cheerfully. “If knowledge is power, then you, my dear, are a helpless babe in a crib. This way.”

  He plunged again down a side-corridor, and I followed.

  “But, yes. This is Marlin Scott’s access network. Pretty handy if you know how to get around, which luckily for you, I do.”

  “But there are…there are blast doors,” I was confused. “Coded. Scott said as much at the party. You know, that same party where you helped me with my mask and shot my date and then hit me in the head with a gun?”

  “There’s only one way out of our beloved walled city, other than with extremely high security Cabal papers,” he said conversationally, not remotely apologetic for attacking me. “And that’s through the tunnels of the Labyrinth. You are right of course, there are coded doors on all four of the exit tunnels which lead out beyond the city walls. And they are always sealed. Even I can’t get out. But inside the city, the rest of the underworld warren? The whole place is open.”

  He stopped so suddenly I ran into the back of him.

  “Steady on there, darling,” he muttered. His shaggy blonde head whipped from left to right. A corridor led in either direction. They both looked identical. Black and grim and industrial. We had made so many turns, I no longer even knew which way we were facing.

  “Why have we stopped?” I panted. I risked a look behind me, but beyond the reach of the glow-stick’s light, the darkness was impenetrable. A roar rang out, echoing off the walls. I had no way of knowing how close it was, the sound bounced around and rang up and down the tunnels but it was clear that the were-beast was down here with us now, giving chase.

  “Makes one feel like Perseus, doesn’t it?” he said. “You know, trapped in the Labyrinth with the Minotaur. Rather romantic really.”

  “Romantic?” I stared at him as though he was insane, which was the conclusion I was coming to. He shrugged.

  “Strictly in the classical sense I mean, not pink champagne and chocolates. More Byronic. You have blood all over your face you know.”

  “Why have we stopped!?” I snapped. “That thing is coming!”

  “Because I’m waiting for it to catch us up,” he said, as though I’d asked the world’s stupidest question. “If we get too far ahead, it will lose our scent.”

  “Isn’t…isn’t that what we want?” I hissed through gritted teeth, staring at him wide-eyed.

  “Not at all,” he said, seeming to come to a decision. “This way, I think.” He turned right, and I followed him onwards. “If it doesn’t catch us up, we can’t kill it, and then how will we learn anything?”

  The tunnels curved here, and several metal steps led upwards in a tight spiral, until it spat us into a wider passage. Dry and dank. At least there was no more water to slosh through. A cluster of thick pipes ran along the ceiling in either direction.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked.

  “I already told you. Honestly, don’t you pay attention to anything, Doctor Harkness?”

  “You’re not Chase Pargate,” I argued. “I checked. Chase Pargate is dead, and if he wasn’t he’d be in his fifties now.”

  “I know an excellent dermatologist,” he snickered. Goddamn him, he was having fun. Was this all a game to this lunatic? “Who told you I was dead anyway?”

  “My boss, Veronica Cloves.” I answered. “And how do you know my name?”

  “Some of us are far better at snooping than others,” he needled playfully. “I had a fabulous teacher. Right up until she shot me in the chest, that is. Dear old Vee. She always was a viper.”

  He stopped dead in the darkness, and I barrelled into him again.

  “Will you stop doing that?” I grunted. “What do you want with the Voynich, why were you at Marlin Scott’s party, and what the hell were you looking for?”

  “Shush,” he said. He dropped the glow-stick on the floor, and grabbing me by the wrist, pulled me suddenly into a side-tunnel so narrow I hadn’t even noticed it was there. We wedged together in the narrow confines of the darkness, our faces inches apart.

  “What are you doing?” I struggled.

  “Will you please be quiet?” he said in a strained whisper. “I’m not after an illicit grope, snug as we are. It’s here.”

  It’s here? I almost said out loud, and would have if his hand hadn’t shot up and clamped over my mouth. His skin smelled so strange, like incense and spices. Utterly at odds with the grimy surroundings. I stared mutely at him
in the darkness with wide eyes. My body rigid with fear. He was quite beautiful, in an androgynous way. Every bit as twinkling and playful as when he had been a waiter tying on my mask at the party. Pargate’s eyes were narrowed, looking not at me, but back out to the main corridor where he had dropped our spluttering glow-stick. My heart was pounding in my chest. I’m sure he could feel it beating like a drum, we were so crushed together. He on the other hand wasn’t even breathing heavily. He was utterly calm. He had a sly smile on his face. A child playing hide and seek with friends.

  “Something wicked…” he breathed gleefully, in an almost imperceptible whisper, “…this way comes.”

  A low growl confirmed his suspicions and my fears. The were-panther was here. It had tracked our every turn in the Labyrinth, and now instead of dying in the basement of the Camera with a vampire, I was going to die in this hellish warren with a blonde mad-eyed lunatic who smelled like a spice cupboard.

  A shadow fell across the pool of light of the glow-stick, springing up the wall like a prancing demon. The Tribal came into view. It stumbled over the light, sniffing around. Its form heaving as it took deep, expert breaths, finding us with its nose.

  I was aware of Pargate’s hand slowly sliding down between us in the darkness, and for a moment was appalled. One last grope before death? But he reached carefully into the front pocket of his own jeans, and slowly withdrew what looked like a long, pale spike. A weapon of some kind. Like a Japanese throwing dart. It gleamed in the glowstick’s light.

  I had no such weapon. Nothing to defend myself with. I really had to start carrying a gun, if I got out of this alive. I made a mental note of it.

  A thought hit me. There was one thing I had. It wasn’t much, but…

  As I reached laboriously down into the pocket of my tattered parka, trying like hell not to rustle, the creature turned its head toward us – a motion so fast I thought it would snap its own neck.

  Eyed gleamed in the shadows, the rank sick smell washing over us again, as its jaws split in a feverish howl.

  Chase leapt from the opening, surprising me with his speed and leaving me wedged alone in the narrow space. He threw himself at the creature, a fleeting red devil, spike raised high above his head mid-leap like the knife of Brutus.

  He had one shot, I knew that. Allesandro had gone toe-to-toe with the other upstairs, but he was a vampire. They healed as quickly as you could cut them, I’d seen it. This was just a man. If the spike didn’t meet its target, that creature would rip his arms off as if he were a rag doll. It would tear him apart in seconds, and then come for me.

  In slow motion I saw the creature twist, spotting Pargate, but it was too late. The man thudded into it, actually knocking it back a step or two, and as it leaned away from him, he climbed its front, his hair behind him in a tangled mess, eyes wild and murderous in the gloom.

  As the two of them toppled to the floor, the creature roaring in surprise and anger, Pargate brought the spike down, two handed with all his might, towards the creature’s matted chest.

  The Tribal caught his arm as they landed in the dark, huge strong claws closing around his wrist before the weapon could meet flesh. There was a sickening snap, and Pargate grunted with pain. The spike fell uselessly from his hand, clattering away into the darkness.

  The creature’s other hand came up and fastened around the man’s throat, making him gag and his eyes bulge. It was going to kill him.

  The were-beast threw him spinning him into the air. Chase’s back met the pipes on the ceiling with a resounding clatter, and he fell back down, slamming against the stone.

  The beast stood, flexing its claws, and stepped over to him, looming above the fallen attacker, a furred and grinning angel of death.

  Through bloodied teeth, I saw Pargate stare up at it defiantly, eyes blinking rapidly, trying to regain focus. He grinned humorously at the monster. “Best…you can…do…pussy?”

  He knew he was dead. The Tribal drew its arm back, preparing to bring its clawed fist forward and tear off the man’s head as it had done with Hope the helpful librarian.

  It let out one last almighty roar of bestial triumph, deafeningly in the tunnel, and just before it struck, dashing Chase Pargate’s skull once and for all, I landed on its back.

  I hadn’t actually remembered leaving my bolthole in the darkness, but here I was, mild mannered Lab-rat and social shrinking violet, riding a were-panther in a dark catacomb as though it was a bucking bronco. I clung to its huge rank back, one arm around its throat, and with my other hand, I stabbed deeply into its neck my hypodermic needle.

  “Calm…” I yelled, “…the fuck down!”

  It threw me off effortlessly, rearing back in pain. I landed heavily and scuttled to the side of the tunnel, out of its path. Its hand went to its throat, staggering unsteadily, as the contents of my syringe coursed through its system. In a drunken, shambling loop, it slowly turned to face me, its rabid face a contorted mess of surprise and pain.

  And there in the subterranean shadows, after a moment of surreal silence, it toppled like a redwood, falling flat on its face heavily enough to make the walls shake and dust rain down from the low ceiling.

  The pipes vibrated together above us, their ringing the only noise in the suddenly silent tunnel.

  Chase Pargate and I, on either side of the fallen monster, stared at each other in the spluttering green light. I was panting and shaking. He looked surprised, and then he raised his eyebrows.

  “Well,” he said, grinning at me, his teeth bloodied. “Fuck me.”

  “Is it dead?” I stammered, not daring to move.

  Before my eyes, the creature seemed to be shrinking, melting in on itself. With a sickening crunch of gristle and bones, it slowly changed. Fangs and muzzle collapsed back in on its skull, claws shrank, retracting and become hands, and its massive twisted torso melded back into the natural form of a human.

  In less than a minute, the were-beast was gone, and in its place, naked and face down in the dull shadows and the flickering green light of the fallen flare, its body a tapestry of scars and bruises, lay a man.

  “It’s reverted,” Chase said with a grunt, pulling himself up into a sitting position. “Fucker broke my arm. What a darling. That spike was sister-blessed too. Total waste. I’m going to get it in the neck for that.”

  Tentatively, I crawled towards the now humanesque Tribal. He had mussy dark hair, scraggly stubble and bloodshot eyes. He looked half-starved, his skin drenched in shining sweat.

  “Are you…alive?” I whispered.

  “What the devil did you hit that thing with, sweetness?” Pargate asked.

  “My own serum,” I said absently. “It’s all I had. Medication I need to t…calms people down. Him too apparently.”

  I could feel my unlikely companion staring at me in disbelief.

  “Well now,” he said. “Scared to mingle at parties but a dab hand at bringing down hellcat here. Aren’t you full of surprises, after all?”

  I ignored him. He wasn’t my immediate concern. This thing had tried to kill me, and I wanted to know why. My eyes roved over his body.

  “These wounds,” I said, realising what I was seeing. “They’re not all from fighting.” Gingerly, I brushed the unconscious Tribal’s hair away from his eyes, wanting to get a good look at his face, his human version. “Someone…did this to you,” I said. “You’ve been tortured.”

  The body shuddered, making me startle, and his eyes shot open. He stared around wildly, a frightened and confused animal.

  “Where…where am I?” he gasped, his voice dry and ragged. He was so hoarse, as though he hadn’t drank in days. He coughed convulsively. The serum was working through his system. I had the Pale virus inside me, the most powerful virus mankind had ever created, so it fought off most of Epsilon’s strength when I medicated. I doubted this Tribal would be able to do the same. I knew for a fact Epsilon made vampires explode. If similar effects counted for other GOs, then this Tribal had seconds left t
o live.

  “You tried to kill us,” I said. “Don’t you know? Do you remember?”

  His eyes locked on mine, frantic and terrified. I realised, abhorred by his confusion, the sickly sweet smell, the illness and death that flowed off the man. Something had been done to him. He was being controlled, poisoned, drugged, I didn’t know what, but he hadn’t acted on his own volition.

  “Who sent you to kill me?” I asked urgently. I could see he was fading already. “You’ve been drugged. Driven mad. What can you remember?”

  The Tribal coughed again, his body spasming with pain as the serum tore at his muscles, unknitting his nervous system from within. “K…Kane,” he gasped.

  My stomach knotted. Kane?

  The Tribal reached out, and with a bloody hand, gripped my wrist. He was feverishly hot. My instinct was to pull away. But he was struggling to speak.

  “Tell Kane…he was right,” the Tribal spluttered. Blood welled behind his teeth, as his eyes urgently roved mine. He was frantic. “Right not to trust them…tell Kane… we’re way past…blankets. Death is coming for all.” He coughed again, spitting blood on his stubbled chin. “...In the rain.”

  “Blankets? Rain?” I gripped his hand in both of mine, which tightened on mine so hard I thought he was going to break my fingers. But he didn’t reply. His eyes had glazed, and with one last shuddering breath, he died in front of me.

  I stared at the dead man before me, on my knees in the dark dust of the tunnel. My lips and chin were crusted with my own blood from where I had run head first into the glass wall. My arms and legs felt like water and my clothes were filthy and tattered.

  The adrenaline was leaving my system, making me shake uncontrollably with nerves. I couldn’t even bring myself to look up behind me at Pargate. I just knelt there, holding the hand of the man who had just tried to hunt and kill me. Who had been controlled, drugged and sent against me. And I didn’t know by whom.

  Footsteps were approaching, slow and steady. They echoed in the tunnel. Dazed, too tired to even feel fear, I raised my head, and saw a shape resolving itself from the shadows.