“I probably could have picked that lock,” he said once he was inside the tunnel.
“Don’t worry. I have a key,” said Primo, and walked away into the darkness.
“Then why…?” Shrike elbowed Spyder to remind him not to speak. He followed them, giving up trying to understand his companions’ logic.
“This is one of the old animal pens,” Primo told them eagerly. “The soldiers kept their horses here during the winter rains. You can still hear them whinnying if you put your ear to the wall during storms.”
In the near, but never total, darkness, they climbed down ladders and through storm grates. They walked passages with floors of mud, passages lined with planks, cobblestone passages and some whose floors seemed to be some kind of soft, spongy metal that made Spyder want to run like a little kid. He was sure that there was no way all these passages were part of the prison complex. This was confirmed for Spyder as they moved through a rocky tunnel whose walls were lined with clay water pipes marked with inscriptions in Latin and Greek. Were they moving in time as well as space? Spyder wondered.
They went through underground vaults and what looked like old sewer sluiceways. Occasionally, they would meet another group moving in the opposite direction. Some were dressed in rags, some looked like ordinary city dwellers, while others looked like escapees from some particularly mean and decrepit Renaissance Faire. The groups never acknowledged each other. Spyder got the impression that the passages weren’t the safest place to be.
Up ahead, he noticed that Primo had slowed down and was nervously wringing his hands. At a watery intersection that reminded Spyder of the high gothic sewers where Orson Welles met his bloody fate at the end of The Third Man, Primo stopped. The little man turned in slow circles, peering into the distance. He stared hard at the walls, as if looking for a message.
“What’s wrong?” asked Shrike.
“Our transport isn’t here. A tuk-tuk was supposed to be waiting.”
“Did Madame Cinders pay them in advance?”
“Naturally.”
“That was your mistake.”
“No. She knows this family well. They are reliable. That’s why she employs only them to transport her guests.”
“Maybe they broke down,” said Shrike. “If they were anywhere nearby, we could hear the damned racket from the tuk-tuk’s engine.”
“We shouldn’t remain still too long. It’s dangerous. I suppose we should start walking.”
“That would be my suggestion,” said Shrike. Spyder didn’t like the idea of being in the passages any longer than they had to. He looked back the way they had come and saw things moving in the darkness. Golden eyes glinted and slid along the floor. Spyder caught up to Shrike and made sure not to fall behind again.
After what seemed like hours, they were moving through a passage lined with old red brick and dry rot timbers. A cool breeze touched Spyder’s face. Sand had piled in miniature dunes where the timbers met the floor.
“Oh dear,” said Primo leaning over a broken machine in the tunnel ahead. Twisted wheels lay on the bricks. Spyder could already smell the stink coming from the wreck. Melted rubber, gasoline and burned flesh.
“I’m guessing this is the tuk-tuk we were waiting for?” said Shrike.
“It would seem so,” replied Primo. “Hmm. I don’t believe this was a motor accident. There appears to be an arrow in the driver’s eye. I wonder who could have put that there?”
“That would be us,” came a croaking voice from the roof of the passage.
Four men (and the gender of the intruders was just a guess on Spyder’s part) dropped to the floor. The men weren’t holding anything, so Spyder wasn’t sure how they’d been holding on to the ceiling. But what seemed more important to him now was the men’s elongated faces and crocodilian skin. Each was dressed differently—one in a firefighter’s rubber overcoat, another in priestly vestments, the third wore shorts and an I LUV LA T-shirt and the fourth was wearing a high school letter jacket. Spyder didn’t want to think about where the lizard-men might have acquired their clothes, but the rust-colored stains on the LA T-shirt gave him some idea.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Primo, and he gave the lizards a bow. “I am Primo Kosinski and I am conducting these guests to the abode of Madame Cinders. The Madame has negotiated safe passage through the Blegeld Passage for herself and all her guests.”
“She didn’t negotiate with us,” said the lizard-priest in a gravelly, hissing voice.
“That’s because the compact is universal. No one may ignore or prevent—” Primo began. Shrike cut him off.
“What will it cost us to get through?” she asked.
“The pretty green. Piles of it. Do you have that?”
“You know we don’t,” Shrike said.
“Good,” hissed the lizard in the letter jacket. He took a step toward Shrike. Just as she was bringing her sword up, Spyder saw Primo ram his shoulder into the lizard’s midsection, smashing him against the wall in an explosion of bone, blood and dry skin. Next, Primo rounded on the priest and back-fisted him, ripping off a good portion of the beast’s face. Spyder was pulling Shrike back from the carnage. As awful as it was, he couldn’t turn away. The first thing he noticed, aside from the fact that Primo had the last two lizards by the throat and was slowly choking the life from them, was that the little man’s clothes were no longer loose on him. In fact, they seemed a little tight. His skin had turned a bright crimson and long, thorned hooks protruded from every part of his body, ripping through the fabric of his suit. Primo growled with animal fury as he crushed the throats of the lizards until their heads hung at odd angles on limp flesh. Dropping the attackers’ bodies, Primo turned to Spyder and Shrike asking, “Are you both all right?”
“We’re fine,” Shrike said. “Thank you.”
The little man, for he was already shrinking back to his original size, approached them, cleaning his hands on the T-shirt he ripped from the body of one dead lizard. “Forgive me, please,” he said. “You were under my protection and should never have had to even raise your weapon. You may ask Madame for my life, if you like.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Shrike. “You protected us and we’re grateful.”
“I’m happy to be of service.”
“You’re of the Gytrash race, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Members of my family have been guides for Madame Cinders and her friends for over a thousand years.”
“Your family should be very proud of you, Primo.”
“Thank you. I believe they are. At least, they sit well with me.”
Spyder felt Shrike’s hand on his arm, quieting him until Primo had moved away to inspect the lizard-men’s bodies. When he was out of earshot, Shrike whispered quickly. “The Gytrash are nomads and escorts for travelers. They are a very practical race. They eat their dead for nourishment, but also as ritual. It’s their highest act of love and praise.”
“We’re almost there,” said Primo. “Shall we continue?”
“Let’s,” said Shrike. Spyder walked beside her trying to decide which member of his family, in a pinch, he could eat.
SIXTEEN
The Birth of Monsters
When the world began, there were no such things as monsters. Demons were just fallen angels who, booted out of Heaven and bored with Hell, wandered the Earth sticking little girls’ pigtails in inkwells and sinking the occasional continent.