From behind me Candy says, “Friend of yours?”
“Apparently not.”
“Maybe instead of your blunderbuss you should use your na’at. Shoot the gun once and everyone in the Lower Forty-eight will know we’re here.”
“Yeah, but no one in Kill City knows what a na’at is, so it doesn’t help to flash it. A gun is like love. The universal language.”
“I can’t decide if that’s poetry or a desperate cry for help.”
“We should keep moving,” says Hattie.
The dark closes in around us again, like we’re marching straight up a dinosaur’s ass. Or we’re lost in an old haunted fortress in a Euro-horror flick. Tombs of the Blind Dead. A hapless bunch of schmucks trapped in a cracked palace with an army of Templar zombies.
How do Kill City’s residents live like this? I remember hearing about people living in New York’s abandoned subway tunnels. Mole People, they call them. Some scavenge outside during the day, but others never leave the tunnels. I guess you get more than used to the dark. You come to think of it as home. It sounds a bit like Hell. It’s the most awful place you can imagine, but after a while you start relying on the filth and blood, the cozy familiarity of betrayal and casual brutality. It’s more than coping. It’s adaptation. You go into the dark one species and mutate to fit your surroundings. Grow better eyes and ears. Get used to the feel of the air so you can tell when something is coming at you. After a while you’re so suited to the environment you’re a whole new species. Except for the ones who can’t make the change. They never stop struggling with the dark. They’re always looking for a way out. Those are the ones who build paper meditation walks dedicated to the world or kill so cleanly for their Hellion master that it’s completely unexpected when you finally cut their throats. Of course, if you make it out, what you’ll find is you’re now a stranger in two worlds because the dark changes you and you’ll never got back to what you were before you got lost.
“Look at this,” says Vidocq. He’s crouched on the floor looking at a plastic water bottle. He holds it up. “This is new. So is this.” He picks up a half-smoked cigarette and sniffs it. Holds it out to me. I sniff it too. I pull off the filter and examine the tobacco at that end. It’s fresh.
I say, “Tykho told me that someone else knows about the ghost. I guess we’re not alone. The question is, are they ahead of us or are they lost and stopped here to get their bearings?”
“We have to assume the worst,” says Delon.
“I agree,” says Brigitte. “We have to assume that they know more than we do.”
“Or they’re lost and are doing the simple thing,” says Candy.
I say, “What’s that?”
“They’re circling around behind and following us since we’re the ones with not one but two certified guides.”
I look at Delon and Hattie.
“How much longer?” I ask the old woman.
“We go down another level just ahead. It will be harder for anyone following us to keep up.”
“Let’s get there and shake these fuckers.”
Up ahead we come to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Diogo goes in first, and when we’re through, he takes out a padlock and secures the door from inside. The lock is big, but I’m not convinced it will keep any motivated people out for long. Still, any lead it might give us is a help. When we start moving again I make sure that Delon stays up front with whichever son is leading the way.
We go down to a floor with mall administrative offices and lockers full of maintenance equipment. It’s cooler down here. Less green with vegetation, but there are thick black patches of mold over all the air vents and the air is thick. Water drips down from overhead pipes. Vlad the Impaler could move in and start scaring peasants from this doomsday dungeon.
Hattie looks me over in the pale lantern light.
“You’re Sub Rosa, aren’t you?” she says.
“How did you know?”
“You stink of it.”
“Sub Rosa?”
“Judgment. About my family.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t give a rat’s ass—half a rat’s ass—about your family. Besides, I’ve seen worse.”
“Where?”
“Right in town. You remember the Springheels?”
“Charm makers. Used to be high-and-mighty but aren’t held in much regard anymore.”
“If there were any left, you’d be fighting over the same stale pretzels and moldy Big Macs.”
“What happened to them?”
“The last son, Jack, he had a fetish for demons. He called up an eater one day and the party didn’t go the way he planned.”
“The eater got him?”
“Technically, a High Plains Drifter, a zombie—”
“I know what a Drifter is. Just because I live in the boonies, don’t count me as stupid. Now go on.”
“Anyway, a Drifter got him in the end, but if it hadn’t been one of them, an eater would have done it sooner or later. He was begging for it.”
She thinks about it for a minute.
“I suppose we look quite respectable compared to that.”
“Yeah. You’re mother of the year and I’m king of the Mouseketeers. We’re a couple of lottery winners with money to burn.”
“You’d have killed my boys back there, wouldn’t you?”
“Every one of them.”
“Is that how you got that face? Doing things of that sort?”
“This? I was skipping through a field and fell on some dandelions. They hurt more than you’d think.”
She looks at me.
“Who’s the little Lurker?”
“Don’t worry about her. She’s with me.”
“I thought so. The face of a killer and a Jade on your arm. Your mama must be proud.”
“My mother wouldn’t know a Jade from a lawn flamingo.”
“Once we drop you off, you won’t be coming back, will you?”
“Much as I enjoyed the room service, I have another hotel to get back to.”
“I have your word on that? We won’t see you again?”
“Hell yes.”
“All right, then.”
“So, you’re calling it off?”
“You mean my boys killing you all and leaving you here in the tunnels? I expect I will.”
“Good call.”
“We’re done here.”
Hattie falls back to where Diogo is walking and says something to him.
“Aw, Mama.”
She slaps him.
“You mind me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We go down a long side corridor to an unmarked door. Doolittle tries the handle. It doesn’t open.
“Trouble, Mama,” he says.
“Allow me,” says Vidocq, and gently pushes the boy out of the way. He takes a leather wrap from his pocket and opens it to reveal a set of delicate tools. Brigitte and Traven hold lights over his head and he takes a couple of them and picks the lock.
Hattie coughs and says, “A good man to have around.”
“You should hear him sing karaoke.”
Hattie turns to the group.
“This wasn’t always locked. Guess the Shoggots are even worse about folks wandering into their territory. You sure you want to do this?”
“We have no choice,” says Delon.
Hattie looks at me.
“What kind of secrets can a dead man have that you need so much?”
“I’m hoping he knows where I left my car keys.”
She shakes her head.
“There’s no helping some people.”
A click echoes off the walls and the door opens a few inches.
“Et voilà,” says Vidocq.