“I said get off your arse and do the job. You want that young man back, you’ll have to go fetch ’im and time is short.”
CHAPTER 47
I did not know where we were going. Marsden had been there with Michael while I was getting captured by Alice, and the last bend of the river into an even older bit of waterway was unknown to me. The walls of the watercourse were white here—or once had been—rather than the red brick and Portland cement of the Victorian sewers we had just left. The lichen-pocked stone glowed with some odd luminescence and the tunnel widened into a reservoir with a spiraling staircase built into its wall.
Marsden paddled us to the stair and tied off the canoe to a rusted iron ring that I suspected was meant for just that purpose. As we started up the stairs, we passed dozens of pairs of eyes that gleamed in the darkness.
“What are those?” I whispered, unable to see more than a humped shape, even in the Grey.
“Cats. Vampires don’t care for ’em much more than river spawn, but they know it keeps the fish men away. Shows we’ve found their back door.”
“Why aren’t they doing anything? We must smell just like the river spawn by now.”
“Not to the cats. We’re warm-blooded. We’ve got to move, though. It’s coming on for sunset.”
Marsden pocketed the flashlight and we crept up the stairs in the dark, relying on our senses in the Grey and the dim limning of stones by the weirdly glowing lichen to see us up the steps.
At the top a spiderweb of arched corridors stretched into the darkness below Clerkenwell. Marsden led me along one of the tunnels and I could hear the water of the Fleet gurgling in the distance. Now I knew that was the sound I’d heard when I followed the kreanou to meet Glick.
We went through a door into what turned out to be a storeroom. Marsden huffed in annoyance and started out again immediately, but I stopped when I spotted a pile of water containers in the far corner. It appeared that someone had stocked the area as a shelter sometime in the past, and it seemed likely, given the disarray of the boxes and cans, that the vampires used the goods as food and supplies for prisoners and henchmen and anyone else they needed to hide from the daylight world.
I found a few clean rags and wet them from the water containers so I could wipe off my face and hands. I rinsed the sludge from my mouth. The water tasted of old plastic, but it was a big improvement over the filth from the Fleet. I wished I had the luxury of time to look at the itching wounds on my leg where Jakob’s claws had pierced my skin, but I let that be, hoping I’d be able to do something about the infection later. Marsden shook his head in exasperation, but I noticed he used one of the rags to wipe his own face and hands before leading us again into the maze of corridors.
The hall we walked down next was thick with cold Grey fog that sparked with random shots of energy and eddied into the shapes of oblivious ghosts. I imagined it was used once in a while but not with any frequency, which was good for us; we’d be able to escape along it with little chance of being intercepted. Marsden stopped at a crossing, tilting his head to concentrate on sounds ahead.
“Four,” he muttered. “Red Guard, all humans; no Brothers or demi-guard. We’re in luck, but we’ll have to take them out fast.”
I reached into my pocket and got the puzzle out of its plastic bag—I didn’t want to fumble for it when we needed it to unlock Will’s cell. As I looked up, I saw Marsden reach under his moleskin coat and pull out two gleaming knives. He flipped one of them around and offered it to me, underhand and without turning his head back in my direction.
“No,” I whispered. I didn’t want to kill anyone else; what I’d done to Jakob was terrible and still sat like a weight, regardless of any justification.
“Don’t be daft,” he hissed back. “They’ll kill you quick as look at you—or take you prisoner again for that mad harpy, Alice, to play with. Clever as you are with your hands and feet, girl, it won’t be enough against them, and that does your man no good.”
Reluctantly, I took the knife.
“Look sharpish,” he warned as we started forward.
I kept my vision turned more toward the Grey, looking for any sign of magical traps. This time we weren’t unexpected, and I doubted that Alice and her pet sorcerer wouldn’t have beefed up the security where they could. They’d probably laid a lot of different traps to cover all the bases. The upside was, making and laying any magical traps would have worn Simeon down, which was definitely in our favor. We’d just have to be clever about looking for them and hope they’d relied on magic more than technology.
I had long ago realized that vampires didn’t really know what a Greywalker’s capabilities were; it wasn’t until I’d met Marsden that I understood that we were each different, which certainly threw a wrench into most magical plans. Magic is strongest when specific. Loose, general spells are usually weak or short-lived, according to Mara. But the vampires wouldn’t need anything powerful down here; just something strong enough to hold us or slow us down until reinforcements could arrive.
The first guard we came across was looking down the hall the opposite way. An ordinary-looking man, except for his blood-tainted aura and the small submachine gun—entirely illegal in England—slung high under his arm. He had his back to the wall quite a few feet away.
“Here, can you get round him through the Grey?” Marsden whispered.
I nodded. I’d look like a ghost and there would be nothing I could do to the guard while I went, but if I popped out fast enough and hit him hard enough, it should work. I only wished I could go behind him, but he’d left no room and I didn’t want to try walking through him.
I eased deeper into the Grey and the catacombs sprang up in fiery lines through the silver mist. Knots and tangles of power that looked like messy coils of barbed wire dotted the hallway—traps. I skirted the nearest one, hoping Marsden could see it, too, and glided to the other side of the guard, who looked like a red-and-yellow smear as I passed him, the gun a cold, dark block swinging by his side.
The guard stiffened and turned his head toward me as I slipped back to normal. He yanked the gun up, bracing against the sling as I punched him just below the sternum. He grunted as his breath was driven from his lungs, and Marsden pounced on him from behind, forcing him to the ground. The guard’s finger must have tightened on the trigger as he collapsed, but his body muffled the short burst of gunfire. I felt a sharp tearing sensation in my chest and head as he died, and I clamped down on a cry of shock and agony, biting my tongue.
The guard lay in a clumsy heap as a thread of blood oozed out from beneath him. A furious haze of red energy rose off the downed guard and resolved into a ghost that glared at me and spat a few vile words before the heat of his ire was sucked away into the grid. The memory shape of the dead man dissipated with the odor of rotten eggs.
Marsden picked himself up, pulling his knife from between the corpse’s ribs. “Next time, just cut his ruddy throat,” he growled, sidestepping to avoid the magical trap on the floor.
“Don’t you. feel them?” I asked, still aching.
“Yeah, but you learn to turn it down after a while. You’ll get used to it.”
I hoped not. I didn’t want to have cause to get used to the sensation of fresh death.
We slipped back into the Grey and stalked the next one, who was turning to see what the noise had been. Marsden slipped, jumping over time and space, to exit the Grey next to the guard. I had to run the distance through the mist, over the hot lines of the grid and around the cold bulk of stone walls toward the bright, living shape of the guard. Marsden cut the man’s throat before I could reach them, and the knife of pain and shock ripped through me again. The blood ran across the stone floor, blazing with white light that flashed away like a magician’s trick smoke.