Dust City (20 page)

I shift my eyes away from the moonlike patch of sky. I relax. I float. I’ll probably drown down here. It’s only a matter of time before the water sucks me under, starts dissolving me in its darkness.

Near the top, the well walls are scabrous brick, but down here in the depths, it’s all rotted away. Soil and clay are exposed in patches. Patches of earth that seem to sparkle. Maybe it’s the water, catching light from the surface and throwing it up the shaft. But no, it
is
the soil. It’s glimmering faintly.

It’s fairydust runoff from the old days. I’m down with the leftover miracles. This land is full of it. That must be why Skinner sent me here. This is how they claim their land. With wolfish muscle.

The whimpering above me has died away. Either the kid recovered from my carnage or he slipped into catatonic shock. Or else he’s gone for help. Sure enough, off in the distance, I pick up the squeal of sirens.

My body throbs in the water. My eyes are playing tricks. The glittering streaks buried in the soil become morbid
shapes. Frayed, disjointed skeletons; cracked skulls; bony, grasping hands, and the splintered wings of angels. They clutch and spin and flap around me, an army of broken ghosts. While inside my head, an old voice sings . . .

Sleep, little cub,

and quiet your eyes.

Bottle your tears,

and soften your cries.

Dream, little soldier.

I’ll never be far.

I’ll find you, my soldier,

wherever you are.

PART THREE

EDEN

32

A FAIRY STORY

THERE’S A ROW OF HOLDING CELLS IN THE REAR OF THE MID-CITY POLICE
Department. They come in all shapes and sizes. Little cabins for elves up to great caverns for giants. I’ve got my wolfish one all to myself.

Gunther and Mrs. Lupovitz are here. They’re on the far side of the station, filling out forms with a police administrator. Mrs. L looks overwrought, edgy as a cliff. Gunther just looks bored.

I was in pretty desperate shape when they fished me out of that hole. They hoisted me up with a lungful of well water and a spine that felt like it was bending the wrong way. The goats had pummeled my face into a disaster that would’ve given Skinner’s a run for its money. Detective White, however, was unfazed. She was content to have me languish in a cell rather than take me to a hospital. In her experience, she told me, it makes for better interrogations when the felon (in this case, me) is given a night to “stew in their own bruises.”

So it’s lucky Mrs. L always carries a few vials of fairydust
in her handbag, ready to patch up hooligans at a moment’s notice. For obvious reasons, I balked at the sight of the Nimbus halo, but I was in such bad shape I didn’t say anything. I just sat there like a junkie and breathed it in. The dust did its best, but it was just some basic over-the-counter stuff. I’m still sore and still a little crooked from the waist up, but overall I’m not too bad. I’m a passable version of myself.

Only it’s not me I’m worried about.

“Hey!” I yell across the room, rattling the bars. “When’s somebody gonna
listen
to me?! They’ve still got her, Mrs. L! It’s Fiona! It’s Roy’s sister!”

Gunther rolls his fat eyes. I’ve been going on about Fiona so much he’s drawn the obvious conclusion that I went on the lam because I had a crush on a girl. He’s half right.

“I can show you where they’ve got her,” I say. “I can take you to the biggest nixie refinery of all. I know exactly where it is. I can tell you all about it.”

Detective White rises from her desk and stalks over, sucking her teeth. “You like telling fairy tales, don’t you? Just like your pop.”

“He didn’t do it. He was forced to do it. I mean, when he first—”

“Oh, so now you’re
both
innocent. That
is
a fairy tale.”

I grip my bars. “It’s not a story. Everything I’ve told you about—my father, the fairies, what I saw at the refinery—
it’s all real.”

White shakes her head. “We’ve raided Dockside I dunno how many times. Never found any fairies, that’s for sure.”

“That’s because they’re up in Eden.”

“Ah,” she says. “You want us to raid Eden?”

“If that’s what it takes. You have to believe me.”

White shakes her head. “I believe what I see, kid. I saw what you did to those Capra boys.”

“I was defending myself.”

“Save it for your statement—which you can give me in the morning. Right now, I’m too tired to listen. I’m going home.” She trudges off and grabs the leather jacket slung over the back of her chair. I see her wince as she slides it on.

Mrs. L’s done with the paperwork. She comes over. “Oh, Henry,” she says, and I’m enveloped in her peppermint breath. “What am I going to do with you?” She massages her handbag like it’s an aching muscle. “Honestly, this is so unlike you. You’ll end up in a cell next to your father. Is that what you want?”

“Maybe he’s not as bad as everyone says. He was
forced
to do what he did, you know. The nixies have this awful new kind of dust, and Nimbus is helping them. They’ve got the fairies locked up in Eden.”

Reaching in through the bars, she gives my paw a reassuring squeeze, but it’s clear she doesn’t believe me. “I’ll do everything I can to help you,” she says.

“Thanks, Mrs. L.”

She nods and waddles across the station, tugging Gunther away with her.

All that’s left for me to do is slump on the tiny cot. My bruised back is tender against the cold cement wall. All I can think about is Fiona. Is she going to end up like that dealer, Jerry? I imagine a gorgeous, chocolate-brown wolf, sea-green eyes flashing with an ancient ferocity, pacing back and forth inside a cage bedded down with her own excrement. It’s all I can think about for hours, watching the cops slowly trickle home. Eventually, only the night guard remains. I can’t see him, but I can hear him, drowsing quietly down the hall.

There’s a single barred window in the holding cell. Outside, I can see Eden floating up there with the moon. One’s a hovering suburb, peaked with bristling spires of light. The other one is a luminous, bone-white disc. They couldn’t be more different, but somehow, seen from where I’m sitting, they’re the same—bound together in freedom and flight.

Suddenly, there’s the sound of smashing glass. It’s followed by a growl and a scream. Sounds like it came from the night guard. I can’t imagine who caused the commotion. But someone is strolling into view, tapping the bars one at a time.

It’s Matt, from the flophouse.

“C’mon,” he says. “We gotta get you outta here.”

“But how?”

He holds up the guard’s jungle of keys. “How else?”

“No,” I say. “I mean how did you get in here?”

Matt starts trying key after key. “You kidding? Nixie tunnels go everywhere. Even here.
Especially
here, if you see
what I mean.” He finds the key we’re both waiting for, and the lock clunks open. “The nixies, the cops—they’re practically in bed with each other.”

I pause in the door to my cell. “You mean Detective White?”

Matt waves away the suggestion. “Not her. She’s barely in bed with the police half the time. If she wasn’t a hominid, I’d call her the ultimate lone wolf. Now come on,” he starts down the corridor. “We gotta go.”

At the end of the hall, the guard’s lying face up in a pool of black coffee. The white handle of a smashed mug is clutched lovingly in his fist. Matt leads us to an open ventilation shaft and we climb inside, headed back into the world under the streets.

33

THE STATUARY

“I KNOW THIS DARKNESS BETTER THAN I KNOW MYSELF.”

That’s how Matt explained the fact that he doesn’t require any map. He led us through every twist and curve, under every overhang and over every crossing, without any hesitation at all. Which is why it’s so strange that he would lead me here. To a dead end.

“Where are we?” I ask him.

“Under the statuary,” he says. He’s running the flat of his forepaw over the wall, searching for something. When he finds it—a crag that juts out a millimeter too far—he struggles to spin it clockwise. “No one’s . . . used this . . . in a while,” he says. “It’s stiff.” Finally, the rock twists a half-turn and a door cracks out of the bare rock face. A secret entrance.

“This way,” he says.

Once I’m inside, the door cleaves shut behind me. It’s a new kind of dark in here, miles beyond pitch-black. Matt takes me by the elbow. He leads me forward blindly. Even
here, he knows his way. My ears pick up a shift in the echo. I sense we’re approaching another door. Matt grabs my wrist and places something cold and metallic in my palm. It’s a key.

“You’ll need this,” he says. “They’ve got her locked up.”

Without a sound, Matt opens the door. My stomach sinks a little when I see where we are. It’s the defunct refinery where I nearly murdered Roy.

Matt shakes his head. “Can you believe this is where he lives?”

He means Skinner. This empty ruin is his home.

“It’s down there,” says Matt, pointing down the wall. “I’ll create a diversion. You get her out. The door to the statuary is behind the yellow foundry basin at the end.”

“Thank you, Matt.”

“Hey,” he says, “a promise is a promise.” He hunches over and stumbles into the open. “Ssshkinner?!” he yells in a drunkenness that’s probably only a mild exaggeration. “You hearin’ me, Ssshkinner? I wanna talk to you! I worked for you a
loooooooong
time, but now I’m thinkin’ of quittin’ and you know what? I want a package! I want a retirement plan!” He picks up a bent wrench and starts clanging it against the machines.
“Wakeup-wakeup-wakeup!
Get your hideous butt down here!”

I hope he knows what’s he doing.

The door behind the basin isn’t lavish or gilt with gold. It’s as grimy and dilapidated as the rest of this place, and it clings to its jamb by a single hinge. The only lock is a length
of chain, tied in a loose knot. Thinking of Skinner, it makes sense. When you’ve got the power of alchemy budding in your fingertips, displays of wealth lose their meaning.

Matt clangs across the floor, throwing his limbs against everything he can find. I take advantage of the noise, using it to mask my work as I untie the chain. The room inside is like the rest of Skinner’s makeshift home—bare concrete walls, cracked glass, ragged light—but instead of a room haphazardly strewn with derelict refinery equipment, this one is thick with the golden statues of Skinner’s victims.

Every species is represented—ravens, elves, foxes, humans, dwarves, mules, cats, goblins, nixies, and on and on. There’s even a single giant, a young one, his boyish features vast and perfect. The giant’s head reaches all the way above the scaffolds that line the ceiling. Each one of the victims wears a frozen expression of bewilderment or fear or pain. Goose pimples raise the hair on the back of my neck as I wander through the statues, surrounded on all sides by terrible expressions: eyes popping, heads thrown back, mouths wide, tongues raised in silent screams. Others are less dramatic, with eyes and teeth clenched, steeling themselves for the inevitable. Then there’re those who’re merely stunned, doomed to an eternity of quizzical disbelief. A few of them are completely calm, accepting their fate. They even wear the faintest hint of a smile as if to say, Yes, I suppose I had this coming.

“Henry?”

I see her in a cage in the corner. She’s still herself.

“Are you okay?”

She’s trembling. “Get me out of here.”

The cage is locked, but I’ve got Matt’s key. It grates when I punch it into the mechanism. It turns, but hardly.

“Come on, come on!”

Fiona pulls on the bars. I shimmy the key some more, yanking again and again on the lock. Fiona’s looking past me, back toward the door. “Hurry! The only way out is way back there.” I shake the key harder, twisting with all I’ve got, growling with the effort, and
presto
—it’s either worked or I’ve broken it. Who cares which? It opens.

She’s been cramped in there all night, so she’s wobbly on her feet. We stick to all fours, weaving through a forest of gold. I see Matt through the gaps between statues. He’s leaning in the doorway, swigging from his whiskey bottle.

“No diversion required,” he says. “Don’t think anyone’s here. But that’s no reason to stick around.” He eyes the statuary.
“’Specially
in here. This place gives me the—” His eyes widen slightly and lose focus. His mouth opens in tiny increments, like the cogs of his jaw are sticky. Slowly, his face takes on the expression of an empty scream, agonized and silent.

“Matt?”

An acrid odor seeps into the air. I recognize it, something like burning soap, jagged and hot and scorching the insides of my snout. Matt’s struggling to breathe, but it’s not working.

“Matt! What’s going on?”

He doesn’t answer. His eyes beg for air. The bottle slips from his hand and explodes on the floor. His tongue bobbles out his mouth and all over his body his hair quivers and bristles and then—it all stiffens. Every follicle shimmers. He’s been turned to gold.

“Matt!”

Skinner steps out from behind his newly minted statue. “Hello, Henry,” he says, out of breath. His face is bright red and sheened with sweat. Twisted blood vessels pop out all over his disfigured face. “Glad to have you back,” he says, dabbing his brow with a silken glove.

“What have you done?”

Skinner laughs. “I’d say that’s fairly obvious.” He spreads his arms, waving them across the room. He lightly kicks Matt’s frozen leg. “He was getting old, wasn’t he? Outlived his usefulness. But look at him now. Matt here is worth
much
more dead than alive.”

A growl rises in my throat.

“Easy now,” he says, wagging a finger. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything foolish.”

“We know what’s going on here,” I tell him.

“Do you now?”

“You’re working with the Nimbus brothers. We saw you all together.”

Skinner says nothing. For a tiny moment, he looks concerned, but on a face like his, it’s difficult to tell.

“We know all about your dust experiments. What you did to my father, and all the others. We’ve seen what you’re hiding upstairs at the refinery.”