Ibenus (Valducan series) (17 page)

Allan didn't speak as he returned, Ibenus ready before him. He gestured to Luc, who extended his thick arm and eased Gerhard farther from the basement door. Snapping a finger into the air and pointing, Allan directed Orlovski to one side. The Russian pressed his back to the wall, his kukri ready. Allan nodded, once, twice, and on the third he lifted his powerful light and darted in. Orlovski shot down behind him as if connected by an invisible tether.

Their footsteps thumped down the stairs. Lowering his protective arm, Luc stepped closer to the door and shined his light down after them.

Orlovski's voice came through the radio, "Clear."

"Check under the boiler," Allan said.

"Nothing."

"Fuck. You see this?" Allan asked.

Orlovski grunted.

"Gerhard, come down. We need you."

Gerhard tensed, excitement and fear. Needed him?

Luc motioned his head, urging him on, and Gerhard stepped through the door, Umatri before him, and headed down the narrow brick-lined stairway. It opened up to a hall with three doors and a giant spray-painted mural of a nude woman spread eagle on the floor. Light moved within the furthest room. Gerhard glanced in the others as he passed, a large closet with a tile shower and a laundry room with no machines. A cardboard sleeping pallet and a torn and spilled backpack rested against the laundry room's far wall.

The final room was wide, taking up almost half of the building's footprint. An ancient green and rust-streaked boiler dominated the far wall, so large Gerhard wondered if they'd simply constructed the building around it. Its thick door hung partially open, revealing more trash and refuse shoved inside. Beside it, hacksawed pipes led to a square where a presumably a smaller, newer, and now absent model had once been.

Allan and Orlovski stood to the left of the giant boiler's door before a wide round hole in the floor. Remembering the urban explorer photos, a metal grate had once covered it, but it was nowhere to be found.

Allan didn't look up as Gerhard approached. "Is Umatri sensing anything?"

"No," Gerhard answered. The keris' blade hadn't moved since the last of the screamers had died.

Allan frowned and circled his light down the open hole.

Gerhard stepped over a broken wine bottle and joined them. The circular opening was about a meter across. Their bright flashlight beams revealed a long, brick-lined tunnel extending down so far their lights barely reached the bottom. Metal rungs protruded from the mortar down one side, their surface buried beneath dust and a rust patina. Something glinted in the hazy blackness. Metal? Glass? He thought of the empty spray-paint cans lying around. Maybe one fell down there. Easily twenty meters down.

"There's a tunnel leading off at the bottom," Orlovski said, angling his light as best he could.

Allan nodded. "Could be the sewers. Maybe the old mine catacombs."

"You believe it's down there?"

Allan nodded again. "We can't just send someone down one at a time. Not if it's waiting." He curled his lip, seeming to ponder it.

Gerhard looked at him, then to Orlovski, and returned his attention to the shaft, stretching down like a backdoor to hell. If there was another demon, and he believed there could be, he wanted it. He wanted its blue fire along Umatri's blade. "So what do we do?"

#

"I know it's in here," Luc grumbled from the open back of the van, digging through a rectangular tub. His deep voice came through Victoria's foam earpiece, echoing his words with only a moment's delay. They'd pulled the van outside the abandoned building's shattered door. Splinters hung from the hinges the same as they had in Manchester.

Victoria scanned the dark street, her gaze searching the high-rise apartments that loomed over the tops of the neighboring buildings, its rows and rows of balconies making it appear like a giant stack of wafers. Most of the windows were dark, but not all. She wondered if she'd even see a watcher up there if the lights were off. Could they see her looking for them? Maybe TommyD was up there. Though they'd never met, she owed the man her sanity, if not her life. Her mental descent after James' death hadn't led to the darkest of thoughts, but they could have if TommyD hadn’t found her. Now he, or one of his agents, might be watching her through a high-power lens, likely one attached to a camera.

A feminine voice came through the scanner's speakers in assertive French, something about a traffic accident Sam explained. So far, no one had called in the hunters.

"Here you are." Luc held up a roll of silver duct tape, the faint lights gleamed off the sweat-slicked face visible through the mask's oval slit.

"You all right?" Allan asked.

Victoria turned back to where he stood, digging through a dull aluminum case. A trio of cameras and their necessary accoutrements filled the niches in the shiny black foam. "Fine. Just feel a bit out in the open here."

"I understand." Allan popped a little door on the back of one of the cameras and slid a rectangular battery in. "This shouldn't take too long." He winked. "We'll be back in a few."

"You want me to circle around again?" Sam asked.

He glanced down the empty street. "Stay here and watch the feed. Move if someone starts coming this way."

"Roger that."

"Good luck," Victoria said.

Allan gave a nod, his smile hidden beneath the black mask, but she could see it in his eyes. Camera in hand, he closed the van's door and darted back to the building, drawing Ibenus as he did.

Victoria slid back into the front passenger seat and rested the laptop across her knees so she and Sam could both watch. A black, gray-framed window dominated the screen with little icons running along either side. She couldn't help a glance to the short-barrel pump shotgun resting against the Australian girl's inner thigh.

Sam closed her hand over the microphone by her mouth and whispered. "You know everyone's going to assume you're screwing, right?"

A cold, defensive gush surged through Victoria's stomach, rising up her chest. She put a hand over her own mic, feeling the heat of in her cheeks. Was she blushing? "But…we're not."

The young woman shrugged. "Doesn't mean they aren't assuming it. They've thought that about me and Taras for two years now."

"But you're not?" Victoria did confess that while Allan had said otherwise, she'd suspected there was more to Sam and Orlovski's weirdly close relationship. Their hands always touching each other's arms when they spoke, the way they seemed to carry entire conversations with only a look.

Sam snorted. "No. He's practically my brother. I'm just letting you know that people are going to talk. Especially with the way you two look at each other."

"How?"

She grimaced a little shrug. "There's just a flirty vibe."

"It's nothing."

Sam's brow arched knowingly. "But you still like him, though?"

Victoria nodded, the confession seeing to cement her unspoken crush.

"I knew it."

"You're not going to—?"

"No." Sam waved it off. "Don't worry. What's said in the van stays in the van."

"Thanks."

"Back when I first came on, Master Schmidt would come with me on these."

"Really?"

"He's too old to hunt any more, so he elected to show me how to run the surveillance. The things we talked about…" She shook her head, exhaling a breath.

"Like what?"

She shook a finger. "What's said in the van…"

"Ah," Victoria said. "Right."

After a moment's silence of listening to the hunters debate how to lower the camera, Sam said, "Honestly, it's pretty cool to have you here. Can get lonely, you know?"

"I can imagine." Victoria peered through the side mirror, making sure the street was still clear. Years of being a copper and never once did she fully realize the paranoia of seeing the blue lights. In that event, Standard Operating Procedure was to drive, radio the team to evac to a set rendezvous point. They'd drilled it in her. But now, now that she was here, Victoria couldn't guess what she'd do if she saw the police. Would she lose her senses, panic like so many suspects had, or would she freeze? It was so weird to be thinking this way. In the event they were apprehended, everyone had forged IDs, everyone but her and Gerhard that was. Real IDs and phones, the ones linked to their real identities were still in Brussels. Until the new identities were ready, it was even more imperative that she not get caught.

"You'll get a good idea as soon as Master Turgen splits us," Sam said, pulling Victoria back to the present.

"Well, until then, you have a lot to teach me." She removed her death-grip from the mic, but paused and squeezed it again. "I, um, wanted to apologize again for shoving a gun in your face. I'm…very happy we've gotten past that. I truly am."

"We'll get past it a lot faster when you stop bringing it up," Sam said. "I appreciate it, but it's really in your best interest to stop reminding me."

Victoria smiled. "Noted." She glanced back at the high-rise, hoping for the first time, that TommyD or his agents weren't actually up there. The idea of Allan or the other knights getting ID'd made her uncomfortable. They'd taken her in, shared openly, and offered their trust. Even Sam, who had every reason in the world to hate her, had moved past it. A barbed, regretful pang slid between Victoria's ribs at what she'd done. What she might have done. And what she'd promised to do.

They'll make you trust them
, TommyD had written.
All cults and extremists do that first. That's how they work. They draw you in and make you feel important. But don't buy into it. Don't believe the lie
.

She ground her teeth, the needle sliding deeper. What the hell did he know?

"I think we have it," Allan announced.

Green light shone from the laptop's screen as the gray-framed window flashed to life. A blank wall appeared, washed out, only the barest features visible. The details sliding into focus. A brick wall, cut pipes hanging from the ceiling above spray-painted scrawl. The image whirled, losing focus, then coming in on Gerhard and Luc. Their eyes glowed through the slits in their ninja masks. The camera lowered, revealing a round manhole. A board lay across it, a notch chipped into the side above the very middle.

"I got you," Sam said.

"Lowering you down."

The camera moved lower, past their feet until stopping at an extreme close-up of a brick wall. It swayed little and the bricks began moving up at a slow, unsteady pace. The flashlight beams from above played off the tunnel's walls.

"Looks like there used to be a ladder," Victoria whispered, noting the bent and cut brackets jutting from the mortar.

Sam nodded. "Slow down, we're starting to sway."

The camera's descent stopped until the rocking ceased, and then it continued. The tunnel seemed to go forever, worn and irregular bricks rolling past as if on a video loop.

"Just a little over halfway down," Allan said as if reading Victoria's mind.

She braved another glance. The streets were still empty.

Blocks of digital static shifted across the screen.

"Reception is acting up," Sam said. "How much further?"

"Not much."

"If we lose it we'll need to move the computer in there."

"Just a little more," Allan said.

The brick wall ended, revealing a long, stone tunnel, its pale walls bright in the camera's infrared beam. The stones seemed to move.

Victoria's eyes widened as the image shifted into focus. "Shit! Allan, they're coming!"

#

Allan stood above the open pit, shining his light down as Gerhard fed the white nylon rope through the notched board and lowered the suspended camera. Luc had affixed little duct tape flags along the line, marking two-meter increments.

He breathed through his mouth, trying to avoid the sickly sweet stench of the screamers they'd killed still clinging to his mask. He'd encountered enough rotted corpses over the years to know that all-too-familiar stench. It only took once and you'd never forget it. There was an article he'd read once where weapon manufacturers were studying various odors for non-lethal riot control stink bombs. They'd concluded that the most repulsive smell was that of rotted human flesh, a stink hardwired in people's brains as the foulest. He grinned, imagining the effect that tossing a couple dead screamers into a mob might elicit.

Sam's calm voice sounded in his ear bud. "Reception is acting up. How much further?"

The eighth duct tape flag slid past the notch. He shined his light along the passage's walls, guessing three more at most before the bottom. "Not much."

"If we lose it we'll need to move the computer in there."

He'd worried about the stone walls' interference but hadn't mentioned it, hoping it wouldn't be necessary. Another flag slid through the notch. "Just a little more."

The camera continued down, moving past the visible walls. Almost twenty meters. He held out a hand, signaling Gerhard to stop.

He was about to ask if it was enough but Victoria's panicked voice came through. "Shit! Allan, they're coming!"

A cacophony of screaming infants erupted up the shaft, distorted by echoes. Then they appeared, pouring around the sides and up the tube's walls like frenzied ants, mandibles clacking from their hard emotionless mouths.

"I can see two mantismeres," Sam said, her voice unsettlingly calm.

Orlovski sheathed his kukri, drew his pistol, and started firing with metronome timing.
Pop… Pop… Pop
. Even suppressed the shots were loud enough to make Allan wince. The Russian didn't seem to notice. Bullets ripped through the ranks, shattering their child-like faces and sending bugs toppling back down the pit as more surged past them.

"Circle up!" Allan ordered. He drew his own pistol. The other hand braced it, holding the light as he shined it down. The closing wave was like a single boiling thing. Unable to focus on just one, he fired at the mob. His shots chipped up brick and wounded several, but nothing like Orlovski's methodical precision.

Gerhard dropped the line, sending one of the screamers crawling up it into the pit. Umatri's sheath rattled and shook, the writhing blade desperate for blood. He drew his pistol and began firing. His shots, like Allan's, were a wild hailstorm of bullets. Luc moved beside him, his own pistol out.