Rogue (16 page)

“Show-off,” muttered Ajay.

“Like you're not?” asked Elise.

“Not
physically.
”

“Which way, Will?” asked Nick, looking at the side staircases. “Right or left?”

Will waited and let the answer come to him. “Doesn't matter. Coin flip. They both lead to the same place.”

He immediately started toward the right stairs.

“Actually, science has determined that a flipped coin is not strictly a fifty-fifty proposition,” said Ajay. “Surprisingly, the coin will return to whichever side you're holding faceup in your hand before it is flipped, exactly fifty-one percent of the time.”

“Fascinating,” said Nick, and then he stifled a big yawn.

Will led the way down. The stairs were broad and steep, fashioned from the same smooth stone blocks that had been used to build the rest of the structure. They reached a landing twenty steps down; then more stairs doubled back down the other way. They all reached for their flashlights before they descended the second set; Ajay also fixed a device with a strap around his forehead, like a miner's helmet, and switched it on. Peering ahead, Ajay led the way and they slowed their pace as the darkness grew around them.

“Does any of this seem familiar, Will?” asked Elise.

“Not yet.”

“But you're positive Coach is down here, right?” asked Nick.

“More than fifty-one percent,” said Will. “Less than a hundred.”

They reached another landing. The stairs grew more slippery here, moisture seeping in around the stones, leaving a thin layer of scum or moss on the walls.

“We're descending into the swamp itself,” said Ajay, moving his twin beams around to examine everything closely. “There's repulsive muck all over the walls, but a section of the stairs is fairly clean right down the middle, which would indicate they're used fairly frequently.”

“Yeah, who wouldn't want to climb down under a swamp?” said Nick. “Fun for the whole family.”

“You think the Makers built this?” asked Elise.

“This all suggests a relatively robust and developed social organization or, daresay, civilization,” said Ajay. “Well beyond the Neolithic, perhaps shading toward bronze or even Iron Age development. Most likely employing a monarchal system, probably tribal, involving familial lines of succession.”

“What are you yapping about?”

“That is to say, I don't believe the Makers created this. But I would venture to say they most likely created the creatures who created it.”

As they turned the corner of the landing, Will shined his light down at the third set of stairs stretching before them. Tendrils of slimy moss hung down from the ceiling, some of them clumping together to form thick webs. The air felt oppressively hot and humid here. Multiple sources of dripping water echoed throughout the chamber. Even here, tendrils of the same creeper vines that nearly wallpapered the outside of the structure had insinuated themselves into the nooks and hollows of the walls and stairs.

Looking more closely, Will noticed that a broad middle section of this entire staircase was missing the layer of scum as well.

“Must be a lot of people using these stairs,” he said, taking the first few steps down. “Look how clean they are here, same pattern, straight down the middle.”

“Strange,” said Ajay. “One would think you'd see footprints, or at least some gaps, but it's like they've been swept halfway clean.”

“Maybe they got a janitor,” said Nick. “Who does a half-assed job.”

“Yeah, that's probably it,” said Elise.

“What was that?” said Will.

He stopped. The rest of them stopped. Everyone listened. Nothing but dripping water.

“Now I don't hear it,” said Will.

“What was it?” asked Elise.

“I don't know, something faint, kind of in the background. Let's keep moving.”

They started down a few more steps, nearing the halfway point of the staircase.

“There it is again,” said Will.

They stopped again, all at once. This time they all heard it.

Something brushing or swishing along the stone.

Then it stopped abruptly.

“Where's it coming from?” asked Elise.

“I can't tell,” said Will. “Could be above or below us.”

“It's both,” said Ajay.

Will turned to Elise:
Let's check it out.

You take high, I'll take low,
she answered.

He blinked on his Grid and turned toward the landing above, and he heard Elise send out waves of her echolocation patterns toward the stairs below.

Large heat signatures, half a dozen of them, showed up on Will's Grid, faint through the stone but moving toward them, maybe two staircases above.

It's bad,
she said.
Half a dozen of them.

Same here. But half a dozen of what?

Not sure. But I know why the stairs are so clean. They're not walking. They're slithering.

WILL'S RULES FOR LIVING #9:

TAKE CARE OF THE MINUTES, AND THE HOURS WILL TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES.

“Ajay, stand between us,” said Will quietly.

Nick put himself between Ajay and the stairs leading up, while Will and Elise took a step down, leaving Ajay in the middle. The sinister sounds—and figures on the Grid—drew closer to them.

“Move down to the next landing,” said Will, now whispering. “In the corner, where we can see both sets of stairs.”

They edged down the last few steps to the landing and took up position in the corner, looking both ways.

“Am I going to need my hatchet?” whispered Ajay.

“Unless you've got something more effective,” said Will, his mind racing to calculate their next move. It came to him quickly.

I'm going to make a run down there and try to draw the ones on that level away from us,
he sent to Elise.

Check.

Can you make the ones above us think we're somewhere else? Anything to buy some time?

I'll try. What do
you
think they are?

I'll let you know. And I'll try to get a line on where they've stashed Jericho. I think he's close.

Got it.

“Ajay, Nick, stay with Elise,” Will whispered. “I'll be right back.”

Will shined his light down at the next staircase; it turned out to be the last set of stairs, and it emptied out into what looked like an open, flat plaza with the same stone floors. The heat signatures appeared to be on that level, somewhere out in the darkness beyond, still more than fifty yards away. Nick put a hand on Will's arm and clamped down.

“Dude, you sure?” asked Nick.

“Yes.”

Will nodded to Elise and turned off his flashlight. As he blinked the Grid back on and took the first step down the stairs, he heard Elise throw a vocalization up and around the corner: a perfect impression of some big cat's echoing, menacing roar. Will looked back in that direction and noticed that the heat signatures above them had stopped.

“Good Lord, that even scared
me,
” whispered Ajay.

“Yeah, like
that's
hard,” said Nick; then he craned his head around to Elise. “Wait, that was
you
?”

“Duh,” said Elise.

Will took a deep breath and flew down the stairs. He stayed to the center, where he knew the footing was good, and once he hit the flat of the plaza, he realized that the stones were clean here, too. Firm traction. Good.

And ahead of him,
lots
of slithering.

He stopped dead, opened his senses to soak up impressions from all around him, and immediately sized up what he was facing:

The plaza, as deep as it was broad, appeared square, and as near as he could tell, it ran the full length and width of the stone complex above. He saw four ways out: the stairs they'd just used, two arched tunnels leading down on the wall to his left, and another staircase corresponding to and identical to the one they'd come down straight ahead on the far side of the plaza.

Some kind of structure occupied the dead center of the room: round, maybe ten feet across, with a wall about three feet high around some kind of opening.

Maybe a pit.

Bright spots of lights—torches, he realized—burned in brackets all around the wall. To the right of the circular wall stood a strange structure, like a slightly angled funnel, that ran from the ceiling and emptied into an opening in the plaza floor.

Maybe the end of the tunnel below the trapdoor they'd encountered above.

Farther to the right stood the only opening along the right-hand wall, a massive archway that led away into an ominous, inky darkness.

Will's eyes picked up movement and more light.

Six heat signatures were sliding past the pit, separating, three moving to either side. One in each group carried a torch. He flicked off the Grid and got his first look at them.

His first thought was
snakes
, but no, they looked too broad and muscular and they had arms holding the torches. They were also all holding weapons, spears and swords and axes, so the word that came to his mind next was
snake-men.

They were tall, well over six feet, gliding along on thick, powerful trunks that undulated back and forth with a sinuous, nauseating grace.

The hard, gray stalks of their scaled torsos flared up into thick, hooded necks—a cobra look—that thrust their flat, vile heads and sharp faces forward. When they opened their mouths, Will saw fangs and forked tongues. Hybrids indeed, but the question was, with what? Something human was definitely in their features, and it informed their gleaming black intelligent eyes, but Will didn't have time to give it much thought.

He ran straight at them, pushing himself to top speed in a few strides, and the move threw them. They hesitated, some kind of communication passing between them, harsh and guttural barks. Will veered left as he neared them and saw the trio to the left of the wall brace and steady themselves, raising and readying their weapons…

…and then Will shifted to another gear and blew right by them, guttering the flames of the torches as he passed. The blows they brought down at him hit empty space he'd barely occupied. Will passed by the wall—confirming that it did indeed surround a pit, but he had no time to glance down into it—and didn't slow until he reached the opposite end of the plaza; there, he turned in a wide arc and stopped near the far staircase.

He waited there. The creatures, jabbering at each other, momentarily confused, regrouped into a pack and came after him. They didn't even spread out to try and contain him. No strategy, no sense of shared tactics, just an all-out assault, their eyes glimmering with hate, fueled by a primitive brain-stem rage.

More good news, Will figured: Either they weren't as smart as they looked, or they were used to much more stupid prey.

Will jogged to his left, watching the pack adjust that way; then he feinted more convincingly to his right, and they bit on that move, too. When he'd drawn them far enough toward him, he raced back in a wide arc to his left around them and headed back to the middle of the plaza. This time he slowed just long enough to look down into the pit.

There were bars laid over the opening, a latticework of thick black iron, set deep into the stone wall a foot below the rim. It was pitch-black in the pit, but Will did see torch light glinting off silvery water about twenty feet down, and when he blinked on the Grid he caught a single heat signature moving around.

“Coach, you down there?!”

“Why, were you expecting someone else?”

Jericho's voice echoed up through the stone cylindrical chamber, which Will realized looked like a well. He heard splashing, and when he blinked off the Grid, he thought he saw an arm waving up at him.

“You all right?”

“I'm not hurt, but I'm pretty damn inconvenienced.”

A spear zipped right by Will's head—he heard it slice the air—and clattered onto the stones behind him, its iron blade throwing up sparks. Then he heard a lot more slithering. He looked back; the pack was closing on him fast.

“Hang in there, Coach,” said Will. “We're coming back for you.”

“Well, I don't exactly have anywhere else to go,” said Jericho.

Will ran again, back toward the original set of stairs; then he jogged left toward the nearest exit on the left-hand wall, an arch that led somewhere down below. The snake-men tracked his every move and he stayed just enough ahead of them to keep them coming. Twice more they hurled weapons at him—an ax and what looked like a hammer or mace whooshing toward him end over end—and for the second one he had to project out a thought-shield to prevent it from making a serious dent in his head.

I found Jericho,
he sent to Elise.
He's down here, like I figured: pit, bars, water.

That's great,
she answered.
Uh, we're a little busy right now.

He could feel the mental strain she was under coming through.

I'm coming back toward you,
Will answered.
Taking the long way around.

Do what you have to do—

I have a plan.

Of course you do.

Will broke off the connection, let the pack close the gap again, and then sprinted toward the far staircase. This time they were smart enough to spread out behind him, six feet apart, trying to discourage him from turning back. Instead he just ran right up the stairs and stopped on the first landing. He looked back just long enough to make sure they were taking the bait, then ran up to the next landing, and the one after that, and then he was back in the chamber they'd first entered.

He ran straight across to the stairs they'd initially descended, where he paused just long enough to see the creatures crest the top of the stairs behind him; then he headed down.

From below he heard the clash of steel on steel and the grind of steel on stone. He blinked on the Grid and saw a mash-up of heat signatures moving around vigorously.

Nearly there,
he sent to Elise.
Bringing more with me.

Oh for joy, for joy.

Will turned the corner around the final landing. Halfway down the last set of stairs, Nick held one of the snake-men around the throat with his left fist and was punching it repeatedly in the face with his sledgehammer right. The thing was nearly out on its feet. Three more of the beasts were already sprawled out on the stairs, either unconscious or dead, a green sludge flowing from their eyes, nose, and small slits in the sides of their necks that were probably their ears.

“Hey, buddy,” said Nick, still throwing punches as Will came into view. “Turns out they're not as tough as they look.”

“It's about time!” shouted Ajay.

The last two snake-men had squared off with Elise, with Ajay just behind her. Will could sense that she'd spent a big portion of her reserves already, probably with a blast that took out the three on the stairs.

Ajay was pointing another of his homemade gizmos at the one closest to him. He fired it and a spinning steel disc the size of a circular saw blade flew across and severed its hand. The creature gave out an agonizing bellow as its hand fell off still holding a short sword.

Nick smashed the creature one final time and it slumped to the ground in a limp pile. The last one standing, gripping the stump of its severed hand, turned and tried to slide away up the stairs. Nick followed it up to the landing, pounced on its tail, picked the thing up by the tail, and whipped it around a few times.

At that moment the other group of six snake-men that had been tracking Will turned the corner onto the landing at the top of the next set of stairs. Nick saw them arrive, stopped his spin, planted his foot, and hurled the snake-man through the air at them. The thing's body flew like a Frisbee, whirling and ricocheting violently off the walls, and then it crashed into them.

Will and Elise joined Nick on the landing: Without even thinking about it, Will spontaneously summoned up an image of Lyle Ogilvy in full wendigo form and projected it out at them.

That's a new one,
he realized as he watched the image appear and saw them react in fright.
They can actually
see
this one.

Elise, following his lead—his idea had passed between them without him even having to think about sending it—supplied a convincing accompaniment of the wendigo's horrifying screech.

The six snake-men turned as a group and slithered back up the stairs as fast as their tails could carry them.

“Yeah, you better run!” shouted Nick.

With a warrior's shout, Nick bounded up the stairs after them. Will grabbed his arm, which didn't dissuade him—he was pretty sure Nick was too strong to
physically
stop at this point. So he slipped a thought into Nick's mind, hoping Nick would mistake it as one of his own: