“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.”