Blood Rites (The Dresden Files 6)

Chapter Thirty-two

The basement in the shelter was unusually deep, especially for Chicago. The stairs went down about ten feet, and were only about two and a half feet wide. My imagination treated me to a brief vision of some grinning Renfield with a machine gun popping around the corner already shooting, bullets tearing all three of us to shreds in the space of a heartbeat. My stomach writhed in pure nervous fear, and I forced myself to put it aside and focus on my surroundings.

The walls had been mortared and painted white, but cracks and mineral stains from damp spots all but concealed the original color. At the bottom of the stairs was a landing maybe three feet square, and then a second set of stairs led farther down, the air getting more cramped and colder as they went.

The stale air smelled like mildew and rot. Our breathing and our movements sounded incredibly loud in the otherwise oppressive silence that followed, and I found myself pointing the paintball gun forward, over Murphy's head and Kincaid's shoulder, so that I could start shooting as soon as something bounded into view. For all the good it was likely to do. Against any normal thug, the weapon would do little but make them damp. Or vaguely aromatic.

The stairway ended at a half-open old door.

Kincaid nudged it slowly open with his spear, already crouched.

Murphy aimed her gun at the black doorway.

Me too. The end of my stupid paintball gun quivered involuntarily.

Nothing happened.

Silence reigned.

"Dammit," I muttered. "I don't have the nerves for this crap."

"Want me to find you a Valium?" Kincaid asked.

"Kiss my ass," I said.

He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a couple of plastic tubes. He bent them sharply, shook them up, and they began to shine with chemical light. He edged up to the doorway and flicked one to the left, the other to the right, bouncing them off the walls so that he wouldn't expose himself to anyone in the hall beyond. Then he waited a beat and leaned out, peeking around. "Nothing moving," he reported. "No lights. But it looks like that map was pretty good. Hall on my right goes about ten feet, then ends at the door to that closet. Open hall on my left, twenty feet long, and opens into a room."

"Closet first," I said.

"Cover me."

Kincaid flowed down the last couple of stairs and through the door. Murphy kept within a foot of his back. Kincaid peeled off to the right. Murphy dropped into a crouch, shotgun aimed down the green-lit hall to the left. I wasn't as smooth, but I went after Kincaid, paintballs and staff ready.

The closet door was only five feet high and opened out, toward the hall. Kincaid listened at the door, then leaned aside to let me touch it first. I couldn't feel any enchantments on it, and nodded to him. He shifted his grip on the spear so that he'd be ready to drive the tip of it into anything that came at him from the closet, and drew the door open.

The light from his spear flickered around a dank little chamber that was too big to be a proper closet and too small to be a room. Patches of moisture and mildew blotted the damp stone walls, and the smell of unwashed bodies and waste rolled out of the door.

Half a dozen children, none of them older than nine or ten, huddled against the back wall of the closet. They were dressed in castoff clothing, most of it far too big, and they wore steel cuffs on their hands. The cuffs, in turn, were locked to a larger chain attached to a heavy steel ring bolted into the floor. The children reacted in silent terror, flinching away from the doorway and from the light.

Children.

Someone was going to regret this. If I had to take this building, hell, this block apart with nothing but raw will and my bare hands, someone was going to pay. Even the monsters should draw a line somewhere.

Then again, I guess that's why they call them monsters.

"Son of a bitch," I snarled, and ducked my head to step into the room.

Kincaid abruptly threw his weight against me, shoving me aside from the door. "No," he growled.

"Dammit, get out of my way," I said.

"It's a trap, Dresden," Kincaid said. "There's a trip wire. Go through that door and you'll kill all of us."

Murphy checked over her shoulder and returned to watching the darkness for trouble.

I frowned at Kincaid and picked up the plastic light stick, holding it out. "I don't see a wire."

"Not a literal wire," Kincaid. "It's a net of infrared beams."

"Infrared? How did you-"

"Dammit, Dresden, if you want to know about me, wait for the autobiography like everyone else."

He was right. It was a little late to be worrying about Kincaid's background now. "Hey, kids," I said. "Everybody stay really still and keep back, okay? We're going to get you out of here." I lowered my voice and said to Kincaid, "How do we get them out of there?"

"Not sure we can," Kincaid said. "The beam is rigged up to an antipersonnel mine."

"Well," I said. "Can't we just... can't you put a weight on a land mine and leave it there? So long as the weight holds the trigger down, it doesn't explode, right?"

"Right," Kincaid said. "But that's assuming we've gone back in time to World War Two." He shook his head. "Modern mines are pretty good at killing people, Dresden. This one's British, pretty recent."

"How can you tell?"

He tapped his nose. "The Brits use a different chemical priming charge than most. It's probably a bouncer, very nasty."

"Bouncer?"

"Yeah. If something interrupts the beam, the charge activates. Several individual submunitions get blown up into the air, or sideways, or however they want to set it up, in a pattern. Then they explode maybe five or six feet in the air. Sends a couple of thousand steel balls out in a big cloud. Kills everything in thirty, maybe forty meters if you're in the open, maybe a lot farther in a tight space like this. If it was me, I'd have set the charges up to get thrown straight down this hall. All these stone walls, the shrapnel would shred everything real good."

"I could hex down whatever is sending the beam," I said.

"Thus interrupting it," Kincaid said. "Thus kablowie. Thus death."