Echo City Page 20

  Geraldine sat down on the bottom step, puffing, and leaned her cane against her leg. "Do you know how to open it?" she asked me when she had her breath back.

  "No," I said. "I know the first place to look, though."

  When I was here before with Muirin, I hadn't paid much attention to the graffiti on the old steps. It was just graffiti, like anywhere. Now, though, I knelt and looked at it carefully. On the riser of the bottommost step, next to the damp earth, I found the chalked outline of a key. I took the iron key out of my pocket and compared them. The drawing was the exact size and shape of the one Lily-Bell had given me.

  "No keyhole?" Fresca asked, leaning over my shoulder.

  "Like they'd make it that easy."

  But actually, it was almost that easy. I laid the key against its chalk doppelgänger, fitting it carefully against the chalk marks. The rock went suddenly soft, the key sinking in and growing warm against my fingers. A sharp crack and pop came from the far side of the steps. Fresca flinched violently, jostling my arm.

  Leaving the key where it was, I rose and looked over the foundation. There was a wooden hatch behind the steps, half-covered with fallen leaves. I couldn't remember if it had been there when I'd first met Lily-Bell; I was looking at her, not at the ground. But I knew for a fact that it had not been there when Muirin and I had searched the area.

  I climbed over the foundation and brushed the leaves away. There was a big brass ring sunk into the timbers of the hatch.

  "I'll cover you," Fresca said, her voice shaking a little, and pointed the muzzle of her shotgun at the center of the trapdoor.

  "Just don't shoot me, please."

  I was expecting resistance and perhaps theatrically creaking hinges, but despite its weathered appearance, the trapdoor swung open easily and silently. I jerked back, and when nothing happened I peered down a set of stone steps leading into darkness. Cool, earthy-smelling air breathed out into my face.

  Creiddylad jumped onto the steps immediately. She started to trot down and then paused when she realized that no one else was coming. She looked back, ears pricked, as if to say, What's keeping you people?

  "Flashlights," I said, and we whipped out our motley assortment of cheap lighting equipment to examine the staircase. The stairs didn't go down far—after perhaps twenty steps, they ended at a dry earth floor. Taking advantage of our lights, Creiddylad descended to the bottom and waited for us, a pale dog-shaped ghost against the darkness.

  "I may need a little help with the stairs," Geraldine said.

  "What? No way, not 'til we know what's down there." Fresca and I could run. Geraldine couldn't. I swallowed. "I guess .... I'll go down and see what's there. No farther than the bottom of the stairs."

  "I—I'll come with you." Fresca's face had lost all color. She looked absolutely terrified. When I touched her arm, she flinched explosively, nearly firing the gun into the ground. She was trembling.

  When Scylla had taken her, Fresca had been alone in the dark with the monster for nearly a full day. "No need," I said. "You guys stay here. You're my backup."

  Fresca offered me a very tiny smile. "I've still got you covered."

  And here I go breaking Horror Movie Rule #1, I thought. Never go into the dark basement alone and unarmed. Not to mention D&D Rule #1: don't split the party! But Creiddylad didn't seem worried, and I'd seen her attack the Tiger as well as defending me from Jill Frost. She was also no slouch in the fighting department. I was probably in more danger from Fresca getting so jumpy she accidentally shot me in the back.

  None of which made it any easier to descend the stairs with nothing more than a flashlight in my hands.

  But nothing jumped out of the dark at me. I stepped onto the earthen floor and shone the flashlight around. The walls were packed earth like the floor, and the ceiling, laced with tree roots, was high enough that I could stand without having to stoop.

  One thing that intrigued me was how cold it was down here. I could see my breath, and when I aimed the flashlight over my head, I was surprised to see frost glittering faintly on the earthen ceiling. I stretched to touch it. Cold. So cold it hurt my fingers.

  Did magic have actual, thermal effects on the world? I'd always assumed that the cold sensation of the sword was entirely psychological. But maybe it wasn't. Could the gate be drawing energy from the world itself in order to operate? I ran the flashlight's beam down the stairs, noticing the glitter of frost on the lower steps as well. Kneeling, I found the greatest concentration of frost crystals around another chalk outline of a key, a twin to the one up top.

  "Kay, dear?" my grandmother called down.

  "Everything's okay so far," I called back, and then all the fur rippled along Creiddylad's spine, and she growled.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin, but Creiddylad wasn't looking down the tunnel into the darkness; she was looking up the stairs. Toward Geraldine and Fresca.

  I heard my grandmother say, in a very calm, too calm voice, "One step at a time, honey, down the stairs—" and then Creiddylad raced up the stairs, snarling, and I bounded after her.

  I almost ran into Geraldine and Fresca at the top of the stairs. Fresca was frozen stiff with terror, her eyes like holes in her face, while Geraldine tried to coax her to take the first step onto the stairs, using the quiet tones of a woman soothing a frightened child. She was also splitting her attention between helping Fresca and casting frequent, quick glances over her shoulder.

  And the reason for that was because of the Tiger watching us from the edge of the woods. It didn't seem to be doing anything, just crouching there, looking at us. Now that I'd encountered a few of them, I was starting to find them easier to look at—less vibratey on the eyeballs, more clear and distinct around the edges. Or maybe it was the rain, blurring and fading it along with everything else. This one, like the one I'd seen at the hotel, was wearing pants: ragged and filthy, but definitely pants, possibly blue jeans. I got the idea that it wasn't sure if we belonged here or not, and was watching us until it figured that out, at which point something really unpleasant would probably happen.

  Creiddylad stopped just within the ruined foundation, and stood stiff-legged with her hackles up and a low snarl burbling from her throat. I had once seen our cat in a similar standoff with a neighborhood cat, both of them glaring at each other and making little high-pitched cat growls. The first one to break, lost.

  I took the shotgun from Fresca's paralyzed fingers, and looked anxiously at Geraldine, who had her cane in one hand and the other arm around my petrified roommate. The arrangement looked, to say the least, highly unstable. With the shotgun in the crook of my arm, I lent a hand to Geraldine, helping them onto the first step, then the second—all the while, watching the Tiger watch us. Fresca let us move her like a doll.

  "I assume," Geraldine murmured, "that I have now seen one of your Tigers."

  "You have," I said quietly. "Listen, I don't think closing the trapdoor is going to be enough to stop it." Anything that could claw through a steel door wasn't going to be deterred by two-inch-thick planks of wood, at least not for very long.

  Geraldine risked another quick look at the Tiger. "What would happen if you removed the key? Would the door vanish, as before?"

  "I—don't know. I think probably."

  A deep, ripping growl from Creiddylad made me look around. The standoff suddenly broke as Creiddylad leaped into a low, floating run. She cleared the foundation in a bound and arrowed through the wet grass, aiming at the Tiger.

  I left Fresca to Geraldine, hurled myself over the foundation, and fell to my knees in front of the riser where I'd inserted the key. Before I could lose my nerve, I reached for it. The metal was shockingly cold to the touch, cold enough to hurt. The key had become embedded firmly in the stone. I almost lost a fingernail prying it out, but finally it came with a sharp pop.

  As it fell into my hand, the horrible thought occurred to me that the tunnel might simply cease to exist, burying my grandmother and Fresca under tons of dir
t and rocks.

  "Fres—" I began, rising, but as soon as I could see over the steps, I saw the hatch still yawning wide.

  But there was something shimmery about it now, something not quite right, like the hazy vibration around the Tigers, or one of Muirin's glamours. Maybe it stayed for a little while, so you could take the key and get through— Even as I thought it, I lunged over the steps, losing some skin in the process. I stumbled onto the top stair and reached to swing the trapdoor after me. Touching it hurt, and I felt dizzy and weird standing in the opening—like my head was moving at a different speed than my feet.

  "Creiddylad!" I shouted. "Come here!"

  Dog and Tiger were circling each other, jockeying for an opening. I yelled Creiddylad's name again, and she broke away, dashing towards me. The Tiger sprang after her with that preternatural speed. I brought the shotgun up to my shoulder, tried to steady my hands, and fired. It kicked me in the shoulder and nearly sent me tumbling down the steps. Either I missed, or the shotgun load didn't do any visible damage to the Tiger—but it faltered, losing the rhythm of its stride, and Creiddylad rocketed down the stairs past my legs. I slammed the trap door, nearly whacking myself in the head. Half-climbing, half-falling, I tumbled into the rest of our group at the bottom of the stairs, and whirled around, pointing the shotgun up the stairs at—

  —nothing. In the dim, reflected glow from Geraldine's flashlight, the stairs dead-ended at the earthen ceiling.

  I took a few deep breaths, then lowered the shotgun and slipped my hand into my pocket to touch the key. It was body-warm now, all traces of that terrible cold gone. Two-way door, I reminded myself. Lily-Bell must have opened it from this side.

  I actually had the key out and was bending over to touch it to the chalk mark before I realized that if I did, we'd have a Tiger on top of us.

  I can open it any time I like. We aren't trapped. Not really.

  But the air would have felt so much less ... thick ... if I could have opened it, just once, to prove to myself that I could.

  Instead I sat down on the bottom step—my shaky legs didn't want to hold me anymore—and laid the shotgun carefully beside me. Fresca was slumped on the floor, my grandmother seated behind her. "How is she?" I asked.

  "I'm okay," Fresca said in a faint voice, then drew a breath and said with a hint of anger, "I'm totally fine. I'm fine."

  The flashlight lay across Geraldine's knees, and my grandmother had both hands on Fresca's shoulders. I caught the glitter of tear-trails on Fresca's cheeks.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "I lost—" Fresca began, in a choked voice. She swallowed heavily. "I lost it, I just—Your grandmother said 'There's something there,' and I—I couldn't see it—" She broke off sharply and bowed her head, her green hair hanging down to cover her eyes. "It could have done anything," she said, "and I wouldn't have known until ... I couldn't, Kay, I couldn't move, I just—couldn't."

  I hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder beside Geraldine's, my fingers pressing against my grandmother's cool ones. "We're all okay," I said. I glanced at Creiddylad, who was lying on the floor, wet but alert. "All of us."

  "That doesn't help," Fresca said, muffled. I felt a sharp tremor run through her. "If I have to get a drink of water in the middle of the night, I take the shotgun. Didn't Drew ever tell you that?"

  "He never mentioned it," I said. There had been an unexpected gentleness in Drew's voice last night: She's crying in there ...

  "I wasn't going to come down here with you guys." Fresca took a long, shuddering breath and raised her head, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. "I was just going to, to go back and wait in the car, like you said, you know? I couldn't make myself take that first step."

  "Um," I said.

  "I know. What am I gonna do, curl into a ball and cry about it? Well ... I guess that's kind of what I am doing ..." Gently but firmly, she pushed our hands off her shoulders and then reached around, groping across my leg. I guessed what she wanted and pressed the shotgun into her hands. Her body relaxed a little, and she stood up, looked at the ceiling and then followed it with her eyes to the top of the stairs. "Oh," she said.

  "Oh," my grandmother echoed, looking up at the blank underside of the earthen ceiling.

  "I can open it," I said hastily. "There's another key mark, down here." I tapped beside it with a finger. "I just think I'd better not right now. For, um, obvious reasons."

  "So what was out there?" Fresca asked. She looked at both of us. Her hair was a wild, rucked-up mop, her eyes red and swollen. There was a trail of green dye down her cheek, washed out by the rain. "Yes," she said impatiently, "I know what you're thinking right now, and it's probably something along the lines of Let's not freak out Francesca and give her a screaming meltdown, but not knowing is worse."

  She certainly sounded like normal Fresca again. But that was the problem these days; she was normal Fresca right up until I stumbled into one of her unexpected, brand-new emotional minefields. "It was a Tiger," I said. "From Shadow New York, I told you guys about them yesterday—"

  "Tammany Tigers. I remember." Fresca swallowed, her throat working, and then looked up at the ceiling again. "What do they look like?"

  "Sort of like a tiger crossed with a gorilla," I said. "This one was wearing pants."

  "I couldn't see it that well," my grandmother said.

  "They're really hard to see. I'm getting better at it, myself."

  "Giant invisible gorilla-tigers in pants. Right." Fresca squared her shoulders. "At least now I know what to be terrified of. Up there, anyway." She took her flashlight from the pocket of her slicker, held it up against her shotgun military commando style, and swung around to aim down the tunnel. All that the flashlight illuminated was more tunnel. "So, uh, do you know what there is to be terrified of down here?"

  "Hopefully nothing," I said, very firmly trying to put from my mind all thoughts of darkness and the warnings thereof. Lily-Bell had come this way, so it couldn't be too unsafe. "Shall we see where this tunnel goes?"

  Chapter 16

  The tunnel ran straight for about a hundred yards, then curved sharply to the right. Although made of earth, the walls were very smooth and regular, meeting the floor at a sharp angle. The air was dry and dusty, and held a hint of the crisp autumn-leaf smell of Shadow New York.

  "I am aware this sojourn was partly my idea," my grandmother said, limping along between the two of us, "and therefore, as I believe Charles Darwin once remarked upon suffering terrible seasickness on the Beagle, 'I got myself into this of my own free will.' However, I don't think I'm up to walking all the way to New York City."

  "I don't think any of us are," I said. "And hopefully we won't have to. I doubt Lily-Bell hiked all the way. If this isn't some kind of shortcut—"

  I never had a chance to finish the sentence, because something glinted far down the tunnel, like a chrome reflection at the farthest edge of our flashlight beams. Fresca brought up the shotgun, so apparently she saw it too. We all three waited for a moment, but nothing moved, and Creiddylad trotted ahead of us with no sign of nervousness, all the way to the edge of the flashlight-illuminated region of tunnel before stopping to wait.

  "Hang on," I said quietly. I closed my eyes and did my best to put myself into a relaxed, second-sight-enabled state, hoping it would be more help than hindrance this time.

  Even without the second sight, I can see things that most people can't. I can see right through glamours. I can see ghosts. It's very hard for magic to trick me or hide things from me. This is why I have the sword in the first place—I saw it, while most people wouldn't have been able to.

  But with my second sight fully open, I can see a whole lot more.

  It was still inconsistent and hard to put myself into that state on purpose. I used to mainly do it while I was painting, as a kind of accidental meditation. These days, I was learning to do it intentionally, but I still had a ways to go.

  But I was getting better.

  The
last time I was in these woods, I got that eyeball-searing, flashing display. This time, the whole tunnel lit up shockingly bright, the same electric blue-white as the sword when it was in full fighting mode. Fresca and Geraldine's blue and green auras were all but invisible against that brilliance; even Creiddylad's lurid red was subsumed into the light around it.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, but even my eyelids didn't block it entirely. It was dimmer, though, like seeing through sunglasses, and now I could see that the blue-white light was pouring from dense, complicated patterns all over the walls and ceiling and floor. It didn't seem to form letters or runes or anything recognizable, just a complex and repeating pattern, chaotic yet organized.

  A fractal, I thought. It's some kind of fractal.

  We were standing on some of the lines, and I hastily shuffled to one side, but there were patterns everywhere; it wasn't possible to avoid them. And it didn't feel any different if I was standing on them or not, anyway.

  "Kay?" Fresca asked quietly when I knelt down and touched one of the patterns.

  "It's nothing," I said. Which was what it felt like—nothing.

  I covered my eyes with my hands and squinted through my fingers. This attenuated the brightness to the point that I could see there was no living aura waiting for us at the end of the hallway, red or otherwise.

  With my palms pressed to my eyes, I tried to gently turn my second sight off as Muirin had been teaching me. The visualization I used was a button in my brain, and I pretended to push it, slowly and carefully, then just as carefully opened my eyes. This time it worked properly. The tunnel was dark again.

  "Whatever's up ahead," I said, "it isn't alive." I tipped my head back to study the ceiling with my flashlight. Nothing was visible to the naked eye except for the glitter of frost, here and there among the tree roots.

  Creiddylad made an impatient whuffing sound, not quite a bark, but close.

  "Yes, dear, we're coming," my grandmother said.

  We were almost to the end of the tunnel anyway, at least the part we could safely walk on. The dirt floor ended at a slightly raised brick platform, just a single step up that Geraldine could easily manage. The light we had seen was a reflection from a gizmo that looked like it came straight out of a video game, a gleaming silver gearbox sort of thing on the platform with a waist-high lever rising from it. Running out of the platform, and presumably connected to the lever, was a single gleaming metal rail that vanished into a horizontal bricked-in shaft about eight feet in diameter.