Nightlife (Cal Leandros #1)(33)

"In there?" I groaned at his affirming nod. "Great. Just goddamn peachy." Aiming a solid kick at the metal, I rammed my foot against it, sending a shower of orange rust flakes into the air. "Yo, Avon calling."

"You are just the soul of finesse, aren't you?" Robin shook his head in disbelief and disapproval.

"It isn't precisely his strong suit." Niko pushed my foot aside and grasped the grate with both hands, yanking it free with a tortured screech of metal. "Who wishes to go first into the gaping maw of hell?"

Ignoring his mockingly dry tone, I crouched and then dropped feetfirst into the hole, the inky blackness swallowing me instantly. It wasn't as far as the earth's center, but it was far enough to send an unpleasant jolt through my legs as I landed. Pulling a small flashlight from the waistband of my pants, I switched it on. Partially shielding it with my fingers to let my eyes adjust, I called upward, "Come on in. The water's fine." Gagging for a moment, I muttered to myself in the rising waves of troll reek, "Smelly as hell, but fine."

Niko landed beside me as agilely as a cat. Robin followed immediately, nearly as light-footed as my brother. I guess you'd pick up a bit of dexterity over a few thousand years or so. He wasn't as silent as Nik, though. "Grimy. Filthy. Putrefying. Abbagor, you abominable beast, wallowing in filth like a pig. This is silk. It will never come clean."

As he rambled on, becoming more and more outraged as he went, I shot the beam of the flashlight around the artificial cavern. The concrete walls were liberally coated with a wash of green slime, doubtless either fungus or mold. What the floor was made of was a mystery, as we stood almost calf deep in bone-chilling mud. "Helluva bachelor pad your pal Abby's got going for him," I offered with a curl of my lip. "Wonder if it's rent-controlled?"

"It appears to be a long-forgotten maintenance area," Niko commented. Taking the light, he picked out a far corner with it. "Ah, a tunnel, and not man-made, I believe."

Not man-made? Just because the concrete looked to have been gouged and ripped away in chunks by claws that had left scoring over an inch wide? Hey, let's not jump to any wild and crazy conclusions. "That'd be the front door," Robin said matter-of-factly before heading toward it, the mud making every move an exaggerated giant step from that old kids' game of "Mother, May I?"

"Let's get this over with so I can burn these clothes and take an hour-long shower." He glanced back over his shoulder with a lascivious grin. "It's a big shower. Anyone care to join me?"

"This little adventure just keeps getting better and better," I hissed, mud sluicing up my legs and threatening to pull off my shoes as I went. "Nik, you want to poke me in the eye with a sharp stick, top the whole night off?"

"As amusing as that sounds, perhaps later." Niko passed me with ease. I could see he'd discarded his shoes and moved on silent bare feet. It was a good idea and I stopped for a second to pry mine off and toss them aside. I wasn't as quiet as my brother with the mud squelching between my toes, but it was still an improvement.

The air in the chamber, while rancid with the essence of troll, was still the air of New York. Unaccountably warm and humid for the season, thick with pollution, but still the same old air you breathed day in and day out. That all changed when we passed through the homemade, troll-made doorway. Every ounce of warmth was leached away and every bit of movement died with it. It became an atmosphere, heavy as stone, cold as the metal drawer in a morgue, and lifeless as the corpse in it. It was like breathing ice cubes. Chunks of it passed painfully through your windpipe and sat in your lungs like lead. The smell even faded some. After all, there had to be some movement to carry a scent, right? And there was none here. Even the very molecules seemed frozen, nothing daring to move, nothing daring to attract attention.

A deadly attention.

"Abbagor!" I yelled, my voice promptly echoing into the distance as a distorted gibbering howl. I had no problem with attention. After all, that's what we were here for. And quite frankly, I would rather have Abbagor front and center where I could see him, no matter how pissed he was, than lurking unseen in the darkness contemplating us with empty, soulless eyes. How did I know they were soulless? Hell. I didn't have a clue. But I knew. And when Niko's hand floated out of the darkness to fasten on to my arm and pull me closer, I could see he knew too. Niko always looked out for me, but he also knew in most cases I could more than take care of myself. This… this did not have the smell of most cases.

"I can't see a damn thing," Robin said, his voice tense. Apparently, he hadn't been lying when he'd said the troll was no friend. "Abbagor, we don't have all night. We want to talk with you. And could you take pity on us lesser beings and shed some light on the situation?"

"Afraid of the dark, randy little goat?" A cold, cold voice drifted from above. "Be very sure the dark isn't afraid of you."

"Come on, Abbagor, old buddy, old pal," Robin wheedled, slipping smoothly into his sales persona without a hitch. "Help me out, for old times' sake, and we'll be out of your tendrils in no time. My word on it."

"Older times. Moldered times. In all times, Goodfellow, you are the same. A boil refusing to be lanced." The words were amused, but it was the humor of a fat spider curled in its web with all the patience in the world. "If only you would hold still, I could remedy that."