In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(123)

She reminded Sveti of Rachel, all those years ago. Those big, dark gleaming baby eyes, full of terrible knowledge no child should have.

As Sveti watched, she turned and scampered, swiftly and silently, into the dark . . . to the right. Like the first poet. R for Rodionov.

Just like that, she couldn’t leave. She couldn’t make a decision based on fear when a little child reached out to her. Real or illusion, it made no difference. The imperative was exactly the same.

Wow. Following visions, now. She probably needed antipsychotic drugs. But they were in short supply here, so she’d just go with it.

She turned on the flashlight and followed her little friend. It was nice, in this bleak, awful place, to imagine that she had company. It was a childish mind game, of course, but if it helped, who gave a shit?

Help or no help, she was so f*cking afraid. She heard Tam’s voice echo in her head. Endless, gruelling combat training sessions. Don’t allow fear to control you. Fear is just a fantasy. Pop the bubble.

Intellectually, she understood that, but no amount of pep talking could keep her from feeling it. Fear of pain, darkness, but most of all, fear that it was all for nothing. Cruelty, for its own mean, stupid sake.

She would find some meaning in this, goddamnit. She would slap some down on top of it by brute force and bolt that f*cker down.

It was slow going, through the big, confusing chambers, and the choices of left or right were by no means obvious. She had to explore each new cavern before she even understood which direction a person could choose to go at all. Some were full of deep, black pools of water, the minerals around them slippery with condensation, like wet ice.

And so it went. Vast mineral monuments, like the trunks of huge trees. Cascading waterfalls of frozen stone. Huge phallic pillars and massive, tumorous lumps. She wished the little girl would simply appear and lead her on, but she did not see the little girl again. It had just been that one brief flicker, because she wanted it too badly. The little girl had slipped through the chinks in her mind’s armor only because she had not expected her. Ghost, hallucination, or vision, none of those entities could be forced. They did what they damn well pleased.

She memorized every landmark, marking the image in her mind for her reverse journey. That cathedral ceiling, that batwing arch, those kissing columns, that fat, warty monolith. She was so focused on this, she did not allow herself to feel the breathless panic. Then she saw light, far ahead. She was so relieved, she started to cry.

The chamber she emerged into was as large as the entrance chamber, at least twelve meters tall, with a big opening at the top a couple of meters across. A covering had been laid over the hole, she could see the straight line of corrugated metal silhouetted against a white sky. It looked as if the earth had given way, enlarging the hole.

Plant roots hung down. Tufts of grass and foliage furred the opening. A beam of light blazed in, like a bolt of heaven reaching down to her. She almost heard celestial music.

The realization unfurled slowly, because her eyes were still blurred and blinded by tears and the sudden influx of sunlight. But as she blinked and rubbed the wavering haze away, it opened up inside her, like a sinkhole somewhere around her liver.

First she saw the one right at her feet. Not believing it. Then she saw another. Then still another. And once she saw those, she saw them everywhere. They filled the entire chamber.

A sea of human bones.





CHAPTER 25

It was a charnel house. Bones filled the room, but the highest heap of them was right under the opening itself.

They had been dumped from the hole from above, allowed to fall any which way. It appeared that the earlier ones had been put into body bags, but the more recent ones not.

They had gotten sloppy at the end.

The exposed bodies were all desiccated skeletons. Many had been disassembled, perhaps by small animals. A faint smell of corruption hung about them, but they were shriveled and yellowed and dry.

Many of them were very small.

Sveti thudded painfully to her knees on the jagged rocks, next to one of the smaller ones. Its flattened skeleton was so tiny. It must have been so little, maybe two or three. The size Rachel had been when they were rescued. Scraps of fabric clung to the tiny leg bones. There was embroidery on the rotted cloth. Flowers, bleached and colorless.

She hugged herself. The sound coming out of her throat felt too high for human ears to hear. The pressure would implode her throat.

She vibrated with shaking sobs for these lost voyagers. This innocent baby. All the little girls and boys who would never be saved.

And for her own wretched self.

When the shaking had spent itself, she felt empty and exhausted. The angle of the sun blazing down into the hole had shifted. Its beam shone down, right onto the little skeleton. The grasses and flowers above had let some of their seeds drift down and take root, even in that deathly place. Grass sprouted, and twisting plants twined around the small rib cage. A few small white flowers bloomed here and there.

That sent another wave of pain lancing straight through the hot, unstable jelly that used to be her heart.

She pulled the toy bear out of her purse and tucked it tenderly between the rib cage and the arm bone of the tiny skeleton.

“Thank you for helping me,” she whispered. “I’ll stop the people who hurt you. And I’ll pray for you. I’m not good at it, but I’ll try.”

Her knees wobbled as she stood. The shifting light had now illuminated a plastic cord that dangled down from the hole, knotted at various intervals. She had not seen it, so shocked had she been at the bodies. She wondered if her mother had left it there. She could not imagine anyone else having a reason to climb down, or up. For the murderers, this hole had been a one-way street.