Year One (Chronicles of The One #1)(42)

She didn’t speak, didn’t ask, but put her hand on the butt of the gun.

She heard the leading edge of male laughter, with enough mean in it to tell her they wouldn’t be friendly.

“Did you see that asshole squirm!”

She caught the light now—two beams cutting through the dark, growing closer, brighter.

Now and again they sliced over the walls. If they swept over her or Fred, could she use the gun? Could she aim and shoot another human being?

“Pissed himself. Fucker pissed himself!”

“Don’t see why we can’t hunt another down here. Plenty of asshole fuckers in the tunnel.”

“Come on, most of those are crazy. It’s more fun to make them crazy, then kill the fuckers. Let’s get a woman this time, and not one of the hags down here. We do her a couple times, then nail her on the tracks, do her again before we gut her.”

“You’re a sick bastard.”

More laughter. She heard their boots ring on the ground. Saw their silhouettes behind the beams of light.

Could they see hers?

“Let’s get two. I don’t want your sloppy seconds.”

A beam skimmed the wall an inch from her face; her hand tightened on the butt of the gun.

If they hadn’t been so busy laughing about their plans to rape, torture, and kill, they would have seen her.

They walked on, close enough she could have reached out and touched them. Continued along the tracks, arguing about the best hunting ground.

Beside Arlys, Fred quivered. “I don’t know enough to stop them,” she whispered. “I don’t have enough yet to know how. I hope someone does. They can’t hear us now, or see the light.”

Trusting her, Arlys turned on the flashlight.

She counted her paces. Fifty. A hundred. A hundred and fifty.

This time Fred gripped her arm, fingers digging hard. “Do you smell that?”

“I smell musk and urine and beer puke.”

“Blood. A lot of blood, and … death. But no sound, no movement.”

In another twenty paces, Arlys smelled it. She knew the scent as it had streaked over her face, even into her hair, from Bob Barrett.

Then her light picked up something on the tracks. Beside her Fred let out a muffled sob, but kept going.

A body, Arlys realized as they came closer. A body nailed to the ground through his hands and feet. His mouth hung slack in a battered face, showed broken teeth. And all the blood that had spilled out of him when they’d sliced him across the belly formed a gleaming, dark pool.

When Fred lowered to her knees, Arlys swallowed down her rising gorge, tugged at her.

“We have to go. He’s gone, Fred. You can’t do anything for him.”

“I can. I can say a prayer his soul finds peace. I can do that for him.”

Arlys straightened, stood by—now with the gun in her hand.

She didn’t have to ask herself if she could aim it or fire it at another human being, not when she looked at what human beings had done to a boy who looked barely twenty.

Damn right she could.





CHAPTER NINE

Fred rose, letting out a breath that shuddered with tears.

“He was younger than me.”

“I wish—” Arlys cut herself off. Wishing solved nothing. “We have to keep going.”

“I know, and I know it doesn’t matter to him now, but I wish we didn’t have to leave him alone here, too. That’s what you were going to say.”

“But we have to. You take the flashlight.” Arlys intended to keep the gun in her hand now. “There are probably more like those two. If you sense anything, we hide. If hiding doesn’t work, we run. If running doesn’t work, we fight.”

She curled a hand around Fred’s arm as they walked. “If fighting doesn’t work for me, and you can get away—”

Even in the dark, Fred’s shock gleamed. “I won’t leave you!”

“If only one of us can get out, one of us gets out. I need you to go to Park and First in Hoboken. Be there at three a.m. My source’s name is Chuck. Get to Chuck, tell him what happened.”

“I can do some things. I’m still learning, but I can do some things.”

“You do whatever you can to get to Chuck. If he doesn’t show by five, find a safe place. Find more like you, Fred, and get out.”

“Would you leave me behind?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not telling the truth. I can hear it in your voice. We’re both going to get to Chuck. You have to think of the positive, of the light, or the dark takes over.”

You have to prepare for the worst, Arlys thought, the incomprehensible worst or you could die in the dark.

They kept walking, following the beam of the light as the track switchbacked. The musky stench grew stronger, as did the lacing of piss, the sudden, gagging odor of vomit. And again, blood.

Arlys felt herself growing almost immune to it when the light caught a stain, a pool, a trail. And worse, when Fred played the light over the wall.

NEW YORK IS OURS!





THE RAIDERS


Written in blood, it served as warning and triumph, as did the dripping skull beneath it.

“Like the two we saw back there,” Fred whispered. “They like to kill. Some of them follow the Black Uncanny. The magickals who hunt humans, and us. I don’t know why.”