Chapter 11

Ch. 11: Julian

Holding my phone in front of me, I descend into the dark. Halloran's light has already vanished, and my own barely penetrates a few meters into the tunnel's gloom.

"Halloran?" I call.

A dull and quickly fading echo is the only reply.

At the bottom of the steps, I hesitate. An icy draft, like a ghastly exhalation, flows from the tunnel's mouth, carrying with it the scent of damp stone and decay. Though now shielded, my senses remain slightly raw from the reading, and I pause for a breath as I consider my next move.

Do I a) follow a mysterious man I just met into a dark tunnel that leads who-the-fuck-knows-where, or b) call my werewolf boyfriend and wait for help?

Hissing a few choice expletives under my breath, I decide that, before I do something incredibly stupid, I should at least send Dane a text telling him where, exactly, I've gone; but when I open my messages again, I discover there's no signal.

I'm not a complete idiot, so I turn back towards the stairs, intending to return to the surface and send a text from there.

I've only taken two steps when Halloran's voice, garbled by echoes, reaches my ears. All I can discern is my name and the urgency in his tone. Swearing under my breath, I waver. Then Halloran calls again, and this time I catch the word 'help' among the mangled sounds.

"Fucking wonderful," I whisper to myself as I turn back towards the tunnel. "If you get murdered down here, it's your own damn fault, Julian. No wonder Dane doesn't let you do things."

Heart in my throat, I step into the gloom. Closely set bricks of rough black stone form the tunnel's sides, which curve inward to meet in an arch overhead. Crumbled mortar litters the floor, and the space is so narrow that a large man would brush his shoulders on either wall, and Dane would have to duck his head.

Several meters in, the tunnel connects to another passageway at right angles, and I pause to consider this new choice. A slight noise on my right, like the rustle of dry leaves or the whisper of breath, draws me in that direction, but I've hardly taken a step when another echo carrying traces of my name calls to me from the left. With a shudder, I turn and follow it.

Soon I discover that every dozen paces the tunnel turns either right or left, and before long I've lost all sense of direction. With each step, the hazards of underground places rise unbidden to my mind: pockets of deadly gas, the risk of collapse, getting lost or trapped without a light — to say nothing of less natural dangers.

I've just about psyched myself out to where my own shadow will scare me shitless if I look at it wrong, when I round a corner and come face-to-face with Halloran, coming back the other way. We both startle, and I fall back and hit the damp brick wall with a half-stifled shriek.

"Julian! Lords almighty, are you all right?" he asks, reaching to steady me.

Hand pressed to my chest, I manage to gasp a reply. "Yes. Are you?"

"Yes, yes. I found something I need your help with, is all. Wasn't sure you'd heard me in this damned maze, so I was on my way back."

"What is it?"

He nods back down the tunnel and beckons. "Come and see. It's not far."

He leads the way, and my nerves settle a little as I follow him.

"What the hell is this place?" I ask as we turn another corner and the floor dips and rises once more.

"I'm no local historian, but I'd guess it's original to the town," Halloran says. "Probably built by the railway workers who founded the place in the late nineteenth century. Look—" He points to the side, where another opening leads to a short passage ending in a flight of stairs. "Just like the ones in Lagrange's shop. There are more like that, further on. I'd say the tunnel connects to all the buildings on this block."

"Why?"

"To get around unseen, most likely. It's perfect for smuggling contraband, or attending clandestine meetings, or just for your average Joe to visit the brothel without it making the morning gossip rounds."

He keeps his voice low, and I do the same. I also notice that he's drawn his gun and carries in what Dane calls a 'low ready' position, angled at the ground.

"What's the gun for?" I whisper.

He glances at me over his shoulder. "Shooting things. I thought all you Americans knew that much."

"Is it safe to shoot down here? What if the bullet ricochets, or ignites a cloud of gas, or something?"

He snorts. "You've been watching too many films. It's just a precaution. I heard some noises earlier. Probably just rats, but best be safe than sorry."

We proceed in silence for several minutes, and I count two more short, branching passageways ending in stairs. I also note a few places where the walls have been patched and the arched ceiling reinforced with curved strips of steel.

"Someone's kept the place up," I remark quietly.

"Aye, and put it to good use as well, I wager."

"The thief?"

Halloran lifts a shoulder in a slight shrug. "Maybe. It would explain how he's been able to break into so many places without so much as tripping an alarm. Ah, here we are." He stops and gestures at a section of wall. The bricks are a slightly different shade and set in a more regular pattern. Tracing the outline of an upright rectangle roughly the size of a small door, he says, "There's no mortar here—just the bricks stacked in rows."

"And how the fuck did you notice that?" I ask, my suspicion returning in full.

Either failing to notice, or choosing to ignore my tone, he keeps his attention on the wall. "There's a slight breeze — a change in the air. Don't you feel it?"

Now that he points it out, I detect a thread of colder air among the prevailing dank draft, carrying a strange mineral scent and another, unpleasantly sweet odor.

"Another tunnel?" I ask.

"Maybe — something that's been blocked off at the very least. That's why I need the help. I can't move the bricks while holding my light and gun, and I wasn't quite willing to give up either on my own."

"Can we just knock it down?" I ask, giving the wall an experimental shove. It doesn't budge, and Halloran shakes his head.

"We don't know what's on the other side, and even without mortar, gravity and friction are holding it in place well enough. Here — start at the top."

I do as he says, and quickly find a brick I can move. Setting it aside, I shine my light through the hole and discover a black void on the other side. My flash illuminates a low, sloping ceiling of rough stone, but not much else. Halloran has a look as well, and then we work quickly to pull out more bricks.

Within ten minutes, we have a neat pile stacked to one side. Grit covers my skin, dust hangs in the air, and I sneeze more than once before we finish. At last, the opening is wide enough to step through, and Halloran shines his light into the darkness beyond.

"Alright, let's see what we have here," he says, climbing carefully through the hole. I follow, and the pale, diffuse light from our phones reveals an uneven floor and angled surfaces of natural stone. We stand in a small chamber, but ahead, a greater darkness looms, and I get a sense of a vaster space I can't see.

"Shit. It's a cave," I breathe.

"Looks to be," Halloran agrees, and steps forward.

Reflexively, I reach out and catch hold of his sleeve. "Hey, be careful!" I hiss. "Caves are fucking dangerous, Halloran."

"Are you worried about me?" he asks, a slightly teasing note in his voice.

"No. I'm worried about me," I reply. "There's no service down here, if you haven't noticed. If we get trapped or something, we're fucked."

He chuckles. "I think we have enough resources between the two of us to get ourselves out of a scrape."

Taken a little off guard, I release my hold on his sleeve and he starts forward again. Usually, I have to fight for a piece of the action; I'm not used to being dragged into it against my will.

Together, we advance, phones aloft, and Halloran with his firearm at the ready. We don't get far before he holds out his arm and blocks my path with a sharply whispered warning, and I look down to see that we stand on a ledge.

Below, an abyss yawns. At least it seems like an abyss to my untrained eye, until I see the shine of our flashlights reflected back at us. It's a circular hole, roughly ten meters wide and at least as deep, with a pool of dark water at the bottom.

"Look," Halloran whispers, pointing to my left. "There's a path."

Turning, I see a narrow lip cut into the stone and descending the side of the pit in a spiral. It's barely a foot wide and hardly qualifies as a 'path,' but Halloran has already started along it.

Reluctantly, I follow him, keeping one hand on the wall. About halfway down, in a spot where the path widens a bit, he pauses and looks over the edge once more.

"Lords, take me," he breathes. "Do you feel that?"

At first I don't know what he's talking about, but then I pick up on it—like a faint hum or a charge of electricity in the air.

"What is it?"

"This is a 'thin place,'" he whispers. "A place like the standing stones, where one may cross realms; only here you would not find yourself anywhere so pleasant as a Fae forest. This—if I am not mistaken—leads to the underworld: to the realm of exiles and the home of monsters." He shines his light on the dark water below us, but the surface is like a black mirror, and reveals nothing of what lies beneath. "I think this may be where our thief came through."

"Through the water?"

He nods. "There's probably a submerged tunnel or a passageway down there. Something that doubles as a physical and symbolic doorway between worlds."

I shudder at the thought, and back as far away from the ledge as I can. "Let's get out of here. Dane needs to know about this."

I turn away, but Halloran catches my shoulder. For a moment, I think he's going to argue, and I have a rebuttal on the tip of my tongue, but his attention is on the ledge above us. I looked up and see a glint of light, and then Halloran shoves me, hard. For a moment, I'm terrified he means to push me over and into the dark water below, but I merely stumble to the side as he falls against the wall at his back with a grunt.

"Hey! What—?" I turn and see he's clutching his shoulder, from which the handle of a small, ornate silver knife protrudes. Blood darkens the fabric of his shirt, and his face twists with pain, but he shakes his head at whatever look of horror he sees on my face.

"It's just a flesh wound," he gasps. "It's not deep. Here—" He holds his gun towards me. "Go after him."

I shake my head and back away. "I don't know how to use that."

He huffs with exasperation and grabs my hand, forcing me to take the weapon. "If it took brains to use the thing, there'd be a lot less violent crime. Aim, safety off, pull the trigger. Now go — you're wasting our chance!"

I hesitate a moment longer, and he gives me a rough shove, his hand leaving a bloody print on my shirt.

"Julian! Are you a detective, or aren't you? Do your job!"

His words ring in my ears, and with sudden resolve, I turn and dash up the narrow path to the ledge. I keep one shoulder to the wall for support while holding my phone and gun in front of me, the way I'd seen Halloran do, and pause at the top to sweep the little cavern with my light.

It's deserted. I risk expanding my senses a little, sight and hearing sharpening, and pick up the fading echo of footsteps in the tunnel beyond. Stepping through the opening, I decide the echoes are coming from the left—back the way we'd come—and take off in pursuit. The sounds seem far ahead of me, so when I round a corner and suddenly find myself flat on my back, a knife pressed to my throat, the air knocked from my lungs and the gun knocked from my hands, I am taken completely by surprise. I stare up at a hooded figure, and can just make out long dark hair and a pale face in the light of my phone, which landed a few feet away, flash-side up.

The blade presses hard against my skin, the figure's muscles tense, and my eyes widen with horror as I realize that I am one swift motion away from death.

Then the figure freezes, and with a sharp gasp, withdraws the knife. Cool, slender fingers touch my face, and in the gloom, I can just make out an expression of pure shock as the figure leans close: shock, and something strangely familiar as well.

"Who are you?" I whisper.

In reply, the figure jerks back again, looking over her — for I'm fairly certain my assailant is a woman — shoulder and going still. I hear it, too: footsteps approaching rapidly and the echo of hushed voices in the dark.

Then, in a rush of soft fabric, my attacker is gone. So is my phone, and I'm left in the pitch dark of the tunnel, scrambling for the gun as someone — or something — draws near.

I find it and get to my feet, back pressed to the tunnel wall as I struggle to orient myself. There's a corner on my left, and I take a breath, intending to step around it and call a warning, but as I catch my breath, I realize that the rough rasp of air in my throat is all I hear. The footsteps and whispers have ceased.

I step around the corner, my eyes wide as I struggle to make out anything in the dark, but before I can speak a word, a bright light blinds me as someone much larger and stronger than me catches my arm and twists. My wrist snaps, the gun goes off, and in the flash, I glimpse Dane's expression of dawning horror.