Tales of the Unquiet Gods (17 page)

Melody waved his apology away with one hand, her other covering what Pat suspected might be a smile. The old fellow certainly was a character.

"We're just looking to find out if you saw a lady come through here earlier," Pat said.

"Might have done. I've seen lots of ladies come through here."

"This one was about Patrick's age," Melody said, gesturing to Pat. "She has light brown skin, black eyes and hair. She had her hair up, and a jacket that stopped about here." She gestured to the bottom of her ribcage. "But the collar came up to under her chin. She'd have walked through her and around there," she pointed around the bend of the wall.

The old man shuddered.

"Her." His voice went flat, and his face blank. "Yeah. I saw her. She gave me a look to freeze the blood in your veins. And her coat moved." His jaw worked and he spat on the concrete floor, earning a black look from a passerby. "Not like the wind was blowing it. Like there was something moving around
underneath
the coat."

Pet felt his stomach clench.

"Did she come back?" Melody asked in a voice hard enough to shave stone.

"No. I ain't seen her come back through here. Might have somewheres else, though," he added. Pat didn't think so. With the night of the full moon upon them, he suspected any other
Iaphneths
to have returned to the fold, so to speak. He passed the twenty to the grim-faced man.

"Thanks for your help."

"Yeah, no problem." He looked at Pat, and a sharpness flashed into his eyes. "When you see him, you tell Tourney that Sergeant Murphy says to watch his six, y'hear?" In an instant, decades of rough wear dropped away, and Pat clearly saw the Marine that Murphy used to be.

"Will do, Sergeant," he said. "And should you find anything you think we should know about, you can send it care of Detective Patrick Timmons."

"Please come by Washington Square or Madison Square Park sometime and hear me play."

Murphy looked up at her, his face unreadable.

"I might just do that, Missy. Look after yourself. And the cop."

Murphy heaved himself to his feet and moved quietly into the crowd, which swallowed him in an instant. Pat looked after him for a moment, then shook his head.

"Shall we?"

Melody met his gaze with her blue one, eyes shining with unshed tears.

"How do we let people get that way, Patrick?"

He shrugged.

"It's not usually about
let
," he said, standing up. "For most in the sergeant's situation, they've chosen to live outside society, and the best we can do is show them kindness every now and again. As much as they'll accept."

He stood, watching the press and surge of humanity moving around them for just a moment. Normal people, moving about their normal lives, just of pain, misery, drudgery and hopefully just enough joy to get them through the day. And they had no idea what horrors lurked under their normal, everyday feet.

But he did.

"Last chance to back out, Missy," he offered, using Murphy's nickname for her. "Stay safe; maybe live to fight another day."

Pat looked to Melody, meeting her once more steely gaze with his own. Her spine was straight, like the will that drove it, and he knew she wouldn't quit. It was no surprise when she shook her head.

"All right, then. Let's do this." He stepped around the corner.

12

To see a closed maintenance door. Melody reached for the doorknob, a lever in industrial steel, but Pat put out a hand to stop her. Something was stuck in the keyhole, as though someone had forced melted wax out from the inside of the mechanism, to ooze down the handle. If wax was a translucent pale purple. He leaned close and sniffed. The usual odors of humanity, as well as the antiseptic bite of chlorine bleach. Layered over it, though, a thread of oily fish and the something alien that told him they were, indeed, on the right track.

With nothing else to indicate caution, Pat pushed gently on the lever. With a sharp crack, a fat, blue spark popped in the safety light mounted over door frame. Evidently, somebody or some
thing
had messed with the mechanisms the Metro Transit Authority usually used to keep people out of its private domains. Though he noted with wry amusement that that Keep Out sign had actually been wiped clean of the usual coat of grime.

When Pat pushed, the door stuck. With a grimace, he pushed harder, and when it became obvious even that wasn't going to be enough, he threw his shoulder into it. With a juicy pop, the door came loose and swung inward, and Pat and Melody caught a billow of stench in the face. Pat swore and spat, while Melody whirled and vomited.

Hardened slime coated the door jamb, and oozed down to form a puddled mass of sludge on the floor. Pat swallowed convulsively, and turned to Melody, placing a hand on her shoulder to steady the shaking young woman.

"You okay?"

She straightened with a jerk, and threw an alarmed look over her shoulder. Pat removed his hand, a little unsure of himself. Then Melody relaxed, and her expression turned apologetic. She gave him a wan smile before speaking.

"That's - nasty." She spat, and pulled a white handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her mouth. Pat was surprised. He didn't think people carried them anymore.

"Yeah, and there's worse to come," Pat said. "Take a minute out here while I look inside."

Melody nodded, eyes still watering, and Pat stepped over the puddle of gook on the floor. The stuff coated the inside of the door, as well as the jamb and a good portion of the walls around the it. The stuff froze the light switch in the up position, but the fluorescent bulbs flickered.

Pat took a careful breath, but with the door open, simple airflow seemed to be enough to clear out most of the foul odor. He looked around the little room.

Another doorway stood opposite and offset a few feet, though it was just a black hole. The door seemed to be missing completely. Some cleaning supplies lay in one corner, next to an industrial sink and a metal cabinet.

He crossed to the cabinet and gingerly opened the door. When nasty alien monster things failed to leap out at him, he took a closer look. More cleaning supplies. A sound behind him brought his head around to see Melody easing her way inside.

"Careful with the stuff on the floor; it's bound to be slick." At her nod, he went back to examining the room. The flickering of the lights didn't make that particularly easy, and after a moment he judged that there just wasn't much to see. Pat slipped to the darkened doorway, and noticed that the door had been wrenched off, leaving tortured hinges behind. Remembering the monstrous creature that likely waited below, he didn't think that would have been hard to manage.

After a short moment, Pat found his eyes adjusting to the dim light. And the space was lit, despite its appearance in the other room. The room - much larger than the entry - contained several large machines, fenced off with a sign warning of electrocution danger. The gate appeared to have been forcibly removed, probably by the same chitinous horror. A heavy extension cord with danger yellow insulation stood out of a large socket on the wall near one of the machines, and ran out the open gate and down an open hatch in the floor. A hatch from which spilled the dim light in the room.

Pat reached into his jacket and drew his pistol, just as Melody stepped through the doorway. The M1911 had been a gift from his father, who'd used it in Vietnam to good effect. Pat had replaced several parts of it, to include substituting a threaded barrel. Which was necessary for the suppressor he drew from the right side of his shoulder rig. The sound of metal on metal as he screwed the one to the other drew his companion's attention, and when Melody realized what he held, she gasped.

"What-?"

Pat lowered the pistol and held his finger to his lips. Leaning close he spoke calmly.

"Our next move is through there," he pointed to the open hatch, "and neither of us knows what's down there, though I've got a couple of ideas. While I'd like to find Carla and simply disappear, I don't think that's likely. This is the only way I can think of evening the odds. Though I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to anybody."

It wasn't that the gun was illegal. The suppressor, either. He even had all the proper permits. Though since they'd been signed by his superiors in the NYPD and he fully expected his membership in that august body to cease any time, it might be better that nobody got word he was carrying a .45 in his "off time."

Melody gave him a look pregnant with interest, her eyes luminous in the artificial twilight, but managed to stifle her curiosity. She shrugged, and gestured toward the hatch. He nodded, and moved toward it.

"Wait," Melody hissed.

When Pat turned to look, she'd ducked back into the entryway, and scooped up the mop lying on the floor. She shoved at the slimed door, pushing it closed. The coating showed obvious cracks, but only for a moment. Before Pat's eyes, the stuff flowed together, leaving a rippled sheet of transparent goop across the door. He cocked his head as Melody rejoined him.

"I didn't want anybody else to stumble in here by accident," she apologized.

Pat shrugged. He just didn't want to get caught where he shouldn't be. He knelt at the edge of the hole in the floor, and peered down into the next room. Which was exactly like the one they were in, with just a bit better lighting. Someone had set up a cot in one corner with some blankets on it, and a utility light hung from a bracket on the wall.

Irritated, Pat unscrewed the suppressor from his pistol, and slid them both into his rig before climbing down the ladder as quietly as he could. He was just reattaching them when Melody joined him. The look she gave him combined equal parts amusement, questioning and apprehension, and she flicked a glance at the gun. He frowned and jerked a shoulder in a violent half shrug.

Taking a deep breath, Pat pushed tentatively at the part of his being torn open by his recent enslavement. Immediately his gut churned, shooting flickers of burning pain up his torso. He grunted, as external stimulus flooded over him. The sense of searing heat beat on his skin, even through his clothing, and carried with it a flavor of
wrongness,
as though a diseased sun shone on him. His eyes flickered closed as he tried to figure out the source.

When they'd been upstairs in the active part of the subway station, he'd felt it through the soles of his feet. Now that they were down a level, it had shifted. Now Pat felt it on his chest and legs, though not on his face.

"Down, still, I think," he gritted through clenched teeth. "And in front of us." Pat pulled back, and the roiling in his stomach subsided, but he still felt weak from the exercise. He opened his eyes to find himself on his knees, though he had no memory of how he'd gotten there.

Melody stared at him, her azure eyes full of concern and no small amount of fear.

"Patrick, you can't keep doing that. You turn white as a sheet every time." She put out a hand to help him up, but he waved her off. Her lips tightened, but she stood back as he heaved himself to his feet.

"The way I see it, we don't have much choice, and Carla has absolutely none." Pat stretched his jaw, which had clenched tight against the pain. Melody pursed her lips and shook her head, but didn't contradict him. He knew he was right, but devoutly wished for a better way.

Now that they were closer, he could actually feel whatever it was a bit, even while he wasn't actively trying to. It was the same wind-on-sunburn sensation he'd experienced at the park, but with that added texture that screamed poison.

After a moment, he felt solid enough to move on. He jerked his head and started forward, moving through the open doorway into a small supply closet like the one above. This one had neither supplies, nor a thick coating of slime over the door. Someone had duct-taped plastic strips full of LEDs at about head-height on the walls to give light. The power cords ran to a strip on the floor and back into the other room. Idly, Pat wondered who was footing the bill.

Pat stared at the closed door while Melody waited patiently. He didn't want to burst in on anybody. Stealth was their greatest advantage at the moment, and he was loathe to give it up. He was also distinctly unenthused about going through the door without any back-up but an untrained, unarmed nineteen-year-old.

Pat took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. He was surprised when Melody beat him to it. She stood to the inside of the door and looked a question at him. He castigated himself for not thinking of it first, and stepped back and nodded.

She opened the door, just a crack at first. The hinges neither squealed nor stuck, telling him somebody kept them well oiled. Pat saw next to nothing through the opening, and motioned her to open it wider. As she did, he scanned the space beyond. It looked like the mirror image of the station above, except for the flickering of reflected light on rippling water where tracks should be. Water, thick with scum and flotsam, which lapped against the rails in the bottom of the tunnel. The rails, he saw when he looked closer, had never been attached to the brackets that jutted, rust-covered and jagged out of the sluggish water.