MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

The words were sarcastic, Levi knew—he couldn’t do sarcastic, didn’t have the wit for it—but it was actually sort of endearing coming from Ryder. His top lip curled up a hair, which surprised him. He was
excited
for her to see the Hub.

“Quiet, now.” He waved a hand at her, the barely-there smile fading. “Need to concentrate.” Inscribed against the theater’s yellow brick wall was the portal, though currently inert and invisible to human eyes. It was a thing of magic, a thing of Vis—the power undergirding creation—crafted by someone with far more talent and ability than Levi possessed. He couldn’t make such a thing, nor could he even see it. He could, however,
feel
it. The portal was an abnormality, an aberration which didn’t belong to Inworld. Levi could sense the tension, the power emanating from miles off.

He swept his hands over the wall’s stony surface, searching for the weak spot in the construct, for what he always thought of as the keyhole. It wasn’t really a keyhole, of course, but it served the function well enough. There, low on the wall by his ankle, was a node of energy, a confluence where the different strands of power met and intertwined. He shifted his finger, gradually, slowly, feeling for the peaks and valleys of power in the node. His digit twisted, elongated, and thinned until it
sunk
deep into the theater wall, momentarily disappearing from view.

With a soft hiss, the portal formed in a blaze of opalescent light: one moment, old brick wall, the next, a doorway seven by four feet suspended in the air.

Levi heard a sharp intake of breath. “Holy shit,” Ryder whispered.

No sarcasm now.

TWELVE:

Chuck MacLeti

They caught a cab, a Victorian-era carriage pulled along by a zombified horse with greenish flesh, a wispy mane, and gobs of missing meat. The driver—a rail-thin man in black, wearing a top hat—said nothing, merely assenting with a nod after Levi gave him the destination, a place called the Lonely Mountain.

Ryder had a million questions as they cruised along cramped streets filled with battered cars and trucks, battered rickshaws, mopeds in a thousand different hues, and stranger things, each jostling for position as the traffic crept forward. This place was overwhelming, like the worst acid trip of a lifetime, but also outlandishly exciting. Ryder had travelled a lot, city to city and state to state, but she’d never left the US, and this place was
almost
like taking a trip to some exotic city far away from America’s safe and well-ordered shores.

According to Levi, this place was not even part of the world she knew at all. A pocket dimension, whatever the hell that meant.

She’d spent time in many a big city—New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco—but this place was like nowhere she’d ever been. The streets were narrow and choked with traffic. The buildings loomed up on either side, tall and thin, in an explosion of muted colors. A towering gray concrete tenement, covered in splashes of graffiti, on the left. A metal fronted building covered with neon tubing, advertising “Full Immersion VR Integration,” on the right. Overhead, power cables and phone lines twisted together in a mad jumble so thick it almost blocked out the muddy sky overhead. Those cables were like a manic spider’s web, running from everywhere to everywhere else, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

She spotted a rustle of movement on the wires, the motion just on the edge of her peripheries: an actual spider, a stout creature the size of a Pomeranian, with spindly metal legs, scuttled across a dense tangle of cables and disappeared into a nearby building of crumbling yellow brick. She shuddered. Yeah, this place was
almost
like visiting a foreign city, at least until she saw something like that, which jarred her back into her terrible reality. And the spider was, by no means, the only oddity.

She spied a chalk-white creature without a head, but with a face protruding from a distended belly, leaning against an alleyway wall with one foot casually propped up. Meanwhile some dude strutted by on oversized arms, hands as big as dinner plates, his feet shriveled up and hanging limp beneath a purple-skinned torso.

Being in the Hub was like being at a never-ending GWAR concert—all metal spikes, fleshy tentacles, and gore. But she was a survivor, and if this was her new reality … well, she’d deal with it as it came. Denial was never an option, not for her. So instead of letting the newness, the bizzaro nature of this place, frighten her, she asked questions.

She pointed at the creature in the alley, the one with the face on its stomach. “What’s that?” she asked, eyes tracking the freak.

Levi glanced up.

The Mudman looked different again. He no longer looked like the dumpy, balding guy with the thin mustache, nor did he resemble the police officer from the hospital. Now he was an unremarkable bald man with a doleful, basset hound face, wearing a plaid button-up shirt tucked into a pair of khakis. Looked like a middle-aged construction worker—but a site foreman instead of a new hand. His muddy eyes were the same, though: sad and somehow introspective.

“Blemmy,” he replied tersely, then turned away from her, his gaze once more fixed on the passing sights.

Ryder patiently waited for some explanation, but no more seemed to be forthcoming. She cleared her throat and pushed on. “And that would be what? Again, let’s just pretend I know all of jack-shit about this place.”

He sighed deeply, annoyed—always annoyed, this guy—and turned back to her. “From Africa. Live in jungle communes. They eat people. That’s pretty much all they like to do. Hunt. Kill. Eat. Stay away from them.”

She gulped and ran sweaty palms over her jeans, suppressing another shudder. Every new piece of information the Mudman revealed only served to terrify her further. Who knew there were so many fuckin’ monsters walking around in the world? As if dealing with the drug-dealers and shiesty gangsters wasn’t scary enough.

Still, she refused to be intimidated into silence. She pointed at the guy walking on his hands. “And him?”

“Halfie. Offspring of a human and something else. Usually come out looking like a little bit of each. Half this, half that. Halfies.”

She pointed at spiral building of pitted black stone, jabbing straight up in the sky like the horn of a unicorn. She briefly wondered whether unicorns were real, then dismissed the thought as silly—even in a world as wacky as this, there had to be a few things, at least, which were still myth. “What about that building, there? The spire.”

“Road spire,” he said after a moment. “Kinda like a traffic light. You’ll see ’em all over the city.” He waved a hand vaguely about. “No proper stoplights here, so those things, they help keep the roads orderly,” he said, as though explaining something so elementary it couldn’t possibly need any explanation at all. “At least as orderly as traffic in the Hub ever is. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to think.” He tapped at his temple and looked away.

She turned back to the window, splashes of red dotting her cheeks.
Guy is such a colossal dick,
she thought.
Authoritarian, follow-the-rules, tool-bag conformist.
The rest of the ride passed by in uncomfortable silence—silence that didn’t seem to bother Levi at all, but annoyed the piss out of Ryder. The asshole could at least have the good grace to realize she was mad at him.

The horse sidled to a stop after a few more minutes and Levi slipped out, grabbing Ryder’s arm in a too-hard grip and dragging her along.

Once safely on the sidewalk, Levi let her free and moved over to the front of the cab, reaching for his wallet as the gaunt driver peered over the edge at him with hollow, deeply recessed eyes of gray.

“Forty-seven Quwar,” the skeletal man said, extending a spidery hand.

“Dollars?” Levi asked. The driver regarded Levi through squinted eyes, lips peeled back from needle-sharp teeth in hate. The creeper acted as though exchanging dollars was an intolerable hassle worthy of death. Ryder watched Levi, waiting for the Mudman to smash the driver into paste, but as usual he appeared unfazed. As placid and unruffled as a mountain buffeted by a light breeze.

“Fine,” the driver finally conceded, “seven fifty.”

Levi dug out a ten. The driver pocketed it without even the pretense of making change before
clucking
at his deathly mount and pulling the carriage back into traffic.

Levi wheeled around and ushered Ryder toward the building behind them.

Their apparent destination was something out of a fantasy novel, part hulking cave, part Arthurian castle. A monstrous structure sporting high, craggy stone walls of gray. Jagged merlons ran along the top parapet, narrow windows bled orange light, and otherworldly moans and groans drifted to her ears. She’d been to enough shitty bars to spot a whorehouse when she saw one. She wasn’t sure where she’d expected Levi to take her, but a pub that doubled as a whorehouse sure as hell wasn’t it. He was too puritanical and uptight for it.

Levi brushed past her without a word, walked through the open portcullis—a retractable, drop down gate—and pushed open the bar’s front door. Yep, she hadn’t seen that coming, not from a mile off with a good set of binoculars. Since she didn’t want to stand around gawking like a tourist, she followed.

“The Lonely Mountain,” she said, reading the sign stenciled on the door. “Neutral Zone, Violators will be Incinerated…” She snorted. “Pretty funny—”

“Not a joke,” Levi replied, glancing over one shoulder. “The owner’s a dragon—greedy, fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding murderer. The real deal. Name’s Firroth the Red. He’ll incinerate anyone who puts a toe wrong. I’ve seen it myself, so be on your best behavior.”

The smirk melted from Ryder’s face, ice under a dragon’s flame, and she nodded her understanding.
This fuckin’ place. If there were dragons, maybe unicorns weren’t unrealistic after all.

“Hotel California” flooded out of the open doors, the twang of guitars and the reedy cry of Don Henley filling the air. Dim red light illuminated the cavernous interior. Hanging stalactites and jutting stalagmites littered the space, each filled with the ever-shifting light of enslaved, winged creatures. Ryder didn’t know what the tiny creatures were, but if she had to guess, she’d say pixies, based mostly on the tiny butterfly wings decorating their backs. That and their vague resemblance to Tinker Bell. Sluttier, though.

Smoke hung thick in the air, the perfume of sharp cigars, the sweet scent of hookah, and the stink of something pungent and sulfurous. It was actually sort of enjoyable.

“Stay close,” Levi whispered into her ear. “Say nothing. Touch no one. Make no agreements. Be invisible. This isn’t fun and games, and the Lonely Mountain is no place for Rubes.”

She followed in the wake of her guide, who cautiously carved a way through the crowd, his eyes skipping about, clearly searching for someone. She had no idea who since Levi was as forthcoming as a bank vault. The Sprawl, they were going to the Sprawl. That was the sum of her insight.

Eventually, Levi made his way over to the bar, still scanning the building’s patrons—a splattering of men and women, most of which could never pass for human. One chick, sporting a white cocktail dress, preened garish feathers of red and gold and blue with an oversized beak: a giant parrot-woman. A man—so fat the stool hardly supported his ass—wore a stained wife-beater and snorted through a pig snout. Apparently, though, none of the bar goers was the man Levi was looking for, since he kept right on moving.

After a few more minutes of useless searching, Levi elbowed his way to the bar proper, pushing between the parrot-feathered woman and the pig-faced man. He held out a hand, signaling to the guy behind the bar. Well, he was shaped like a guy.

Ryder assumed the bartender was probably also the bar owner, Firroth the Red, based solely on his dragonesque appearance. He was eight feet of ripped, hard-edged muscle on top of more muscle. Dude was a roid-head for sure. Scrolling tribal tattoos in blues and blacks, like scales, snaked around his arms, neck, and face in swirls of artistry. He had bright red hair, the envy of any punker—shifting gold then orange and back again—and a fat cigar, hanging from the corner of his scowling mouth, which seemed to be the source of the sulfurous stink filling the bar.

Freaky son of a bitch, no doubt, but some part of her also wanted to slip the guy her number. Kind of her type.

Ryder glanced at Levi, noting that his usually neutral mask had slipped away completely. An unbridled look of murder was plain as the nose on his face, even if he was
trying
damn hard
to hide it. She didn’t know much about the guy behind the bar, but one thing was abundantly clear: Levi wanted him dead. Buried. Like yesterday. But, perhaps even more importantly, Levi didn’t
do
anything. Ryder had seen firsthand what the Mudman was capable of, so if he was holding his bloodlust in check, it could only mean the bartender was in a league far outside of Levi’s.

Back in the bad days, Ryder had seen twitchy-head tweakers look at big-time dealers the same way. Hungry but impotent.

Levi smiled at the cigar-wielding man, the look of hate slipping away, buried behind his carefully cultivated human façade.

“I see you, Golem—
Mudman
,” the bartender said, his voice deep and rich. “I see you and the human girl, both.” He emphasized the word
girl
as if to mock their pitiful attempts at concealment. “And I see your hunger.” He smirked, unconcerned about Levi’s murderous desire. The dragon-man dropped his voice to a raspy whisper.

“You’re a dangerous guest to have around, Mudman. Might be, I had some folks stop by earlier, Thursrs, looking for you and a certain young lady.” He glanced at Ryder with eyes like molten gold, slit down the middle with thin slices of black. “You’re wanted by the Kobock Nation—mayhap even a mage. Could be they’re offering a hefty reward for information leading to your capture.”